DataBroker DAO - Marketplace for IoT Sensor Data
DataBroker DAO unleashes the potential of currently inaccessible, low value
data into the creation of new transversal Value Added Services. It prevents
people with powerful ideas to rely on people with powerful operational resources,
in a phased, pay-as-you-grow, MVP model. As with the financial markets, where
the importance and value of company data have been apparent for decades,
giving rise to Bloomberg Market Data, Thomson Reuters, FactSet and a lot of
vendors, the same opportunity will emerge for IoT sensor data.
Doing so with a distributed foundational layer for the buying and selling of IoT
sensor data we expect that unimagined uses of the data will emerge to create
incredible value adding services that enrich the quality of life in our cities and our
societies as a whole.
DataBroker DAO is the first marketplace for IoT Sensor data that will connect
sensor owners with purchasers of the data directly, utilising existing
infrastructure from telecommunication providers operating sensor connectivity
networks based on GSM, LoRa, SigFox or via a proprietary gateway of the sensor
owner.
In a sense, the DataBroker DAO can be likened to a “secondary market” for IoT
sensor data and has been referred to as an “eBay” or “Amazon” for IoT sensor
data.
Stakeholders
There are a number of stakeholders in the DataBroker DAO including sensor
owners, gateway operators, data processors and data buyers. Below is a
definition of each of these stakeholders.
Sensor Owners
Sensor owners are the stakeholders who have purchased IoT sensors and make
the data emitted from their sensors available for sale via the DataBroker DAO
platform. This is a diverse group who have generally purchased sensors in order
to improve the efficiency of their operations.
The key role of Sensor Owners in DataBroker DAO is to sell the data from their
sensors on the platform.
Data Buyers
Data Buyers are those stakeholders who will purchase data on the platform. This
purchase may be to use the data in its raw form for their own purposes or to
purchase the data with the intention of transforming/enriching the raw data to
be resold with added value via DataBroker DAO (see Data Processor below).
The use of the data purchased by Data Buyers can be quite straightforward, for
instance, purchasing temperature and rainfall data provisioned by a neighboring
office building to have accurate local readings to the more complex, like
purchasing data to train one's AI.
Data Processors
Data Processors are those Data Buyers who purchase data with the explicit
intention of enriching the data and either reselling it or handling it for their clients.
The enrichment may take many forms and Data Processors can be categorized
by the level of insight provided :
● Simple data services are the most common. Data brokers collect data
from multiple sources and offer it in collected and conditioned form —
data which would otherwise be fragmented, conflicted and sometimes
unreliable.
● Smart data services provide conditioned and calculated data, with
analytical rules and calculations applied to derive further insight from the
collected data and aid the decision-making process. (e.g. Artificial
Intelligence)
● Adaptive data services apply analysis to a customer’s request-specific
data combined with data in a context store. This is a more advanced form
of service.
It is estimated that there are more than 5,000 data processing companies
worldwide relying on a vast array of open datasets published by government agencies and non-governmental organizations (Moore, 2016) in combination with their proprietary datasets and algorithms to enrich publicly available data.
These range from specialized boutiques, such as CB Insights, Fico, Intelius, etc.
to large global consultancies such as McKinsey, Deloitte, PWC. It is estimated
that 75 percent of analytics solutions will incorporate at least ten or more data
sources from second-party partners or third-party providers by 2019 .
It is expected that Data Processors will make up the majority of Data Buyers on
the DataBroker DAO platform.
Gateway Operators
The data emitted by the billions of devices deployed globally flow across a
wireless sensor network (WSN) operated generally (but not exclusively) by large
telecommunications companies in each country. This may be a traditional GSM
network, a LORA network or an alternative such as SigFox.
The key role of Gateway Operators in DataBroker DAO is to expose the gateway
they operate to enable sensor owners to sell their data on the platform.
Who “wins" in this story?
Sensor owners (data providers) are able to directly monetise their data to
generate passive income that will turn a sunk cost into a potential money maker
and at least the opportunity to recoup some of their investments in IoT sensors
(purchase, installation, maintenance, software licenses to interpret the sensor
data). A sensor owner will earn 80% of the amounts received and pay a small
recurring fee for putting the sensor on the platform.
Data buyers and data processors get data as a service so do not need to make
the upfront investment in hardware to get the data they require. Another
advantage for both buyer types is that DataBroker DAO provides access to data
that would otherwise be trapped in the data silos of sensor owners.
Gateway providers: gain scale and speed in the adoption of their network/devices as the partner connected to DataBroker DAO can present a win-back to their enterprise accounts, a clear USP. These gateway operators are the gateway through which the data flows to the DAO, and as such, they are also paid out immediately for each sale in the platform and will receive 10% of the fee. The DAO takes the remaining 10% of all funds, depending on market conditions, received on the platform to cover operating costs
Who “loses" in this story?
Sensor manufacturers: While manufacturers will increase sales in the short run
due to the higher profitability of IoT projects. However, on the longer term,
“sharing” sensors may reduce their day-to-day sales. This can be balanced by
higher replacements due to the higher amount of sensors in the field.
