WHY I DECIDED TO INVEST IN OCEAN PROTOCOL

I have decided to write an article on why I personally decided to invest a considerable amount of funds into Ocean Protocol. Before I invested in this project I was invested in four main projects, two of which I wanted to hold and two that I was looking to exit. I kept hearing a considerable amount of talk in other telegram groups and social media outlets about Ocean Protocol so I decided to do some research on this project to see if it was the magic 3rd hold I was looking for, below is some of what I discovered through my research.

What is Ocean Protocol?

Ocean Protocol is a tokenized service layer that exposes data, storage, compute and algorithms for consumption with a set of deterministic proofs on availability and integrity that serve as verifiable service agreements. There is staking on services to signal quality, reputation and ward against Sybil Attacks.

Ocean helps to unlock data, particularly for AI. It is designed for scale and uses blockchain technology that allows data to be shared and sold in a safe, secure and transparent manner.

How does Ocean Protocol work?

Ocean Protocol is at once a business, technical, and governance framework that is interwoven together to allow data and services to be shared and sold, in a secure manner. Ocean Protocol stores metadata, links to data, provides a licensing framework and has toolsets for pricing. A multitude of data marketplaces can hook into Ocean Protocol to provide “last mile” services to connect data providers and consumers. Ocean Protocol is designed so that data owners cannot be locked-in to any single marketplace. The data owner controls each dataset.

What problem does Ocean Protocol solve?

Ocean Protocol unlocks data so it can be used productively.

The world’s data is growing exponentially yet is massively under-utilized. Most companies have tremendous amounts of data, but have difficulty exploiting it. Conversely, many others are starving for data, particularly in AI. Ocean Protocol allows data providers to share data, while maintaining control and having transparency.

Who are the main participants in Ocean Protocol?

The main actors in Ocean Protocol are data providers, data consumers, data marketplaces, service providers and network keepers. Data providers offer data. Data consumers obtain data for their own use. Data marketplaces connect data producers and data consumers. Service providers provision computation, storage and algorithms for sale. Network keepers support Ocean’s protocol by running nodes within the network. Please refer to our Marketplace Framework for more details.

What is Ocean Protocol Foundation?

It is a Singapore based non-profit foundation. Its mandate is to ensure open access to the protocol and platform, provide long-term governance, community and ecosystem, and be a custodian of funds raised. DEX Pte Ltd and BigchainDB GmBH are the founders of Ocean Protocol Foundation Limited.

What is the relationship between Ocean Protocol and BigchainDB?

BigchainDB will develop the protocol and network for Ocean Protocol. For details about the technical architecture, refer to the technical white paper.

Does Ocean Protocol use BigchainDB?

BigchainDB is a persistent data store with blockchain characteristics of decentralized control, security and assets. Ocean Protocol does not use BigchainDB except as one of the many potential services to integrate into.

Who are Ocean Protocol’s competitors?

Ocean is a protocol and network on which data marketplaces can be built to unlock data for sharing and selling. It enables data to be shared. Most other projects are decentralized / centralized marketplaces or data brokers. Ocean is complementary to both centralized & decentralized marketplaces, because it provides an additional channel for the marketplaces to publish their services. We consider projects like Enigma and Datum to be potential partners.

Who are Ocean’s partners and early customers?

Singapore is the lead government partner for Ocean Protocol. Singapore is supporting an 18-month development roadmap with DEX and Ocean Protocol Foundation. We are partnering up with numerous multinationals from insurance, pharma, automotive, and other industries to develop the technology and provide data.

Blockchain connecting AI and healthcare continues to partner with Ocean Protocol

Singapore-based healthcare company Connected Life has announced a partnership with Ocean Protocol where they will utilize blockchain technology and provide distributed data exchange protocols for Artificial Intelligence.

Connected Life will use blockchain technology to provide solutions to enhance patient symptom monitoring. Motion sensors in Connected Life’s IoT technology enable continuous monitoring of patient symptoms. Such as cancer and heart disease, chronic diseases and gradually onset treatment extends long-term, by the falloff of dopamine neurons in the brain, such as Parkinson’s disease of intractable diseases that cause motor disorders such as walking, in long-term treatment, it is not possible to see a doctor every day. Therefore, self-care on its own is important.

Large amounts of data are needed to make the AI solution more accurate and robust, but there are some challenges in accessing medical data. First, because medical data is so sensitive, it is reluctant for data providers such as patients, health professionals, hospitals, governments, health care companies, and insurance companies to share data. It is also difficult to obtain consent for sharing because the owner of the data is unclear.

In addition, medical data is distributed across many databases, it can be difficult to find specific medical data. Scaling AI with Blockchain Technology in order to address these data challenges and make it more widely available, we need a way to establish trust among the data stakeholders.

The ocean protocol utilizing blockchain technology can advance the data economy. Identity-managed data can be established as an owner and by maintaining access control of data through smart contracts to strengthen trust in data sharing. In addition, the accurate traceability unique to blockchain technology enables tracking of the progress from data acquisition to use.

The Ocean Protocol is a sensitive data sharing solution because it protects the privacy of your data. To make a solution using AI more accurate, you need to load a lot of data and train the AI.

Ocean Protocol provides services that can be shared while maintaining the confidentiality of data. In order to combine medical data with negative images of data sharing for AI, which requires large amounts of data in order to be better intelligence, a protocol that combines blockchain technology and privacy technology is needed. The Ocean Protocol may be the forerunner of the data economy.

Data asset pricing in Web 3 marketplace (dexFREIGHT)

dexFREIGHT are huge believers of Web 3 movement. They hold a firm belief that users always have the first right to their data and be able to monetize it. This belief has led them to partner with Ocean Protocol/BigchainDB and create a much-needed logistics data marketplace powered by smart contracts, whereby companies can buy and sell logistics data at their will and change the “rent seeking” paradigm that has plagued other marketplaces. One of the critical parameters in the data marketplace is pricing or valuation of user (shipment) data.

