The cryptoworld is all about collaboration. Joining forces with other projects that align with your mission can add some serious strength and expanded utility to both parties. MEDIA Protocol has recently partnered up with SWIPE to deliver content and announcements via our CryptoCatnip dApp.

On Friday 17th August 2018, MEDIA Protocol’s CEO, James Tabor caught up with SWIPE CEO, Clifford Lim, on MEDIA Protocol’s Telegram channel to discuss how SWIPE evolved, the value of collaboration and the future of the partnership with CryptoCatnip.

About SWIPE

SWIPE is a blockchain-based mobile engagement data monetisation platform, complete with a privacy and data sharing protocol. SWIPE’s goal is to empower and strengthen the data privacy of the user and build a data ecosystem where key stakeholders are adequately compensated for their efforts.

What’s the problem you see with data monetisation approaches currently?

Clifford: Currently, centralized data intermediaries aggregate data and sell them for maximum benefits and profits to themselves. There is no transparent tracking of data contribution, aggregation and data privacy controls. Both users and data buyers are on the losing end — the former is not incentivized or rewarded for their data contributions, and the latter is unable to audit and verify the quality provenance the data. SWIPE’s platform would remove this unnecessary middleman from the ecosystem and build a transparent and fairer data ecosystem for all. At the same time, user’s data is protected through Swipe’s Privacy and data sharing protocol.

As the SWIPE team are former owners of multiple apps, we know the problems of data monetization for apps and it’s really unfair for app developers, so we are hoping SWIPE can change things for them!

Who are some of the middlemen that cause these [data monetisation] issues? Without these market actors, who sets the price/value of the data?

Clifford: The middlemen that cause these issues are third party data aggregation companies. They give a terrible deal to app developers because they give them a one-time sale price to buy the data from app developers and then resell them to as many data buyers as they want.

Users who produce the data should be the ones to decide the price of how much they should be rewarded for their data. Whenever a data buyer creates a campaign to purchase data, the app users will be notified about the pricing of the data that they are selling. If the price is acceptable by the app users then they will provide consent to sell their data. Using a smart contract to manage the transaction, the entire process is transparent and auditable bringing benefits to all the stakeholders in the ecosystem.

What was the rationale for opening up the CryptoCatnip announcements to other projects like SWIPE? How is the crypto space when it comes to collaboration?

James: There are a number of reasons we’ve started inviting other projects to add their news to CryptoCatnip:

1. We’re all followers of multiple projects and it can be difficult to remain on top of all the updates. It made good sense to have all these great projects share their news in one place.

2. Crypto and blockchain is all about collaboration between projects. The space and technology is so nascent that it is all about collaborating between projects when bringing blockchain to the market. At conferences you’ll see traders hanging out with traders, investors with investors, and most importantly projects hanging out together.

Is there a way to integrate SWIPE and MEDIA Protocol via CryptoCatnip then?

Clifford: Yes there is, SWIPE and MEDIA Protocol will be collaborating through technology integration and cross-promotion in each other in our areas of geographical influence.

SWIPE’s Blockpost App will be integrated with MEDIA Protocol’s Smart URL which will give opportunities to users to be rewarded for sharing and interacting with certain articles. This feature can can be extended to any apps and any blockchain data marketplaces inside the SWIPE network in the future.

Blockpost is a Proof of Concept mobile application by SWIPE that aggregates crypto-related news and hosts airdrop/earndrop campaigns. Through technology sharing, we would be able to integrate MEDIA Protocol’s Smart URL feature. News articles may register their URLs with MEDIA Protocol and leverage on the platform in order to promote and incentivize content consumption.

If anyone would like a recap on how MEDIA Protocol and SWIPE are working together, do have a look at the partnership article that was published just a few days ago. We are bringing as much value as we can to people using blockchain technology, allowing them to earn from participating in data monetization and to earn from sharing and creating content. We have already included MEDIA Protocol into our application.

With Smart URLs it’s not only going to be super beneficial to publishers, as their content will be incentivized to be shared, but also super fun for users to earn rewards for being part of this new economy.

With all this data flying around, how does SWIPE manage data privacy?

Clifford: The main thing we do is to provide apps with fair data monetization and we do that by providing users with the power of owning their data. This is how we do it:

Any data collected is encrypted with the users’ own public key. This ensures ownership and privacy of data. In addition, user consent is managed on-chain and transaction records will be logged for auditability.

Blockchain is able to introduce transparency into the data transactions process, enabling users to monitor the usage and transfer of their data. In addition, data campaigns hosted on SWIPE will be managed through smart contracts, which will also handle reward distribution and implement data governance.

How will content producers be able to access and analyse the data generated by MEDIA Protocol?

James: We do this in a number of ways:

1. We’ve been building a Publisher Portal that interacts with the blockchain and smart contract. This has been designed to be as similar to an AdWords kind of experience, to make it easy to adopt. As well as allowing users to create campaigns, it also provides analytics about how the content has been interacted with and shared. This will be accessed via the Portal.

2. For the more tech savvy or established clients we are creating a set of APIs to make it easy for them to plug MEDIA Protocol into their existing analytics packages.

Where will the [SWIPE] data be stored?

Clifford: SWIPE are exploring using IPFS and Bluzelle to handle the data storage.

