Technological breakthroughs have offered innovative solutions for smart parking systems, independent of the use of computer vision, smart sensors, gap sensing, and other variations. We now have a high degree of confidence in spot classification or object detection at the parking level. The only thing missing is end-user satisfaction, as users are forced to use multiple interfaces to find a parking spot in a geographical area. We propose a trustless federated model that will add a layer of abstraction between the technology and the human interface to facilitate user adoption and responsible data acquisition by leveraging a federated identity protocol based on Zero Knowledge Cryptography. No central authority is needed for the model to work; thus, it is trustless. Chained trust relationships generate a graph of trustworthiness, which is necessary to bridge the gap from one smart parking program to an intelligent system that enables smart cities. With the help of Zero Knowledge Cryptography, end users can attain a high degree of mobility and anonymity while using a diverse array of service providers. From an investor's standpoint, the usage of IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) lowers operational costs, increases service resilience, and decentralizes the network of smart parking solutions. A peer-to-peer content addressing system ensures that the data are moved close to the users without deploying expensive cloud-based infrastructure. The result is a macro system with independent actors that feed each other data and expose information in a common protocol. Different client implementations can offer the same experience, even though the parking providers use different technologies. We call this InterPlanetary Smart Parking Architecture NOW-IPSPAN.
Keywords: IPFS; collaborative smart parking; distributed systems; federated model; protocol; smart parking.