Ocean's target audience are organizations wanting to utilize decentralized computing power through its Ocean cloud or build their own marketplace for specific types of data that can give access to an ecosystem where all stakeholders can take advantage of each other's assets.
The project was created in 2017 by Trent McConaghy who also worked at BigchainDB. It is supported by the IOTA Foundation, DataBroker DAO and Ocean Protocol foundation. Trent has worked with large corporations such as IBM, Nokia Bell Labs and Ascribe (now BigchainDB). The advisory board consists of notable names in the field of technology, science and business including Stanford professor Ronan Le Bras (who reviews scientific papers for Nature/Science).
Ocean Protocol was designed to solve the problem posed by Trent McConaghy: "how can we make it easier for organizations to share data while protecting personal information?". Trent focuses on ways to make it possible for organizations to share their data more easily without worrying about giving access to unintended parties. This becomes even more important when companies want to monetize part of their data and benefit from what others share, but at the same time prevent competitors from buying their data. The system must be fair and provide rewards to all parties involved: organizations that share data, companies that research algorithms around it and buyers of such information. The solution is a platform where all these different agents can interact with each other without giving too much power to any one part.
Ocean Protocol uses "token-curated registries" (TCR) as its primary incentive structure for decentralized computing power through its Ocean cloud or building their own marketplace for specific types of information which could give access to an ecosystem where all stakeholders take advantage of each other's assets.
Token-curated registries are designed for highly specialized communities that have shared goals and values, where members are incentivized to curate the list of entries. In the context of Ocean Protocol, this would be a registry of data providers, data buyers and data scientists. The TCR is a way to guarantee the quality of the participants and data in the ecosystem. It also provides a mechanism for rewarding good actors and weeding out bad actors.
The Ocean Protocol Foundation will use 20% of all funds raised from its upcoming token sale to establish an ecosystem fund that will be used to support initiatives that will build on top of the Ocean Protocol network.
OCEANOCOL (OCEAN) is an ERC20 token that will be used as the primary payment method on the Ocean Protocol network. It will also be used to reward data providers, data buyers and data scientists for their contributions to the network.
The token sale starts on April 4th, 2018 and will run until May 3rd, 2018. A total of 1,000,000,000 OCEAN tokens will be available for purchase at a price of US$0.10 per token. The minimum purchase amount is 0.1 ETH.
In short, Ocean Protocol is a decentralized data exchange protocol that allows organizations to easily share data while protecting personal information using blockchain technology. Token-curated registries are used to incentivize quality participation in the ecosystem and the Ocean Protocol Foundation will use 20% of all funds raised from the token sale to establish an ecosystem fund that will be used to support initiatives that build on top of the Ocean Protocol network. OCEANOCOL (OCEAN) is the primary payment method on the network and will be used to reward data providers, data buyers and data scientists for their contributions to the network. The token sale starts on April 4th, 2018 and will run until May 3rd, 2018. A total of 1,000,000,000 OCEAN tokens will be available for purchase at a price of US$0.10 per token. The minimum purchase amount is 0.1 ETH.
