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Learning to swim in the big crypto OCEAN
I sometimes feel like a small fish trying to learn to swim in the great crypto ocean. And while I thought it that way, I suddenly remembered a project I had read about… and which is also being built on the Polkadot chain. The Ocean Protocol. Now that I had started to look at projects on this Polkadot chain, it fit very nicely into the overview.
So I hope you are ready for a dip in the ocean today.
We're going to learn to swim, my itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny-yellow-polkadot bikini still comes in handy.
Well, here we go.
Dive into the Ocean Protocol!
Society and our society are increasingly dependent on data. Central organizations have an enormous amount of information from us, ranging from marital status to where we have a bank account and with which health insurer we are affiliated. Not only in the private sphere, but also in the professional sphere, it is usually the larger companies that have access to certain data, in contrast to smaller companies.
In addition to the technological revolution that we are currently experiencing, more and more investments are also being made in artificial intelligence (AI). In this new technological market, a small number of companies are in possession of an enormous amount of data, which makes it almost impossible for other parties to innovate in the field of artificial intelligence. If we look in practice, companies such as Google and Facebook have such a dominant position in the market that it is almost impossible to have access to as much data as the competition. This means that medium-sized and smaller companies have less chance of innovation because they do not have access to this data.
Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) is a kind of marketplace where various data are made public. Where larger players have a monopoly on this data, small starting entrepreneurs can also buy data from Ocean Protocol and share it with other companies in order to still have a larger database. This with the aim of making all necessary data related to artificial intelligence accessible.
The Ecosystem Development Fund is part of OCEAN's financing plan. This is to help developers develop and build projects with Ocean Protocol. There are currently 20 million Ocean Tokens allocated to the fund.
Origin of Ocean Protocol
OCEAN was launched in May 2019 through an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and was received positively almost immediately. An Initial Coin Offering can be seen as a crowdfunding for the launch of a project. This ICO raised a whopping $ 30 million for the project. The token price for one OCEAN was then $ 0.12. Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) is built on the Polkadot ecosystem like other well-known tokens such as Polkadot (DOT) and Kusama (KSM).
Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) is operated by a Singapore-based non-profit organization. They guarantee open-source access to the protocol and platform, whereby data data is much better protected and is only used when the owner gives permission. Major players such as Facebook and Google hold proportionally much more data from us than other organizations, which puts them in a position of power and makes them almost sole ruler in the market. With a view to the future, these major players will only be able to increase their position of power through the availability of all data. These are used for the latest technological innovations related to, among other things, artificial intelligence.
The Ocean Protocol is located on the blockchain in which an open and transparent character prevails, which works with pre-programmed algorithms to link the right information to the right data. They will collect data for the development of artificial intelligence.
Ocean Protocol WhitePaper
In the whitepaper they themselves give an example of how this can work in practice. We are looking at a technical project where they have researched how many kilometers driven are required to design a good AI control system for self-driving cars. Obviously, this research requires an enormous amount of money and time and hardly any organization has all the necessary data.
It is possible to share data with other parties involved, such as manufacturers, using Ocean Protocol. This way, all parties have a good overview of the data they are working with and the results of this project. In this way, various parties can commit themselves to innovation for a better future in the field of artificial intelligence.
The goal is not to develop one marketplace like the example above, but to develop different marketplaces on which different types of data can be placed. For example, companies that do not have sufficient data themselves can use it for further development of their product. This ensures a much more efficient production process.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence or artificial intelligence is a software that can mimic the human way of thinking in very specific problems. Complex production processes are often time-consuming and labor-intensive because different scenarios often have to be created due to a lack of data. This could be the question of how fast a certain car can drive on an icy surface with a certain type of car tire. You can apply any possible scenario and collect all this data, which takes a very long time. Or you can exchange extra existing data by means of Ocean Protocol in order to arrive at answers much faster.
The arrival of AI is accompanied by a whole data flow. AI processes cannot be completed without the organization having access to a whole series of data. In practice, it is often larger players who use AI and can implement these developments much faster because they have this data available.
As a result, they eliminate smaller organizations that do not yet have this data. In practice, you get a scenario in which large companies have, as it were, a monopoly over our data. Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) strives for a kind of marketplace where everyone can buy and exchange data.
New data economy
The technological revolution has gone so fast, and is still going very fast, that we don't realize until later what it has done to our data. Have you ever been looking for new furniture online by accident and only see advertisements for furniture for consecutive days? Contrary to popular belief, this is no coincidence. These websites use your cookies and personal data and use and sell them to third parties.
