Your Data, Your Income | European Blockchain Convention

foreign thank you for being here these Final hours of the conference hope you are having a good time and enjoying and I hope this panel gives you a bit of more value so yeah we're going to be talking about your data your income um it's all about data ownership which is one of the big Promises of web3 I think very important and maybe you guys can introduce yourself a little bit we don't have a lot of time we have 20 minutes so yeah so great to meet you both in person uh finally first time um to simplify my background is in traffic and politics I worked at City group for over four years dealing with crypto in a variety of niches I then moved over to D5 strictly defy as I was working with an oracle provider a decentralized Oracle provider for over one year and I currently am CI Chief Innovation officer for swash which is a web 3 data monetization platform and the focus of my discussion today but in parallel I sit on the board of crypto UK and also on the board of the multi-chain asset managers Association and I support a variety of projects in advisory roles projects stemming from open metaverse next-gen D5 and more generic web 3 projects including digital fashion so I do have a very filtered and eclectic approach I would say I'm a research engineer at protocol labs and I'm more into the storing of data because like uh protocol Labs is one of the companies behind open source projects like Falcon and ipfs and the idea of these projects is to instead of relying in in like AWS and all these big Tech infrastructures to try and aggregate all of the market of storage and try to compete by aggregating the the global resources and and infrastructure that is out there and it's a way also of like keeping some ownership I mean I don't think we're going to be able to keep all of the ownership of our data but at least it's some way to keeping a bit of the ownership of that data I agree say thank you to them hanging in there in there the weather is amazing Amaze so really thank you we appreciate you taking your time to listen to us I probably wouldn't have so I would probably be outside so really appreciate it me too actually okay well welcome thank you very much my name is Sabrina bonini I'm the founder of crypto School Tura which is an agency a creative agency that helps Branson businesses actually give more ownership to the customers right so um so yeah let's just dive in um so when we move from web one to to web 2 from the information the information economy to the platform economy at the beginning we didn't really know that we were going to be the product right so our data suddenly is being monetized and owned by other people and when we talk about data ownership it's basically the right of an individual to to control their data but this is not happening really in today's world but thanks to web3 maybe we can start to own our data a bit more and actually monetize it but my question my first question is do you think the the main public the main consumer really cares about owning the data I actually appreciate it I wanted to say thank you uh yeah so to second on what you were saying we had with one moving to web 2 and then to web3 I think it's important to dismantle this a little bit and try to explain what everything meant in simplistic and basic and and very succinct terms so web one was about user centricity and user control right so that's how it started that's how the web Revolution started with the web one implementation however uh and it's very it's a very important caveat there were no reliable and sustainable monetization model so you had web one great the user is in the center everyone can in principle benefit but people could not make money out of it entities could not make money out of it hence the move into web 2 uh and well the correct for that time monetization models were found but then we ended up in a situation where a handful of entities control our data monopolize our attention and do not give anything in return to the user so that's the whole web 2 platform Monopoly kind of parameters what web3 offers and I completely agree with you let's not pretend that it's going to be a Flawless ecosystem it's not but it's going to return and we are starting to see that more power to the user and generate additional tools via which the individual data generator can monetize or get rewarded for the attention it provides right um I think what's also important to add it's something that we do not talk about when it comes to web 2 I mean we talk about the fact that okay platforms take control of our data we do not get anything in return materialistically speaking or otherwise I think the worst part is or or the additional more black holish uh aspect is the fact that the data we generate is used by those the said platforms via Algos to uh create manipulation techniques that are going to be used against us to maintain that attention right to ensure that we get addicted to utilizing the platforms the data that we generate that data is pulled into algorithms and then the best mechanics are designed in order to make sure that we never leave those platforms and we can discuss I mean even now we talk about web 3 and it's great but the user aggregation for most web three projects happens on web 2 offers we all use Twitter we always use LinkedIn we all use Discord Etc telegram Etc right so it's also about that and I think digressing a little bit that's why the whole open metaverse ecosystem and discussion is important because we will create an alternative virtual economic ecosystem whereby I mean if AI is going to surpass humans and it already is we might at least be in control of it as opposed to letting all of the control of that artificial intelligence to centralized entities right so this is like I said the the kind of hidden bad part of web 2 that no one talks about and here we are in web3 Via decentralized technologies that have been at play for over a decade it's not something new uh we have the capacity we have the design module to enable users to get Revenue out of sharing their data to get Revenue out of sharing their attention and to learn how to monetize and be aware of of their specific data rights and I will stop in a second leave it over to you to answer the second part of your question no I think uh people being aware of their data and their data privacy rights is a very Western European and U.S Centric phenomenon I don't think people in Emerging Markets even care about that they would care about the monetization model probably for sure actually but they don't really care about those rights I think they have bigger issues to deal with like being locked out of um banking systems or not really having a digital identity um so yeah this is also something that we need to remember not to filter everything through the Western European and U.S lands okay so my take is that we don't care about like data ownership at at all not even in Europe not even in Europe like I don't like okay you really need you really need to give someone so let's put an example of Google like who can live without Google and if you want to leave you can live without Google yeah me too but it's hard right because it's everywhere so you will have to fix identity like I mean it's really convenient to just sign in with your Google account get inside everything don't remember any just one password you need to give something that is as good as Google in order to for people to be aware of data ownership I have that for free so I'm I don't care about wallets I don't care about having a digital wallet like you need to fix identity