Datawallet 2019 — Update #1

Dear Datawallet community,

the last year has been an exciting one for Datawallet with tons of activities packed into the previous 12 months. And while we are still considering doing a “year in review” type of update, we wanted to use this first post to look ahead and address a few questions and changes. We know the past year has not always been easy with the ups and downs the blockchain space has experienced — but we are strongly believing in our vision of empowering the individual to take back data ownership using blockchain technology. This year we are going full steam ahead and are excited to have you along for the ride. We very much value the continued support we have received and are getting from our community.

What lies ahead

2018 has been a year where we built a lot of foundational technology, including our infrastructure, data pipelines, smart contracts and more. This year will consequently be the year where we release a lot of the technology and products we have been building. As we mentioned in our last update, we were in the midst of contract and partnership negotiations with multiple large corporations. These are slowly coming to fruition now as well and we can’t wait to share the details with all of you.

In January, you will see the first new release from Datawallet and we are beyond delighted to show you what we have been working on. Also in the next few months, we will be releasing the first open source projects, allowing other developers to start fully utilizing the most important resource the internet has to offer in an ethical way — data. With that, we will also share our vision and progress on the blockchain side of Datawallet, which has become even grander than initially anticipated. Needless to say, 2019 will step by step see a lot of product releases, content and business updates from Datawallet, bringing to fruition all the hard work our amazing team has done over the past months.

We would very much appreciate your feedback in the coming weeks and for this reason, we are also implementing a few changes. Starting with the below…

Changes to Telegram and our approach

With the upcoming product launches, we also want to make a concerted effort to connect more closely with our longtime community as well as all the new people that will join the data revolution in 2019. To this end, we have decided to bring the moderation of the Datawallet Official Telegram Chat even closer to the core team. As of January 14th, the Telegram will be moderated by our two community Ambassadors Lars and Pranav, with questions being answered directly by core team members. This means that the immediate response times may be a bit slower as we don’t have 24/7/365 moderation online, however, we think that the answers and dialog will be more profound and efficient this way. We will also continue to post the most important updates on the Datawallet Daily Announcement Channel.

Also, we want to answer some interesting community questions more in-depth every now and then. Recently, Datawallet Community Member DT asked why so many blockchain projects seem to fail at getting real traction and a substantial, active user base. In our opinion, there is a rather simple answer to this. Apart from financial applications, most blockchain projects have been building technology solely for the blockchain space without a commercial or mass market appeal. Of course, there are infrastructure project and protocols that are more foundational, but even applications leveraging existing blockchain technology have so far had often very specific use cases and were accompanied by a UI/UX that is not suitable for the mass market. We are believers in the power of blockchain technology, but a mass market product, should not have it front and center. A lot of people still do not fully understand blockchains and cryptocurrency and that is why we have been working hard on creating a product that fully utilizes these technologies, but where you do not have to interact with them if you don’t want to. Where the blockchain processes are happening behind the scenes with the user benefitting from a stellar and simple experience, but getting the full benefits. Our team is happy to further discuss this question in the Telegram Chat.

Miscellaneous

Below are a few miscellaneous items we also wanted to share with all of you:

• One of our Ethereum Developers, Patricio, recently wrote a post on Ethereums Layer 2 Scaling Solutions (as we are working to find the best possible blockchain solutions for a mass market platform). You can read it HERE if interested — there is also a lot of links to further dive into the topic in the article.
• Our VP Alex Yergin was also recently interviewed by Center of Data Innovation. He was asked 5 questions about Datawallet — and you can find his answers HERE.
• Datawallet was also invited to pitch in Munich at DLD 2019 in front of government officials, industry leaders, and investors. Our CEO Serafin Engel will do the pitch and we look forward to connecting with all the amazing attendees and other speakers (among them Joe Lubin, Don Tapscott, Sebastian Klauke, Oliver Samwer & more)
• Shortly after, Serafin will also present at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Datawallet is also co-hosting a dinner with many of the world’s leaders and industry expert in attendance with the goal of changing the way personal data is used across the internet.
• The Datawallet Berlin team recently moved into a new office where all our data engineers, blockchain devs, data scientists, designers, and full-stack developers can collaborate more easily.

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We have a lot of awesome updates, product releases and content coming out over the next few months and are excited to have you on the journey with us. As always, if you have further questions please contact the team via our official Telegram Group or stay up to date with only the most important news via our official Telegram Datawallet Daily Channel.

Make sure to also follow Datawallet on Twitter // Medium // Reddit // Youtube

Datawallet — Take control of your data.