A Privacy-Protecting Data-Exchange Wallet with Ownership- and Monetization Capabilities
Alex Norta, Daniel Hawthorne, Serafin L. Engel · 2018
As people engage increasingly with Internet services such as social media, search, and e-retail, they create considerable quantities of data. Well known social-media companies and a secretive data-brokerage industry monetize this personal data without explicitly consulting-or sharing the revenues with-the users who produced the content. Such is the dominant personal-data ecosystem. There is clear need for a transparent and fair data exchange based upon the expressive consent of the Internet users producing the data. This shortpaper specifies such a system built upon a user-controlled ”DataWallet” and a blockchain-based smart contract system to allow transparent and mutually beneficial exchange of data between consenting parties. We detail the requirements of such a system, its necessary structure, and the dynamic interactions of its components and stakeholders through an example focusing on a simple exchange of data for DXT (the data exchange token).