Masa 3.0: Building the Leading zk-Data Marketplace and Network

Data is the new oil in the AI era. Welcome to Masa 3.0, building the largest zk-data marketplace, positioned to power the AI revolution.

In Masa 2.0 , Masa was the first project to build upon Vitalik’s novel concept of Soulbound Tokens (SBTs). Our web3 identity and community engagement products are foundational in building Vitalik’s vision of a decentralized society. To date, over 1-million SBTs have been generated by ~800,000 unique wallets participating in the Masa Network.

Now with Masa 3.0, we dream even bigger. The rapid AI revolution has driven astronomical demand for massive and diverse amounts of data beyond just identity data, and the applications of data extend beyond web3.

In the New Era of Masa 3.0, we are expanding our identity-data focus into building the world’s largest zk-data marketplace and network in the AI era.

Masa disrupts the big tech data silos, incentivizing consented and verified data marketplace between data providers (users & businesses) and data consumers (developers, startups, and enterprises) in a fully privacy-preserved way. We envision a scalable, secure, and resilient global data marketplace where data is private by default, and millions of businesses engage with billions of users in a new data paradigm powered by Masa.

We welcome you to join us in building an open, permissionless data economy. In this blog post, we share our full vision for Masa 3.0, unveiling the bleeding-edge technical innovations we’ve been building in stealth for 14 months, and detail ways you can participate in this exciting New Era at Masa 3.0.

A new data paradigm in the AI era #MyDataPaysMe

AI is radically changing the world before our eyes at an exponential rate that no one can yet comprehend. By 2030, there will be over $1-trillion in aggregate value created by companies leveraging AI models, with the largest impacts expected in AI-powered user engagement applications, including generative AI. We foresee a world where AI algorithms will know users better than they know themselves, predicting their needs, desires and offering hyper-personalized experiences. Products, media and social platforms will all dynamically adapt to each user, immersing them in a customized environment designed just for their own interests and engagement.

AI innovation requires high-quality, mass amounts of unbiased and verifiable training data to power their AI models: most valuable of which is user behavioral data that captures real-world human behavior and natural language. Currently, open and permissionless internet-scale user behavioral datasets sufficiently deep for AI model training do not yet exist. This is because:

• Big Tech Data Silos: Much of the most valuable user engagement data is locked up in proprietary silos controlled by big tech companies like Google and Meta. Simply put, users’ data are locked in Big Tech’s walled gardens.
• Regulatory Privacy Concerns: Collecting and sharing detailed user data raises privacy issues around consent. Regulators are banning 3rd party cookies. There are also many emerging lawsuits regarding training AI models on copyrighted data — the media called it “the big risk behind the AI investment boom.”
• Lack of Incentives: There are very limited financial incentives for data providers (users and businesses) to share their proprietary data. Users don’t benefit from sharing their own data, big tech does. Billion-dollar industries were built from monetizing users’ data without consent and compensation.

The old data paradigm is broken. Masa is fixing it.

Masa is on a mission to break closed data silos and architect the internet’s new nervous system — the world’s largest user data marketplace powered by cutting-edge zero-knowledge and fully-homomorphic encryption.

Imagine a world where your data is yours. A world where you’re in control of how your data is shared and with whom. A world where your data is profitable for YOU. A world where your data flows freely while remaining private and under your control. A world where businesses and developers can tap into vast oceans of privacy-preserved, consented and validated data to build innovative AI applications that were never before possible.

Masa makes this vision a reality. Masa is on a mission to transform the internet into an open data economy that empowers all. #MyDataPaysMe

Building the Largest ZK-Data Marketplace

Achieving critical mass with a sufficiently broad and deep data set is key to building the world’s largest zk-data marketplace. We’ve achieved this first-mover advantage by amassing user identity and behavioral data that is used for user engagement, growth, and analytics. Thanks to our users and partners, Masa has established a commanding lead, unlocking a trillion dollar market opportunity.

