Toyota researchers unveiled a blockchain solution designed to address data fragmentation in the transportation industry and simplify financing for capital-intensive projects.
Toyota Blockchain Lab, the automaker’s research division, announced the creation of a new blockchain platform, Mobility Orchestration Network (MON). The platform will enable vehicles and fleets to be turned into tradable digital assets, making it easier to attract investment in the transport sector. A prototype of the network is already deployed on Avalanche.
The project aims to solve the problem of fragmented data in transportation, where information about vehicle registration, insurance, ownership, and operation is stored across disparate systems. This creates barriers to financing, especially in capital-intensive areas such as deploying fleets of battery electric vehicles (BEV) and robo-taxis.
MON is designed to unify data from multiple sources to create a single digital identity for each vehicle. At its core is the concept of a Mobility Oriented Account (MOA), which aggregates three categories of data:
- Institutional. Legal documents such as registration certificates, ownership rights, tax records, and insurance details.
- Technical. Manufacturer-provided information, including the vehicle identification number (VIN), maintenance records, and software integrity.
- Economic. Operational metrics such as usage history, revenue from operation, and repair records that confirm the economic value of the asset.
The combined data will form Trust Chains, allowing each vehicle to be represented as a verifiable digital asset.
Technically, the solution leverages the Fungibility Ladder concept, which gradually transforms a unique asset into a liquid financial instrument:
- Ownership (non-fungible). Each vehicle’s ownership is represented as a non-fungible token (NFT) under the ERC-721 standard.
- Portfolio (semi-fungible). Multiple NFTs are grouped into portfolios, e.g., by model or region, making them easier to manage and assess risks.
- Security (fully fungible). A portfolio is valued, and a fully fungible tokenized security is issued based on it, enabling investors to freely buy and sell.
The MON prototype is built on the Avalanche blockchain, chosen for its high transaction speed, scalability, and ability to create customized subnets. Its architecture includes four interconnected L1 networks for managing trust (MON), securities, payments, and utility operations such as car-sharing or EV charging.
This concept opens new opportunities for financing in the transport industry, including cross-border trade in used cars, attracting global capital to regional fleets, and creating new business models for robo-taxis and logistics services. Toyota Blockchain Lab emphasizes that MON is being developed as an open protocol, with plans to collaborate with various industry participants for its further evolution and adoption.
Avalanche is already used for similar projects. For example, in July 2024, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) digitized 42 million vehicle titles on the blockchain to simplify ownership transfers.