However, hardware margins are in a "race to the bottom” and are already razor
thin. Sensor providers already make most of their money via software and
services. From this perspective, the producer can pull resources and capital out
of unprofitable hardware manufacturing and allocate these to successful SaaS
offerings. From our discussions with manufacturers, they are very enthusiastic
about this prospect.
Who will sell data?
There are a number of data sellers identified and the overview of the sectors
already investing in sensors from Gartner highlights the key potential sellers of
data for the years to come. The diagram below identifies the 2 groups (business,
consumer) and the sub- groups that constitute each. It is clear that the business
group is the main driving force in sensor deployment globally.
The business group is led by the following sectors:
Manufacturing and Natural Resources: the so-called industrial IoT consists of
companies that are deploying sensors in order to improve operations. Their
primary purpose for deploying sensors is to improve the efficiency of operations
to reduce their cost base. DataBroker DAO presents the opportunity to sell
selected data that will not reveal to competitors specifics of their manufacturing
process.
TRANSPORTATION
The data for transportation consists of both traffic and vehicle specific data. Traffic data includes for instance congestion and for instance data for shipping of goods like temperature sensors in food shipping containers. This also includes sensors for managing public transportation such as trains and busses. Vehicle specific data includes a wide array of sensors in cars and trucks both personally owned vehicles and fleets measuring everything from CO2 emissions to speed to preventive maintenance.
UTILITIES AND GOVERMENT
Utility providers deploy sensors for “smart” utilities en-masse to deliver more efficient utility services to their clients including smart grids and smart meters primarily for electricity and water. Government sensors are also wide ranging including everything from water level sensors to detect flooding, air quality monitoring to smart street lights.
The DataBroker DAO Alliance
In the future we envision, the world where the DataBroker DAO platform will be
an integral part of the “IoT data”-fabric, there will be, more than ever, a need for
collaboration between the stakeholders in this ecosystem. These parties will
need to find ways to work together to further their collective businesses and
use-cases.
They formed the DataBroker DAO alliance to help facilitate this collaborative
ecosystem. Apart from gaining essential insights into the requirements of the
platform, we feel that guiding the stakeholders through this foundational change
in doing business together will be the linchpin in the further development of the
platform.
At this time there are 7 companies that have formally joined the alliance. They
include players in each of the stakeholder groups and are a good cross section of
the ecosystem.
OBSTACLE TO SUCCESS
The biggest obstacle to the success of DataBroker DAO and the full valorisation
of IoT sensor data is on the supply side of the equation. That is the adoption of
the marketplace by data sensor owners who are generating data. DataBroker
DAO enables sensor owners to sell their data directly to interested 3rd party data
consumers and are thus provided with the opportunity to recoup their sunk costs
for IoT sensor hardware and software (>600 billion USD today) incentivising
them to provide access to their proprietary data.
To overcome this obstacle, one of the first priorities will be hiring an experienced
team of enterprise sales profiles. Their focus will be to guide the gateway
operators through the sales cycle, onboard them into the DataBroker DAO
Alliance and push for the integration of the dAPI into their systems.
Below is an assessment of the current beta version of DataBroker DAO based on
these 6 pillars:
● Creating a central point of “discoverability”: the DAO pulls together data
that is otherwise locked in organisational silos controlled by the sensor
owners.
● Supporting interoperability: the DAO defines standard metaformats for
data descriptions and will integrate several processes to bring actual data
into standardised formats in the next iteration of the platform.
● Achieving consistent data quality: data streams come directly from the
gateway so there is no point in the process that is open to manipulation of
data. In the next iteration of the platform, a reputation system that allows
data buyers to provide feedback on data quality will be added to further
enhance the controls on data quality.
● Building an ecosystem: the DAO brings the stakeholders in the IoT sensor
data market together. It is the foundational layer of the ecosystem.
● Opening up new monetization opportunities: Sensor owners are
incentivised through direct remuneration from data buyers. In a future
iteration, the platform will introduce additional data enrichment and
display options that service providers can monetise through the platform.
The roadmap includes graphical packages from mapping to charts.
● Enabling crowdsourcing: Sensor data is crowd-sourced directly from
sensor owners.
The past few months the team has been hard at work to build the working platform. Leading up to the token sale we will open-source more and more of the code underlying the platform. Check out the beta version at https://beta.databrokerdao.com
THE DTX TOKEN (DaTa eXchange)
The DTX token is a utility token in the Databroker DAO platform . The DTX token is a ERC20 compliant token with 18 decimals. The token will serve as the credits
to buy and sell sensor data within the platform.
The MiniMe token
Apart from the initial use in the platform, the token is based upon the MiniMe standard.
A MiniMe token is easy to clone. This means it allows us to create new tokens
with an initial distribution identical to the original token at a specified block, either
to upgrade the token contract, or to create spin of tokens for e.g. governance.
The token Solidity code is available at https://github.com/DataBrokerDAO
Size of the market
To determine the market potential and future worth of the token we need to look
deeper at the potential market for IoT data.
The market size of the primary market for IoT sensors grew from a 600 billion
euro in 2015, to a staggering 900 billion in 2017. The market is projected to reach
1.3 trillion in 2020 and up to 1.6 trillion in 2024.