IPFS deals with file storage, while Bluzelle deals with database storage. In simple terms, files refer to data that is stored in a computer system in an unstructured and arbitrary manner. Their size can be fairly large, and their contents cannot be searched or queried in an efficient manner. A database is used for storing related, structured/aggregated data in a manner that can be easily searched, retrieved and utilized. In SWIPE’s context, IPFS would store the encrypted individual user data, while Bluzelle would be the database that stores the metadata that can be used by a data buyer for targeting purposes, for example to obtain an idea of the data set he will be buying (e.g. sample size, demographics etc).

What would you say is the most appealing feature of MEDIA Protocol for content creators?

James: For content creators, there are numerous advantages:

1. They can get visibility on how their content is interacted with.

2. See how the content is shared — this is very big, as a major challenge in the space is called “Dark Social”. This is how we actually all share content — not via trackable platforms or social networks. When we find something we like, we share it on Telegram, WhatsApp, WeChat, Slack etc. and these are not attributable. MEDIA Protocol links consumers together using blockchain, so content creators can see who has shared and actually brought value to the network

In addition to this data side:

3. Content creators can make it easier to accept payment. As we know, we all dislike paywalls. With MEDIA Protocol you won’t have to give your email address, credit card number etc. just click a button and access what you want with tokens you’ve earned.

4. Accept micro-payments without having to have huge amounts of friction, or rely on centralised platforms like PayPal etc.

If I blog, will it [MEDIA Protocol] be applicable too?

James: Very much so. Initially you will have to add a piece of script to your blog, but we’re focusing on rolling out integrations with major platforms and hosting companies. It makes more sense for this to be as baked in to the internet as possible.

The great thing for a blogger, or any content creator, is that you’re not only able to better understand your audience, you’re also able to earn by accepting payments.

This will affect a re-balancing, so if you make great content you could use MEDIA Protocol to promote to your audience, who will then bring in new users who will pay you more than you gave out — directly attributable ROI.

This is why we’re making it as easy to use as possible. So you don’t have to be able to code to use is. This will be how you, or I, will interact with it.

Where will the rewards/tokens come from?

James: We have a fixed supply of tokens and it is up to the brand, publisher or content creator to hold a lot of these in the smart contract and decide how they will be distributed.

Is the platform ready for use?

James: The smart contract is built and we have created an example application CryptoCatnip. The Publisher Portal is being developed and will be released later in the year.

To get development going quickly, we’ll be open sourcing the Catnip code complete with a how-to-build documentation so that others can quickly deploy apps too

With the App framework built around CryptoCatnip, you can look at MEDIA Protocol as something akin to Platform as a Service — except that you’ll be developing and building your own incentive models.

Which apps are already on the SWIPE network?

Clifford: We currently have around 15 apps with more than 2 million users from Asean that have already signed up on SWIPE.

Our target apps are those that have a user base that is between 50–500k, as these apps have not yet reach the critical mass of user base that can allow them to monetize their data.

To further expedite SWIPE’s growth, we are targeting to onboard app networks, studios as well as app stores that have multiple apps in their network. One such example is BADR interactive that has already signed up with us.

James: Something that we get asked a lot, and I know the SWIPE guys do too, is how we all differentiate and compliment each other. It can be very easy, from the outside looking in, to see a number of projects working on blockchain projects around media and advertising and assume that we all compete — this could not be further from the truth.

SWIPE are all about data monetisation, whereas MEDIA Protocol is focused on how content is distributed, and creating better understanding of how this is shared across an audience.

What kind of data does MEDIA Protocol produce?

James: The main benefit to the advertisers is a better understanding of how content is shared between their consumers. This removes reliance on the 3rd party platforms that currently pertain to be the “network”.

1. Interaction data e.g. read, like, share, completed survey, viewed. (on chain)

2. Network data e.g. wallet xyz shared content to wallets abc and def (on chain)

3. Permissioned access to consumer data e.g. history, oAuth etc. (held securely off chain)

One of the things we have to stress is that blockchain acts as a settlement layer for us. While there is some metadata around the content and interactions, personal consumer data is not written to the blockchain — that would be a disaster!

Earn Rewards When You Use CryptoCatnip

Community members from all our partner projects, including SWIPE, can earn real MEDIA Tokens (MPT) for interacting with the content, news and announcements they already love via our CryptoCatnip news aggregator. The dApp currently runs on testnet tokens, but these can be transferred into real MEDIA tokens after the MEDIA Protocol TGE as outlined in the bounty via the links below:

Bounty Form

Bounty on Medium

All the Rules

Download CryptoCatnip on iOS and Android now and get rewarded for reading and interacting with the content you already enjoy. It’s as simple as join, read and earn.

For more information regarding MEDIA Protocol find us on our social channels below:

Website: www.mediaprotocol.org

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MEDIAProtocol

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MEDIA_Protocol

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/media-protocol/

Telegram: https://t.me/Media_Protocol_Community and https://t.me/MP_Announcements

Medium: https://medium.com/@mediaprotocolsm

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MEDIAProtocol

For more information regarding SWIPE visit the social channels below:

Website: https://swipecrypto.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/swipecrypto

Twitter: https://twitter.com/swipecrypto

Telegram: https://t.me/swipecrypto

Medium: https://medium.com/swipecrypto