The people building Ocean Protocol

Ocean Protocol is being built by a diverse ecosystem of contributors who share a common vision of unlocking data for AI. Our core team and advisors have converged from many different countries, industries, and backgrounds to collaborate on kickstarting a New Data Economy.

The Ocean Protocol core team combines a deep background in big data, blockchain, artificial intelligence and data exchanges, with real-world business experience as entrepreneurs, designers and technologists who have started over 20 companies.

Obviously it takes more than two people to build a successful blockchain project on the scale of what Ocean Protocol are aiming to achieve but the two men leading this team and their experience can not be underestimated which is why their background played a major role in me investing into the project to the level I have. I felt I should make it clear to people sitting on the sidelines just who are in charge of this project and the experience they have.

BIO TRENT MCCONAGHY (Founder)

I’m working on Ocean Protocol. We aim to make the opportunities and benefits in AI more equal. Ocean is a decentralized substrate for AI data & services. It’s designed to catalyze a data commons side-by-side with many data marketplaces, make verified & privacy-preserving compute more accessible, and give provenance to training data, model building, and prediction. This in turn can help catalyze autonomous driving, medical research, and more. My long-term goal is to help ensure that humanity has a role in an increasingly autonomous world.

I started my career by doing AI research for national defense in the 1990s, while still an undergraduate [paper].

Then, in my first startup (ADA), we explored the relation between human creativity and AI-based machine creativity. Synopsys acquired ADA in 2004.

I extended that work during my PhD from 2004–2008, and found a way to reconcile machine creativity with existing engineering knowledge. Here’s the book.

In my second startup (Solido), we leveraged AI to help drive Moore’s Law, which was under threat due to high manufacturing variations. Here’s the book. Now, Solido software is used for most modern chip designs. Siemens acquired Solido in 2017.

My third and current startup is all about democratizing data for the planet. We hatched ascribe (2013) and BigchainDB (2015). Our focus is on Ocean Protocol (2017).

Other current activities:

Past projects:

PhD in EE from KU Leuven, Belgium. Awarded #1 thesis worldwide in the field.

BE EE and BsC CS from U Saskatchewan, Canada. Awarded #1 final year thesis.

Did ML research for Canadian Department of National Defense, in the second half of the 90s.

Wrote 2 Books [1,2] on AI/ML, circuits and creativity. Also 35 Papers and 20 Patents on AI/ML.

Co-organized workshops on AI/ML and circuits [e.g. 1,2,3,4]. TPC / reviewer for many conferences & journals [e.g. 1,2,3,4,5]. Lecturer at Data Science Retreat [link].

Organized meetup “Singularity Meets Self Improvement” [link].

Past projects: painting, BCI hacking, hypnosis, video game programming, surfing.

Raised in a pig farm in Canada, hacking away on cold winter nights. 3D CAD tool, wordprocessor, dozens of games.

Member of Advisory Group for the e-Residency team of the Government of Estonia.

Bruce Pon (Founder/Board member)

Founder / Board Member

Jun 2017 — Present2 years 7 months

Singapore

Founder / CEO

May 2014 — Present5 years 8 months

Berlin Area, Germany

Founder / CEO

Jun 2014 — Feb 20161 year 9 months

Founder / Partner

Jan 2009 — Jul 20145 years 7 months

Avantalion International Consulting GmbH

International Project Manager

Oct 2003 — Dec 20085 years 3 months

Daimler Financial Services AG

Consultant

May 1996 — Mar 20025 years 11 months

Advisors

We have over 35 advisors spanning the globe, with recognized expertise in AI, blockchain, big data, business and policy. Advisors were carefully selected based on an alignment of values towards unlocking data and AI for society. Advisors work to build meaningful collaborations, refer potential business partners, integrate with the protocol, and provide guidance on governance.

The companies trusting Ocean Protocol

We work closely with our collaborators to iterate on the network’s underlying technology. The following projects either have an agreement with Ocean Protocol or are actively working on integrating their project with Ocean Protocol.

Fitchain

Fitchain allows organizations to publish their business challenges and connect to data scientists who effectively work on a solution.

Enigma

Enigma is using groundbreaking privacy technologies to build the first platform for scalable, end-to-end decentralized applications.

IBM Watson AI XPRIZE®

Ocean Protocol will help bring data and information to the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE® participants.

MOBI — Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative

Using blockchain and related technologies to make mobility safer, greener, and more accessible.

Couger

Couger is building the integrated autonomous technology platform Connectome, which integrates AI, IoT, Robotics, and Blockchain to achieve search, prediction and seamless payment execution in the autonomous world.

Messari

Messari is building an open data library and curation tools that help researchers, investors, and regulators make sense of the cryptoasset industry.

Unilever

Unilever Foundry is Unilever’s global platform for partnering with the world’s best startups to accelerate business innovation on a global scale. We identify and leverage the latest technologies from around the world, and exchange knowledge to solve business challenges through collaboration with Unilever.

Roche Diagnostics

Roche Diagnostics is a division of Roche which develops and integrates diagnostic solutions that address the challenges of today and anticipate the needs of tomorrow.

DCI

DCI is committed to build South East Asia’s most intelligent digital commerce data platform that enables brands & retailers to better understand and effectively drive their eCommerce Performance.

Data Natives

Data Natives brings together diverse strands of the global tech community. They aim to educate and inspire their 70,000+ community members, and motivate them to shape the innovations of tomorrow.

In Conclusion

Ocean Protocol has everything one should be looking for if wanting to invest in crypto.