Blockchain-based platform launches beta network for data sharing

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Ocean Protocol, announced the launch of its beta network. Ocean Protocol is a substrate that allows anyone to build data services and marketplaces on top and is launching with a mission to provide safe, privacy-preserving and borderless data sharing, to unlock the Data Economy.

"Today's beta release is a big milestone for our project and society as a whole. It marks the beginning of a new and open global Data Economy. With the beta network going live, data scientists and developers can start building and experimenting with new services and applications using Ocean Protocol," said Bruce Pon, co-founder of Ocean Protocol.

Though the world has been generating massive volumes of data, until now there has not been a safe, privacy-preserving and borderless solution to unlock the new Data Economy. Every day, the world creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data and thanks to digitization and advances in IoT technologies, data continues to be generated in an unprecedented rate. However, only 1 percent of this glut of data is ever analysed. Data supply and demand are currently disjointed. Data remains inaccessible – locked in silos and hardly shared. This is because data owners fear of losing control and violating privacy laws with data sharing.

Ocean Protocol uses blockchain technology, smart contracts, and tokens to enable safe and secure sharing of data, guaranteeing control and auditability while protecting privacy. The technology allows organizations and individuals to set pricing and trade data without losing control of their data assets. Smart contracts allow data owners to program the conditions of access, which are then executed with precision. This gives data owners and buyers transparency, security and guarantees of payment and use.

Ocean also enables algorithms and models to travel to the data, get trained and then leave without exposing the data or taking a copy, thereby retaining privacy, ensuring regulatory compliance, and freeing up data to advance AI and solve problems for the economy and society.

"Ocean allows people to unlock the value of data without necessarily unlocking the data itself. It is a substrate to finally realize the potential of an open permission-less data economy while still preserving privacy," said Trent McConaghy, co-founder of Ocean Protocol. "We welcome early collaborators already deploying their solutions on our network today, and we look forward to seeing tens, hundreds, even thousands of other marketplaces and applications to be built on top of Ocean, so that data can be freed from their existing silos to deliver world-changing solutions for many verticals including automotive, energy, healthcare and so on."

The Ocean network will continue to deliver software and network updates over the next two years, with five phases planned, each providing more sophisticated features, incentives and enhanced performance.