It is therefore interesting news that with the new update of IOS14 it is much more difficult to advertise effectively because Apple is changing its data policy. This turns the world of marketing and advertising upside down, while it would be only normal to decide for yourself what happens with your data.
But there is more!
Medical world
Ocean Protocol is not only there to protect data data, but also to automate certain processes by means of algorithms on the blockchain. For example, it may just be that you have a birthmark that you are worried about. After a visit to the doctor, these photos can be sent to a lab, where they are checked fully automatically on the blockchain and where you get more information if further research is necessary.
This information can be used in the data pool to expand the algorithm. Suppose there is a new unknown case and specialists do not know whether it could be dangerous. By conducting research and sharing this data on the basis of the Ocean Protocol, others can buy and use this data in function of further developments.
In the past, the Ocean network has been used for an AI solution to make critical Parkinson's disease data available to healthcare users around the world. This allows for better decision-making and allows trends in different data to be analyzed and resolved. Does this mean that we will soon no longer have to go to specialized hospitals in America and that we can also do the treatments from the Netherlands because we have all the data and expertise? That's the purpose!
Car industry
In their roadmap and whitepaper, they themselves set the example of the automotive industry, but Ocean Protocol has even more potential applications in this sector. In 2020 Ocean Protocol completed a proof-of-concept demonstrating other ways the Protocol can be used for secure financial data flows.
An example of this is a collaboration between different car manufacturers. For example, Toyota has a coalition with Mercedes, Daimler and Ford, among others. Together they want to collect, analyze and compare data in order to further develop and produce the AI for self-driving cars. Smaller companies do not have enough data for developments and are competing with market leaders such as Tesla, Google and Facebook. By offering a marketplace for data via the Ocean Protocol, all these companies can collaborate in a reliable and secure manner. All without fear of losing their intellectual property.
Ocean Protocol Roadmap
Ocean Protocol is innovating every day to position their project stronger and more effectively on the market. View here which innovations the project wants to realize in the future, and in particular in 2021.
Gas fee solution?
A much-discussed theme in the world of crypto is gas fees. These are the costs associated with a transaction. Yeah, those insane gas fees we all know a little too well! . This can go from exchange to exchange, or even to a software or hardware wallet. Often there are too high costs associated with a transaction. This is a working point of the Ethereum blockchain and some argue that the success of the native Binance Coin (BNB) is due to the high gas fees of Ethereum (ETH).
Addressing the high gas fees are planned for various tokens and the Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) would also like to offer a solution for this in the near future.
Stable Coin
There are now a whole range of stablecoins. According to CoinGecko, the counter currently stands at 52 stablecoins, which is of course a lot. The essence of the crypto world is of course a countermovement to the current monetary system where fiat money is subject to strong inflation and deflation and central organizations have power over our money. We now know a number of well-known stablecoins such as the DAI token and Tether.
In the second quarter of 2021, the Ocean Protocol would come to the market with its own stablecoin. This is to reduce the variations in prices and liquidity. They not only want to offer a financial currency, but they also hope to create a real building block for further developments within the Decentralized Finance domain. By offering pairs and a stablecoin they want to increase their position in the market.
Multi-chain
Ocean Protocol will continue to invest in optimizing data assets at all times. They strive for a multi-chain environment where users can access their data assets across multiple blockchain chains.
Market position OCEAN
With a top 100 position, Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) demonstrates the importance of their project. There are more and more investors who join the project and see the future here. In total there are 420 million tokens in circulation of which Binance is the most active market that trades in them.
My conclusion
Ocean Protocol is a token of interest on a very large scale. In the past it has completed a successful research on Parkinson's, but the way of working is applicable to different aspects of society.
Where there are more and more influences of artificial intelligence, there are more and more possibilities to solve problems effectively through this modern technology. We are increasingly aware of the data that is moving digitally around the world at lightning speed and the Ocean Protocol wants to make this data available to all companies and start-ups that can use this data for the development of their product.
We already see successful projects in the automotive industry and in healthcare, but it doesn't stop there. There is great interest in this crypto because its operation can be applied to almost all facets of society. Offering this data on the blockchain to all requesting parties supports the decentralized nature of the crypto market.
Congratulations if you made it to the end of this post! Now you can go and do your own research ... because,
I AM NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISOR
Have a nice day!