Initial value of the DTX token
The goal is to have 1 DTX token to cover the average value of the data from a
sensor for one week. This allows us enough granularity (at 18 decimals) to work
with micropayments, even after significant growth and price increases.
We determine the corresponding price per token by looking at the market
predictions in the previous section for 2024. At that time we project to have 2.5
billion USD flowing through the platform for 225 million sensors.
The average sensor has a value of ~12 USD per year, ~1 USD per month, or 0,25
USD per week and as such the value of 1 DTX token should equate initially to this
number. At an ETH price of 1000 USD / ETH, 1ETH will get you 4000 DTX tokens.
We determine the maximum number of tokens issued to be 225 million, the
amount of sensors on the platform in 2024.
5% is reserved for team incentives over the coming 4 years. The majority of this
team fund will be distributed to team members joining the project and will be
vested in stages over 3 years, and the unvested tokens return to the fund in case
the team member leaves the team. The rest is distributed to current team
members and advisors.
An additional 10% is reserved for the platform fund. The majority of these tokens
will be used to allow enterprise users to buy tokens using fiat currency to ease
adoption of these crucial users. This will happen if no other solution via
exchanges can be found, and gradually over the next 4 years as not to influence
the market.
Our earliest supporters, those who purchased the old DATA token, will get an
equivalent of their original ETH investment at current prices in DTX tokens at a
bonus rate of 60% to reward them for their trust in the project. This amounts to
6,5% in total.
30% or 67.500.000 tokens will be locked up until January 1st, 2021. Effectively
decreasing the available supply significantly for the foreseeable future.
0,5% of the tokens is reserved for the bounty campaign.
The rest, 108.000.000 tokens (48%) will be sold in to this sale event
TOKEN SALE
The token sale will accept purchases in ETH. The tokens will be delivered the
week after the sale completes.
Pre-sale starts March 19th, 2018 4PM CET
The presale phase of this token sale event starts on March 19th, 2018 at 4PM
CET. During this presale a 50% token bonus applies (6000 DTX/ETH) and the
minimum purchase amount during this period is 10 ETH.
Main sale starts March 26th, 2018 4PM CET
The main sale will start March 26th, 2018 at 4PM CET.
The sale will run for 4 week. The rate for this phase is 4000 DTX per ETH. ()
Only on the first day a 10% bonus will be awarded.
Before and during the token sale, a referral system is in effect. Contributions via a
referral link will result in a bonus of 5% of the tokens sold via a referral link. These
tokens are part of the locked reserve and do not increase or affect the total
amount of tokens, nor the maximum amount of tokens offered.
Unsold tokens will be kept by the platform. In case of a significant ETH rate
(1000 USD/ETH) change leading up to the sale will cause a recalculation
according to the same formula used above.
Trading starts April 30th, 2018
The tokens will be issued and be tradable 1 week after the sale ends (April 30th,
2018).
At this point in time we have a commitment to list the DTX token on
Chankura.com at that time and are identifying one or two more exchanges to list
it on, by that time.
Roadmap
MARCH, 19TH 2018 4PM CET
PRESALE
The presale phase of this token sale event starts on March 5th, 2018 at 4PM CET. During this presale a 50% token bonus applies (6000 DTX/ETH) and the minimum purchase amount during this period is 10 ETH.
MARCH, 26TH 2018 4PM CET
TOKEN SALE
The main sale will start March 26th, 2018 at 4PM CET. The sale will run for 4 week. The first day a 10% bonus will be awarded.
APRIL 30TH 2018
TRADING OPENS
The tokens will not be tradeable until 1 week after the sale ends (April 30th, 2018). At this point in time we have a commitment to list the DTX token on Chankura.com at that time and are identifying one or two more exchanges to list it on, by that time
Q2 2018
MAINNET RELEASE
With the availability and the ability to trade the DTX token, the platform can move to the mainnet.
Q2 2018
SETUP AND ONBOARDING OF AN EXTENDED TEAM
One of the larger challenges for DataBroker DAO will be scaling the team fast enough to cope with market demands. Onboarding a new sales team and additional developers is a daunting task. Since September this has been an active focus and this will be the case for the years to come.
Q2 2018
GATEWAY OPERATOR INTEGRATIONS
The main road to mass adoption is integrating with gateway operators that enable the onboarding of millions of sensors in one go. The DataBroker DAO platform will be integrated with the gateways of these gateway operators. We will be working on both common standards and libraries to ease integration, and perform the initial integrations for the first operators in the DataBroker DAO Alliance.
OFFICIAL LINK: https://databrokerdao.com/
ANN THREAD: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2113309.0
WHITEPAPER: https://databrokerdao.com/whitepaper/WHITEPAPER_DataBrokerDAO_ENG.pdf
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/databrokerdao
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/DataBrokerDAO/
TELEGRAM: https://t.me/databrokerdao
REDDIT: https://www.reddit.com/r/DatabrokerDAO/
BLOG: https://medium.com/databrokerdao
AUTHOR: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1016988
ETH ADDRESS: 0x6b9e41aF4f0fABF7c736eB18473D803cE2C9e82e