At Zenodys we challenged ourselves with the complex and hard task of how to create a marketplace where everyone, even non-programmers and non-technical people, could trade their digital assets. We all have them. Either in digital or physical form. They are waiting to be collected and sold in a secure and private manner.
Today, there are two major obstacles that prevent us from doing so, without such a marketplace.
Programming skills
Assets can be gathered only by the ones who possess programming skills. Sure, technology does get simpler and simpler: there already are APIs that deliver data from owners to customers. But an API call is just the “last mile” in this process. Data must be prepared and gathered from asset owners directly and processed in customer environments, which is a complex task, reserved only for programmers.
Asset fragmentation
‘Digital asset’ is a much broader term than it might seem. Static data is just one part of the digital ecosystem. What about algorithms, applications, user interfaces and so on?
Let’s take the example of object recognition from images. For recognizing objects, the image must be processed step by step with different algorithms (enhancement, restoration, compression, segmentation, etc.). Nowadays, there just isn’t an efficient way for you to simply “buy” an algorithm and apply it to your image. Or in an even more complex scenario: you cannot buy algorithms from different providers, connect them into the pipeline and apply all of them to your image. Another example would be a user interface for data visualisation from one provider that displays data sources from different providers.
Zenodys solves these two problems with the easy to use Visual Development Tool and the Zenodys Open Protocol, which converts all data into a standardized format and provides a standardized sandbox environment for executing algorithms, apps and dApps.
So that only the sky’s the limit with our blockchain based tool that enables you to connect digital assets from different providers.
But we didn’t just stop there, at creating a digital asset marketplace for everyone.
We challenged ourselves further with an almost impossible task: to optimize the process of the owners of the digital data, so that they can convert their assets into the tradeable form in under 10 mouse clicks. And through a procedure that will be flexible and without “hard-coded” scenarios. Result? We succeeded and even beat ourselves: we optimized the trading process to an incredible figure of 7 mouse clicks!
With the help of our advanced algorithms, both in Computing Engine and Elements, we found the perfect sweet spot between flexibility, easiness and performance.
This post does not intend to describe the platform from scratch. You can refer to the technical whitepaper and Zenodys Open Protocol specification for more information.
Let’s start trading
Suppose we want to trade energy consumption. In this example we are using the ZWave Fibaro smart plug, but the digital asset can be gathered differently, replacing the ZWave Element with another or setting its properties in a different way. This is the final Template:
Now, let’s start counting mouse clicks:
Click 1
Drag the “Start” Element into the Visual Development Tool canvas.
This is the starting point in the asset trading loop.
Click 2
Drag the “LicenceChecker” Element.
This Element waits for asset requests from customers. Request is validated through smart contract upon its arrival. A further loop is executed with each customer’s request.
Click 3
Drag the “GetEnergy” Element.
If validation from the previous Element succeeds, then the digital asset is obtained by the “GetEnergy” Element. The particular properties are set by the Fibaro smart plug specification.
Click 4
Drag the “AssetTransmitter” Element, which responds with the digital asset (power consumption measured by the “GetEnergy” Element) to the customer’s request.
Click 5
Connect both the “Start” and the “LicenceChecker” Elements.
Click 6
Connect both the “LicenceChecker” and the “GetEnergy” Elements.
Click 7
Connect both the “GetEnergy” and the “AssetTransmitter” Elements.
Hooray! We now have a ready-to-trade digital asset with just 7 mouse clicks and with no programming skills required.
Writen by Tomaz Vinko, Zenodys CTO
