![BEYOND UNICORN: Private Investors' Knowledge Base - [Founder Talk] How Blockchain unlocks value in data with Bruce Pon from Ocean Protocol](https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/episode_images/bcf84929dd2042bcfe7c45cfd61183eeb6ed41adfb35f2c586778d0b4575ca7a.avif)
[Founder Talk] How Blockchain unlocks value in data with Bruce Pon from Ocean Protocol
08/05/20 • 43 min
Today’s guest is Bruce Pon, CEO of BigchainDB and founder of Ocean Protocol. We began our conversation by probing into the value of data as an asset, what are the problems preventing the value of data being unlocked and how Ocean is solving that problem by building a protocol for data sharing, how it envisions global adoption through community building and industry partnerships. We discussed about the Ocean token – its usage, value creation and learnings from its IEO and ICO. Finally, we imagined a future where Ocean Protocol becomes the de facto protocol for access control and an Ocean DAO driven entirely by its contributors.
A personal disclaimer before we begin – I am a holder of Ocean Token since March 2019.
Key highlights from our conversation
Data is worth at least as much as land Data is the new asset that people are going to be able to monetize, securitize, use as collateral. The hypothesis is that data is worth at least as much as land which is estimated to be worth $7trillion by an economist. This belief is further reinforced by the fact that the top 10 most valuable companies in the world today are mostly internet platforms, information platforms.
Blockchain is the middle layer between data provider and data buyer The key problem with centralised data marketplaces is that they need to have custody of your data which results in the need for trust – data providers need to trust that the data marketplaces can manage your data well, keep it secure and provide you with a full audit trail. This often limits data sharing. What blockchain can do is to act as a trusted middle layer – the custodian for data, providing the data providers the full control of their data.
The Ocean Protocol is fundamentally an access control system.
Currently, there aren't any other protocols that look at data sharing as an access control problem. Ocean is the access control layer. In five years, what I want is Ocean being seen as the protocol that everybody follows to use for access control.
The usage and value accrual of Ocean Token At the very core, any crypto token can be used as a means of exchange. In the case of Ocean token, it is the means of exchange within Ocean Protocol. So that's the base level.
Second thing. And this is since the inception of the proof of authority network, you can use Ocean tokens to kickstart smart contracts on our proof of authority network. So right there was utility of this kind of a native token for a unique network.
Moving into the future, we're going to have some other exciting kind of uses of the Ocean token. Number one is we're going to kickstart the network rewards. This is 51% of the total supply that we've talked about from the very beginning. That is kind of a discount token model that allows value to come back into the ecosystem if people are using the protocol. And then there's another use case where we have for the Ocean token, which is governance. That's a little preview of what we're going to be releasing later on this year.
In the blockchain space, you can't separate speculation from utility from kind of global adoption. I think it all plays together. I see speculation very, very optimistically. It is viewed as this interplay between builders, speculators and the existing kind of traditional world where we are trying to disrupt.
Content at a glance with time-code
(01.36) Bruce’s background story (03.18) BigchainDB and Ocean Protocol explained (05.57) Data as an asset is worth at least as much as land (07.38) Core problems in data that Ocean Protocol is solving (17.56) How Ocean Protocol is designed to overcome trust, privacy and security of data (20.30) Uses cases and industry partnerships of Ocean Protocol (24.59) Importance of community for decentralised projects like Ocean Protocol (27.30) The usage and value accrual of Ocean Token (33.03) Learning from Ocean’s failed IEO (36.47) The value of speculation within Crypto (39.38) The future of Ocean Protocol imagined
Episode linksBigchainDB: https://www.bigchaindb.com/ Ocean Protocol: https://oceanprotocol.com/ Ocean’s blog post on IEO: https://blog.oceanprotocol.com/what-happened-with-the-ieo-54cc5c6c3db9
ChainLink: https://chain.link/
Today’s guest is Bruce Pon, CEO of BigchainDB and founder of Ocean Protocol. We began our conversation by probing into the value of data as an asset, what are the problems preventing the value of data being unlocked and how Ocean is solving that problem by building a protocol for data sharing, how it envisions global adoption through community building and industry partnerships. We discussed about the Ocean token – its usage, value creation and learnings from its IEO and ICO. Finally, we imagined a future where Ocean Protocol becomes the de facto protocol for access control and an Ocean DAO driven entirely by its contributors.
A personal disclaimer before we begin – I am a holder of Ocean Token since March 2019.
Key highlights from our conversation
Data is worth at least as much as land Data is the new asset that people are going to be able to monetize, securitize, use as collateral. The hypothesis is that data is worth at least as much as land which is estimated to be worth $7trillion by an economist. This belief is further reinforced by the fact that the top 10 most valuable companies in the world today are mostly internet platforms, information platforms.
Blockchain is the middle layer between data provider and data buyer The key problem with centralised data marketplaces is that they need to have custody of your data which results in the need for trust – data providers need to trust that the data marketplaces can manage your data well, keep it secure and provide you with a full audit trail. This often limits data sharing. What blockchain can do is to act as a trusted middle layer – the custodian for data, providing the data providers the full control of their data.
The Ocean Protocol is fundamentally an access control system.
