The following article explains how data scientists can access datasets that are distributed through Web 3.0 technology, whilst earning bounties of up to 10’000 US$ for data science work. Engage with a global data science community to explore blockchain data exchange, solve data challenges and learn how to become part of a Web 3.0 data economy, powered by Ocean Protocol.
Asset Tokenization on the Blockchain
Blockchain technology disrupted and evolved the Web 2.0 internet to Web 3.0. Whilst Web 2.0 offers an exchange of information through intermediaries, Web 3.0 allows for a trustless exchange of value between two parties. On blockchain networks, the mean of exchange are tokens. They can represent various forms of value, including money (Bitcoin), ownership (NFTs) and utility (OCEAN).
The superpower of blockchains to tokenize assets helps to regulate proof-of-ownership and improves transparency. The recent multi-billion-dollar speculation around non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that represent unique ownership over digital art and collectibles proves that Web 3.0 is experiencing unprecedented attention. Whilst digital art was likely just the beginning for blockchain tokens, many use-cases still lie in the dark, waiting to be explored.
One such largely unknown use-case for blockchain is the valuation, monetization, and exchange of datasets that was initiated by Ocean Protocol.
The Web 3.0 Data Economy
Blockchains can be used to tokenize non-traditional assets, like data and intellectual property. These tokens can then value, monetize and transfer assets that couldn’t be exchanged previously.
Ocean Protocol is a pioneer in this domain and deployed existing token standards across a multitude of blockchains to incentivize data owners to publish their datasets and intellectual property to an open-source data marketplace called the Ocean “Onda” V4 Data Market. Ocean’s technology pairs blockchain tools like decentralized finance (DeFi) to allow data to become a decentralized asset class. Effectively, Ocean Protocol’s technology makes datasets investable. Data owners can create ‘Datatokens’ for their datasets, a form of blockchain tokens that regulate the value and the access to their data. Datatokens can also be traded by speculators. Therefore, the Ocean Data Marketplace could be compared to a stock exchange for data assets, whilst it also provides the opportunity for data scientists to access data.
In summary, tokenizing datasets on the Ocean Marketplace helps data owners to offer their data assets to both buyers and investors. Whilst Datatokens can be spent by data consumers to gain access to the underlying dataset for their purpose, speculators can trade Datatokens for profit. The supply and demand of the Datatokens determines the price of the underlying dataset. This unique concept gathered attention from a variety of institutions, including Mercedes-Benz and the World Economic Forum.
Blockchain Data Challenges
Publishing data openly is not a common practice among companies around the world. Whilst many executives believe their data holds the company’s dearest secrets and needs to be protected, they miss out on the potential economic value that lies untapped. One example is Goldcorp, a near-bankrupt business that released a 400MB .zip file of geographic drilling data to the world with the plea to submit potential mining sites. In return, Goldcorp offered data scientists a reward for every submission. More than 80% of the submissions led to the exploration of profitable sites and Goldcorp grew to become a leading multi-billion-dollar mining business. It is evident that with the right incentives, releasing open data to a global audience of data scientists creates unimaginable economic value.
Ocean Protocol, a pioneer within the Web 3.0 data economy, shares the vision of unlocking data and aims to bridge the gap between blockchain technology and data scientists.
Currently, there are over 400 tokenized datasets on the Ocean Data Market with some gathering attention of data scientists. They include a dataset of consumer browsing history launched by Swash and an AI-optimized image library for self-driving cars published by Evotegra. With the launch of Ocean Protocol’s new data marketplace, there are many more datasets expected to be published.
In collaboration with data publishers, Ocean Protocol will also release data challenges that incentivize the global data science community to solve real-world problems and create economic value for data owners that tokenize data on the Ocean Marketplace. Challenges could include writing an algorithm for a dataset, establish insights to the data or determine whether the data could be valuable for other use-cases. Data challenges will generate real-world economic value on top of Ocean Protocol’s blockchain data marketplace. Whilst exploring a variety of datasets, data scientists can also make use of other Ocean Protocol features, such as using Compute-to-Data, and receive additional rewards.
Learn how to engage with the Ocean Marketplace with Data Whale’s Tutorials or visit Ocean Protocol’s website.
