Ocean Protocol Research Report
Author: Garet Johan, CoinEx Business Ambassador
Based on Singapore
The Ocean Protocol Foundation develops a decentralized data exchange protocol that facilitates the sharing and monetizing of data assets for artificial intelligence (AI) while guaranteeing control, auditability, transparency, and compliance to all actors involved.
This becomes Ocean Protocol an ecosystem where users, corporations and others can use their data in a symmetrical and transparent way
Functions
Guarantee control, auditability, transparency, and compliance to all actors involved.
Functionality to reconcile spread of data with privacy and the commons.
It has infrastructure for service agreements and access control,
It has cryptographic proof-of-service and network rewards to incentivize supply of relevant AI data & services.
It uses on-chain bounties to ensure long-term sustainability and improvement as a public network.
Problems to be solved
Convert the information available for use by an artificial intelligence without losing control of the data
Resolve the tension between wanting more data for better AI models, with the individual right to privacy
Incentivize putting data in the commons
To be a self-sustaining ecosystem and to improve over the decades
Business:
Ocean incentivizes participants to submit, refer, and make available (provably) quality AI data & services, via a new construction called Curated Proofs Market (CPM). A CPM has two parts: predicted popularity of a dataset/service, and its actual popularity:
1. Cryptographic Proof. The actual popularity is the count of the number of times the dataset/service is delivered or made available. To avoid being gamed, it must be made available in a provable fashion using a cryptographic proof. For example, this may be proof of data availability.
2. Curation Market. This is for predicted popularity, a proxy for relevance. The crowd knows much better than designers of Ocean whether a given dataset/service is relevant; so we harness the power of the crowd via a curation market. This market can be thought of giving reputation to data/services where the actor must “put their money where their mouth is.”
They stake to buy “shares” (aka drops) in that dataset/service. The earlier that an actor stakes or bets on a given dataset/service, the more drops they get for the amount staked, and in turn the higher the reward.
Business Model:
To avoid people gaming the reward system, only stakeholders provably making high-quality data/services available will be able to reap rewards. Network rewards for a given dataset/service are distributed based on amount of stake in that dataset/service, and its actual popularity. In other words, CPMs instantiate the goals of verification and virality. To the best of our knowledge Whoever bets on the most popular data/service (and makes it available) wins the most rewards.
Economic Stakeholders
REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE
Singapore’s goal is to be the pre-eminent hub for data sharing and Al. Towards this vision, Singapore is coordinating relevant ministries and agencies to provide an approved legal and regulatory framework for data sharing by industry and government alike.
Newton Circus (DEX) has signed a memorandum of intent (M01) with the Info-communications Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA) and PricewaterhouseCoopers Risk Services to foster the formation of data collaboratives: structures where data contributors, data users, solution developers and technology providers collaboratively work together to solve common business challenges In a safe regulatory environment.
From left: Mark Jansen, Data & Analytics Leader at PwC Singapore; Chirdeep Singh Chhabra & Mike Anderson, DEX; Yeong Zee Kin, Assistant Chief Executive of IMDA; and Lance Little, Managing Director, Roche Diagnostics Asia Pacific.
With the support of Singapore, several companies are participating in the data sharing use cases. Based on the progress in building the decentralized data exchange protocol, we hope that more companies will embark on the path to unlock their data.
Ocean Protocol should be used to unlock public data and solve important challenges facing the planet. We have partnered with other governments, as well as with non-governmental, academic, and public service initiatives to kick-start use cases centering around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Al for Good. By devoting resources to “commons” initiatives, Ocean Protocol can become a vital tool for global researchers.
Team Information
Bruce Pon is the Founder of BigchainDB and Ocean Protocol, blockchain startups focused on bringing data and AI together since 2013. Previously, Bruce co-founded Avantalion, a consulting firm that helped to build 20 banks around the globe for companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Mitsubishi & Jaguar LandRover.
Trent McConaghy is a founder of Ocean Protocol. While still an undergraduate in the mid 1990s, he did AI research for national defense.
