Protofire and Ocean Protocol in a Cross-Interview
Sharing their expertise in blockchain and machine learning, the interviewees discussed how both technologies can help to build decentralized markets.
As part of a strategic partnership, Manuel Garcia, CTO at Protofire, and Razvan Olteanu, COO at BigchainDB and the Ocean Protocol team member, participated in a cross-interview to get a deeper understanding of each company’s main focus. The experts talked about the possibilities DApps bring to Web3, what decentralization means for data science, some challenges the decentralized market may face, and how both companies can benefit from the partnership.
Why did you decide to have this expertise in DApps?
MANUEL: I spent 15+ years working at the intersection of business and software innovation, implementing many methodologies and technologies across industries. Over the years, I have delivered highly scalable and fault-tolerant solutions — from monolithic applications to distributed web e-commerce platforms with 100+ million users.
When I started to explore the blockchain technology and Ethereum, in particular, it was a mind-blowing experience. Although these were the early days of blockchain, I grew really enthusiastic about it.
When I understood that the ecosystem is not only driven by technology and its adoption, but also by a great community behind it, and realized the potential of decentralization, there was no way back to Web2. Just think about token engineering, sophisticated game theoretic models, the opportunities of research and development around decentralized finance are truly unlimited.
How and why did you get into blockchain and particularly joined Ocean Protocol?
RAZVAN: My very first blockchain-related project was a few years ago when I developed an exchange for a crypto project and realized that blockchain will become the future of IT with many use cases. I started collaborating with BigchainDB 2 years ago for a specific consulting project — a mix between strategy and leadership training. Last year, I continued to support managing internal processes, from operational and strategic perspectives — the collaboration naturally evolved into my current position as COO of BigchainDB.
What are the possibilities that DApps bring to Web 3.0?
MANUEL: DApps are applications that use decentralized networks and protocols for some or all aspects of its operation. Crucial back-end parts of application logic are executed on a decentralized permissionless peer-to-peer network, such as Ethereum. This network enables the execution of business logic without interference from third parties, such as powerful corporations or governments, which makes it a censorship-resistant platform. DApps are unstoppable. DApps can be built by anybody and are available to anybody. DApps are not limited to centralized servers and data silos. All these features bring unlimited possibilities that didn’t exist before.
Where do you see the future of data science with or without the support of permissionless, trustless, decentralized, censorship-resistant networks and DApps?
RAZVAN: To start, I consider data science as an important part of our lives. We are living in a data-driven world and more data means more AI to handle it. Predictions show that by 2025 we’ll create 463 exabytes of data daily. Data scientists will not be able to manage these huge amounts of data and will require automated tools to analyze, clean and model.
At the same time, data and user privacy need to be secured. Decentralized applications are the solution for the future because they are much safer since they do not store users’ data in a centralized repository, but in decentralized nodes. Another important aspect for future adoption is that people can use smart contracts to make payments: users are searching for solutions to ensure that all their published data will not be altered and they will remain the owners without the need of censorship. I am proud that Ocean addresses the aforementioned concerns, making our solution useful to data scientists.
What are some of the challenges that you experience in blockchain right now, and how do you overcome them?
MANUEL: Bitcoin already has 10+ years of successfully delivering the promise of decentralized digital currency. However, there is a huge gap between digital currency and DApp development to bridge. At the moment, Ethereum is the most mature public blockchain to run DApps and manage their state, which is a difficult thing to do, and we are still at the early stages.
The existing infrastructure and tooling cannot always be used for production purposes. This is a challenge, on one hand, but, on the other hand, it is an opportunity to contribute to this open and collaborative ecosystem, building a brighter future.
What are the main challenges you see in data science? Can blockchain help? How?
RAZVAN: I see two main challenges: data and what to do with it. Our aim is to help data scientists cover the first issue. At Ocean Protocol, we’ve invested our efforts to build a blockchain solution to unlock the data for AI by covering privacy issues, meeting regulatory and policy issues, so unleashing data that was inaccessible before.
Define/describe your background in oracle development. Define the oracles, and how this can advance our partnership.
MANUEL: We have been working with oracles since DevCon 2 in Shanghai. Protofire developed a DApp — Flight Delay — for Etherisc. The solution allows a user to buy insurance for his/her flight and get a refund in case the flight is delayed or cancelled. All the relevant information about the flight (e.g., the cancellation reason or delay time) is provided by an oracle.
These days, we are working on a few oracles built on top of the decentralized oracle network — Chainlink. These oracles provide information related to the DeFi protocols to help DApp developers ensure stability against such adverse events as a bank run, for instance.
The Ocean Protocol capabilities of providing curated data, either consolidated in a static data set or delivered via real-time feeds, can be a huge value for users of decentralized oracles networks.
How would your ideal Ocean Protocol use case look like (industry, type of data, usage, outcomes, users, etc.)?
RAZVAN: We’ve spent a lot of time and effort in creating a commons data marketplace, which is truly the ideal use case for Ocean. Commons Marketplace connects data providers to data consumers, compute providers and data scientists. Our goal is to transform Commons into a one stop shop, where any and all types of data is readily available and owners can be appropriately rewarded for their contributions.
About Ocean Protocol
Ocean Protocol is a decentralized data exchange protocol to unlock data for AI, launched in 2017. Through blockchain technology and the OCEAN token, Ocean Protocol connects data providers and consumers, allowing data to be shared while guaranteeing traceability, transparency, and trust for all stakeholders involved. It allows data owners to give value to and have control over their data assets without being locked-in to any single marketplace.
About Protofire
Protofire is a team of engineers that help companies, building decentralized protocols and developer platforms, to accelerate the growth of their ecosystems. By providing hands-on coding and open-source contributions, the company is focused on facilitating product adoption by the blockchain developer community. The team at Protofire design state-of-the-art developer tools (SDKs, APIs, and sample apps), improve the performance of oracles, as well as build and execute security checks of smart contracts.
