DALN (Data as Labor Network) represents a paradigm shift from viewing user-generated data as free capital to recognizing it as labor that should be fairly compensated.
Our first product is a data DAO that empowers consumers to turn their credit card transaction data into assets and have direct control over the use and monetization of their data. We are building Phase II of the product for mainnet launch on FVM.
With 1.86 billion credit card transactions completed daily worldwide, aggregated spending data represents the most lucrative data type in the alternative data market. Projected to reach $143.31 billion USD by 2030 with 54.4% CAGR, this field is ripe for disruption by products like DALN that shift control back to consumers.
DALN confronts several critical problems in the existing alternative data ecosystem:
- Consumers lack ownership and control over their own data, despite fueling this lucrative data economy.
- Central intermediaries like card issuers and data brokers currently capture all the value from selling access to aggregated personal data.
- There is a need for a network that can coordinate and pool data in a privacy-preserving way, without concentrating power in centralized entities.
With the support of several grants, we completed Phase I of the project and deployed a demo app on the Calibration testnet of FVM. The Phase I product features:
- tokenization of data assets with cryptographic encryption and access control;
- ingestion of anonymized credit card transaction data through the Plaid API;
- verifiable on-chain decryption of data and payments to data contributors;
- a token burn mechanism for compliance with GDPR ("the right to be forgotten").
In preparation for the mainnet launch on FVM, Phase II entails a complete redesign of DALN's architecture and user experience to maximize end-user privacy and ease of adoption. We aim to eliminate all friction points for web 2.0 users migrating to our platform. On the B2B side, FVM's programmable storage underpins a trustless data marketplace where we can create subscription and data licensing business models.
By overhauling both consumer-facing and B2B products, Phase II will realize DALN's full potential as a network empowering people to collectively leverage their data as assets outside the extractive web 2.0 paradigm. We are building DALN as the on-ramp for the mass adoption of an open and fair data economy.
The success of DALN will bring millions of data contributors ("end-users") and thousands of SMBs and enterprise clients into the web 3.0 ecosystem. With over 184 million adults in the U.S. alone owning at least one credit card, the potential user base is enormous. While DALN integrates numerous cutting-edge technologies under the hood, the UX will conceal this complexity entirely. We will provide features like login with web 2.0 credentials, self-custodial wallet creation, and gasless transactions to enable seamless interactions with decentralized apps. This frictionless UX facilitates onboarding millions of users onto web 3.0 with ease.
Major financial players like hedge funds, investment firms, and retailers currently spend millions acquiring data from traditional marketplaces and alternative data brokers. By instead storing encrypted data on IPFS and settling transactions on-chain, DALN provides a profoundly impactful new model. As the network grows, DALN expects to store terabytes of encrypted data on IPFS and facilitate licensing fees reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars settled on-chain. DALN has the potential to reshape how data is valued and exchanged among key industry stakeholders accustomed to opaque markets and intermediaries.
While several existing products claim to reward users for contributing data, these projects often obfuscate how they actually monetize the pooled data. With DALN, these transactions become transparent and traceable. In addition, redistribution of the the majority of the revenue among the data contributors will be programmed in smart contracts and therefore can be audited.
Furthermore, DALN empowers members to form sub-DAOs (e.g., investment DAOs) with equal access to licensing the pooled data for co-creating innovative use cases. This possibility resonated with participants in our focus group interviews and unlocks lots of opportunities for collaboration in an open data economy.
DALN's potential reaches far beyond credit card data monetization. The underlying technology can expand as an infrastructure, enabling users to leverage all varieties of alternative data and user-generated content with full privacy and control. With the rapid development of generative AI, all kinds of data (text, code, images, and structured data) are being ingested into the "supply chain" of training and fine-tuning large AI models. This has further entrenched the exploitative perspective of data being viewed as free capital.
Failure to launch DALN will be a lost opportunity to prove the viability of data DAOs. DALN is an experiment with huge implications for reimagining a more transparent and equitable data economy.