on the crypto
This week, Ocean v3 brought to life the proposal for an Ocean data market with Ethereum-based datatokens, as well as a range of other features such as initial data offerings (IDOs), the staking, the automated market making (AMM) functionality and the potential for sharing and monetizing machine learning models.
Making the value of data democratic
The goal of the project is to make the value of data and artificial intelligence (AI) democratic, which tends to accumulate in the hands of a few Internet giants. To monetize data created by individuals, businesses, or even cities, efficient methods are required for evaluating individual data sets.
To solve this problem, Ocean uses decentralized finance (DeFi) elements, combining AMM price tracking tools with decentralized exchange (DEX) technology. To explain how datatokens work, Ocean founder Trent McConaghy uses the analogy of "wrapping", the way cryptocurrencies are represented on Ethereum in order to be composed into yielding DeFi assets.
“I think an interesting way to frame this is to see datatokens as an ERC-20 wrapper for access control,” said McConaghy. "So just as BTC entered the Ethereum ecosystem in the form of wrapped bitcoin, Ocean is creating data wrapped to bring data services as assets into the Ethereum ecosystem as well."
Does data monetization become real?
McConaghy points out several obstacles that have so far held back the ability to monetize data: lack of control, lack of privacy, difficulty in pricing data, false signals of care, and poor interoperability. By leveraging a combination of blockchain and compute to data, Ocean had tackled the first two problems; adding DeFi elements and lo staking in v3 it helps to fix the rest, he said.
Every data service on the market gets its own dated ERC-20 Ocean to gain access to data services. Fakes are a common problem on the internet, from fake Amazon reviews to Twitter bots.
Lo staking in Ocean addresses this problem: the more you do staking on a particular data pool, the more likely it is to be a quality data set. Another interesting aspect of Ocean's token model is the way it operates staking in the context of the AMMs. AMMs offer an easy way to launch so-called initial data offerings (IDOs) and provide liquidity to the system.
Ocean collaborations
With the launch of v3, Ocean announced the partnership with CivicTechHub, the largest database of projects dedicated to the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as Swash, Human Protocol, Thalus.ai and Transport Genie.
"To incentivize better data flow in our COVID project database and to facilitate cross collaboration, the ability of ocean protocol market liquidity to double as a management mechanism and investment it's a logical step, ”Vincent Verheyen, CEO and founder of CivicTechHub, said in a statement. CivicTechHub aims to provide Ocean functionality to each of the projects on its COVID-19 platform, Verheyen said.
