Knowledge portability is a commonly-repeated promise of crypto. “Take your followers and social graph throughout the web.” “Carry your online game objects throughout video games and platforms.” “Log into any website with a single, unified identification.” These claims have excited builders and builders, however haven’t but gone mainstream.
Latest platform shifts have highlighted the fragility of our digital lives. With talks of a possible TikTok ban, creators face dropping years of content material and viewers relationships in a single day. In the meantime, as US shoppers embrace new AI fashions like DeepSeek, inbuilt China, they face related questions on the place their knowledge lives and who may get entry to it.
These are signs of a basic downside: customers do not actually personal or management their knowledge. We reside on rented land.
Lots of right this moment’s main crypto investors wrote about knowledge portability and consumer sovereignty within the early days of Web2. This imaginative and prescient of an web — the place customers, not platforms, management their digital lives — was one of many driving forces behind crypto. Whereas crypto has succeeded in monetary functions, this promise of transportable knowledge and a self-sovereign web stays unfulfilled.
We have seen many makes an attempt: NFTs letting you convey objects throughout video games, decentralized social networks like Farcaster and Bluesky promising transportable social graphs, and verifiable identification requirements. None have (but) seen widespread adoption.
The truth? Whereas early web thinkers care deeply in regards to the rules of knowledge sovereignty, most customers have an easier query: What can I truly do with it?
With out AI, most knowledge is simply related inside the walled gardens of the platform it’s on. With AI, it turns into a valued digital commodity and a instrument to energy practically each utility. Your message historical past helps AI perceive your writing fashion, your preferences, and your relationships. With many customers storing their knowledge in self-sovereign wallets, builders can construct AI experiences which might be actually personalised. AI lastly supplies the “why” on knowledge portability, within the type of a greater product expertise fairly than ideology alone.
There’s nonetheless a cold start problem. It’s inconvenient for customers to attach their knowledge. And for builders, the mindset right this moment is: should you persuade customers to add their knowledge to your platform, why would you make it straightforward for them to take it elsewhere? This creates a cycle the place every new platform turns into one other walled backyard, recreating the very downside they got down to resolve.
That is the place new incentive constructions may lastly break the extractive cycle. DataDAOs create a right away alternative for customers to port their knowledge by way of monetary incentives, fixing the chilly begin downside, as long as the information is onboarded in a self-sovereign, interoperable means, like on Vana. As extra customers convey their knowledge into these interoperable methods, builders can construct functions that weren’t potential earlier than.
Think about a customized well being coach that may analyze your sleep knowledge from Oura, your exercises from Strava, your diet from meals supply apps, and your stress ranges from communication patterns.
Or, an AI assistant that actually understands you as a result of it may possibly entry your full digital historical past whereas sustaining your privateness by way of granular permissions.
This solves a vital downside that has plagued previous makes an attempt at knowledge portability. Customers will not export their knowledge with out clear advantages, and builders will not construct for transportable knowledge with out customers. Knowledge DAOs break this impasse by making it instantly worthwhile for customers to attach knowledge.
Extra importantly, as soon as customers make their knowledge self-sovereign, fully new sorts of functions turn into potential. AI brokers can entry your full digital historical past to offer actually personalised experiences. Builders can construct functions that mix knowledge in ways in which weren’t potential when it was siloed throughout platforms.
We all know there’s a whole lot of demand for AI coaching knowledge – many main mannequin suppliers are poised to hit a data wall quickly, making them seek for publicly unavailable datasets to coach newer, higher-performing fashions. New fashions like DeepSeek have proven the worth of top of the range knowledge, with fastidiously curated human-generated examples to bootstrap their novel coaching methodology. On the similar time, consumer knowledge insurance policies like GDPR and CCPA legally require platforms to permit customers to export their knowledge in a usable, standardized format. Networks like Vana enable customers to monetize their knowledge by collectively bargaining with mannequin trainers in want of helpful coaching knowledge not accessible on the general public web, and make it interoperable for true knowledge sovereignty.
Two forces converging – the proliferation of AI, and new monetary incentives – create the potential for each customers and builders to learn from knowledge portability. The pursuits of customers, builders, and knowledge networks lastly align. Customers achieve fast worth plus higher AI experiences, builders get entry to wealthy consumer knowledge to construct new functions, and networks develop stronger with every new participant.
For the primary time, now we have each the know-how to make knowledge portability helpful and the incentives to drive adoption.
Crypto has but to ship on its authentic promise of a self-sovereign, interoperable web the place customers personal their knowledge, unfettered by Web2’s walled gardens. By creating monetary incentives to convey knowledge onboard and leveraging AI’s capabilities, we lastly have a window of alternative to make the web actually user-owned.
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