Ocean Protocol Review: Everything About OCEAN Explained Extensively

The upsurge in data usage in the past years brings to our attention the increasing value of data. Individuals, companies, NGOs, even government organizations utilize data. It has evolved into a major asset in businesses today. Data controls a lot of activities in a business ranging from consumer data to financial data.

This uprise in data collection and generation provides an avenue for organizations to utilize the data and monetize them. Sadly, today most of the data generated are not used, wasted, and inaccessible to organizations who need them.

The reason is that a majority of the valuable data systems are closed. This closure restricts access to both corporate and public data to internal and external businesses. The utilization of data can be advanced using technology.

What is Data Economy?

The increase in data creation globally brought about the emergence of companies to leverage upon the data. Companies, such as Google Inc, harvest these data for huge monetization purposes by revamping and selling them. Another thing to note is that AI makes it possible for monetization of data collection possible. As users increase, AI techniques become more exact.

The purpose is to balance the access to data, making it possible for the actual data owners to earn from their data. It combines technology with governance to ensure transparency. This mechanism allows ads to be even more relevant and boosts the income streams and value for the organizations controlling the data.

The interesting part now is knowing how to make the data accessibility equal for all users. And how to make sure that the main owners of the data can monetize them at will.

The Ocean Protocol team targets to achieve this goal using the combination of governance and technology. They want to maintain data transparency and, in turn, stabilize trust among users in the ocean ecosystem.

What is Ocean Protocol?

Ocean Protocol is developed to provide a borderless data distribution that is safe, secure, and reliable for unlocking the data economy. It allows users to build marketplaces and data services on it. The protocol can also be an ‘open-sourced’ protocol for exchanging and monetizing data and other ‘data-based’ services.

It is built on the Ethereum blockchain and controls the entrance to data sets using the data tokens. These tokens are later redeemed by members who want to gain access to those data or information. The protocol seeks to make available all data sets on its network to researchers and beginners without these data leaving their storage.

One of the major advantages of this software is that it facilitates exchanges. It connects users in need of data or storage resources with those who have more than they need.  The system pays these users who spare their resources some OCEAN (the protocols native currency) to reward their work.

The OCEAN coin or token is made to be multipurpose crypto used to maintain the data tokens. The system allows its holders to participate in the buying, selling of tokens and the general governance of the protocol.

The first companies to anchor this network is startups and industry incumbents. Startups include; Next Billion and Connected life, while industry incumbents are Johnson & Johnson and Roche. In addition, you can visit the Ocean Protocol Blog for regular updates.

The Ocean Protocol Team

Bruce Pon and Trent McConaghy, an AI researcher, founded the Ocean Protocol in 2017. The founders worked with a large team of diverse professionals interested in using AI to free data.  They are forty members spread across the world.

Bruce Pon, the leading founder of the Ocean Protocol, also founded a blockchain database software (BigChainDB) company. BigChainDB is a software project supported by the foundation of the Ocean Protocol and OceanDAO. They are a non-profit based company in Singapore and a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization), respectively.

He also founded Avantalion Intl Consulting, a banking business aimed at providing banking services to the unbanked. Bruce Pon worked here from 2008 to 2013. He helped the company to establish over 18 financial institutions in the unbanked areas of the world.

However, Trent McConaghy, the second founder of the Ocean Protocol, is an AI professional. He has worked with the government of Canada in 1997 and also the founder of the ADA Company.  The ADA Company is aimed at helping analog circuit designers faster using AI.

Trent also founded the Solido after ADA was acquired in 2004. Solido is another company that assists circuit designers using AI. Siemens took over the Solido Company in 2017. Within that time, 19 out of the top 20 global semiconductor firms used Solido to enhance their chip style.

Most of the Ocean Protocol team members are entrepreneurs. They have gained much experience with opening their private companies before joining the Ocean. The Ocean Foundation raised a sum of USD 26.8 million via many rounds of coin offerings. They also supplied a total of 160million tokens.

