Top Things You Should Know About Ocean Protocol (OCEAN)

Hey guys, I’m back with another comprehensive Q&A piece, this time for the decentralized data exchange protocol – Ocean Protocol (OCEAN).
Ocean Protocol aims to unlock user data, so it can be used productively rather than simply stored by huge corporations such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. It aims to solve the data centralization problem by making users’ data available to the community in order to build better products, services, and experiences for all.
Now, before we dive in, the following piece is similar to my latest articles on Quantstamp (QSP), Cream Finance (CREAM), Dogecoin (DOGE), so if you haven’t already seen those, be sure to check them out as well. 
Hope you enjoy!
The list of Q&A is kind of long so first comes the list of questions that I have prepared the answers to:

1. What is Ocean Protocol?
2. Who and When Created Ocean Protocol?
3. What is $OCEAN Token Used for?
4. What is the main product of Ocean Protocol?
5. What is Ocean Marketplace?
6. Where to Store $OCEAN?
7. Where to Buy & Sell $OCEAN?

1. What is Ocean Protocol?

Ocean Protocol website homepage

Ocean Protocol is an on-ramp for data services into crypto ecosystems. By using datatokens, smart contracts, and libraries, Ocean Protocol aims to help users unlock the potential of their data for use in new ways, and especially for Web 3.0.
The commercialization of data has been monopolized by large corporations like Google and Facebook who take and sell users’ data for a profit, without ever sharing that profit with the users’ it comes from. 
Ocean Protocol aims to combat data monopolies by making data available to the community in order to build better products, services, and experiences for all. It’s building a New Data Economy that gives the power back to data owners and enables them to capture value from that data.
As published by the Economist in 2017:

“The world's most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data.”

If the quote above is correct, then it’s easy to see the importance of what Ocean Protocol is aiming to achieve.
Which is the creation of a decentralized data exchange framework that allows data and services to be shared and sold, in a secure manner.

2. Who and When Created Ocean Protocol?

Ocean Protocol founders, Bruce Pon and Trent McConaghy

Ocean Protocol was created in 2017 by Bruce Pon and Trent McConaghy, two entrepreneurs with deep backgrounds in big data, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and data exchanges. 
Bruce Pon is also the founder of multiple other companies. He’s the founder and CEO of BigChainDB, a decentralized blockchain database for big data; founder of Ascribe.io, a service for creators to register and track intellectual property on a blockchain; and founder of Avantalion Consulting Group AG, a company that builds banks for the underbanked.
Additionally, Bruce served as the International Project Manager for Daimler AG and was a Consultant for Accenture.
Trent McConaghy has close ties to Bruce Pon and serves as the CTO to BigChainDB in addition to working on Ocean Protocol. He also co-founded and served as CTO to Ascribe and was the founder and CTO of Solido Design Automation, and Analog Design Automation. 
Additionally, Trent has done AI research for national defense and has done extensive research on human creativity and AI-based machine creativity for his first startup, ADA. 
Joining Bruce and Trent on the core team of Ocean Protocol are 13 talented individuals with a wealth of real-world business experience as entrepreneurs, designers, and technologists. As well, Ocean Protocol has over 35 advisors spanning the globe, with recognized expertise in AI, blockchain, big data, business, and policy.

3. What is $OCEAN Token Used for?

Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) logo

The native cryptocurrency of Ocean Protocol is $OCEAN and its primary use case is:

• Stake on Data
• Govern Community Funding
• Buy & Sell Data

Stake on Data
Users add liquidity to data by staking $OCEAN tokens on a data asset in the Ocean Marketplace, to earn transaction fees and staking rewards. 
It’s similar to Uniswap, where users add liquidity to specific token pools to earn rewards and fees. But with Ocean Protocol, users stake (add liquidity) to a datatoken-OCEAN pool to earn a cut of each data buying transaction fee, proportional to their stake.
Also, stakers will earn $OCEAN rewards via the Ocean Data Farming program when it launches. 
Users can stake OCEAN using Ocean Market.
Govern Community Funding
Users use $OCEAN in OceanDAO to govern which Ocean community projects to fund. To support the long term growth and success of Ocean Protocol, users are incentivized to vote for projects that offer the best chance for growth.The $OCEAN token is deployed on the Ethereum mainnet with a total capped supply of 1.41 billion tokens, 51% of which is disbursed over decades to fund community projects curated by OceanDAO.
Buy & Sell Data
$OCEAN is the default unit of exchange to buy & sell data in Ocean Market. Users can earn $OCEAN by publishing data in Ocean Market, or by creating their own Ocean-powered market.

4. What is the main product of Ocean Protocol?

(Source)

The main product of Ocean Protocol is datatokens, which serve as the on-ramp and off-ramp for data assets into DeFi. Through the use of datatokens, Ocean Protocol essentially enables access (licensing) to databases so that data can be monetized and sold.

