The blockchain space is undergoing a transformation, trending towards decentralized applications backed by secure data sets.

NewsBlocks primary innovation is that news is data. When news becomes data, stored on an open, tamper-proof blockchain, it gives anyone the ability — for the first time — to use the data to create news applications, and to buy and sell news data in the world’s first news datamarket.

A desire for data

Online news has made significant inroads in many countries, with close to 60% of internet users in the US, UK, Australia, and Japan now getting their news at least once a day online, with the figure rising to 70% in Sweden and 80% in South Korea.

In recent years, newspapers have shifted their news business model away from their centralized websites, to engaging their audience wherever they are: on social media, instant messengers, and chat and voice applications.

However, as these distribution channels have grown, trust has lessened. Readers will implicitly trust news they get from a mainstream news site, but the same news promoted on a Facebook group, is trusted less, in part because of Facebook’s recent data scandals, but also because — up to now — social media as a medium itself has not been seen as as having as much trust as mainstream news sites.

The basic proposition of NewsBlocks is to build trust into the Network at the lowest level — to create a base layer of verified, unbiased news data that can be trusted, no matter where it is published.

Making a market

NewsBlocks applications are powered by smart contracts, queries and microservices. As just one example, imagine Crash News, an application that searches for, and retrieves, information only about car crashes. Each query to the blockchain returns the data and time of the crash, the model of car, and a related picture or video. The developer then creates a feed that alerts users whenever a particular car, such as a Tesla Model S, crashes. The developer puts ads for each car type in the feed.

Adding a price layer to the data creates — also for the first time — the news datamarket. Now applications can use NewsBlocks Tokens to buy and sell news data, without the need for any third party.

NewsBlocks data and payment flows

The Crash News developer pays for data at a price set by Smart Contracts depending on demand. A car crash in a small town will cost less than a celebrity crash that is in high demand by other apps.

As the developer builds the audience for their app, they will generate more advertising revenue than data fees, making a profitable business.

There are many advantages to this system:

The developer doesn’t have to ask a third party’s permission to use the data. Pricing is set by the market. Anyone can add their information. For example, if you see a car crash on your street you can upload a video to the blockchain, and you will get paid directly by the Crash News app, again without the need for a third party.

Too much data?

Obviously, converting all the world’s news into data will require storage in excess of the capacities of current blockchain systems. NewsBlocks will use a hybrid system that tracks data publication and access operations on the blockchain, while securely storing data records offchain in a decentralized network of NewsNodes.

Each NewsNode interacts with the blockchain and provides applications with microservices and Smart Contracts that assist news data verification, query, and retrieval services. Contributors, who can range from individual citizen journalists through to news corporations, can publish news data to their local NewsNode which broadcasts it across the NewsBlocks network, while news applications run NewsNode queries to retreive news data, with all payments transacted and settled by NewsBlocks tokens.

Data is power

We envisage many new applications for NewsBlocks’ news datamarket: Search and retreive data to create trusted news sites, chatbots and voice apps. Compare past and present data to build automated fact checkers; and analyse sources to create ‘trust ratings’ that help warn of fake news. We look forward to opening the data to developers around the world so that they can build the next generation of news apps.

Find out more about NewsBlocks and the NewsBlocks Token at https://newsblocks.io/