Ocean Academy | Guest Review series
Ocean101 — Deep Dive
The fourth industrial revolution gave birth to a data-driven economy. Big data has implications in every sector today. It is used to push targeted ads to consumers as much as to predict the weather or run an airplane on autopilot.
Modern society is increasingly leaning towards an AI-driven economy, AI extracts value from data by using it to train effective AI models, but useful data is hard to come by these days. Big internet companies are sitting on a data monopoly. They have access to near unlimited sources of data, which they use for their AI-driven technologies. A startup may emerge with an extraordinary AI model but may lack a good source of useful data for its training. This is a major challenge that the traditional data economy faces today.
Data In The Web3 Economy
Web3 aims to hand the ownership and control of personal data back to the user’s hands. It cuts the middlemen(big internet companies) between data providers and consumers. The data owners can effectively monetize their data in the Web3 economy without losing its ownership. Control over one’s data also incentivizes data sharing. If the owner controls how their data is being used and monetized, they become much more comfortable with sharing it. This is the core idea behind the Ocean Protocol, to act as a trustless bridge in the data supply chain of Web3.
What Is Ocean Protocol?
Ocean is an open-source protocol that acts as a bridge between data providers and data consumers in the Web3 economy. The protocol offers the following three high-level functions:
- Publishing — Users can publish the data they wish to monetize on the network.
- Consuming — The published data is listed in the network and, can be consumed by interested parties for analytics.
- Marketplace — It enables complex interactions between the data providers and consumers.
The protocol is built on the Ethereum blockchain, following the ERC-20 standard for tokens. The protocol packages data sets into ‘datatokens’ and enables a marketplace where these datatokens can be sold to interested parties. The Ocean Market is essentially an automated market maker for the datatokens. The data providers provide various details about the data and the URL to find the data. This information is then encrypted into a datatoken and stored on the blockchain. A data consumer, who wishes to redeem the data token, pays the necessary consideration upon which the datatoken is decrypted for the consumer’s use. The data providers are rewarded in OCEAN tokens. The system ensures that data usage is entirely transparent, so the providers know exactly how their data is being used.
Ocean Protocol facilitates the sharing of data without the data provider losing their privacy or ownership with the help of one of its features called Compute-to-Data. This feature allows the data consumer to run certain computational and analytical processes for their research or train their AI models. The providers retain control over their data throughout the whole process. They can even store the data in their servers and only unlock parts of the data pack to certain clients.
Ocean Protocol is well built for all use-cases right from enterprises who have little access to finances for large data-assets, and also individuals, startups, and other small players who do not possess the means or financial might to gain access to large pools of reliable data for research. It is of paramount importance for such individuals to learn how to use the tools offered by the protocol, which is why the Ocean101 course was built.
If you are ready to explore the Ocean down to its depths, let’s dive in!
Ocean101
Ocean101 is a free course constructed education on the basics of the Ocean Protocol, its use cases, and a guide to mastering the Ocean interface so that data professionals can start their data analytics journey in Web3 with ease. There is no prior knowledge of blockchains and distributed ledgers required for this course. The course teaches everything necessary to know about getting started with Web3 and Ocean protocol.
Ocean 101 learning curve:
Upon completing the Ocean101 course, the following concepts will become familiar:
- Basics concepts of blockchains and Web3.
- Mechanics of Web3 data economy.
- Key components of the Ocean Protocol.
- Application of Data markets.
Course Breakdown:
The course is broken into twenty-four chapters, which will gradually cover all the mentioned concepts in layman terms, along with simple real-world analogies and practical examples. Here is a breakdown of the flow of the entire course:
Chapter 1: Why should you care?
The chapter introduces readers to the shortcomings of the traditional data market. It explains how the centralization of data into the hands of private players results in valuable data not being monetized to its best potential. Individuals and startups with limited financial muscle cannot get their hands on adequate data to train their artificial intelligence models and develop new products.
The chapter then explains how Ocean is facilitating an open data economy that brings the control and ownership of data back in the hands of the data providers, enabling healthy revenue streams and data availability for small players.
Chapter 2–5: Blockchain Basics
These chapters cover a comprehensive explanation of every blockchain-related concept required to be known to use the Ocean interface properly. These concepts form a crucial foundation for any data professional who has never interacted with distributed ledgers before.
Readers start with a basic meaning of a blockchain. Simple real-world analogies help one understand the concept with ease. Readers then learn that interacting with a blockchain requires gas-charged from your wallet. The course will also help one try out real blockchain transactions themselves, with the help of test-nets that provide free test tokens for this exact purpose.
Chapter five gets a little intricate with the concepts of smart contracts. Readers learn how smart contracts facilitate a global supercomputer we call a blockchain. The concept of Web3 and its advantages over Web2 are also discussed.