Since launching in August 2022, Masa has rapidly built the leading user data marketplace with a unique and proprietary dataset that is growing exponentially:

• 800,000+ unique user wallets have permissioned their data to the Masa Network;
• 70+ businesses and developers have consumed Masa Network data;
• 5,000,000+ events comprising over 30,000,000+ unique data points across 10,000+ on-chain and off-chain data categories processed through the Masa Network.
• Our wide range of data categories include web2 front-end events, web2 social events and sentiment analysis, web3 on-chain events and wallet interactions, and identity data;
• 7 Blockchains supported, including Ethereum Mainnet, BNB, opBNB, Polygon, Base, Celo, and Scroll, and expanding to more EVM- and non-EVM in the next 3–6 months.

The key to our exponential growth lies in building viral, utility-driven products that drive massive network effects: Masa Growth and Masa Analytics. By offering reward campaigns to users and an invaluable data insights product to projects, we have established verticals for user acquisition. In the near future, we will retain these users by allowing anyone, anywhere to monetize their data.

Masa Growth provides gamified quests, SBT badges, and domain names that incentivize community engagement. Masa is the team and infrastructure powering many viral campaigns in the past 14 months, such as Base Domain Name, Celo Prosperity Passport, Masa Soul Name, Masa Soul Circle SBT, Injective Soulbound Ninja, Xion Soulbound Blaze, and many, many, more. We recently launched our v3 App, where you can access all your favorite features — including rewards campaigns, referrals, soulname minting and more — in a simplified, clean and easier-to-use interface. We remain firm believers in using the power of Soulbound Tokens and Non-Fungible Tokens to build a thriving and loyal community in web3.

To date, over 1-million SBTs have been minted through Masa to power web3 identity and community engagement campaigns. Spoiler alert — leading up to Masa’s Network Launch and Token Generation Event, we will launch a unique and sophisticated airdrop program to honor and reward our Masa Soul Name holders, as well as users who have participated in our SBT, community and partner campaigns.

Masa Analytics offers the first unified (web2 & web3), privacy-preserved (cookieless) analytics solution for understanding web3 user behavior and driving growth. In 2023, the Masa Team spoke to more than 100+ projects in web3. One problem became clear: in a bear market, real active users have become harder to acquire and even harder to retain. Web3 builders are now forced to deeply understand their users and their behaviors in order to achieve long-term success and product market fit.

Masa Analytics became a game-changer for web3 projects seeking to make data-driven decisions without compromising user privacy. As a recently announced product, we have already been powering analytics for some of Web3’s biggest players, for example helping QuickSwap with campaign analytics and user segmentation. With 5,000,000+ events comprising over 30,000,000+ unique data points already streaming through the Masa Analytics engine, Masa Analytics is a crucial part of Masa Network’s product suite.

Masa’s current and future products are acquiring permissioned user data at a critical velocity. We’ve established the first-mover advantage with a deep data set and vertical product market fit, which is incredibly hard to replicate. Masa’s head start has allowed us to refine network architecture, data pipelines, and tooling specialized for decentralized data exchange across categories. This network effect will attract more developers and diverse data, stimulating hypergrowth. The larger and more varied the dataset, the more valuable the Masa Network becomes.

Masa’s incredible momentum, even amidst a bear market, is fueled by our passionate community. Over the past 2 years, more than 200,000 members from 196 countries have joined our journey. We are especially grateful to our 400+ Masa Ambassadors and Moderators from 44 countries around the world. Their dedication drives our global movement. We could not have come this far without our community. Their energy and loyalty give us confidence that our mission resonates across cultures. Together, we will realize our vision of an open data economy that empowers people worldwide.

Our accomplishments have also earned recognition from leading investors and institutions. Masa has successfully raised $8M+ in venture capital from leading investors such as Anagram, Digital Currency Group, GSR, and GoldenTree. In Spring 2023, Masa was one of the 12 projects selected from 1,500 applications for Binance’s highly-selective Most-Valuable Builder accelerator; on demo day, Masa won the #1 spot in the Binance Accelerator based on investor votes. Masa’s accomplishments have been recognized and featured by the World Economic Forum’s Digital ID initiative, CNBC, NASDAQ TV, New York Stock Exchange, Consensus, EthDenver, CoinTelegraph, CoinDesk, Blockworks, TechCrunch, and more.

