The kings of data must utilize blockchain technology

Published at: Feb. 13, 2021

In our digital world, data has now become as valuable as gold or oil. In order to achieve success, companies must adapt to handling their data much like a commodity, by trading and earning a profit off of it. Data is especially valuable when it comes to artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms due to its ability to provide value that enables new AI use cases.

In order for a marketplace to be successful, it is essential to take into account scalability, quality and price of data. This is where blockchain technology comes in, where it will able to provide marketplaces with low infrastructure costs. Data is valuable, and blockchains are able to provide the infrastructure that allows transactions to be economical while promoting privacy, which has become one of the most important aspects of selling and using data.

Related: The data economy is a dystopian nightmare

Blockchain is going to change data marketplaces

Last September, Snowflake became the biggest software IPO to date, while Salesforce, having been around for much longer, has been public since 2004. Because Salesforce has been around for decades, its foray into blockchain was almost obvious — a company must adapt to technology advancements to hold its place at the top. Salesforce currently uses blockchain as a low-code platform that allows organizations to share verified, distributed data sets across a trusted network of partners and third parties. By adopting blockchain technology, Salesforce and Snowflake enable companies to create blockchain networks, workflows and apps that deliver new customer experiences.

Technology is always evolving and moving forward, never backward, so these companies will need to continue to stay aware of trends and innovations in the blockchain ecosystem in order to remain competitive. Gartner predicted that “by 2021, 90% of current enterprise blockchain platform implementations will require replacement within 18 months” to stay relevant. This is important to understand because the world is producing more data than ever before due to the adoption of the Internet of Things, AI and the digitization of everyday life.

The data collected through our smartphones, laptops and watches is naturally more complex and specific than ever before, which will help companies make more informed decisions and increase efficiency and profitability. It makes sense that in the future, technology will be advancing rapidly and needing replacements more frequently.

Related: Why secure data tokenization should scare the hell out of Big Data

How AI and blockchain technology will change data marketplaces

To further advancements in technology through blockchain and AI, there are companies that offer autonomous economic agents to help facilitate company decision making. These agents are able to work autonomously on a customer’s behalf and conduct economic transactions to make decisions easier. Customers not only purchase and exchange value sets but they can also use those data sets to train their own AI.

Related: Why you wouldn’t eat chicken nuggets, and why you shouldn’t trust Big Data

These AI prediction models are able to accumulate relevant and anonymized data. When a company buys and obtains data, it is able to effectively train its model, which it can then use to make more accurate predictions, which can be used across any industry, providing tremendous value that would otherwise not be possible without AI.

Blockchain enabling data monetization

Although data monetization has been around for quite a while and is clearly on track to continue to innovate and put money in pockets, it has also suffered from poor interoperability, problems with data pricing, and privacy concerns with a lack of control over ownership. The answer to these impediments is simply the widespread adoption of blockchain technology.

By uniting blockchain and artificial intelligence, the capability of building AI models on top of data without risking privacy would be available not only to organizations and companies but also to individuals. According to MarketsandMarkets, the consumer data monetization market is expected to have grown to more than $6 billion by 2025. This fast-growing market touches countless industries and plays a huge part in the growth and future of technology.

Utilizing the power of blockchain to unlock the value of data in a decentralized setting will transcend the data market industry, bringing security and transparency to transactions and easing both the consumer and the company experience. While data is now as valuable as gold or oil, privacy is a new valuable digital commodity as well, meaning the future of our world may no longer lie in tangible offerings.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Humayun Sheikh is the CEO and co-founder of Fetch.ai. Sheikh is an entrepreneur and a founding investor in DeepMind, who is now changing the way we transact and travel using artificial intelligence.
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