Can Web3 Turn Data Privacy Concerns Into User-Owed Intelligence?

Our ability to keep our information private, and keep it under our control, hasn’t existed for well over a decade.  However, with the evolution of AI providing deeper and deeper insight, our personal data has become more of a liability for us while becoming a veritable gold mine for data brokers and the companies that pay billions for that information.

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If you speak to a handful of friends and colleagues, the key discussion points start to repeat themselves. There’s nothing we can do about it. These companies know everything about me. Someone is making money from my data, but it isn’t me.

This sense of hopelessness and resignation is actually by design. If the business model works to where our data is taken from every website, app, social media platform, and food delivery service we use, then how do we even begin to fight it? With this many groups taking our data, will fighting what we can see even do any good?  

With so many of the apps and platforms we rely upon taking data in a completely legal way via the end user agreements, how can we fight data privacy issues in the first place? After all, if you don’t agree to the terms, you can’t use the app. And for many of these apps, we are going to use them no matter what, especially if we do not have to pay to use them.  

The problem is, a “free” app isn’t free. An app you pay for, at a price you feel is reasonable, actually costs a lot more. As the saying goes: If you aren’t paying for the product, then you are the product. 

However, even if you are paying for a product/service, your data is still likely a revenue stream for the company taking it.  

This trickle of our data once used for mailing lists has turned into a complete invasion of privacy, and is being used maliciously to find those ways to best part us from our money. Advertisements that target us can be convenient at times, but are predatory even if we benefit. The challenge really is: Are we too late to fight for our right to privacy?  

The answer, shockingly, might be no. And Web3, of all things, might have the exact infrastructure needed to rebalance the fight for data privacy.

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Web3’s Perfect Building Blocks

Web3 is able to do a great many things, from digital currency to keeping truth on-chain. It is able to govern a community through that same community, even though its members are scattered across the globe. 

It is able to create trustless contract management so that parties completely anonymous and unknown to each other can conduct business without fear of being exploited. And it is able to tokenize things of value, like RWAs, currency, art—or your data.

Because Web3 is able to take pieces of data and encapsulate them through tokenization, it creates some very interesting opportunities. Whether these chunks of protected data become literal tokenized assets or are collected in a different way, the blockchain aspects of Web3 are able to ensure ownership and custody of this information while encrypting it to prevent others from using it without permission. 

This concept is beginning to gain momentum in the Web3 industry, and that value can be spread across any traditional industry by pairing it with Web3 infrastructure.

The other interesting piece here is the use of AI. While data brokers and companies use AI to find, harvest, and comb through your data to find valuable insights (i.e., ways to manipulate you into buying things), AI can also be used to protect data.

One example of this is the NEAR architecture. 

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It can use NEAR AI to set up the ability to collect your fragmented consumer data and turn it into private insights that are in your custody. 

Similarly, this information can be used with NEAR Intents to move around various Web3 chains. Why would someone want to move their protected data around? Because there may be good reasons to share this data with providers and companies.  The big difference is who chooses to share it, and who benefits.  

For the current model we live in, data brokers from around the globe harvest your information, and sell it to anyone who wants to pay for it. Taking that decision out of your hands is already violating, but these same data brokers make money for doing so, and even though it is your information, you don’t control it and don’t benefit from others taking it.  

Using NEAR architecture, platforms could create both data protection and data monetization. The best example of this is likely ConsumerFi Protocol, a Web3 platform that creates user-owned intelligence. Users have custody of their data, hold the ability to choose who they share it with, and earn revenue for doing so. This creates a completely new way to look at your own data, and take back ownership of it through Web3 innovation. 

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The larger community seems to be warming to this idea very quickly. The recent ConsumerFi token launch on Calyx reached its funding goal in under 1.5 hours, raising over $80K, indicating this is a hot topic for Web3 and data privacy alike.  

However, with its connections to other chains through NEAR, this launch had 508 participants who engaged across 11 ecosystems, showing what can be done with strong architecture boosting a value-added project.

What’s Next?

If platforms can begin to use these tools to protect their users and their data, and if users see that they have every right to own their data, the entire ecosystem of data brokerage and theft will begin to shift. 

User data as a free resource to harvest and sell will start to dry up as more users take control of their data. At the same time, companies can gain even better insight to their customers by purchasing those insights directly from the customers. Even better, this moves away from companies acting like slimy salespeople, and more like friendly collaborators. 

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If users choose to share their info, they are more likely interested in those platforms who are using it, creating even deeper insights while more closely connecting companies with their communities.