The pieces are in place for Masa to lead the zk data race, and we possess the talent and drive to expand our edge and dominate the market.

Introducing the Masa Network

Behind the scenes, Masa has been building a bleeding-edge technology stack and advanced infrastructure. Now it’s time to unveil the Masa Network.

Masa pioneers cutting-edge zero-knowledge and fully-homomorphic cryptography to construct the largest, most secure, and resilient zero-knowledge data network. This enables private data exchange at global scale.

The network has four core layers:

1: User Layer: Masa zkSBT

You control your data through the Masa App and partner interfaces. Users leverage Masa’s novel zero-knowledge Soulbound tokens (zkSBT) to control their personal data sharing. zkSBTs are like personal data lockers — they let you store encrypted data on-chain or off-chain. You can grant verifiable access passes to specific developers based on programmable terms, enabling selective disclosure through advanced zero-knowledge and fully-homomorphic cryptography.

Your data pays you. Users are compensated for data contributions in stablecoins, blockchain-native tokens (e.g. BNB) and MASA tokens, aligning economic models between data suppliers and consumers.

This new open and permissionless data economy benefits both web3 native users and mainstream internet users: Masa’s zkSBT fully supports EIP-4337: Account Abstraction, which empowers every internet user to use social login to manage their data, eliminating the complexity of private key management.

2: Data Exchange Layer: Masa zk-Oracle

The Masa zk-Oracle Network is a decentralized network of oracle nodes that act as an intermediate privacy-preserving data exchange layer. The oracle nodes ingest data from on-chain and off-chain sources into a standardized format. Then process, validate, and analyze data while maintaining indexing for efficient data queries.

Oracle nodes use zero-knowledge proofs to write encrypted data ensuring privacy preservation. By using zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption, the network preserves privacy while allowing developers to derive insights without exposing raw data. The system supports encrypted messaging, VPNs, and decentralized file transfers to augment community applications.

To participate, oracle operators stake MASA tokens. Oracle node operators earn rewards in MASA and fees from oracle usage from applications built on Masa.

3: Data Access Layer: Masa Network

The Data Access layer provides blockchain infrastructure for user zkSBTs and vital data access protocol contracts. By deploying on a dedicated Avalanche subnet & opBNB, Masa achieves modular scaling as adoption grows. Our innovative gasless architecture eliminates fees, promoting mainstream use. Data is stored on onchain data storage infrastructure, starting with BNB Greenfield and later expanding to other protocols such as Space & Time and IPFS.

Node operators restake stMASA tokens to run validator nodes on the Avalanche subnet, earning rewards and fees from data consumers. Combined with gasless transactions, this enables high-performance, global-scale zero-knowledge data access control.

4: Developer Layer: Applications

The Application Layer provides developers with the interfaces and tools to build a new class of privacy-preserving, decentralized applications on Masa’s zk-data marketplace. It helps solve the bottleneck around internet-scale user behavioral data trapped in fragmented proprietary silos.

The Application Layer allows developers to leverage the network’s capabilities:

• Applications can ethically source encrypted data from a global user base to train advanced AI models, democratizing access to data-driven innovation.
• Businesses can securely share data to enable collaborative analytics without exposing competitive intelligence. Masa incentivizes opening data while preserving privacy.
• Individuals can monetize their data and control access to drive equitable value exchange, shifting power back to users.

By empowering developers to leverage our network, Masa will revolutionize the data paradigm — unlocking new products, returning control to users, and creating outsized economic value while protecting privacy.

