Trent McConaghy grew up on a farm in rural Canada. He did AI research for 20 years including running 2 startups and a PhD. For the last 5 years he has been focused on blockchain and in particular on Ocean Protocol which he has co-founded.. Ocean Protocol is a protocol whose mission is to unlock data for the broad benefit of society. Data is becoming increasingly important and influential throughout the world, ensuring that the opportunities to access data are equalised is the aim of Ocean Protocol.

What is blockchain?

Blockchain at its heart is a technology, just as the internal combustion engine or a computer. The internal combustion engine combined with oil unlocked mobile transport in a big way. Similarly blockchain unloads a whole new set of possibilities that we haven’t seen before. At the very heart, it is simply a database. However its a database with very specific characteristics:

* Decentralised: no single entity owns or controls it

* Immutable

* Concept of ownership if you have the private key to it such as tokens for money like with Bitcoin

* Unlocks incentives – blockchain can be used to shape incentives for human behaviour

What is the data economy?

Trent looks at the token economy as the open version of the money economy. With the money economy we have tokens, currencies, etc. Traditionally these were distributed solely by national governments in opaque ways through the Fed and Central Banks. Whilst this has been beneficial in many ways there were still challenges. Bitcoin opened up the money economy by being permission less, friction free and fully open.

Today there is a data economy, but like the money economy it is very opaque where credit card companies are selling your data, Facebook buying data from 150 organisations to add it to its own data in order to sell you more adds. There already is a data economy where it’s a flow of value and participants in the economy are buying and selling data in a closed and opaque manner. Just as Bitcoin opened up the money economy, ocean is designed to open up the data economy.

 

AI, the last mile of data

Just like the internal combustion isn’t useful on its own nor is oil useful for its sake, both of them are useful towards machines that are then used for mobility. AI, is the last mile to unlock the value of data. Modern AI really loves data. The more data it receives the more accurate its models become which in turn can create business value. For example AI models used to predict cancer usually use data gathered from 100 individuals. These models can predict cancer from 6 months in or even from stage three. If those AI models were based on orders of magnitude of more data such as over millions of individuals then you could theoretically predict the existence of cancer 6 days into it from very early weak signals. Feeding large amounts of data into AI can help to unlock value and build new applications.

 

Components of the data economy

Three levels to both the open money economy and to the token economy:

* Base infrastructure (i.e. a store of value)

* Unit of exchange

* Platform to launch and to exchange things

The last mile on top of the platform are the applications.

In the token economy the de factor standard, the unit of exchange, that has emerged is Bitcoin. The platform is Ethereum. On top of the platform you have a set of decentralised applications, DAPPS, running on Ethereum, which represent the kind of last mile in terms of applications. In terms of financial side the last mile are Decentralised fi...