In the first blog post, we outlined our motivations for starting the Datafund project. In this blog post, we’ll provide context of regulatory changes ahead and how it is shaping our environment.
But first…
Datafund is a protocol and distributed application (dApp) that guards personal data, provides safe storage and enables provable personal data exchange. Information is shared on the need-to-know basis according to an agreement between exchanging parties.
Because Datafund is an European project (with global ambitions down the road), it will be from the start on compliant with a new regulative in EU that protects individuals — General Data Protection Regulative (GDPR).
We are embracing GDPR as it is one of the globally strictest privacy protections and it enables individuals to reclaim their data. Moreover, once Datafund protocol is GDPR compliant, we estimate that other jurisdictions are quite easy to legally satisfy.
While many economies have been principally favouring capital and technological development, it seems that EU has always been putting humanity at the forefront (or at least trying). In this context some of the actions of the EU seem to be bureaucratic and conservative — for example, not giving in to demands of the advertising and telecom organisations but protecting individuals in the recent e-Privacy case (FM4; in german); or the even stronger GDPR initiative.
GDPR is trying to systematically solve the status of personal data. Nowadays, this data are everywhere and widely used by corporations without the actual owners’ consent. Today, from a global perspective this field is the wild west.
In the digital world personal data, if understood correctly, are the most intimate assets humans possess. What’s more, personal data might become one of the core values of the new society.
Datafund embraces this vision of the future with a strong belief that blockchain is the technology that is the enabler of the grand GDPR vision — citizens should have control over their data.
Today, we have consumers with no rights or who are not aware of their rights, sometimes with some data on one side, while on the other side are corporations and digital services that have enormous quantities of (personal) data and almost no rights to use them. Many global services and applications based on personal data today are using data in a way they should not.
In May 2018, when GDPR came into effect, the situation has changed radically: consumers with all the rights and no data, and corporations with almost no rights and plenty of data. They say data is the new fuel, digital oil, a multi-billion business… how much it will be worth in a few months?
The core idea of the Datafund is operationalisation of consent between a person that owns data and users of the same data. Consent transforms personal data into value. With consent maximising the benefits of blockchain, data becomes a new digital asset.
Datafund is building a consent management platform and an open and permissionless protocol for personal data management and exchange. After the reclaim milestone, individuals will be able to own and manage their data (become Datafund managers of their assets) while enabling EU organisations to use personal data in an ethical and GDPR compliant way.
Moreover, a protocol that transforms data into a crypto asset opens a new horizon of possibilities and value creation for individuals, organisations and society — a new eco-system going towards decentralised data exchange and beyond (currently imagined). In the following blog posts we’ll expand on the topics mentioned with the hope to raise awareness and to continue dialogue with all stakeholders involved.
We believe that this is how the data driven society should be — business oriented but with the European sense of humanity.
Acknowledgement: This blog post is a team effort and credits go to the whole team.
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