Ocean Protocol, the world’s first data sharing platform powered by blockchain technology connecting individuals, industries, startups, governments and data and AI experts, announces today the launch of its beta network. Ocean Protocol is a substrate that allows anyone to build data services and marketplaces on top and is launching with a mission to provide safe, privacy-preserving and borderless data sharing, to unlock the Data Economy.

Ocean’s beta network paves the ground for a series of private and public partnerships from the research, insurance, retail and healthcare sectors to deploy their Proof of Concept solutions on the blockchain-enabled data-sharing platform. Existing collaborators include AI Singapore, Aviva, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson and Roche, all aiming at using Ocean Protocol to set standards and demonstrate how to share data safely and securely without compromising privacy or ownership.

“Today’s beta release is a big milestone for our project and society as a whole. It marks the beginning of a new and open global Data Economy. With the beta network going live, data scientists and developers can start building and experimenting with new services and applications using Ocean Protocol,” said Bruce Pon, co-founder of Ocean Protocol.

Though the world has been generating massive volumes of data, until now there has not been a safe, privacy-preserving and borderless solution to unlock the new Data Economy. Every day, the world creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data^[1] and thanks to digitization and advances in IoT technologies, data continues to be generated in an unprecedented rate. However, only 1% of this glut of data is ever analyzed.^[2,3] Data supply and demand are currently disjointed. Data remains inaccessible — locked in silos and hardly shared. This is because data owners fear of losing control and violating privacy laws with data sharing.

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According to the recent Digital Reality Data Economy Report,^[4] many countries are only achieving about half of their current data economy potential. In the UK and Germany alone, research shows that there were approximately EUR140 billion of data-driven economic value not realized in 2016.

Ocean Protocol uses blockchain technology, smart contracts, and tokens to enable safe and secure sharing of data, guaranteeing control and auditability while protecting privacy. The technology allows organizations and individuals to set pricing and trade data without losing control of their data assets. Smart contracts allow data owners to program the conditions of access, which are then executed with precision. This gives data owners and buyers transparency, security and guarantees of payment and use.

Ocean also enables algorithms and models to travel to the data, get trained and then leave without exposing the data or taking a copy, thereby retaining privacy, ensuring regulatory compliance, and freeing up data to advance AI and solve problems for the economy and society.

“Ocean allows people to unlock the value of data without necessarily unlocking the data itself. It is a substrate to finally realize the potential of an open permission-less data economy while still preserving privacy,” said Trent McConaghy, co-founder of Ocean Protocol. “We welcome early collaborators already deploying their solutions on our network today, and we look forward to seeing tens, hundreds, even thousands of other marketplaces and applications to be built on top of Ocean, so that data can be freed from their existing silos to deliver world-changing solutions for many verticals including automotive, energy, healthcare and so on.”

Ocean Protocol is an open source project. Developers from around the world can run Ocean’s full stack and connect to the Ocean beta network. Data Scientists and engineers can leverage the underlying Ocean API to search, publish, and consume data assets in the Ocean Protocol network. They can initiate personal JupyterLab instances running in local browsers, with Ocean Protocol pre-configured. Coupled with the launch is a reference marketplace for free and public data, to serve as a meeting point for public health, sustainability and environmental use cases.

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“Data and AI related service providers can use Ocean as a launchpad offering relevant services to data providers and consumers. In addition, Ocean gives data and AI professionals a means to monetize their findings and models,” McConaghy added.

The Ocean network will continue to deliver software and network updates over the next two years, with five phases planned, each providing more sophisticated features, incentives and enhanced performance.