Ocean Protocol: A DEX Protocol Powering the Web3 Data Economy

Have you considered monetizing the data your company produces? Apart from providing a platform that allows you to make income by selling data, Ocean Protocol offers blockchain services that help you sell data without needing a third party.

Ocean Protocol is a blockchain-enabled service interface that makes data, storage, computation, and algorithms available. The platform applies a set of deterministic accessibility and quality proofs that act as verifiable existing contracts. In addition, services are staked to indicate quality, identity, and protection against Sybil Attacks.

What is Data Economy 

A data economy is a worldwide digital ecosystem wherein data is collected, managed, and distributed by a chain of vendors to generate revenue from the data. 

Popular data sources that make up the Big Data Economy include search engines, social networking websites, payment portals, software as a service (SaaS) providers, and enterprises implementing network connections on the Internet of Things (IoT). 

As of 2021, the sector was worth $64 billion. But according to Statista, the worldwide Big Data Industry will be valued at $70 billion in 2022. 

The report from Statista also shows that the Big Data market is expected to reach different milestones from 2023 to 2027. 

• $77 billion in 2023
• $84 billion in 2024
• $90 billion in 2025
• $96 billion in 2026
• $103 billion in 2027

Interestingly, the Ocean Protocol has joined the lucrative economy, making data more valuable due to decentralization. 

The Ocean Market platform helps data users and providers securely upload, find, and consume data while maintaining privacy. Also, data pools are a source of liquidity for OCEAN owners.

What is Ocean Protocol

Ocean Protocol is an open-source framework that intends to make data and data-based applications more accessible to businesses and consumers. The protocol, which is based on the Ethereum network, employs 'datatokens' to control accessibility to datasets.

Users that require authorization to the database can then transfer the tokens. Ocean intends to provide the data sets on its infrastructure while ensuring it is open to entrepreneurs and academics without giving up control over the data.

Ocean's software is designed to promote data interchange by connecting users who require data but cannot keep it with those who have. The decentralized organization rewards providers with OCEAN tokens in exchange for their efforts.

The OCEAN token (also known as OCEAN crypto or OCEAN coin) is a multifunctional token used to authenticate the finest data tokens and enable customers to collaborate in governance and purchase and sell data.

Additionally, Ocean allows markets to use its interface to link partners and conduct transactions. The data marketplace V4, for instance, was built by the Ocean team and is a marketplace for trading datatokens openly. 

The Ocean Protocol Values

The Ocean Protocol is a blockchain-based project that uses non-fungible tokens or datatokens to commercialize data. The mission is to

• Provide easy accessibility to the protocols and platforms
• Offer data governance
• Promote the expansion of the network ecosystem
• Ensure the framework becomes increasingly decentralized in the future.

The potential of OCEAN to act as a means of transaction for datatokens is its primary application case. However, OCEAN and data tokens are also transferrable for other ERC-20 tokens like Ether, DAI, and many more because they follow Ethereum's requirements.

Clients who own the governance token contribute to the protocol's governance by voting on network enhancement ideas to decide on the ideas to pursue. Because Ocean Market is a marketplace, token owners can wager their assets and give stability to the ecosystem. These liquidity suppliers might receive a portion of the processing fees made by traders who use liquidity pools for their services.

How Does Ocean Protocol Work

Developers may use ocean resources to create their own data solutions. Data is encoded in consistent ERC721 data NFTs and ERC20 data tokens, allowing for data wallets, data trades, and more via NFT and DeFi tools.

Users can generate income by trading data and preserving/staking on data with the Ocean Market program. You can also use software with Ocean Protocol frameworks for safe, privacy-preserving data sharing.

Every data marketplace in Ocean Protocol has its data token. Ocean Protocol users with cryptocurrency wallets can create data marketplaces and wallets on the platform.

Data Marketplace

Ocean's Data Marketplace (Ocean V4) has a simple interface that makes it easy for groups and persons to distribute their data. All types of data are publishable on the Ocean Protocol marketplace, including photographs, location, sounds and auditions, videos, and sales figures.

However, users must abide by Ocean's policies; otherwise, they risk having their assets or addresses removed or blocked. Here are basic operations to carry out on the data marketplaces.

Publish

Publishers need to provide a link to the item (a web address) to post data contents. Then, the resource publisher decides the hosting service to use.

A publisher, for example, can store material on Google Drive, Microsoft Azure, AWS, a dedicated cloud host, or other third-party cloud services. When published, the asset's URL is encoded and recorded as a portion of DDO (Decentralized ID Document) on the database's published.