The Ocean Protocol Values

Here are some of the values that the Ocean Protocol Foundation and the protocol’s team support:

• Through Ocean Market app data, consumers and owners can discover, publish or consume data assets. Moreover, they do so with a private method that is secured.
• With Ocean data tokens, you will get data assets from data. This empowers data exchanges, data co-ops, and data wallets by leveraging exchanges, Defi tools, and crypto-wallets.
• There’s transparent and decentralized governance that uses democratic ideals to disengage capital in the system. Though the disengaging is from the system’s governance, the citizens still possess some power.
• The Ocean system consistently distributes rewards to discourage speculation. They transparently allocate the wealth generated by data distribution and collection.
• The protocol maintains privacy and basic human rights when it comes to privacy on personal data. They work proactively within the range or rules of the ‘privacy and compliance regulations.
• Ocean Protocol uses blockchain technology to proffer solutions to developing a trusted universal exchange populated with various data.

Why Does OCEAN Have Value?

The following features add to the value of the Ocean Protocol token (OCEAN). The OCEAN token holders can buy, sell or stake data tokens in the market. They can also participate in the governance of the network. The token serves as the main unit of exchange for all data tokens.

It sticks to the standards of Ethereum; hence, it can be transferred with other ‘ERC-20’ tokens like DAI, ETH, etc. Investors who stake the OCEAN token assist in governing the protocol. They can vote on proposals like the network upgrade to ascertain the initiative to flag off.

The ocean market is like a marketplace where token holders can stake their coins and offer liquidity. The users that provide this liquidity earn a percentage of the fees collected from traders that use the liquidity pools.

Finally, the OCEAN token offers a major service to the operations of OceanDAO. It gives the holders the right to vote on the proposals to be funded to secure the project’s future.

How Does Ocean Protocol Work?

The ocean Protocol utilizes smart contracts.  A custom program that ensures all data tokens are exchangeable across the blockchain of Ethereum and within its Dapps. The ocean platform operates through 3 main components to ensure a working system.

• Providers: They mint or produce data tokens and make the off-chain data sets accessible to users.
• Consumers: The consumers buy data tokens and retrieve access to the data sets.
• Marketplaces: This is where transactions take place. The marketplace connects consumers with providers to enhance transactions.
• Ocean Market: This is an AMM (Automated Market Maker). It facilitates the data tokens minting and exchange.

The AMM uses a combination of liquidity pools that is similar to Balancer and Uniswap. They allow all trades to settle via smart contracts. They indicate in several fields to alert consumers of their minted and published data token.

The AMM includes a title, a URL, description, price, a title, and where to find the data encrypted & stored on Ethereum. Subsequently, if any consumer wants to pay back a data token, the AMM will decrypt the data and download them directly from the connected wallet.

Compute-to-Data

This is a feature that enhances the sharing of data while the user’s privacy is preserved. With this feature, data tokens permit consumers to use some portions of their data sets to run particular computing jobs. Hence, they support the developments of artificial intelligence or research while maintaining the privacy of some user information.

More so, providers can store data sets on their various individual servers and willingly give out some portions to particular parties or used cases.

 The Ocean Token

The Ocean token is the Ocean Protocol native token used to govern/ power the network. It is the utility token of the protocol known as OCEAN. The main purpose is for buying and selling data & services. The OCEAN is a reward for providing liquidity through data curation and staking.

Users of the platform use the token to create data tokens for running marketplaces.  The OCEAN runs the whole data economy. It encourages the community to make available the necessary resources required to scale and secure the network.

Image Credit: CoinMarketCap

The Ocean ecosystem can use an already existing token like Ethereum as its exchange medium.  The OCEAN token was developed as the protocol’s native reward token and set some monetary policies.

This wouldn’t have been possible if an outside token was adopted. Any volatility in that 3^rd party token leads to a disruption in the exchange orderliness in the Oceanic marketplace. However, 4 major ways to earn the OCEAN tokens.

Ocean Data Providers

These are system actors who possess enough and available data. They are ready to give it out to others at a given price. When the buyers consume the data, they reward the providers with OCEAN coins.

