OpenCourier: an Open Protocol for Building a Decentralized Ecosystem of Community-owned Delivery Platforms
Yuhan Liu, Varun Nagaraj Rao, Sohyeon Hwang, Janet Vertesi, Andrés Monroy-Hernández
TL;DR
OpenCourier addresses the central challenges of the gig economy by proposing an open, interoperable protocol to decentralize delivery platform governance. It introduces a three-layer protocol architecture—Registry Layer, App-Instance Layer, and Instance-Requester Layer—together with a reference implementation to demonstrate practical interoperability. The contributions include standardized data formats, discovery mechanisms, courier preference inputs, community notes, and data-disclosure/auditing endpoints, all aimed at increasing worker agency and transparency. The work enables a landscape of community-owned, locally responsive delivery ecosystems with cross-platform portability and open-source collaboration.
Abstract
Although the platform gig economy has reshaped the landscape of work, its centralized operation by select actors has brought about challenges that impedes workers' well-being. We present the architecture and design of OpenCourier, an open protocol that defines communication patterns within a decentralized ecosystem of delivery platforms. Through this protocol, we aim to address three key challenges in the current economy: power imbalances between the platform and workers, information asymmetries caused by black-boxed algorithms and value misalignments in the infrastructure design process. With the OpenCourier protocol, we outline a blueprint for community-owned ecosystem of delivery platforms that centers worker agency, transparency, and bottom-up design.