Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) Review & Analysis – Ocean Protocol Token Review

Ocean Protocol

A Decentralized Data Exchange Protocol

About Ocean Protocol
Buy OCEAN

ERC20 Token

An ecosystem for the data economy and associated services, with a tokenized service layer that securely exposes data, storage, compute and algorithms for consumption.

Ocean does decentralized orchestration: at its core are decentralized service agreements and decentralized access control, which execute on decentralized virtual machines. This allows connection to, monetization of, and curation of arbitrary data services. On that, Ocean adds network rewards to incentivize data sharing, including privacy-preserving data commons.

Trustful Data Sharing – We bring together decentralized technology, a trust framework, and an ecosystem for data and related services. This allows for data to be shared while guaranteeing traceability, transparency, and privacy to enable data owners to maintain control of their data assets and access a wide range of marketplaces and services.
A Tokenized Service Layer – The Ocean protocol provides a tokenized service layer that offers data, storage, compute and algorithms for consumption with a set of deterministic proofs on availability and integrity that serve as verifiable service agreements. There is staking on services to signal quality, reputation and ward against Sybil Attacks.
1001 Marketplaces – Any data marketplace can hook into Ocean to provide “last mile” services, connecting data providers and consumers. The Ocean protocol is designed so that data owners control each dataset and cannot be locked into any single marketplace.
The Mission to Unlock Data – Society is becoming increasingly reliant on data, especially with the advent of AI. However, a small handful of organizations with both massive data assets and AI capabilities attained worrying levels of control which is a danger to a free and open society.

“We aim to unlock data, for more equitable outcomes for users of data, using a thoughtful application of both technology and governance. Our team and community is committed to kick-starting a New Data Economy that reaches every single person, company and device, giving power back to data owners and enabling people to capture value from data to better our world.”

Positives

Ocean Protocol is another exciting entry into the Data Marketplace sector that we’re slowly seeing develop more and more as tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple all curate data and sell it on all because you clicked “I Agree” on that 67 page Terms of Service agreement that you definitely read. The issue with data right now is that there’s no easy way to get a hold of it in an ethical way. Big tech companies are hoarders of data and the control they have over the data their users paid to hand over is obscene. Ocean Protocol aims to create a Data Marketplace Protocol where data is not only available to anyone willing to purchase it, but transparent and fair in the way that providers or publishers of this data are rightfully compensated for doing so. Keeping useful data confined to a few is an easy way to stifle innovation and prevent the continuation of better understanding the world around us and Ocean Protocol makes that extremely clear and goes a long way to point out the importance of decentralizing the data industry for the betterment of countless industries and the people within them. OCEAN Tokens are the backbone of the network and are integrated into each part of Ocean Protocol. Data Publishers or Curators are paid in OCEAN for their data, Stakers are paid in OCEAN for maintaining the network and simple things such as marketplace fees are also paid in OCEAN. For a more thorough explanation into the function of the OCEAN token, read this document and search “Ocean Token” for a far more technical explanation of OCEANs functionality.
Ocean Protocol not only aims to decentralize the data industry but also introduce a level of transparency that the sector sorely needs. SLA (Service Level Agreements) will help dictate what a Consumer or Buyer of the data set can actually do with it, and Ocean Protocol sits in the background to ensure that the agreement is upheld and rules set by the Publisher or Curator are followed. Compared to the current centralized state of things where data is used unethically and opposed to the wishes of those who created/curated it, the decentralized solutions put forward by Ocean Protocol stand out like a sore thumb. Ocean Protocol have done an excellent job of providing Developers with the documentation they require to build data sets and make them available in a more efficient way than ever before. We highly recommend that even simple Investors in Ocean Protocol have a read through of the documentation as it’s cleanly written and explains a lot about the technical side of the project. You will be impressed.
Business development and the plan to actually see a solution adopted is something we put heavy weight on. Ocean Protocol goes into great depths around how they plan to scale their solution and put special highlights on their current and past efforts to onboard/work with various companies and other projects in the crypto space. Taking the vast amount of use-case scenarios into consideration from Ocean Protocols Business Strategy we can see the Team have made an excellent example with the health industry, namely ConnectedLife, Roche Diagnostics and many other big brand names in the medical diagnosis and treatment sector. ConnectedLife is actually building their own Data Marketplace on Ocean Protocol where private data can be anonymized and sold on to assist innovation and ultimately help others. A lot of what Ocean Protocol is doing has been made possible with some of their tech partnerships with projects like Enigma who specialize in a very similar sector of the crypto space, anonymizing data and allowing sensitive data to become valuable in a safe and ethical way. We highly recommend reading pages 15 through to 25 of their Business Strategy to really appreciate how connected Ocean Protocol is with their partners, working clients, and investors, it’s extremely impressive. With crypto partnerships including those with Enigma, Singularity AI, Fetch AI, Ethereum and a huge amount of VCs backing the project, Ocean Protocol is one of the most well connected projects we’ve seen in the Data Marketplace sector, especially with their recent Unilver and Next Billion partnership.
Around 20 minutes into our research on Ocean Protocol we clicked on the “People” page on their website. We were shocked. Ocean Protocol has by far one of the most extensive and impressive Teams we’ve seen in this sector are being guided by some really experienced Advisors from various backgrounds. With 35 Core Members and 16 Advisors visible on their website, there’s no shortage of talent pushing this project forward on both a technical and strategical front. Bruce Pon (Founder) comes from BigChainDB and has years of experience in the data industry and it’s sectors including manufacturing, supply chain, IoT, media, healthcare and government. | Daryl Arnold (Co-Founder) is An entrepreneur experienced in data, marketing, technology and sustainability. Currently working as the Chairman of ConnectedLife, he provides not only a wealth of knowledge from his previous work but a big foot in the door for Ocean Protocol to explore opportunities in the health industry from the get go. | With a Roadmap that dates back to November 2017 and stretching through to March 2020, it’s clear that Ocean Protocol have been hard at work to create a product they’re proud of before hitting the market with their token. Investors can look forward to more technical advances through 2020 while the Team no doubt look to onboard new clients and slowly tap into sectors that are desperate for innovation.
We look at several projects per week and have extensive knowledge on 500+ projects in the crypto space. Ocean Protocol was a project we looked into and thought “Are we actually considering purchasing some OCEAN tokens?” and that’s saying something. Very rarely do we immediately invest in what we review, simply because of our strict portfolio and mission to remain as unbiased as possible, but Ocean Protocol has made the cut here simply due to how far they are into their Roadmap and the potential they have in this emerging industry in dire need of innovation and transparency. Ocean Protocol states that In 2016, the world produced 16 ZB of data, but only 1% was analyzed, that number is hard to ignore and if you’re a long term investor in cryptocurrencies, OCEAN should be on your radar as a long-term hold. Overall we’re incredibly impressed in the Team powering the project, the premise of allowing Developers a way to change the way data is handled in various industries and their overall strategy towards seeing Ocean Protocol at the forefront of decentralizing the data industry.