Ocean Data Curators

This is a means for users to determine the data that is good or bad. Because the Ocean Protocol is decentralized, this role is not taken by a centralized committee. The protocol allows whoever has the experience to act as the curator in the marketplace. These experienced users also earn rewards(OCEAN tokens) for their services of weeding out fake data in the marketplace.

Oceanic curators maintain honesty via staking their tokens as a sign of better quality.

Ocean Registry of Actors

The openness of the Ocean Protocol does not only require the curation of data in the market places. It also requires the curation of the members of the system.

The actor’s registry accomplishes this role. It compels all the system actors to stake more tokens. This process makes ‘good behavior’ economically attractive within the ecosystem and makes it easier to punish bad behaviors.

Ocean Keepers

These are nodes in the ocean software. They run the software and make all the data sets available.  Nodes are called keepers in the Ocean platform.

They receive the OCEAN like other protocol actors for the function they do. These functions include enabling the data providers to offer or provide data to the OCEAN network easily.

What Makes Ocean Protocol Unique?

The Ocean Protocol, with its unique features, allows users to access data that would normally be difficult or unavailable to access. They achieve this by allowing members with ‘sought-after’ data sets to get its equivalent in the token (tokenize) and avail it to the market.

This mechanism gives the researchers, scientists, data analysts, and anyone else easy access to more secured data that is reliable.

The Ocean network provides the various tools that the firms require to launch and build their data markets. This is either by forking the Ocean Protocol directly or using the protocol’s react hooks. The network also supplies extensive documentation to enhance this process.

Users holding the OCEAN token can participate directly in the ‘data token’ economy via staking their tokens on the data sets in the Ocean Market. The stakes are then the liquidity providers in the OCEAN data token pool. They earn a percentage of the gas fees generated from the pool.

Why Use OCEAN?

The Ocean Protocol may be appealing to users who wish to access data for research purposes, monetize data set, AI modeling, and general analysis.

Members of the protocol are attracted by their ability to control their data, to buy, sell, and take back. This kind of service is only provided by renowned giants like Microsoft, Amazon, or Google.

The project may also be interesting to any developer who wants to implement data exchange tokenization in a marketplace.

Ocean investors who foresee future demand for data sharing markets and AI may wish to add the token to their portfolio.

Ocean Token Distribution

The Ocean ecosystem is powered by the native ERC-20 utility token. The token enables the Ocean community to convert data sets to ‘intelligence’ that any business can act on. It also allows the users to monetize their data.

The OCEAN token has a max supply of 1.41 billion as contained in the newly deployed Ocean contract of 21^st August 2020. The foundation has released over 613 million. We have 414 million tokens in circulation as of Nov. 2020.

The token utilizes proof-of-service as one of its consensus mechanisms. It acts as an avenue of securing the network and an incentive for the system actors and the data providers. It is used for buying and selling data in the ecosystem.

The foundation plan to distribute 51% of the token supply in a ‘Bitcoin-like’ emission schedule.  This will take like a decade for them to fully disburse all the tokens.  And they are meant to fund all the projects of the Ocean community to be curated by the ‘Ocean DAO.’

However, It will reach like 50 years before releasing the total OCEAN token supply. A total token of 600million is anticipated to be circulating by 2022 May and up to 1billion tokens circulating by Jan. 2031.

The team allocated 20% of the total token supply to the founders and 5% to the foundation. In addition, they gave SAFE purchase (Acqyirers) 15%, and the 60% remaining was shared among those running the network nodes (the keepers).

Ocean Protocol Review Conclusion

The Ocean Protocol works in two different industries that are still at their birth stage. Big data and blockchain technology. These industries have started making an impact already, but they still need more discovery, growth, and development.

The Ocean network also uses machine learning tech and artificial intelligence. Both of them are in their birth stage of existence. These technologies help in securing the data making the protocol more reliable and trustworthy.

With the above information, one could say that the Ocean Protocol team is following the right path that may lead to exponential growth soon because the technologies will become more efficient and mature in the future. Furthermore, the progressive increase in the token price ensures that the project has a promising future.

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