The founder of one of China’s pioneering ride-sharing apps has announced plans to launch a new blockchain-based ride hailing service, potentially upgrading security and efficiency for a sector dominated by Didi and Uber.

Chen Weixing, who established Kuaidi Dache in 2012, told the China International Big Data Industry Expo 2018 that the platform would be “the first time blockchain will be tested on a social application on mass scale.”

Chen is partnering with Yang Jun, co-founder of services platform Meituan, to develop the new service. On the sidelines of the expo in southwest China’s Guizhou Province, Yang hinted that in the long term, blockchain could be used to develop even more services, saying “with the use of blockchain, we can build a set of economic systems different from the previous ones…We can direct traffic from the Internet and add on different services to meet users’ needs."

No specific details have been released regarding a timescale for the project or how exactly it would work. However, after recent safety scandals regarding China’s Didi, including the murder of one passenger using the platform, blockchain could be used to enhance security on the platform.

Chen’s Kuaidi Dache was one of the first ride-sharing platforms to gain mass popularity in China, establishing a rivalry with Didi Chuxing which ended in 2014 when both firms merged. Today, Didi Chuxing is worth an estimated 60 billion US dollars.

With China as the world’s biggest source of patent applications in 2017, research into blockchain technology has intensified in recent months. Now the CEO of app developer Funcity, Chen has previously been a vocal supporter of the technology, with Chinese media reporting earlier this year that he has invested in several major blockchain developers.