XYO and Fysical: Bringing an Extra Layer of Precision to Big Data

Picture a person getting into their car, driving downtown, and parking in a paid garage. They walk down the street, duck into a Starbucks, and order an Americano. By the time they sink into that plush chair by the window and start thumbing through their phone, Big Data is flowing.

What route did the car take? Where did the person park? Which Starbucks did the person go into?

These little bits of information — data points — are the lifeblood of businesses, urban planners, data scientists, marketers, and even machines, all over the world. Multiply the Starbucks scenario by the billions, or even trillions, and collectively, that info tells a story.

How powerful is Big Data? It can, in a single line graph, tell a retailer that there’s more than enough foot traffic at a location to open a new shop. But it can also confirm a builder’s nagging fear, that shoehorning one more apartment complex into that high-density neighborhood isn’t worth the time, trouble or money.

In other words, Big Data is decision data.

Our newest partner, Fysical, is a Big Data company that tracks how humans move in the physical world, whether they’re walking, driving cars, taking the bus, or zipping along on rental scooters.

Each month the company gathers, organizes, and delivers 15 billion anonymous data points — from more than 10,000,000 mobile devices — to the people, companies, organizations and governments who need it to make decisions that can change lives.

The team at Fysical knows that accurate data is the only data. And anything the company can do to add another layer of authenticity only solidifies the story their data is telling.

As part of our new partnership, we plan to deliver that extra layer of accuracy that Fysical is looking for, through location verification. But we’re taking things a step further, using our blockchain location network to essentially teach Fysical’s network what data points should look like, for example, each time a person walks into a clothing store, Big Box retailer or movie theater.

Here’s a special message from Ben Smith, Co-Founder of Fysical, about the partnership:

In the last few years, through location data, Fysical was able to show how Spanish fans outnumbered Portuguese fans at the World Cup, how Malaysian traffic jumped 23% on election day, and which conference crowds are the wealthiest. We’re fascinated by these stories at XYO, and pumped to help Fysical tell other ones — even if they end at Starbucks.