The DX Network — project update (June 7, 2018)
This is the first project update so we have a lot to share!
Important things first:
- Our official website URL is https://DX.network
- Our whitepaper is available here
- You can follow the latest updates on our Telegram channel
What are we building?
This deserves a blog post of its own (coming up!) but here is a quick reminder/intro about what the DX Network is in the meantime.
The DX Network enables structured data to be traded in a similar way to how traditional assets like stocks and commodities are traded. This is achieved by creating a marketplace to connect data owners with data consumers.
Making data tradable—i.e. turning it into a liquid asset—is still one of the biggest challenges of our digital age so the potential financial and societal impacts of achieving this are massive. This report from McKinsey attempts to quantify them.
DX data marketplaces leverage Ethereum smart contracts for many of their key functionalities like authentication and micropayments. Because the DX Network focuses on B2B data exchange, the resulting technology and use cases are very different from personal data marketplaces (Datawallet, Datum et al.) and sensor data marketplaces (IOTA Data Market, Streamr et al.)
The first data marketplace which will be launched on the DX Network is for Tech Industry data (structured data about tech companies, products, investors, investments, news and events) as this type of structured data is in very high demand, the industry itself is open to innovation and is our domain of expertise (the DX Network’s core tech team also founded Startup Tracker in 2015). Once we’ve proven the marketplace model for data exchange on Tech Industry data, we will expand to further structured knowledge sets such as financial data and retail data—exciting times ahead.
What have we been doing?
Pilot program
We kicked off the DX Network’s pilot last month with 15 organizations. These partners have helped us refine the initial requirements to design the DX Network’s API interface and will help test the upcoming product releases.
Building a platform without your future customers’ input is like driving with your eyes shut, which is why we have involved our users in the product development process from day one.
The pilot group consists of a diverse set of companies and individuals in the Tech space. From San Francisco to Dubai and from independent developer to VC analyst, the wide spectrum of participants will ensure DX is built as a versatile and user-friendly platform instead of a niche crypto product.
(we’ll write a separate blog post about this too)
Product development
Implementation has started. The first deliverable is the Tech Industry data ontology (RDFS) which defines the initial set of datapoints organizations will be able to buy and sell from each other. It will be published once we make our first GitHub repo public.
Most importantly, we’ve been working on platform architecture, stress-testing different technologies to make sure marketplaces can scale to billions of datapoints and relationships without batting an eye.
Given recent advances in triplestore technology, we’ve opted to use them instead of traditional relational databases for data storage. This allows for semantic queries which are a big plus compared to virtually all data sources available today so I’m proud to say that DX is not only cutting edge because of what the blockchain aspect brings but also in the flexibility of queries it can handle. Overall, we are on time with the product release roadmap.
Team
We’ve added two official advisors: assistant professor Dr. Luke Dickens from UCL (7th best university in the world QS 2018) as an academic advisor and Dr. Graham Deane (Disney, Camelot Group, Imperial College) as R&D advisor.
These two keys roles were filled to provide guidance with respect to the theoretical aspects of DX and platform architecture as we entered the implementation phase. We are now focusing our efforts on adding business advisors who have hands-on experience with token sales.
Legal
This is the last barrier to publishing token economics and opening the private/public token sale. It’s crucial we get the legal structure right to protect the project and token sale contributors so it’s worth taking the time to do things right. If you are one of our early supporters, thanks for your patience, it will be rewarded.
We are currently considering three jurisdictions: Switzerland, Estonia and the UK and have shortlisted three firms out of the 20+ we’ve spoken with. We are very close to finalizing the legal structure and sharing the next steps with you.
Traction
We’re lucky enough to have a strong backing from Imperial College’s Enterprise lab. We were one of the 7 finalists selected from over 300 teams in their yearly tech competition and will be presenting the DX Network to their network of business partners next week.
Overall, the response to DX has been amazing so far, with over 40k subscribers across our newsletter and social channels as well as 700+ early-registrations for the DX Token sale.
We’re very excited to bring this much-needed innovation into the world and with the right community — moon’s the limit!
If you have any questions, come chat with us on Telegram and be sure not to miss our next update by clicking on the Follow button below 👇
