What is Blockchain-based Cryptocurrency and Why Users should care?
In a digital era, almost everyone lives on the internet. We spend an awful lot of time hanging out on social media or searching for news news websites, and think that we are using these services for free. However, these companies are actually taking advantage of us.
Unfair situation for users
We turn ourselves into decipherable data once we connect to the Internet. Any footprints we left online can be easily collected, tracked and analyzed. We as users provide valuable information for tech companies to optimize their products, attract more users, and most importantly, make huge amount of money. Facebook, for example, would have no value if users did not post or share any content on it. Users, and the data we have been creating are the most important to all these tech companies.The problem is, we’ve never gotten paid.
We never thought about this unfair situation until recent years. That’s because most of our actions online are invisible and virtual, and hardly do tech firms say a word about how they have been profiting from data and content we generate online. Most of them just take it for granted without rewarding average users. Well, as users become more aware of protecting their data online, it’s not the case anymore. More and more effective solutions to appreciate users’ contribution come along, including blockchain.
What is blockchain?
As digital distributed ledger, blockchain gets rid of centralized authorities in any online ecosystems, and makes it easier for companies to reward massive individuals globally . Many companies and startups are trying to create blockchain-based ecosystems to reward users in different industries. Usually there would be special digital tokens distributed as currencies in this system. Then users will get rewarded with the given token for a given actions they perform online. It could be posting a photo or sharing their anonymous data. Instead, the company only gets a small portion of every transaction for operating the platform. Furthermore, since their actions are saved on numerous nodes on blockchain and not on a single node, no one can erase or tamper the records, which makes it safer and more transparent than a centralized server.
Some find it hard to differentiate rewarded cryptocurrencies from accumulated points, which have a longer history and are more common in commercial world now. As a marketing strategy to retain consumers and encourage them to repeat purchase, accumulated points or credits are limited to certain products or services, such as frequent flier miles offered by airlines. The accumulated miles are worthless except when you use it to redeem or buy tickets from a given airliner. In addition, since the data are stored in a centralized database, it’s easily deleted or distorted by a simple data entry. The database can be hacked, and the company can even go bankrupt. Either one will eradicate the value of these points, not to mention the companies might arbitrarily tamper those data.
Last week, Amazon’s biggest Japanese rival Rakuten replaced its good old loyalty program with it own cryptocurrency Rakuten Coin to reduce the exchange rate fees and issues global users have with fiat currencies, and to attract more adopters who see Rakuten Coin as a good opportunity for blockchain investment.
On the other hand, rewarding users by blockchain technology is way more reliable. Instead of being stored on one centralized server, the records of rewarding users are stored in a network of computers. Hence, they are more transparent to average users, and cannot be erased or changed even if the company no longer exists. More essentially, tokens can be collected as digital assets. Most of them can be traded on exchanges, so they’re worth something in dollars. Also, compared to insular system of points, tokens can be easily transferred between different users.
Companies who already make moves to reward users
Quite a few startups have already taken actions to reward users with blockchain. They are ambitions to disrupt tech giants like Facebook and Google.
Steemit, for example, aims to overturn the situations where users supply content online but get nothing in return. It rewards users for posting and commenting on its website with its own cryptocurrency called Steem. Another example would be Brave Browser, which claims to protect online privacy by blocking website trackers and sharing less data with advertising customers. Last year, they announced a blockchain-based digital advertising platform using an Ethereum-based token to reward users for choosing to receive ads.
When it comes to big data industry, things are severer. Almost every tech company is collecting and making money out of their users’ data, but hardly do users get rewarded. Measurable Data Token (MDT for short) is a blockchain-based data exchange ecosystem that aims to reward users for sharing anonymous big data. To fairly reward users for the actual anonymous data points exchanged, MDT creates a new system to calculate the value of users’ data in each transaction, which means the more value a user’s data generates, the more he/she will earn.
About MDT
MDT is a blockchain-based, decentralized data exchange ecosystem. It devotes itself to making data exchange fair, secure and efficient, as well as rewarding users for the value they generate. In the future, MDT aims to scale and become an industry standard for data exchange and user incentive model.
MDT is now listed on OKex and gate.io. Want to know more about MDT and its collaboration with other consumer appse? Stay tuned for forthcoming posts on our blog!
Read the MDT WhitePaper https://www.mdt.co/docs/whitepaper.pdf
Website https://www.mdt.co/
Telegram https://t.me/measurabledata
