Data Monetization: 2 untapped ways to monetize your data

Data is everything and everything is data. In this data-driven world, the absence of data would lead to a collapse of industries all-together. Data is the new currency and the companies that have more relevant data are valued more because they can cater better to their customers. When all other things are same how much contextual data a company has can pretty much decide if it is the winning candidate or not. In addition to serving their customers better with the data, these companies now have an additional option of increasing their revenues by monetizing the data directly while safeguarding the privacy of their users.

In this guide, I will be covering two blockchain applications that offer data monetization as part of their service. Both the companies have their respective token listed in the cryptocurrency market, & they are:

In this guide you will learn the following:

Everything about these two data monetization services.
Comparison of the two services, which is the best?
The Problem Statement behind Data Monetization
As mentioned earlier, many companies use sensors (via IoT devices or simple sensors) to collect data that they use to improve user experience and/or provide better solutions. For example, Google, an internet giant company that has a huge list of products/services that it serves to its widest range of users. How do they improve, build or update their products so as to provide awesome experience?

They learn from the user interaction and manual feedback. However, manual feedback plays a very small role in improving the product, as not everyone gives a genuine feedback. Hence, the user interaction is the only way by which the product owners can learn what the product is actually lacking.

Similarly, some companies (irrespective of the industry) learn from the data it collects and improves the product/service. That’s not the real problem, the problem is the step after the collection of data.

Imagine you have the behavioral data of 1 million users of an analytics software product. You used it to improve your product and then moved that data to your archive or data center.

Is that it?

Not anymore. You, as the owner of that data, can now sell those data to other companies looking for similar data. How? That’s where the two data monetization service providers come into the picture.

Let’s explore it, one by one.

But before that, let me build some background for you.

How can AI be used in a blockchain
Yes, it’s finally here. The two most talked about technologies in the tech industry today is finally having a date. AI & blockchain, are dating each other, and it’s the new cool pair. How amazing it would be if AI and blockchain go hand in hand and produce a better structure of the whole blockchain space.

Bottos and Databroker DAO, have been trying exactly the same in this regards. The two company owners have made a perfect blend of the AI and blockchain to produce better data-driven results that can be sold, for good. The decentralized mechanism has already taken the internet by storm, now by having AI in its team, the blockchain technology is only going to flourish.

If you don’t already know, blockchain is distributed system where each node is equally important. Furthermore, each of the nodes is a processed form of a set of data. So technically, processing data is the primary thing that happens in the blockchain technology.

Blockchain technology is so versatile that it can be used in any industry. However, it’s major use is seen in the finance industry. As the blockchain technology has set a trend of e-currency over the traditional fiat currency. The reason why cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin etc are flourishing well is that they are fast, secure and more transparent.

Furthermore, the blockchain is not restricted just to the financial industry. It has expanded to, IoT, Big Data & more importantly, Artificial Intelligence.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

You know it already.

AI is not a new term anymore for most of us. It’s the technological advancements that are intelligent enough to work just like humans. Irrespective of the industry, AI has been doing really great in terms of improving productivity.

Basically, AI is to teach a machine to learn from a huge chunk of data and run on its own.

Having said that, let me talk more about the merger of these two.

AI & Blockchain merger
The basic role of Blockchain is to maintain records and execute them in parallel. On the other hand, the AI is the brain, and it makes the decisions. Learns from the data, makes better decisions, and then keeps growing further. AI does a lot and lots of calculations, to make decisions, assess datasets, predict future etc.

Coming to the contextual use of blockchain — Cryptocurrency. Imagine AI making decisions for Bitcoin, it will help you analyze the market, give data-oriented feedback before you make an investment, predict the price etc. Now, since the AI is backed with a ton of data, you are more likely to rely on it to make decisions.

And, has to be, AI has proven to be a super powerful source of data. Remember Alpha Go? The AI developed by DeepMinds beats the world Go champion.

All in all, the AI-Blockchain merger is only a blockbuster.