Chapters 6–7: Data and Web3
The chapters talk about the relationship of data economy with Web3 and the traditional Web2 model, how the ownership of data shifts from big internet companies in Web2 to the creators in Web3. The chapter explains the importance of control over one’s data.
The concept is explained beautifully with an example of a chat app. In the Web3 economy, users’ chat logs would be owned by themselves and not the chatting service providers. So if the data owners were to monetize the data, the service providers would compete for the best chat app interface to keep the users in their system. Users could also demand compensation for their chat data being used for data analytics. All this wouldn’t be possible in a Web2 economy.
Chapters 8–12: Mechanics of a Smart Contract
These chapters focus on familiarizing the readers with smart contracts and enabling a decentralized smart computer on the blockchain. A basic introduction is given to how customizable smart contracts are written and executed on a virtual machine and how the network is incentivized to execute smart contracts continuously.
This is followed by an introduction to the OCEAN smart contract, which is based on the ERC-20 token standard of the Ethereum blockchain. Readers are also taught to locate the smart contract using Etherscan.
Next, the chapters discuss how data is stored on the blockchain, Ethereum blockchains specifically.
The Ethereum blockchain has proven to be an inefficient storage device for data. This mainly is because of its astronomically expensive block space and needing the data in a certain format to be compatible with the chain.
Chapter 12 talks about how the Ocean protocol provides a framework to index metadata to be accessed via a decentralized marketplace using ocean smart contracts.
Chapter 13–15: Getting started with Ocean
Readers will learn the basic function of the Ocean Ecosystem and the facilities the Ocean toolbox offers. These include smart contracts to build data libraries and marketplaces, standardization of data sets for large-scale collaboration, and a Web3 marketplace to connect data consumers and providers.
The structure of the Ocean Marketplace has also been talked about in-depth. The different layers of the market facilitate users’ communication with the blockchain. The structure explains how the market UI takes user queries to fetch them the required datatoken from the underlying blockchain layer. Next, the chapter talks about the protocol’s store for metadata called Aquarius. Readers are taught about different customization tools offered by Aquarius for the description and storage of the data.
Chapters 16–20: Actors and features on the Ocean blockchain
These chapters are all about different entities that interact with the Ocean blockchain. Their interaction with each other is what facilitates the data market. Following are the entities described:
- Data Providers — They own the data and make it available for use to others for a fee or free of cost.
- Algorithm Providers — These entities sell algorithms instead of data itself. Their algorithms are approved by data providers for their data to be run on them to train various AI models. Algorithm providers are paid every time their algorithms are used.
- Data Consumer — Any entity in the Ocean protocol that purchases any data, uses free data or any algorithm is basically a data consumer.
- Compute to Data Flow — This defines the parameters of access and usage of the provider’s data for the consumer. Parameters like frequency of access, the scope of data made available, among many others can be set by the provider.
- Access Control Flow — This defines the process of implementing Compute to Data.
Chapter 21: Use Cases
This very interesting chapter explores the various instances where Ocean protocol has been used across different industries. The readers will find these applications quite fascinating, from healthcare or logistics to automotive.
Chapter 22: Vision
Readers are introduced to a vision of a new data economy, a world where the data is completely liberalized, the data monetization streams are in complete control of the data providers, and new sources of precious data are discovered.
Chapter 23: Recap
These chapters summarize the key takeaways from the course.
Chapter 24: A word about Ocean Ambassadors!
Upon completing the course, you get the chance to become an ambassador for the Ocean protocol! There are many advantages to becoming an ambassador. Here are some of them:
- Get first-hand exposure to the AI*Blockchain space.
- Get invited to events.
- Be the first to hear about work opportunities.
- Build a resourceful network by getting to know other ambassadors!
- Build a positive future for humanity by contributing to the new data economy.
Ambassadors are active members of the Ocean community. They are responsible for spreading awareness and education about the need for an open data economy. The Ocean community members benefit from a network of resourceful intellectuals who help one another build a successful professional life in the world of data analytics and digital assets. Head on to Ocean Academy to learn more, & Reach out to the Discord for further insights on the Ambassador Program.
Wrapping up!
The Ocean protocol aims to make the data economy fair and easy to access. This will help both big and small entities develop AI models to create value from the data. The protocol also wants the data providers to have complete control over the data they provide, along with the adequate means to monetize it to its full potential. This idea is the foundation of the new data economy.
The Ocean101 is a comprehensive and very useful guide and is a valuable contribution towards making this dream possible.
About our Guest-writer: Arjunchand.eth
I am a self-motivated and result-driven individual; punctual and disciplined. I love working in Crypto because it gives me a sense of belonging to a community that wants to make a change. I am definitely not the smartest person in the room, but I make up for that with my work ethic and intellectual curiosity.
You can follow me on Twitter @arjunnchand