His first startup, ADA, focused on AI for circuit design. Synopsys acquired ADA in 2004. He then did a PhD at KU Leuven on creative AI, which was awarded #1 thesis worldwide in the field.
His second startup, Solido, used AI to help drive Moore’s Law. Now, Solido is broadly used for modern chip design, from Apple to Nvidia to Sony. Siemens acquired Solido in 2017.
Building on early blockchain work in ascribe and BigchainDB, Trent’s focus is now Ocean Protocol.
Roadmap
V2–2019 (or 2020)
After the Commons Marketplace in Tethys, we will have case-specific Marketplaces with Ocean’s collaborators.
Web 2.0 integration (for compute and storage services): we will finalize access and integration to AWS, Azure, etc.
Improved Service Execution Agreements: staking conditions; slashing conditions; bounty rewards; competition rewards. These will provide a lot of value towards incentives.
V3–2020
Verification and Validation of conditions and service provided via cryptographic proofs.
Enables incentives via network rewards.
Incentives / network rewards for different actors (including verifiers). Ocean Protocol will be able to reward with tokens against work done.
Web 3.0 integration (for example: with other decentralized projects). This is the next logical step after Web 2.0 integration. At this point we might update the roadmap to include multi-chain technology integrations.
V4–TBD
Bounties on-chain (DASH style model). Implements a means for the system to not only self-sustain but actually improve over the decades, without guidance by a centralized actor.
Clan governance (enable marketplace specific governance, group governance, etc.) for more modular governance models.
V5 — TBD
Fully permission-less Ocean Protocol. Limits opportunity for gate-keeping by node operators, while still maintaining POA performance levels.
Balanced governance: transparent process for updating protocol that balances stakeholder needs (keepers, service providers, curators, validators).
2020
Tokenomics
The Ocean Tokens (Ocean) are used on the Ocean Protocol network as the means of value exchange, to power the protocol and incentivize the keeper nodes of the network. The Ocean Token is inseparable from the Ocean Protocol and Ocean Protocol network.
Earn Ocean Tokens by providing data
Data providers sitting on large sets of latent data can now publish data for sharing using a variety of pricing mechanisms, while maintaining full control over the data and complying with data privacy and compliance regulations.
Earn Ocean Tokens for curating data
Huge amounts of valuable public data sits unused on servers, always at risk of being removed when the funding dries up or when the political climate changes. Ocean Protocol network incentivizes the publication, curation and conservation of public data by expanding the market of buyers.
Earn Ocean Tokens by being a marketplace
Data marketplaces can connect to Ocean Protocol network to leverage their existing data and find new buyers. Meanwhile, developers, corporations, and governments with new ideas can build value-added services on top of the protocol or launch their own data marketplace.
Earn Ocean Tokens for providing network services
Network keepers provide validation and verification services for the network, store the blockchain history of transactions, and serve up relevant services to the community.
Circulating Token Supply
The circulating supply will be comprised of Ocean Tokens allotted to Acquirors, the Foundation, the founding teams and the network reward.
Early Acquirors in the Seed and Pre-Launch, and the founding teams have lock-ups ranging from 1.5–5 years.
In the initial phase, the vast majority of tokens emitted will come from pre-mined tokens for Acquirors, the Foundation and the founding teams. From Q3/2022, the increase in Ocean Token supply will come solely from the network reward.
Token Supply Inflation
In the first year of the network, the token supply inflation will be 104% as token Acquirors, the Foundation and the founding teams receive allotments of Ocean Tokens.
The following years 2020–2022 will have supply inflation ranging between 17–21% as the founding teams get their remaining allotments and the network reward kicks in. In 2021, there’s an increase of inflation due to the full network reward activating, to incentivise keepers, data providers and other services to flock to Ocean. The 100% network reward is activated only once the network is ported to a permissionless and fully decentralised sidechain, so the 2021 target date can shift, altering the network reward schedule.
