The Elastos DMA Project

Own Your Data with Elastos DMA

We all know understanding Elastos Technology can be a daunting task. Today we’re going to be talking about one of the most important projects currently taking place in the Elastos Ecosystem. We’re going to be talking about The Elastos DMA Project.

What is the Elastos DMA Project?

DMA stands for Decentralized Marketing Platform (DMA). DMA brings a significant amount of utility to the Elastos Ecosystem. I would even go as far to say DMA will be Synonymous with Elastos. Once it is explained, it is actually quite easy to understand what DMA brings to Elastos and to see how the relationship between these two projects can develop in the future.

In short, DMA brings the “Own your Data” to Elastos. It is through DMA we will be able to store, categorize, and monetize our data through easy to use applications and interfaces. Let’s see how DMA describes itself and lets talk a bit about how it actually works.

Within the whitepaper, DMA has described itself as the following:

DMA is the decentralized marketing and commerce framework on top of the Elastos infrastructure. It utilizes the Elastos public resources and services, such as the Main Chain as ledger, SideChain DID, distributed storage, Carrier’s P2P capability, to build the digital marketing layer, packed with various business logical modules.

It is by utilizing the DMA platform, projects seeking to utilize decentralized marketing and commerce within the Elastos Ecosystem can have that need filled. Now, you may be asking yourself, where exactly are these “modules” located.

DMA Architecture Relative To The Elastos Ecosystem

As can be seen in the above image, The Elastos DMA’s modules sits on-top of the the core Elastos Resources. DMA utilizes the Elastos Carrier, Decentralized IDS, and various other core Elastos Functions to achieve their goals.

What are Modules?

You might have also noticed things like “elastos.exchange” or “elastos.profile”. These are Modules. You can think of “modules” as code that has been developed to perform particular functions. For example, “elastos.profile” creates a profile based on the information you have given it. We’ll dive into this more later of course. This should give you a general idea of what these modules are and how the work.

What types of Modules are there in DMA?

For now, the white paper has discussed a few modules. However, DMA has stated that there might even be more modules to come. These modules can be divided into two primary categories. These categories are

1) Digital Asset Related Modules

2) Personal Data Related Modules.

What will these Modules do for DMA?

As previously explained, these modules are simply code develiped by DMA to perform a particular function. These modules that combine to create the Elastos DMA Project will all work together to serve two general functions thus far. These modules have been designed to help with the management of digital assets and they will help with the management of your personal data within the Elastos Ecosystem. Lets get detailed on what exactly these modules are, and the various roles that they perform.

First, lets talk about the Digital Asset Related Modules.

Digital Asset Related Modules

What are the roles of Digital Asset Related Modules?

In order to understand the various roles of the Digital Asset Related Modules. Let first understand what exactly DMA considers a Digital Asset.

DMA’s White Paper states:

“Anything that is capable of being owned or controlled to produce value, is considered an asset. For example, goods, services, securities, warehouse receipts, purchase agreements, licenses, copyrights, music, videos, games, loyalty program points, game equipment, event tickets, collectibles and other physical assets and digital assets. DMA provides a range of services for buying, selling, exchanging, redempting, and managing the assets.”

The Digital Asset Related Modules will be used to manage anything that is capable of being owned or controlled to produce value.

What are the Digital Asset Related Modules?

As stated earlier, DMA is an evolving project, there might be more modules being developed as we speak. Thus far, these are the Digital Asset Related Modules we’re aware of:

elastos.store elastos.tokenizer elastos.exchange

There are no detailed descriptions on the exact functions of these modules, however, we can make some assumptions based on the names of these modules until further details are released. Both categories of modules are equally important, we’re likely to interact with the Personal Data Related Modules just as much as the Digital Asset Related Modules, if not more!

Personal Data Related Modules

What are the roles of Personal Data Related Modules?

If you don’t know Elastos wants users to be able to utilize their personal data to generate wealth for yourself. Not just large entities like Amazon and Facebook that sell and trade our data for their own benefit. This is where the Personal Data Related Modules of DMA steps in.

What are the Personal Data Related Modules?

Thus far, the Personal Data Related Modules we are aware of are as follows:

elastos.pluse elastos.profile elastos.appraiser

Within DMA, the collection, analysis, usage of personal data requires your permission. Your personal data is stored in the personal space of a cloud disk or other decentralized storage system which are ALL encrypted.

