Announcing Boson Protocol’s partnership details with Ocean Protocol

Partnerships and integrations are key to the development of the Web3 ecosystem.

We cannot challenge the e-commerce monopolies by creating our own monoliths. Instead, we believe in developing a foundational infrastructure on which other teams and entrepreneurs can build, and composable pieces (think dCommerce lego blocks) that fit together with existing products and protocols.

At Boson Protocol, our vision is to create an open tokenized economy for commerce.

To develop the vibrant dCommerce Ecosystem we envision, we are working on a whole series of integrations and partnerships, but this is one of the most exciting:

Boson is building its Web3 commerce data marketplace on Ocean Protocol.

Just as Amazon uses data to give recommendations to customers, Boson’s dCommerce marketplace needs data too. It has both supply and demand of data: supply via past customer behavior, and more, and demand in order to give recommendations. Such commerce data is extremely valuable because other marketplaces can use it for recommendations as well. Boson’s Ocean-powered data marketplace will unlock the value of this data.

Ocean’s architecture gives consumers the chance to unlock value from their data without compromising their privacy, and to be incentivized to do so. We believe in creating truly liquid commerce data markets. Within this powerful token economy, data tokens act as a missing link to more easily allow for the formation of an Open Data Economy.

Voluntarily opting into a data marketplace is a critical part of the decentralized commerce revolution and allows people to derive a fair price for their commerce data, which would otherwise be hoarded and have its value captured by the commerce giants, whose prime purpose is to extract.

Why is this data so important? On its own, it is not. But acquiring customer preference data and then doing something with it is crucial for e-commerce businesses. Digital-native organizations such as Amazon have led the way and many legacy companies have struggled to move to a data-driven decision-making culture, hampered by a lack of expertise in decision architecture and data science.

Hence there is a huge market for this data, especially when aggregated. But until now, there was no easy way for individual users to accrue value from it.

“This is an entirely new way of thinking about the role of each participant in the ecosystem. We can finally move from being farmed to playing a fulfilling role in an Open Tokenized Economy for Commerce” — said Justin Banon, CEO of Boson Protocol.

Of course, it is entirely possible to use Boson Protocol for simply enabling decentralized commerce transactions and to opt to keep your data private. But ultimately, the power of token economies, running on permissionless, frictionless global networks, is that capabilities such as monetizing data, which is currently in the hands of few corporations, becomes a possibility to everyone.

We often talk about our data as a liability — something you need to keep safe, build a walled garden around and trust third parties to keep safe. But the truth is that voluntarily shared data is an asset, and by creating a seamless flow between Boson’s game-changing dCommerce ecosystem and Ocean’s liquid markets for data, buyers and sellers will discover how valuable commerce data can be.

“E-commerce platforms love data. This data comes from their users; it’s both personally sensitive and extremely valuable. With this Boson and Ocean partnership, for the first time ever, e-commerce users will be able to control their own e-commerce data, and monetize it if desired. ” said Dr Trent McConaghy from Ocean Protocol

The data itself doesn’t need to live on chain; just the agreement for data access control does. The concept itself is powerful, establishing fully decentralized on-ramps and off-ramps between data itself and tokenized crypto assets. This “data Lego” allows for the easy movement of datatokens in and out of DEXes, as well as easy integration into the DeFi system. In the future, new brands wanting to make an educated beginning of their journey, could buy anonymized commerce preference data in a data market and be able to make decisions just as elegantly as Big Tech is able to — without it necessarily taking years to aggregate it, or at prohibitively high costs.

This is an exciting partnership and a very important integration for Boson Protocol, critical for the delivery of the project’s vision for reimagined commerce.

Further Synergies

As discussed, there’s natural synergy between Boson and Ocean, since decentralized commerce markets rely heavily on data for their efficacy. A curious mind will see further synergies. Boson borrows design patterns developed by our friends at Ocean for data, and applies them to things. We do this at three levels: thing tokens, dCommerce marketplaces, and system-level design.

-Thing tokens: Ocean’s datatokens turn data into data assets to enable data wallets, data exchanges, and data as collateral by leveraging crypto wallets, exchanges, and other DeFi tools. Similarly, Boson’s ERC20 thing tokens turn things into thing assets to enable thing wallets, thing exchanges, and things as collateral by leveraging crypto tools. Let innovation roam free!

-dCommerce marketplaces: Ocean-powered data marketplaces use DEX tools to help price discovery, and aid curation via staking on data. Similarly, Boson-powered dCommerce marketplaces — use DEX tools to help price discovery, and aid curation via staking on things.

-System-level design: Ocean founder Trent McConaghy developed the Web3 Sustainability Loop, a system-level design pattern for Web3 projects for near-term growth and long-term sustainability. Ocean uses this pattern. We have adapted it for Boson’s own dCommerce Sustainability Loop. It enables to us to give grants from minimally extractive fees accrued in our protocol; such grants will foster more activity within the protocol; which will accrue more fees; which will power more grants . This is the flywheel in action! We’re happy to have Dr Trent McConaghy as an advisor to Boson Protocol.

About Ocean Protocol

Ocean Protocol’s mission is to kickstart a Web3 Data Economy that reaches the world, giving power back to data owners and enabling people to capture value from data to better our world.

Data is a new asset class; Ocean Protocol unlocks its value. Data owners and consumers use the Ocean Market app to publish, discover, and consume data assets in a secure, privacy-preserving fashion.

Ocean datatokens turn data into data assets. This enables data wallets, data exchanges, and data co-ops by leveraging crypto wallets, exchanges, and other DeFi tools. Projects use Ocean libraries and OCEAN in their own apps to help drive the Web3 Data Economy.

The OCEAN token is used to stake on data, to govern Ocean Protocol’s community funding, and to buy & sell data. Its supply is disbursed over time to drive near-term growth and long-term sustainability. OCEAN is designed to increase with a rise in usage volume.

Visit Bossonprotocol.co to find out more.

About Boson Protocol

Boson Protocol’s vision is to enable a decentralized commerce ecosystem by funding and enabling the development of a stack of specialist applications to disrupt, demonopolize and democratize commerce.

Keen to learn more?

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Want to dive deeper?

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Lastly, if you’re a decentralization enthusiast, please follow us here, on Medium. We will post frequently about our dCommerce journey and would love to hear your comments!