Features of AI & Blockchain merger:
The core nature of decentralized database is sharing the data across the network and not keeping it in one place. Same holds true for AI too. Since AI relies on hugely on Big Data and hence it also depends on data sharing. The amount of data that the Big Data and Blockchains have, are too huge for humans to manage. Hence the AI algorithms are powerful enough to take care of such huge amount of data. Furthermore, the AI algorithm is also capable of managing the data and make better decisions.

There is a huge need for security when dealing with transactions in the blockchain, irrespective of the cryptocurrency. The existing protocols make sure the security is intact. For AI, the machine that it operates on also needs high-level security. Hence a high-security is expected from the blockchain technology by the AI. You already know that blockchain technology is known for its security. AI already has security features and the merger of the two will further enhance the security.

Technological advancements has lead to de-trusting the internet. Surely, AI & Blockchain are not spared too, occasionally, there are many instances where we lose a pinch of trust on these two technologies. Be it AI robots threatening human existence or blockchain applications gettings hacked. But, a combination of AI and blockchain is expected to have a machine to machine communication. This communication will not only make the users rely upon, but also enhance the security.

Data monetization service #1: Bottos
About Bottos
Bottos is a decentralized data sharing network service. The service runs on blockchain technology. Furthermore, the AI based ecosystem collects the data & enables easy implementation of registration, distribution & transformation of data.

The company aims to become world’s largest data sharing network. The company’s efforts are going to help the AI ecosystem evolve via smart contracts on a blockchain infrastructure. Furthermore, the company also aims to help people capitalize the data assets which the owners can take a control of. As an owner, you can control the data privacy through a transparent ecosystem.

Bottos can be applied to fields of Big data, AI, robotics, IoT, VR/AR & so on. Bottos is not only an AI blockchain but also serves data circulation.

The platform adopts DApps as its main application development layer, which can be classified as follows:

AI
AI Derivatives &
Blockchain-based technologies
Some of the DApps based platforms like Lightning Network, Oracle, Side-Chain help improve Botto’s ecosystem.

Data Monetization Bottos provides
Bottos is capable to tackle issues like “data security”, “Large-scale data storage” & “data fraud”. A public blockchain is known for serving the community and DApps. Furthermore, the DApps multi-level token system is available in most of the cryptocurrency platforms around the world.

Bottos promotes data mining to encourage data sharing, which is a key feature of a blockchain application. Additionally, this can help the data owners to share their unique data so that even they can promote usage of AI.

Furthermore, Bottos uses a huge amount of training data for AI and models. More data the AI consumes, better it evolves. While the community and modules on the platforms grow, the AI is only going to be even better.

Key technological innovations behind Bottos’
High-quality data flow to ensure an original data market mechanism.
To keep the data secure and ensure privacy, the initiatives of data mining and intelligent storage have been implemented.
DApps are more functional because of “multi-value” and it’s value system.
Bottos’ Application Scenarios
Botto’s is a vast platform with a variety of implementation. Considering its capabilities to manage the huge amount of data, the platform becomes one of a kind. So here’s a list of application that Bottos’ can run and manage on its platform or using its blockchain technology:

Data is the new asset now. It should be utmost priority of any company that collects data in any form, to keep it safe & secure. Bottos’ dealing ton and a ton of data took time to build an authentication system that specifies uniqueness of data.

On this platform, the data providers can liquidate their own data and ensure the privacy of the data they provide. Big data companies, when in need of data, can collect data through Bottos’ community. Furthermore, the smart contracts ensure the data cleansing and tagging to have highly targetted data without any junk data leaks.

AI & AGI (Artificial General Intelligence)
The basic element of any AI is data. Data train the AI and help it grow. Considering the lack of data to train the AI, Bottos’ can help the AI quickly obtain the required data to for training.

On the other hand, the platform can invite other AI participant via smart contracts to boost R&D of the AI. Additionally, the high-quality training data can help iteration of AGI to make it a better version of AI.