we need to fix um email like email is super broken I mean I don't know if some there was in in Hacker News recently these um so this article from one guy that he was self-hosting his email for 10 years and he had like to like stop completely his own service because uh all of the Googles all the Microsoft all of these big Tech wears completely censoring their email so it's great if we are like into privacy but we really need to create product not only make people aware but also create products that are good enough to compete with with this big Tech and that's really hard like even if uh even if we come up with the perfect like digital identity how do we migrate all of our data from Google to something else well but that's exactly what I was saying earlier uh talking about user and network effect user aggregation and network effect in web too it still happens in web 2 even for all of even the most dgn of D5 projects they still operate on Twitter right aside from other players so that's why my tech is that we need a Troian horse like we need to I mean everyone tries to those like all web 3 from scratch that's not gonna work like we need products that are first approaching web 2 showing the value of web 2 and then moving into uh web3 and and it's like ethereum signing I mean having a wallet or having some kind of um I don't know not I see my my mother like trying to sign in in her bank account it's crazy that she has to remember that amount of passwords like just having a simple USB with your wallet being able to sign in uh not having to remember like a thousand um passwords or like having to sell your soul to Google that's great like a product that is just forget about cryptocurrency forget about web3 forget about like all of these fancy stuff just some kind of oh sorry so so buy Bitcoin buy ethereum no but for real like I think that going on web3 hasn't worked and these may be the last winter so let's let's try and focus on doing like some some applications that really get into the people and like have mass adoption and and the only way that we're gonna be able to do that there's a lot of cool Tech in in web3 so we have all of these cryptographic Primitives like homomorphic encryption like a lot of stuff on CK proofs and all of that can be applied into real web to project products and projects already so let's try and and like innovate web 2 and then move step by step by web3 I mean I don't think and I'm a maximalist but by the way and I don't think we're gonna make it like all the way to web3 right away unfortunately yeah Sabrina I think we're gonna revamp our discussion flows because he's throwing things at me and I have to respond go please I'm sorry I agree with uh most of the things you are saying I don't agree with the fact that using Google is free that that's what we were discussing yeah it is free it is convenient because we we're used to I guess yeah as a result of our education and kind of inherent way that makes us delegate responsibility for everything and makes us use the easiest solution yeah we use Google because it's the predominant entity to use for what we need it for but it's not free I mean you know we're working on our daytime it's not free you know how it works like if you go not to this audience which is great and they know about tech like go to someone that is I don't know like the guy in the bar or someone that doesn't have this technical background you would ask him like how much you pay for Google they will say none like I have all my photographs with Google photos and that's great I can sign in into Instagram and like I don't have to worry about so so that's why I say like you cannot make users eat glass in order to get privacy because they're not going to do it like um privacy preserving Technologies right now they're really expensive you know from a user experience perspective and we cannot expect everyone to be able to use them so that's my take like at least that's why I think that we should try and approach all of the great Innovation that we have in the web 3 space and try to move it into web to see if we can make it happen but homomorphic encryption is not a web 3 Innovation uh yeah that's my point but but there is like there's been around since the 80s but where we're seeing like actual applications is in in the web3 space so that's why I think that I don't know like and maybe I'm wrong you're not wrong but I think in Europe I think the guy at the bar or the girl at the bar knows about data privacy if not just via the result of gdpr it was so talented everyone knows about gdpr it's it's you know almost infuriating because it's an annoying piece of legislation I was in a corporation trying to implement it uh back at the day but I think people in Europe and U.S are much more aware of data privacy rights and the ability via web3 tools to monetize on their data Maybe not everyone but definitely more than Emerging Markets definitely more than in South East Asia or or in Africa right so yeah I guess there's there's that imbalance I I would say we can go back to okay we have two minutes oh wow wow they're cheating I want to talk a little bit about uh which for example swash which platforms and like which Solutions do we have today to monetize our data okay so I'm just gonna do a minor Shilling okay in one minute uh explain people you're right people inherently do not care about something unless there's a way to monetize on it unfortunately that's human nature and so from that perspective Swatch is a great product and easy to deploy because you download the app you browse you do your day-to-day internet browsing sessions your data gets pulled ethically pulled it's cryptographically secured it gets aggregated together with other data sets generated by other random individuals across the globe who also have the app obviously and then get sold in a decentralized Marketplace and when someone buys it either an entity or other people then you get part of the revenue in Swatch tokens so it's a very simple model it's a very web 3-ish not worthy issue it's a very web 3 model and I think it's something that easily attracts people because you earn passive income on something you don't need to do anything the only thing that you need to do is download the app and set up the digital wallet and that's it you continue doing everything that you were doing before with the additional Revenue generating stream that you didn't have before but that being said and you know I work with swash is this everything we is this our most predominant branding in crypto this is all we want to tell people hey you can make more money on stuff that you didn't make money on before no I think this needs to be coupled with education for instance if you get those tokens you as a non-web three or non-crypto users all of a sudden you have these stock these tokens in your wallet and you can integrate it in other default applications generate yield learn about defy Etc so it doesn't stop here it's not just about oh wow I have passive income great no move further learn about things and then you genuinely get individual responsibility and knowledge that you can deploy as you see fit super interesting we have 20 seconds you want to say something maybe some other some other solutions that you might know yeah no I don't know any solution I would say like just keep innovating like in the end and be aware of your prices no Solutions find those Solutions like they're there definitely let's see how we can make it work but they're there okay well right on time thank you very much thank you very much everyone it was very thank you and enjoy the rest of the conference