How Datatokens work

Datatokens are ERC-20 tokens that enable access to data services. Each data service gets its own datatoken and anyone can access a dataset if you hold 1.0 datatokens. 
To access a dataset, you send 1.0 datatokens to the data provider, and to give access to someone else, you send them 1.0 datatokens. 
That’s it. It’s really that simple. 
Now here’s a real-world example:
Say you have a website about dogs and you have a bunch of analytics tools in there that track what people like to read or what breeds are rising in popularity. 
This data is valuable for someone who has a pet store and it can be helpful to predict upcoming trends and to make smarter decisions on their website, (ie. what products to highlight better, or what products it's better to cut off). 
Now here’s how Ocean Protocol and its datatokens come into play:
The website owner becomes an Ocean Protocol data provider and receives their very own datatoken. This datatoken represents the website’s valuable data and can be sold to people interested in this data (pet store owners) in a DEX manner (decentralized marketplaces for data). 
The website owner (datatoken seller) can set a fixed price for their database or allow for its price discovery on the open market. 

Datatoken Features

Datatokens are the interface to connect data assets with blockchain and DeFi tools (source)

Connect data assets with blockchain and DeFi tools
Datatokens repurpose ERC-20 crypto wallets as data wallets, crypto exchanges as data marketplaces, DAO’s become data co-ops, and more via DeFi composability. 
Datatokens simply bring data into crypto ecosystems powered by Ethereum DeFi. 
Drive more value to DeFi
Datatokens bridge the multibillion-dollar data industry into DeFi assets under management, and help valuable data get used to optimize DeFi yields and capital efficiency.
Simple decentralized access control
Datatokens combine the benefits of decentralized access control with a simple developer experience, user experience, and code.

5. What is Ocean Marketplace?

Ocean Marketplace website homepage

Ocean Marketplace is a place to find, publish, and trade data sets in the Ocean Network. It’s where sellers and buyers meet with a bunch of various data sets being sold from altcoin sentiment data, to consumer brand preferences, to health data, and more. 
For example, this particular data set of “Amazon.com product page data” is for sale on the Ocean Marketplace for 21,672.597 OCEAN ($11,655.02 USD):

(Source)

The above dataset is 5.3 GBs of data that has been processed to extract the main components of the product offering on the product page. The dataset package includes images, prices, brand names, descriptions, number of reviews, ratio positive reviews, discount percentages, and more. 
Potential buyers can download a sample of the dataset for free; they can check the datatoken validity via Etherscan; and they can view the name of the seller, the date the dataset was created, and the date it was published. 

How to Earn on Someone’s Data

Ocean Marketplace Pool for the above-mentioned dataset

Similar to Uniswap, you don't have to be a creator of the token to profit from its trading fees. You can simply add liquidity to the pool and enjoy 10% of the swap fees.
In the screenshot above, you’ll see the pool contains the native $OCEAN token as well as $LUMISTA (which is the name the creator of this dataset came up with). 
Since the $LUMISTA token is included in the pool, this means the creator of this pool allows for price discovery of their dataset and you can become one of the liquidity providers by either depositing $OCEAN or $LUMISTA. 
By staking $OCEAN tokens into a dataset pool, stakers receive a portion of the transaction fee. This fee is a percentage of sales volume and the higher the sales volume, the more you earn. Also, stakers get paid proportional to how much liquidity they provide. 
That said, it’s easy to see how staking on datasets in the Ocean Marketplace is similar to providing liquidity on Uniswap. 

6. Where to Store $OCEAN?

Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) is an ERC-20 token residing on top of the public Ethereum blockchain. That said, you can store OCEAN in any ERC-20 token supported wallet.
However, the best wallets for storing OCEAN are non-custodial Web3 wallets that provide seamless access to the best DeFi applications, like the Ocean Market App. 
That said, DeFi wallets are the best for storing OCEAN because the token is widely used and supported in the Ethereum-DeFi ecosystem. 

Popular Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) Wallets:

• Trust Wallet (mobile)
• Argent (mobile)
• Coinbase Wallet (mobile)
• Ledger Nano S (hardware)
• Metamask (web)

In addition to the above-listed wallets, Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) can be stored on a wide variety of other reputable wallets supporting ERC-20 tokens.

7. Where to Buy & Sell $OCEAN?

Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) can be bought and sold on a peer-to-peer (P2P) basis but the most popular way to buy, sell, or trade $OCEAN is through centralized and decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges.
You can buy and sell OCEAN with cryptocurrency or fiat currency at the following top DEXes and exchanges. In most cases, you will be able to buy OCEAN with BTC, ETH, or stablecoins.

• Binance - BTC, USDT, BUSD, BNB
• Uniswap - WETH
• Kucoin - BTC, ETH
• Balancer - WETH
• Gate.io - USDT

In addition to the exchanges listed above, Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) is also traded on a variety of other exchanges and platforms that enable people to buy, sell, or trade cryptocurrencies.
Hope you enjoyed that read, Let me know if I have missed something in the comments.
Ethereum DeFi Decentralized Exchange liquidity Big Data Ocean Protocol (OCEAN)