After the transition to a decentralised and permissionless chain, the network reward rapidly declines down to 6.8% in 2024 and 5.9% in 2025 when the network reward function becomes the sole source of inflation. By 2030, inflation will be 3.3%, 2040 will give 1.4%, 2050 will give 0.58% and from 2060 onwards 0.28% or less.
Achievements
2019
March
Raised further funds in a “network launch” token sale with CoinList, and in April an Initial Exchange Offering with Bittrex International (now Bittrex Global)
May
Co-chaired the Scaling AI for Good track at the UN “AI for Good Global Summit” in Geneva. Over 2,500 hand-selected participants from 120 countries gathered together for the 4-day conference. The track, which featured speakers from the European Union, IBM, and UNICEF, resulted in 19 identified problems (10 of which were extensively mapped) and 4 teams forming and committing to tackling these problem.
July
Throughout late summer and fall, we worked on a POC with a leading automotive company. We initiated deeper engagement with two more lead customers, towards production deployment targeting the first half of 2020. We’re at early stage discussions with many more.
October
Ocean participated in the OV Diffusion Hackathon in Berlin. There were 23 protocols represented. Of the 50 teams present, 7 built on Ocean Protocol, including an integration with Fetch.ai AI agents, and another combining Ocean with privacy-preserving multi-party compute (MPC).
Token Transactions
Between Fri, Aug 9th 2019 — Sun, Aug 9th 2020, the price of Ocean Protocol ranged between $0.1133 and $0.4380, with a min/max of $0.1036 and $0.4489.
Its market cap ranged between $ 39.02 MM and $ 154.60 MM, with a min/max of $ 36.19 MM and $ 158.44 MM, a median of $ 55.43 MM and a 7 day moving average of $ 154.07 MM.
The trading volume ranged between $ 1.61 MM and $ 12.83 MM, with a median of $ 3.21 MM and a 7 day moving average of $ 9.11 MM.
Governance Model
The Governance implementation has to cover a wide variety of different requirements. Network: Support two Ethereum Networks in parallel. Parts of Ocean are installed on Ethereum Mainnet and Ocean Protocol’s very own Mainnet (Pacific).
Bridge: Support the Token Bridge On- and Off-chain components used for Bridging the Ocean Token between Ethereum Mainnet and Pacific Mainnet.
Keeper-Contracts: Support the requirements coming from Keeper-Contracts that hold the Ocean Protocol Business Logic
Keeper: Support On- and Off-boarding Keeper Nodes on the network Level.
Contracts: Support smart contract upgrades and configuration with data persistence and immutability.
Support for complex foundation organisation elements at the same time being flexible enough to swap out those elements against other implementations.
The execution should be the same for all the different parts of the protocol.
Easy to use for Foundation and team members
The green boxes are a variate of different Multi Sig Wallets, those Multi Sig Wallets are owned by either different parties or owners among the foundation, organisation or team.
They are used to govern and configure the components in the purple boxes. Those boxes are the different components of the protocol, either used to run the ERC20 token, the business logic or the network itself. The Blue boxes represent the different networks that this model is installed on.
Technical Solution
In the world of big data, there are frameworks for large compute jobs (or streams) like MapReduce, Hadoop, Spark, and Flink. The user configures a directed acyclic graph (DAG) of compute and storage. Often those DAGs are a simple compute pipeline. The framework orchestrates the work.
Since AI loves data, AI people use these frameworks in the course of building models (or AI-tuned variants like TensorFlow)
Ocean’s Decentralized Service Execution Agreements (SEAs) and decentralized access control combine to power data service supply chains. This allows compute to be brought to the data , thereby solving the concern of data escapes since sensitive data never needs to leave the premises.
This allows connection to, monetization of, and curation of arbitrary data services
Ocean does decentralized orchestration: it orchestrates the execution of compute DAGs in a decentralized setting. In Ocean, the compute DAG is specified by a Service Execution
Agreement
(SEA). A SEA is the decentralized equivalent of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) found in big data environments.