Currently, there aren't any other protocols that look at data sharing as an access control problem. Ocean is the access control layer. In five years, what I want is Ocean being seen as the protocol that everybody follows to use for access control.
The usage and value accrual of Ocean Token At the very core, any crypto token can be used as a means of exchange. In the case of Ocean token, it is the means of exchange within Ocean Protocol. So that's the base level.
Second thing. And this is since the inception of the proof of authority network, you can use Ocean tokens to kickstart smart contracts on our proof of authority network. So right there was utility of this kind of a native token for a unique network.
Moving into the future, we're going to have some other exciting kind of uses of the Ocean token. Number one is we're going to kickstart the network rewards. This is 51% of the total supply that we've talked about from the very beginning. That is kind of a discount token model that allows value to come back into the ecosystem if people are using the protocol. And then there's another use case where we have for the Ocean token, which is governance. That's a little preview of what we're going to be releasing later on this year.
In the blockchain space, you can't separate speculation from utility from kind of global adoption. I think it all plays together. I see speculation very, very optimistically. It is viewed as this interplay between builders, speculators and the existing kind of traditional world where we are trying to disrupt.
Content at a glance with time-code
(01.36) Bruce’s background story (03.18) BigchainDB and Ocean Protocol explained (05.57) Data as an asset is worth at least as much as land (07.38) Core problems in data that Ocean Protocol is solving (17.56) How Ocean Protocol is designed to overcome trust, privacy and security of data (20.30) Uses cases and industry partnerships of Ocean Protocol (24.59) Importance of community for decentralised projects like Ocean Protocol (27.30) The usage and value accrual of Ocean Token (33.03) Learning from Ocean’s failed IEO (36.47) The value of speculation within Crypto (39.38) The future of Ocean Protocol imagined
Episode linksBigchainDB: https://www.bigchaindb.com/ Ocean Protocol: https://oceanprotocol.com/ Ocean’s blog post on IEO: https://blog.oceanprotocol.com/what-happened-with-the-ieo-54cc5c6c3db9
ChainLink: https://chain.link/
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![undefined - [Investor Talk] EdTech investing in China with Veronica Zhou from Blue Elephant Capital](https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/episode_images/0a5246f12d671fbf5e0dc2fbbf258fcd2aeea7644eef51c29aea2861596d71b1.avif)
[Investor Talk] EdTech investing in China with Veronica Zhou from Blue Elephant Capital
Today’s guest is Veronica Zhou, partner of Blue Elephant Capital, the first pure play education technology focused early stage investment fund in China. We began our conversation by segmenting the Chinese education market into 3 broad segments, namely to consumer (2C), to school (2S) and to business (2B). We then delved deeper into the complex sales system in the “to school” segment; how Covid-19 created the paradigm shift in online education. And lastly, we discussed Blue Elephant Capital’s investment approach and the key investment theses in the next 5 years.
Key highlights from our conversation
Chinese education market is divided into 3 broad segments 1) To Consumer (2C): to families and students 2) To school (2S): to schools, education bureaus, to government’s budget 3) To Business (2B): this includes 600,000 small and medium sized afterschool shops; about 20 large scale education companies such as TAL or New Oriental
Education spending continues to rise across China Families in the first-tier cities (e.g. Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen) in China spend on average 20 to 30% of their disposable income on their kids' education. This trend is observed to be growing over the last few years, and is also developing in the second-tier cities such as the provincial capitals and other more affluent cities in China. It is observed that in a certain city, once over 40% of students go to after school classes, a flipping point will be reached resulting in FOMO - suddenly everyone wants to go to the after-school classes and every parent feels obligated to send their kids there.
2S is the largest segment with government spending on public education expected to riseThe government spending on public education system in China is about RMB 5 trillion - just above 4% of GDP for China. In more advanced economies like Northern Europe, this ratio is about 8% of GDP. So, it is believed that the Chinese government spending on the public education system will continue to grow.
Covid-19 led an 85% increase in online education but this is believed to be temporaryThe first wave of online education start-ups came into existence around 2013. By 2019, data shows that about 15% of the consumer market is acceptive to online education. Covid-19 led an 85% hike in the online education market. But it is believed to be temporary as the majority of the education will still be conducted in physical campus and the majority of the school system will go back to its old track.
Key growth trends identified are 1) education of kids before 3 years old 2) after kindergarten market: OMO (online merges offline) 3) Screenless education for kids before 6 years old 4) Online education for vocational training 5) digitalisation of physical campus 6) The use of new media like TikTok for education purpose
Content at a glance with time-code
(01.20) Veronica’s background story and a brief introduction on Blue Elephant Capital (02.39) Overview of Chinese education market: how it segments to 2C, 2S and 2B; key trends within each segment (09.13) 2S: what areas of private investments are relevant for the 2S segments (11.25) The government’s procurement and purchasing decisions within 2S (16.25) Chinese online education before and after Covid-19 (26.06) Blue Elephant Capital’s investment approach (32.07) Key growth trends in EdTech in the next 3-5 years (38.06) The unicorn discussion
Episode linksBlue Elephant Capital: http://en.ibecapital.com/
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