Consumers do not have immediate access to the web address; instead, they communicate with the data publisher, who decodes the URL and serves the item as a proxy. The DDO saves the file's destination, which the provider can retrieve on request.

Users should implement network security that only enables the publisher to control the URL and prohibits connections from other unapproved parties. Allowing just the publisher's IP address to visit the URL is one approach to do this.

However, not all hosting companies offer this option. As a result, publishers must evaluate security aspects while selecting a hosting provider.

Buy, Swap, and Add Liquidity

The Ocean Data Marketplace allows users to buy, swap, and add liquidity to their assets. Additionally, users may utilize the data marketplace to seek algorithms/data by keyword and sort the results by publication date.

To buy an asset on the data marketplace, you must locate the asset. Connect your wallet once you locate the asset you wish to buy. Then, if the associated wallet address contains sufficient OCEAN tokens to swap for one data token, select the purchase button.

Steps to take after clicking the purchase button include:

• Enable OCEAN token access.
• Purchase a data token by trading with your OCEAN coins.
• Click on the download button to initiate the process.
• Sign the next message, and the file download will commence.

To swap a data on the marketplace:

• Choose the trade option once you identify the dataset.
• Understand the risks involved with this procedure thoroughly.
• To trade OCEAN coins, enter the desired amount. (Note that the quantity of datatokens you will get is indicated along with the swap charges. You can also choose to change data tokens for OCEAN coins on this same page.)
• Authorize the token transaction. 
• Select Swap.

Data NFTs and DataTokens

Blockchain and DeFi technologies work with datatokens and data NFTs to connect data resources. With DeFi composability, crypto wallets become data wallets, cryptocurrency exchanges become data markets, and DAOs become data cooperatives.

The access management has to be on-chain, not the data. End-users may easily access data resources on on-ramps and off-ramps with ocean-based applications.

This is made simple for programmers by Ocean smart contracts and frameworks. The copyrights (or exclusive permission against ownership) for a data source on the blockchain are represented by a data NFT, which we refer to as the "base IP."

Ownership is usually applied automatically when data is created. For example, when a customer uploads a dataset in Ocean V4, the procedure generates a new NFT.

Using data NFTs, you can access the whole NFT ecosystem, including all the tools and opportunities. For instance, several popular crypto wallets provide first-class functionality for NFTs, making it easier to manage your NFTs directly from those wallets.

Alternatively, you may sell your data-NFT on a prominent NFT platform like OpenSea or Rarible. Ocean Protocol datatokens serve as a link between data assets and DeFi technologies.

Holding a 1.0 datatoken grant, you control over the data. Data tokens let meaningful data get used to enhance DeFi returns and financial returns by bridging the multibillion-dollar data sector with DeFi assets under control.

Fine-Grained Permissions

Fine-grained permission is a means of limiting who has access to certain data. Ocean Protocol is largely concerned with access control, managed through data tokens. 

By exchanging data tokens for a dataset (such as a file), individuals can gain access to it. Unlike generic (or coarse-grained) data permission, fine-grained access control utilizes more subtle and changeable ways of granting access.

Access may be regulated effectively at two levels using fine-grained authorizations. These are:

Marketplace-level fine-grained permissions 

Marketplace-level is used in the Ocean V4 frontend for browsing and publishing. A marketplace manager uses the RBAC (role-based access) control server to execute the fine-grained permissions.

There are three roles defined under the RBAC server.

• Admin/Publisher role: Individuals with the administrator or publisher permissions can access the data market on the protocol without any limitations. They can publish, receive, and explore data assets.
• Consumer role: The consumer role allows users to view data, buy them, exchange data tokens, and donate to data pools. Nevertheless, consumers can't submit datasets. They'll see an error message if they go to the publish link since they don't have the requisite authorization.
• User role: Users can explore and explore data assets, but they can't buy them, sell them, or donate to data pools. They are also unable to make datasets public.

If a person visits the data marketplace without having a role, they will be unable to access or find any datasets. Customers must have a wallet attached to explore datasets after the RBAC server is activated on the marketplace.

Asset-level fine-grained permissions 

Generally, the asset level describes how users will consume the datasets. Advanced capabilities such as 'allow' and 'deny' lists allow admin/publishers to manage access to certain data assets.

Publishers may prohibit resources so that only authorized customers can view them (allow lists), or they can limit assets so that anybody except people linked can obtain them (deny lists).

The main concept is to establish "allow" and "deny" sections in the data's DDO, with each item being an Ethereum link. The Ocean Provider uses this information to determine whether to grant access.

The allow-deny lists are not activated on Ocean marketplace by default. Users seeking to start such capabilities must first update the required parameters in the Ocean Market fork.