What’s Next: The Road to Masa Network Launch

Behind the scenes, the Masa Team has been working tirelessly on a best-in-class Network Launch. We are holding ourselves to the highest standards from every single aspect: from legal and compliance, to architecturing bleeding-edge technologies, to building incredible traction and go-to-market momentum, to getting recognitions from leading investors, incubators, ecosystem partners, and media.

Today, we are excited to unveil our Masa Litepaper to the community. You can read our draft version here. This is an important milestone in realizing our vision for an open data economy.

The Masa Network will be powered by a native token called MASA that aligns incentives in a novel data economy and gives holders governance power over the network’s evolution.

Incentives: Masa implements an innovative incentive structure that rewards end users with MASA tokens for supplying valuable data into the network. This approach enables ordinary internet users to passively monetize their data and behaviors by receiving automated MASA payouts proportional to their contributions. Distributing token supply directly to users bootstraps essential data liquidity, incentivizes participation, and drives viral adoption of the network.

Staking: To construct a robust, decentralized network, Masa requires node operators to stake substantial amounts of MASA tokens according to a vesting schedule that incentivizes long-term commitment. Staked MASA utilized on the Avalanche subnet reinforces security and aligns incentives between the oracle and blockchain layers.

Fees: As businesses build applications leveraging Masa Network, they pay usage fees for data and services. Masa distributes these fees to oracle nodes, validators, user wallets, and the DAO treasury to sustain the ecosystem and incentivize continued participation from key stakeholders. A percentage of fees are also burned and returned to the protocol.

Governance: MASA token holders have the ability to participate in governance votes on proposals like technical upgrades and fee structures. This empowers sustainable growth driven by those invested in the network’s success.

Masa Network Launch: The Masa Team is extremely excited for our highly-anticipated Masa Network launch. We’re happy to share that the wait is almost over, with an estimated network launch to take place in Q1 2024. Masa’s breakout success in 2023 has enabled a significant amount of interest in our project, and given us the ability to dream bigger with the size and strategy for our network launch. In the coming months, Masa will be rolling out additional updates, including our launch partners, launch timeline, detailed tokenomics and token allocation breakdowns with the community.

Masa Token Community Airdrop: Leading up to our network launch and token generation event, Masa will be launching a unique and sophisticated community airdrop program. The Masa Token airdrop will honor our Masa Soul Name holders, as well as users who have participated in our SBT, community and partner campaigns. Our intention is to utilize the airdrop to grow our community, build awareness for Masa and reward our most loyal and long-standing community members.

We’re thrilled to have you with us on this journey into the new data paradigm. We are planning for an exciting community airdrop to reward early adopters, community members, ambassadors and moderators in Q4 of 2023. Stay tuned in the coming weeks as we share more details around the launch of the community airdrop.

Join the Masa Moon Mission

The future is here. The future starts now. Here’s how you can join the mission:

Earn Rewards from the Masa Ecosystem: Masa App is your one-stop shop to earn rewards, get rare domain names, participate in quests, and soon, get paid for your data.

Grow Your Web3 Community: Want to attract real and valuable users? Launch a Masa Growth campaign to supercharge your product and community growth. Reach out to us to bring thousands of new users to your community. > Fill out the form

Get Smart with Web3 User Analytics: Masa Analytics provides unparalleled insights into your campaign funnels, product conversions, attributions, and user segmentations. Activate your data-driven growth with a free consultation call. > Book a consultation

Access High-Quality, Privacy-Preserved Datasets: Are you searching for high-quality, mass amounts of user behavioral data for your product innovations or AI model training? Stay tuned on the Masa Network launch, where millions of businesses will be able to engage with billions of users in a secure, private, and resilient global data network. Join our waitlist.

Run Nodes for the Masa Network: We will be announcing the launch of Testnet Phase 3 in the coming weeks. Upon Masa Network Mainnet launch, Masa zk-Oracle node operators can earn rewards in MASA and fees from oracle usage from applications built on Masa.

Stay Tuned on What’s Poppin at Masa: Join our thriving community on Twitter, Discord, and Telegram. Follow our journey on Medium.