As a result of this, no one can get access to your data without the your permission. This offers us, consumers of the Elastos Technology, a dual-protection mechanism. But it creates the question, how will companies gain access to your data to which they can then pay you?

DMA has called the module that performs all of these functions, “elastos.pulse”.

How does “Elastos.pulse” & “Elastos.profile” work together?

Elastos.pulse

“elastos.pulse” on the left

DMA’s Whitepaper states:

“ We name this service as ‘elastos.pulse’. This service takes its roots in traditional Chinese medicine and the role of the pulse within it. Nobody can collect and analyze your pulse information unless you authorize the doctor to put his fingers on your wrist. Through pulse service, personal data can be dynamically collected, analyzed, structured, and maintained, and then turn into the digital portrait”

The “elastos.pulse” module displays it’s Chinese roots proudly. Staying true to it’s origin in preventing access to your sensitive personal information without your permission. It is through “elastos.pulse” we opt into having our personal data collected and analysed for our own gain. As oppose to having Google and various other fortune 500 companies do it for their own gain. The information collected be “elastos.pulse” is then fed into another important Personal Data Related Module.The collected information fed/forwarded into another “elastos.profile”.

Elastos.profile

“elastos.profile” on right

This module does exactly what the name suggests, it creates a profile like a “facebook profile” based on your data to which was given to it by “elastos.pulse”. The profile is basically a snapshot of all the data about you large businesses hold valuable. This puts us users in a position we’ve probably never been in before. DMA gives us the power to now leverage our personal data for our own personal gain. If you give permission, applications/businesses can then use to perform business related functions. A portion of the profits from what ever business they’ve conducted is distributed to you, a profile owner. How much you are paid is determined by the amount you agreed to in smart contracts. In essence, through the Elastos DMA, you have successfully turned all the things that make you special, into something that is securely monetizable. Through DMA, you have turned yourself into a digital asset, something we all know is recognizable by block chains and smart contracts.

“Profile has open data structure, including the basic user portrait profile, and the extended profiles for special scenarios. It’s expandable. With owner’s permission, applications can use profile data to perform business purpose and make profit. Some portion of profit is distributed to the profile owner based on the binding smart contracts. Based upon this mechanism, the Elastos decentralized marketing and commerce vision, “you own your data”and “turn your own data into your fortune”, can be achieved.” — Elastos DMA Whitepaper

“Elastos.appraiser”

Because data is the commodity in this ecosystem. DMA has stated that users are free to decline requests to their personal data/”elastos.profile” until the value of such request is revealed to users.

So you may be asking, how do I know the value of my data?

That’s where DMA’s ‘elastos.appraiser” comes in.

The Elastos Appraiser is a data value assessment service. By analyzing the matching ratio between owner’s data and application’s requirements, it provides the data owners with the information required to make the right decision regarding the use of their data.Thus, when you use the “elastos.pulse”, “elastos.profile”, & “elastos.appraiser” modules. You get the following workflow.

Pulse, Profile, & Appraiser Data Workflow

Here we can see pulse, profile and appraiser as it relates to Decentralized Application that’s a user may be sending or receiving data from.

What about Data Leaks via Devices?

I believe it is important to highlight the fact that your personal data, and the Application are separate of each other within the cyber space when using The Elastos DMA Project. Your personal data is stored in encrypted storage, such as cloud, IOT box, IPFS-like service. While the application obviously runs on a networked device.

Now, lets take a look at a one use case that was presented in the DMA Whitepaper.

DMA E-Ticket Use Case

This use case includes performances, live shows, sporting events, ticket management for various gatherings. DMA can help the event ticketing platform to tokenize the tickets, making it easy for selling in the online ticketing platform. The e-ticket can also be easily sent, transferred, sold/bought among people in secondary market. The original ticket issuer can put restrictions on the e-ticket, such as the frequency, liquidity, price range of the ticket.

I believe this E-Ticket use-case to be easily adopted. Allowing us to tokenize events and create new ecosystems. Who know what the future holds, perhaps this exact application can be evolved to be something even more significant. We’ll have to stay tuned to see what Elastos & DMA has planned.

Conclusion

With Elastos & DMA working together, a future where users actually own their personal data with the option to monetize it is becoming a very likely. A future where we are important as our data, and we each realize 100% of it’s value to businesses. A future where we can all say, we are a Cyber Republic, and Elastos our shield and sword.

My Youtube Channel — https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh5WBMq8chi8GfHmRMT6aDw/videos