Trent McConaghy: Ocean Protocol – The Platform Making Waves in the Data Industry

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Data is a huge industry, worth about $500 billion in Europe alone. And currently there's a fundamental misalignment between those creating data and those consuming it. There's a one direction value flow in terms of those who are providing the value (the data) and those extracting it. These are big tech platforms that typically use that data to sell signals and advertising to brands and merchants. This is referred to as a shadow data economy and it's time to flip this model on its head.

Ocean Protocol is a platform which creates data marketplaces, providing an alternative to the current model. Data providers can sell their data to the platform to whoever wants to buy it and that data set is represented as a token. The value is a function of the usefulness of that data. This creates a much more equitable market where value flow is more cyclical than one directional.

Trent McConaghy, Founder of Ocean Protocol, joins us to chat about the platform. They have just released V3 which has seen the introduction of the data token, the Ocean Market, and a new home on the Ethereum Mainchain.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Trent’s background and long history of building blockchain products
• The business models built around data and the “Shadow Data Economy”
• What Ocean Protocol is and what it achieves
• Technical components and stakeholders in the Ocean Protocol
• Staking and providing liquidity for datatoken markets
• The Ocean Market and activity since the launch
• Ocean Protocol and its compliance with privacy regulations like GDPR
• Ocean Protocol V3 and migrating from a sidechain to the mainnet
• The future of Ocean Protocol and the potential for data stream markets

Episode links:

• Ocean Protocol website
• Ocean V3 release
• Episode 78 - Ascribe – The Internet of Ownership
• Episode 126 - BigchainDB – Scalable Public Distributed Databases
• Episode 184 - IPDB – The Interplanetary Database and its Applications in AI
• Ocean Protocol on Twitter
• Trent on Twitter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/366