How are Data NFTs helping build a decentralized data economy?

Reshaping the way data brokerage works

The data brokerage industry, which thrives on the buying and selling of user data, has grown into a multi-billion-dollar market that’s projected to reach over $462 billion by 2031. Data brokers act as intermediaries, selling personal information they collected from various sources to third parties. But the lack of transparency in the industry leaves users in the dark about what data is being collected, how it is used and who profits from it.

Due to the proliferation of Web3-native technologies, internet users can tackle legacy issues about how they interact with the digital world, such as the ownership of personal data. In the Web2 world, individual data ownership rights stand as a gray area from a legal perspective. However, the Web3 era brings a new approach to the way personal data is handled by introducing traceability and transparency to the data market. Nonfungible tokens (NFTs), unique digital objects that can be verified on the blockchain, have the potential to introduce a user-centric method of processing and distributing personal data.

What are Data NFTs?

Representing the ownership or exclusive license for a data asset on the blockchain, Data NFTs equip data sets with uniqueness and limited availability. This newfound control allows users to dictate how their data is used, limit its distribution and earn them royalties when their Data NFTs are traded or resold. Users can turn any subset of their data into NFTs and then advertise them on a corresponding data marketplace.

Once personal data is packaged and tokenized as an NFT, it becomes possible to trade and trace it across any NFT marketplace. Users can limit the distribution of their data or earn royalties in case this data is resold. Itheum, a Web3 data platform, has developed Data NFTs to place control and fair compensation back into the hands of users. Itheum provides a user-centric data platform, empowering individuals to represent ownership or an exclusive license for their data sets on the blockchain.

Source: Itheum

Classes of Data NFTs

Itheum developed two classes of Data NFTs so that users can pick a specific class of NFTs based on their requirements for privacy, regulation, control of data, retradeability and royalty collection:

• Data NFT-FT — these Data NFTs are comparable to the perpetual fully transferable license model for “data usage.” With Data NFT-FT, users can mint multiple copies of the license and enable royalties on the “re-trade” of each copy. They are ideal for trading high-value, unique data sets between humans or machines. For example, a musician can trade their original music samples directly with listeners or with other musicians, or an Electric Vehicle (EV) can easily trade its data with another EV or a charging station.

For enterprises: Unlocking new possibilities with Data NFTs

Data enterprises play a crucial role in the data ecosystem. They gather and manage vast amounts of data, often of diverse types and from various sources. From user behavior to global trends and patterns, data integrators sort out vast amounts of data and reshape it to make sense to a global audience. Now, with Data NFTs, they can further unlock the potential of their data assets:

• Community engagement — enhancing community bonds by allowing members access to the data minting process. This inclusion creates a sense of community, encourages active participation, and enables your audience to be part of your success story.
• Revenue generation — integrators can earn from minting Data NFTs and subsequent trades, offering a novel, sustainable revenue model for monetizing unique data.
• Data rarity — emphasize data exclusivity with NFTs to attract consumers and increase its value, demand and monetization potential.

For creators and consumers: Data NFTs, a new era of opportunities

Digital creators continuously produce engaging content that delights, informs and inspires their audience. Data NFTs now offer creators new avenues for monetizing their creations and enhancing audience engagement. Individuals such as content creators, researchers, musicians, educators, data analysts, and professionals from various fields, as well as projects, organizations, and enterprises that generate and work with data, can also be considered data creators. Whether they’re producing research data, creating music compositions, curating educational resources, conducting experiments, or generating insights through data analysis, they have the potential to be a data creator.

• Monetizing creations — creators can convert digital art or unique work into Data NFTs, earning from each transaction and retaining full control over rarity and pricing.
• Enhancing engagement — creators can engage their audience by involving them in data-minting, fostering community bonds, active participation and shared success.
• Profile visibility and reputation building — Itheum’s marketplace provides creators with a customizable profile to showcase their work, track trades and royalties and display reputation-boosting badges.
• Expanded user base and community growth — minting Data NFTs attracts diverse creators, broadening a project’s user base and fostering community loyalty.
• Tradability - Data NFTs offer consumers the opportunity to engage in data trading within the marketplace. With the ability to re-trade data NFTs, consumers can explore a dynamic ecosystem where data assets can be bought, sold, and re-sold/ exchanged.
• Data Visualization - Itheum's Data NFTs empower consumers to not only access valuable data sets but also re-imagine and re-visualize them in exciting new ways. By purchasing a Data NFT, consumers can delve into the data, explore its intricacies, and unlock its hidden insights.

Source: Itheum

Data NFTs in gaming: Revolutionizing the gaming experience

Data NFTs have wide-ranging applications in the gaming sector, redefining how games are played, strategies are shared and achievements are showcased. This can benefit game developers, players and guilds:

• Game licensing — Data NFTs can serve as verification and enforce game licenses, protecting intellectual property.
• Tutorials — game tutorials can be tokenized as Data NFTs, allowing creators to monetize their educational content while gamers can access high-quality tutorials.
• Player performances — Data NFTs can store player data, offering insights to developers and highlighting gamer skills.
• Gamer passport — Data NFTs empower gamers to own, share and monetize their gaming history, achievements and preferences, enabling seamless transitions between games, guilds and platforms.
• Strategies — Data NFTs can provide gamers with access to top-tier strategies, allowing them to level up their gameplay and compete at a higher level.

The Data NFT marketplace: A decentralized platform for the data economy

Itheum created a decentralized platform for users to trade unique data sets while benefiting from the transparency, security and minimal transaction fees of the blockchain. Named the Data NFT Marketplace, it stands as a crucial part of Data DEX, the core of the Itheum ecosystem.

Source: Itheum

Data DEX was created to be the “hub” for seamless personal data trade, giving individuals and organizations blockchain-enabled tools to own and trade their data. The Data DEX is designed to be fully multichain compliant, facilitating broad adoption, and will be the home for tools like Data NFT minting, Data NFT wallets and the open and transparent Data NFT Marketplace.

The whitelisting process for data creators to mint their data sets as Data NFTs and advertise them on Itheum's Data Marketplace is now open. To ensure high-quality and unique data sets, data creators must undergo a whitelisting process before minting their data as Data NFTs. This process involves verifying the authenticity and uniqueness of the data set and data creator to ensure the data assets being traded will be beneficial to the community.

Itheum has also joined the Cointelegraph Accelerator program, which took off in 2023 to provide Web3 projects assistance in reaching their true potential. As a participant in the program, Itheum aims to revolutionize data sharing and offer a blockchain-based, Web3 solution for data creators and users alike.