Three Insights on the Blockchain, from a Data Professional
This is a personal post sharing the thoughts I had as a data guy who transitioned from being a crypto skeptic to being an active contributor in the community. My goal is to communicate the thoughts I cultivated over the years that I hope will offer some perspective to anyone curious, to fellow data practitioners, or to those already active in this space.
Insight 1: Blockchains / Cryptocurrencies aren’t (just) currencies. They’re Data.
“Should I invest in bitcoin?”
Like most people, I faced that question way back as well. Full disclosure, I did not invest (unfortunately). My principle then was never to invest in anything I don’t understand — so I researched and here’s what I can roughly piece together.
On the surface level, the blockchain isn’t exactly a currency although it’s the usual understanding that people have of it. The more accurate description is that it’s a humongous ‘ledger’ where multiple computers track how tokens transfer from one owner to another.
A rough way to explain this is when someone ‘buys’ bitcoin, that person actually buys a record saying that they owned that cryptocurrency (which is fundamentally different from buying a dollar where you get the actual cash).
You can easily track this in so-called “Block Explorers” where chains can be tracked in almost real time, and anyone can see how people add records into the massive ledger by making transactions.
This was the first epiphany to me — if blockchains are simply records, then the blockchain is literally data. Unchangeable, public data that anyone can access, validate, procure, and even analyze.
Insight 2: Blockchains are decentralized = Data is democratized
Asymmetry of available information is almost a given in any field. For us to understand how many people are affected in the pandemic, we’d have to collect data from all around the globe. For us to know how many people actually support a political candidate, we’d have to conduct time-consuming surveys.
Because these information are unavailable or in most cases monopolized, making an informed decision becomes expensive, and therefore, inaccessible to most. Personally as a traditional data guy, I already assumed that this is a given anywhere. If I need data for research, let’s say for finance, or health, or transportation, I’d probably have to pay the price. This perspective changed the more I discovered about the blockchain.
With the technology behind blockchains, entire economies can be built around a coin or a token and anyone can analyze the information and make informed decisions because all transactions are public.
In play-to-earn economies such as Axie Infinity (the most popular P2E game), we can even extrapolate how many people are playing the game using the same concept where we track how many people are being granted the SLP cryptocurrency.
There are even walk-to-earn (e.g. Genopets) models, where for the sake of example, a token is granted for every one kilometer traveled, then the ‘minting’ or ‘granting’ transaction of a certain amount of tokens is already representative of how much distance a person walked. With this ledger of transactions we can make conclusions on things like:
- How many people walk per day?
- How much does the average person move?
- During what times of the week? How often?
Theoretically, this would mean everyone (or at least anyone who will go through the effort to dive into the blockchain) would have access to anything and everything. We would have unlimited, democratized information. (Beyond block explorers, there’s also already a couple of projects like The Graph or Satsuma that aim to make querying the data easy).
Is that ultimately a good or a bad thing? Honestly, I don’t know. Many people said the Internet was going to be both bad and good too in its early stages, and here we are now. What if 10, 20, 30+ years from now, a student in some college asks a teacher “how can I research this?” and the simple answer is “Oh, just research this blockchain X or Y.”
Insight 3: Blockchains allow us to fully own our Data
At some point we probably already heard of the saying that “Facebook isn’t the product. You (the user of Facebook) are the product.”
As users, we don’t pay for using Facebook, but Facebook gains a lot of revenue because they sell our data. They sell our behavioral patterns, how we use the app, the profile of our social circles, etc. In other words, they sell our data. (Yes, that’s why when you walk near milk tea shops with your GPS on, you get pinged with milk tea promos).
This is usually the case today in the so-called Web2, where centralized organizations benefit largely on the content and behavior of users and creators because they run the platforms that enable these to be distributed and shared. Data in Web2, therefore, is largely proprietary, and the ones who get the bulk of the benefit of such are these platforms.
I’m not saying to think twice before clicking ‘accept terms and conditions’ (You should definitely still read them though). I am a fan of how Web2 still unlocked a lot of benefits for the world. However, imagine where we could be, if incentives and profits from providing data are given back to users (I’m already imagining a “give data, get paid” button).
This brings me back to my point — with blockchain technology, these are all possible. Because members of the community can own “records” that show their involvement in a project, it enables a decentralized way to give influence back to the world — a “decentralized” society.
Going back to our walk-to-earn example, instead of a centralized company (e.g. Fitbit) that tracks and sells our data on health, it’s the people who literally walk to earn who are receiving the benefits, exactly because data is public in the blockchain. A transaction granting a person ‘walk’ tokens is a proxy for the walking patterns of the community, which is valuable data to let’s say, shoe sellers.
The data living in these chains are available to anyone, and anyone can verify that it is you and only you who owns a certain ‘record’ (hence why NFTs are so valuable, even if people claim you can just screenshot a $300,000 jpeg of a monkey). It is not living in some centralized server somewhere where the only ones to gain from it are the owners of the platform.
I’m sure the blockchain has a lot more to offer, but as a data guy where a common problem is the unavailability of data across different fields, it became clearer to me the unlimited potential of the technology.
As a data guy, I just knew I had to dive deeper into the blockchain
I sincerely find it amazing how the concept of a decentralized ledger (i.e. blockchain) has unlocked so many possibilities especially towards the world of data. Honestly, the idea is fundamentally simple — it’s literally allowing people to make records that cannot be changed or hacked and without being reliant on a single organization. This sounds like gold to a data guy like me.
Combined with human ingenuity time and time again, one cannot simply predict what will come next. A stick was only a stick until it was used as a lever by humans. Now we have tools, computers, and the internet. Now, with the blockchain, we unlocked DeFi (decentralized finance), we isolated economies, and so much more.
As I mentioned, these insights are all definitely still theoretical and the world of blockchains and Web3 is still constantly expanding. I still definitely have my doubts and hesitations, but as I became more and more exposed to the possibilities that blockchains unlock, I knew that as a data guy, I just really had to be part of this evolution.
I’m currently leading the Data team at BreederDAO and I want to give a shoutout to the founders Renz Chong, Jeth Ang, and Nico Odulio who have been nothing but supportive in my pursuit to explore more about the blockchain and Web3. We’re developing the first version of Playcore, the platform to look for all things P2E related, including analytics. We’re excited to share it to everyone soon!
If any of you have thoughts or comments to share or if you have more questions to ask, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me through LinkedIn or tap me at nigel@breederdao.io. I’m happy to share insights and learn from everyone as we discover new developments in the space.