Bottos’ can help build smarter hardware, IoT devices, Robots with data collection tool as a hardware. The data that the hardware collects is then used to upscale the AI in those devices. To begin with, “data mining” happens for intelligent machines, which can be seen as “mining machines” at the data level.

Unlike movies, Super robots need a lot of training and are not easy to make. By super robots, I mean, machines with emotions. Without emotions, robots would harm humans with that smiling face.

To make robots execute just like humans, a lot of data is needed to train them. The reason why robots are being tried and tested so rigorously is valid. The number of robots in the future will be so very high, hence the centralized data management will lag behind. In between all this, Bottos’ has a built-in identity management system that the robots can access in form of nodes.

These nodes will ensure, right data is served to the robots and no harmful action provoking data is served. Bottos’ is that futuristic.

Data monetization service #2: Databroker DAO(DTX)
Databroker is a blockchain based platform that is aiming to enable data monetization, just like Bottos. The company is aiming to fetch data from IoT devices and other smart objects like smartphones, fitness trackers, personal assistants like Google home and Alexa from Amazon.

A lot of data from these devices go unused and the real value of that data vanishes after a single use by the company collecting it.

Databroker DAO is live today and is wanting to monetize the data. A lot of information about Databroker DAO is still unclear, hence the subsequent section is to share more about it.

How does Databroker work?
Considering the distributed nature of blockchain technology, the company has a platform where data owners, data processors & network owners will come together on that platform. The primary target of the company is to make IoT data available for everyone on their marketplace.

However, the data will not be available to anyone for free. The company has the platform in place where anyone can buy & sell data. Consider this example to better understand this. Say you own fitness tracker app and you want to sell the data collected by your app to an advertising company, you can do that on this platform. Furthermore, if you are the advertising company, you can buy the fitness tracker data from the developer on this platform.

Data is everywhere. There no limit to where the data can come from. That being said, here’s another example. Say you are a fashion designer and what to study current fashion trend in a certain region. You can do that on this platform. Again, this data will not be free. But you were anyhow going to spend something to study the market right? Take this as an investment.

Sure, DataBroker seems appealing, but why would use it? What’s in it for you?

Benefits of DataBroker DAO
The DataBroker ecosystem is designed to benefit three different parties in this chain. Here’s how these parties will benefit from using DTX:

#1 Sensor Owners
In my views, sensor owners will have the best benefit here. All this while, the data that they had was undervalued and not reusable. Now that DTX is live, they can monetize the sunk data, no matter how old it is. Not a single cell of the data they had will go waste henceforth.

#2 Network Operators
Network operators will see some serious revenue turn-ups. Since the bridge to access this data is the network, there will be a huge demand in near future of the network operators. If you are a network operator, pull up your socks. It’s time to run.

#3 Sensor Manufacturers
Since the investment on sensors is going to repay, there will be a sharp spike in purchase of these devices. Sure, they’re not as cheap as a burger, but it’s an investment, not a birthday treat.

#4 Developers & Entrepreneurs
For those who are working day and night to publish your idea, your time is precious. With DTX, you can save a lot of time. How? Well, DTX has some quality data that is not easily accessible. You’d need to spend a lot of time mining data as input for your research. You can find some quality & reliable data on the platform.

Final thoughts in data monetization
For years, the data curated by many companies were piling up in the database without bringing a single penny. Its existence was meaningless, until now. Social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram have data worth billions. But all in vain.

The data is used to target ads, customize user experience & upgrade the platform. Sure, doing this brings in revenue. But the data has always been overlooked. Thanks to data monetization platforms like Bottos and DataBroker, anyone can sell the data and earn out of it.

Out of the two, I personally found DTX more useful and profitable. It is versatile and open to many individuals and industries. On the other hand, Bottos is a platform serving data only to AI based firms. In coming years, there will be many such platforms which would vary in various ways. Like fees for the data, privacy, features and many more. But for now, DataBroker is leading this race and will be the king for quite a few years.

Originally published at http://bitfolio.org/data-monetization.