Concerns

We’ve reviewed a few projects handling various “Data Marketplace Protocols” and the same concern rings true for the majority of them. Being a product that is heavily reliant on “supply and demand”, attracting and keeping what Ocean Protocol calls Publishers and Consumers is absolutely imperative to the success of the entire project. Because competitors in this same niche will be building similar platforms in a bid to compete for market share, it’s essentially a race to market and/or adoption. Yes, we’ve stated that Ocean Protocol could quite possibly be the most impressive and technically advanced “Data Marketplace” project we’ve looked at, but you can’t give anybody a trophy just yet, especially when the race has just started. The metric that should be used by Investors to gauge future success potential is the list of partners, clients and other contributors to the infrastructure and network that are secured and steadfast in their cooperation with Ocean Protocol, of which there are many locked in already. This is our only real concern regarding the project. No red flags from what we can see. The effort they’ve put into educating Developers makes this concern a minor one at most.
We’ll start off this point by repeating words that smart investors know all too well. “Just because it’s decentralized, doesn’t mean people will use it over a centralized solution”. At this point in time, the difference between decentralized and centralized systems aren’t what make great products great; the user base backing these systems is. Our concern with Data Marketplaces in general is that a tech giant like Google or Amazon could turn around and offer their own protocol and simply charge a fee on access of the data created/curated by publishers. While projects such as Ocean Protocol offer a decentralized and far more ethical model of doing things, the distrust in these tech giants isn’t to the point where people revolt and mass delete their accounts just yet. In a perfect world, people would see the real value of a decentralized solutions, but in the real world we still need time.
Ocean Protocol is one of the best Data Marketplace projects we’ve reviewed here. Although our concerns surrounding the race towards adoption and the threat of big tech giants becoming more self-aware and creating a similar business model in an attempt to stifle competition, our concerns are more for the industry in general and far less about Ocean Protocol in particular. In our eyes, OCEAN is an investment for the long haul and investors need to either be passionate about the data industry or be prepared to continue their market research as this sector develops. The distrust between these companies and their users is evident and will continue to develop over the next few years. Ocean Protocol will be there the moment the masses decide “that’s enough” and look to support companies that protect the data they’ve been providing for free all these years.