Harmony Partnership Series: Harmony X NOIZ
Harmony joins forces with NOIZ Chain, a startup building a blockchain-powered ad exchange.
Blockchain enables consumers to control and monetize the data that is created through their online interactions. Users create NOIZ profiles to store and manage their information. This is the information brands seek when strategizing their content delivery and personalization. Consumers can earn NOIZ tokens by granting others access to the information stored in their profiles.
NOIZ CEO and co-founder Andy Ann states: “People should have the ability to tell brands their interests, preferences, and desires from the start, rather than having to correct the inaccurate information brands acquire through assumptions. NOIZ gives consumers this ability.”
Challenges today faced by Online advertising agencies:
Online advertising is growing to a multi-billion-dollar market. It is predicted that global digital ad expenditure will reach US$225 billion. However, it is plagued with multiple challenges.
Challenge #1: The success of any ad platform depends on the accuracy of consumer data so that the desired content can be delivered to the correct audience or customer persona.
Given the ongoing concerns about users’ online privacy, which is now protected under the UN declaration of human rights and the new GDPR regulations, gathering data on consumers has become more challenging, but for good reason.
Consumers are often not in control of the data or information that is collected about them. They struggle to protect their privacy either because they are unaware or find it challenging to navigate the process.
Worrying recent cases include the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal and Google’s location data tracking scare. These have made consumers more conscious about how data about them is being stored and used.
Challenge #2: The sheer size of the online advertising market tempts criminals and hackers into creating ways to steal money from advertisers by providing a fake audience, fake users, fake traffic and fake clicks. It is estimated that in 2018, $19 billion was stolen from advertisers due to online ad fraud.
How NOIZ and Harmony solve these challenges:
NOIZ solves these challenges by monetizing consumer data through a marketplace in which this data can be sold and purchased. Use of Harmony smart contracts in the NOIZ platform makes it incredibly easy to manage advertising contracts with publishers.
Not only does the use of Harmony blockchain allow the creation of a token economy and removes middle-men on the NOIZ platform but it also helps to address the challenges faced in online advertising.
Solving Challenge #1: Information that is shared on the NOIZ network can be stored through the Harmony blockchain and encrypted. This ensures users own and have control over their data.
The process of protecting and securely sharing information between a consumer (or user) and an advertiser is managed using Harmony smart contracts. An illustration of this mechanism:
- Users save their data in NOIZ platform which is built on Harmony blockchain and protect (or hide) their data by encrypting with their public-key.
- AI built in the platform helps to classify the user's information into a profile or persona.
- Advertisers interested in a specific persona e.g. ‘Music lover between age 18–30’ interacts with NOIZ platform. The platform returns matching persona and associated users public addresses.
- Advertiser makes an offer via smart contract i.e. pay 11$ equivalent in Harmony or NOIZ tokens if the user shares their information with them.
- Once the user accepts the offer, the smart contract facilitates the transition by creating a copy from original data, adds advertiser public-key to encrypt the data, sends encrypted data to the advertiser and makes the payment of 11$ to the user.
- The advertiser can now access or decrypt user information with their own private key.
Solving Challenge #2: A voting system in NOIZ platform using Harmony blockchain (PoS consensus mechanism) to create community governance as a filtering mechanism to keep malicious parties and their content out of the NOIZ ecosystem.
Users upvote or downvote on advertisers or publishers content, a mechanism which ensures that advertisers or third-parties within the NOIZ ecosystem remain compliant with the community standards.
Harmony uses a Proof-Of-Stake consensus mechanism where distributed randomness generation algorithm is used to select validators for respective shards. This mechanism ensures that malicious actors cannot choose the shard they want to target, therefore, making it secure from any potential attack to change the outcome (or votes).
This makes the voting system in Harmony most secure and tamper-proof. Also, by using Harmony blockchain, zero-knowledge proof can be deployed so that voters identity is not revealed in the process.
NOIZ Chief Strategy Officer David Kang shed light on the big picture of the project. “Keeping people anonymous, secure and in control of information flow online is what we’re making a reality,” he stated, “and we aim for this new reality to disrupt digital ecosystems for the better, not just advertising.”
Harmony is providing NOIZ the tools necessary to bring this new reality to fruition.
