Datawallet’s Road To The Decentralized Web
Datawallet Blockchain — Strategic Series: Article IV
Abstract
In our previous articles, we discussed the technological innovations which have led to the rise of blockchain and distributed ledger technology, the ever-growing need for increased financial and data sovereignty for individuals, and the great importance of the Web3 revolution.
The bigger picture of the Internet of Value demonstrates how blockchain ties into a wider context of technological disruption and its potential broader impacts. Our vision for Datawallet fits into the wider and critical issues surrounding individual data sovereignty, reflects on the challenges of the road ahead, and examines how we’re going to solve them.
You can read the previous articles here: Article I, Article II, Article III.
Continuing Progress
In 2018, we developed the alpha version of what our minimum viable product (MVP) would look like. This was an essential starting point in our journey towards offering our users a fully sovereign data solution. Likewise, the blockchain ecosystem evolved to a point where its capabilities supported the Datawallet platform at scale. We’re now close to providing the complete proof-of-concept outlined in our whitepaper.
Our ecosystem of functional components enables a modular architecture, allowing continued and agile progression for independent features and expansion of the ecosystem during development phases. To deliver top value across these ecosystem components, we weighed up trade-offs within the security, usability and responsibility of our vision. Compliance and industry concerns also helped forge the core technology upon which we expect to build Datawallet.
These efforts have culminated in the latest Datawallet version (with a name that is a nod to Web3 developments), supporting smart contracts to enforce decentralization, a crypto wallet to encrypt and manage access to data, and built on top of the ubiquitous Ethereum blockchain technology.
This is a milestone towards our ultimate vision of a platform for self-sovereign data wallets interconnected through a decentralized data marketplace. We will continue to embrace upcoming challenges through innovation and perseverance as we move forward towards our goals.
Overcoming Hurdles
There are always challenges associated with the development of any new technology. At Datawallet, we remain on the cutting edge of blockchain technology, the wider industry and economic trends, as well as user and regulatory requirements (Datawallet CEO comments on the Federal Data Strategy Action Plan) to ensure the success of our vision. With the development of the Datawallet team and technology over the past year, we’re confident in our ability to overcome any obstacles.
Challenges many blockchain technology projects face are issues of scalability. For Datawallet, addressing this challenge is essential for serving a wide user base as well as enterprise partners or clients. The development of our system architecture nearly a year ago was promising, but little was known about multi-ledger technology.
With over a decade of blockchain expertise on our core team, tracking trends in technology evolution pre “alt-chains” gave us the advantage of understanding the full promise of emerging multi-chain technology, pre-dating the wider knowledge of Ethereum. This influenced our decision to use Cosmos and other multi-ledger technology, emulated earlier this year with the successful launch of the first multi-ledger mainnets and further supported by Binance’s adoption of the Cosmos technology as well.
Additionally, conversations about the environmental impact of proof-of-work blockchain networks are ongoing. Which inevitably influenced our choice to use low energy “Byzantine Fault Tolerant” consensus mechanisms supporting environmental sustainability.
Regulatory compliance in an ever-shifting landscape is a challenge in itself. As the success of blockchain continues, regulators are casting an increasingly watchful eye over the industry. Simultaneously, data privacy and user control are increasingly important topics for lawmakers as companies work on distinguishing themselves as leaders on these prevalent issues.
At Datawallet, we are committed to the protection of data through user sovereignty. Our technology platform aligns the interests of users, regulators, and businesses, helping to improve compliance solutions for all platform participants. Due to the evolving landscape, we’re mindful of regulatory developments and adapt to regulatory changes when necessary.
Ongoing Initiatives
Having explored potential challenges in the wider blockchain ecosystem, and their effect on Datawallet, what solutions do we have in place which will allow us to remain at the forefront of the industry and deliver on our vision?
Our ‘compliance first’ philosophy, where we place emphasis on delivering a functional, compliant and quality product instead of focusing on buzzword trends, should help to deliver our vision of building a value exchange and strong supporting market. In turn, this should create a solution uncoupled from the strong fluctuations of the current blockchain market, where the Datawallet data-economy can function stably and unaffected.
The way we transfer, share and own our personal data is in the midst of a strategic evolution from centralized to decentralized, and Datawallet’s solution is at the nexus of this change. The decentralized web (or Web3) will bring about major changes that will upend industries. Currently, with the Web 2.0, data architectures are still based on the concept of stand-alone computers, where data is centrally stored and managed on a server, and sent or retrieved by a client. Every time we interact over the Internet, copies of our data get sent to the server of a service provider, and every time that happens, we lose control over our data.
Data ownership assuring solutions will be the cornerstone for these developments. With change comes responsibilities, both to users and regulatory bodies. Our blockchain-based solution allows Datawallet to leverage the benefits of a public ledger, giving regulators scope to ensure our practices are legal and transparent, while also allowing us to disintermediate third party custodians of data using centralized systems.
We are excited by the current opportunities for developing solutions which empower people to take ownership of and realize real value from their personal data. Many talented individuals and organizations are coordinating around the issue of data sovereignty, and Datawallet is proud to be at the heart of this movement, providing strong leadership in the field of data sovereignty.
What’s The Bigger Picture?
Part of our vision is to fix the broken data ecosystem. On the one side, customers have no control over the data they create, no transparency into how it’s used, and no ability to get any value from their data. On the other side, companies waste billions in mistargeted advertising, offer sub-optimal goods and services, and are slow in their innovation cycles, all due to incomplete and inaccurate customer data.
In the center of the entire ecosystem sit data brokers, scraping individuals’ data without their knowledge, and selling it to businesses who have no better option than to buy unethically sourced, low-quality data to power their services. Throughout the ecosystem, sensitive consumer data has been lost or stolen through negligence or theft. To fix these problems, we’re building the tools to support a digital economy where individuals truly own and control their data.
Conclusion
Delivering a scalable solution which underpins the first major wave of mainstream growth and adoption in the burgeoning blockchain sector is a huge undertaking, but with our expert team committed to a well-defined roadmap and our wider vision for Datawallet, we’re certain we have the right strategy in place to deliver.
These solutions, and the development of our MVP, are the first step in our ultimate vision of providing a completely self-sovereign data marketplace solution. This couldn’t come at a more crucial time, because as we’ve explored throughout the other articles in this series, the way we handle our own data is changing rapidly.
Sovereignty, both financially and for our personal data, is a catalyst for the decentralization movement. As we move into a new paradigm of data ownership, Datawallet is perfectly poised to offer a full-stack solution for individual data sovereignty.
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Datawallet — The digital wallet for all your data.