Figure 2 shows the mechanics of Ocean orchestration. A SEA Contract handles each step in the DAG compute; and compose to one higher level SEA for the whole DAG. All the SEAs have guaranteed execution due to running on the blockchain-based Ocean network (bottom). Once you deploy them, they simply go; a single entity can’t intervene and stopthem (unless it’s within the definition of a SEA).
The decentralized setting means that SEAs unlock new capabilities, like privacy-preserving compute. Arbitrary forms of compute can be brought to the data. Therefore private data — the most valuable data — never needs to leave the premises, while at the same time value can be extracted from it.
We envision that Ocean will have adapters to leverage existing front and back-end components of existing orchestration frameworks. For example, people might specify a SEA within an Apache Spark context; but then the SEA will be executed within Ocean. Template SEAs make commonly-repeated tasks easier to deploy
Ocean as Inter-Service Network
In executing compute DAGs, each step might have one of many providers. There will be providers for data, algorithms, compute, storage, etc. Each of these may be centralized behind a firewall, centralized on the cloud (e.g. AWS S3 or EC2), or fully decentralized as their own networks (e.g. FileCoin or Golem, Enigma).
Ocean doesn’t provide these services itself, it simply connects them. This makes it an inter-service network, specifically for compute DAGs on big data / AI. Figure 3 illustrates.
Github
Analyzing 3 of the main repositories we can conclude that there is a constant activity in the development of the project, but that undoubtedly the project does not stand out by a multitude of updates, however that does not diminish the value of the project
Community Situation
As we can see in the statistics Ocean Protocol is not known for emitting many tweets, but the proportion of users who have interaction is very remarkable as for example 1,415 tweets were returned 51.3% of a total of 19,612 and each of these was returned 13.86 times the same can be said of the times that the tweets have been indicated as favorites as 1,592 tweets were marked as favorite 57.7% in a total of 68,273 and each of the tweets were marked as a favorite 42.89 times
Discord
It has 511 members, at the time of view 83 members were connected
In the general chat you will find topics related to the use of token transfers. Like other projects. Ocean have other chats dedicated to the development of Ocean Protocol,
Announcement channels, Resources as well as other channels dedicated to events or topics, such as pacific-metrics, covidathon, gitxchange, protect-privacy
YouTube
As you can see the Ocean YouTube channel does not have a considerable number of subscribers but has a considerable number of views that are around 120 000, however because the channel is used to give information about the project is expected that a future has more subscribers due to the audiovisual form based on which the project is explained by the developers
Telegram
It has 7261 members, at the time of view 817 were online
As it is normal in other projects, the questions and comments are more related to investment opportunities and the projection of the price towards the future. There are only a few questions regarding the functioning of the project
Competitors
Currently there are no direct competitors, but Ocean presents itself as a protocol for data management between the different actors involved, and presents the opportunity for each actor to market its data.
Risks
The risks are based on the complexity of the project development and what could delay the integration of the different stakeholders together with the interoperability.
Moreover, the common factor in these projects is related to the security of intelligent contracts
I conclude that it is a project that presents many interesting partners and use cases that demonstrate the innovative strength of Ocean Protocol
Sources:
https://blog.oceanprotocol.com/announcing-the-ocean-protocol-token-swap-august2020-370585578d6e
https://oceanprotocol.com/technology/roadmap#papers
https://blog.oceanprotocol.com/https-blog-oceanprotocol-com-ocean-tokenomics-ii-faf05854314b
https://blog.oceanprotocol.com/2019-year-in-review-43bed3615608
https://blog.oceanprotocol.com/making-ocean-protocols-smart-contracts-and-it-s-governance-unstoppable-45cf99dc1b65
https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UCH8TXwmWWAE9TZO0yTBHB3A
https://gitcompare.com/reportpackages=oceanprotocol%2Faquarius&packages=oceanprotocol%2Fkeeper-contracts&packages=oceanprotocol%2Focean
https://icobench.com/ico/ocean-protocol/team
https://etherscan.io/token/0x985dd3d42de1e256d09e1c10f112bccb8015ad41#tokenAnalytics