Ocean Token

The OCEAN coin/token is used to claim data, administer community financing, and purchase and trade data. Its supply is dispersed throughout time to support both short- and long-term activity.

OCEAN is now available on the Ethereum blockchain system. Its smart contracts are also being implemented on the Ethereum network and, hopefully, other platforms in the future. 

The total number of OCEAN tokens available is limited to 1.41 billion. Fifty-one per cent of this total is distributed over decades on a Bitcoin-like timetable to finance OceanDAO-curated community initiatives.

According to CoinMarketCap, more than 600 million OCEAN coins are now in use as of May 2022. The token currently stays at number 176 in the top 200 cryptos with a market capitalization of $117 million. To access both ETH and OCEAN coins, members will require an ERC-20 compliant wallet. 

OceanDAO

OceanDAO is a community-curated grant DAO that helps support Ocean Protocol group initiatives. You can participate in this decentralized organization:

• If you need money to develop something, undertake outreach, or uncover data, this is the place to go.
• If you own an OCEAN and wish to help shape the Ocean's development, you may do so by learning about ideas and voting.

OceanDAO accepts project proposals from everyone. Nonetheless, before the end of the proposal phase, you should have a minimum of 5,000 OCEAN (worth $962 at writing this) in the same Ethereum address as specified in your presentation.

If you are accepted for a grant, you will get your award funds in this wallet. It aims to direct traffic to Ocean's key stakeholders who have a financial stake in the project.

The Ocean Protocol Team

Ocean Protocol is developed by a varied community of developers who all have the same goal: to unleash data for Artificial Intelligence. The team and advisers have come together from various nations, sectors, and experiences to work on launching the New Data Economy.

There are 28 core team members and more than 35 advisers on the Ocean Protocol. The community thoughtfully chose OceanDAO’s Advisers based on a shared commitment to using data and AI to benefit society. They also help form effective partnerships, suggest possible business associates, integrate protocols, and give governance advice.

Ocean Partners

Ocean Protocol partners and key suppliers help improve the network's core platform. They also provide organizations with international-standard Web3 solutions implemented on top of Ocean Protocol. 

Today, different enterprises either have an active partnership with Ocean Protocol or are in the process of incorporating their programs. For instance, Daimler South East Asia partnered with Ocean Protocol to develop an end-to-end business data marketplace PoC that includes decentralized data access and commercialization.

Participants of IBM Watson AI XPRIZE® also get relevant data thanks to Ocean Protocol. On the other hand, Roche Diagnostics has started a pilot initiative with the Info-communications Media Development Authority (IMDA) and Ocean Protocol to enhance existing procedures and norms of treatment for people on blood-thinning medication.

There are also world-class service partners who use Ocean Protocol to assist customers in designing and delivering new and exciting Web3 solutions. An example is ProtoFire of Altoros, which complements Ocean Protocol in its quest to establish data markets by combining a thorough understanding of Ethereum and machine learning. 

Ocean Market uses an Automated Market Maker (AMM) operated by Balancer to determine automatic pricing.

Conclusion

In general, Ocean Protocol is for users that want to commercialize a database or gain permission to access data useful for research, AI development, or basic evaluation. In addition, ocean enthusiasts may be lured by the chance to purchase, sell, and manage personal data, reclaiming a service that is now only supplied by multinational giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.

Developers that want to create tokenized data sharing in a marketplace might be interested in the Ocean concept. Meanwhile, investors who trust the potential and need for AI and shared data marketplaces may consider adding OCEAN to their holdings.

References

https://oceanprotocol.com/about 

https://blog.oceanprotocol.com/data-sharing-using-the-latest-web3-technologies-7703624aa709 

https://blog.oceanprotocol.com/introducing-oceandao-efe9ed681b84 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/254266/global-big-data-market-forecast/ 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/551501/worldwide-big-data-business-analytics-revenue/ 

https://blog.oceanprotocol.com/launch-a-blockchain-based-data-marketplace-in-under-1-hour-9baa85a65ece 

https://docs.oceanprotocol.com/tutorials/marketplace-publish-data-asset/ 

https://docs.oceanprotocol.com/tutorials/marketplace-download-data-asset/ 

https://blog.oceanprotocol.com/what-is-a-data-nft-5804a2d88671#8974 

https://oceanprotocol.com/technology/data-nfts-and-data-tokens 

https://blog.oceanprotocol.com/ocean-datatokens-from-money-legos-to-data-legos-4f867cec1837 

https://oceanprotocol.com/token 

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ocean-protocol/ 

https://docs.oceanprotocol.com/tutorials/wallets-and-ocean-tokens/ 

https://oceanprotocol.com/collaborators