Technology

Cardano CEO Charles Hoskinson on Why Today’s Data Landscape is the Biggest Case for Decentralization

Bitcoinist | Aug 07, 2019 | 12:05

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Data is one of the most valuable resources in today’s digital economy. It drives the decision making for companies around the world, and the insights derived from big data determine everything from shopping trends to healthcare diagnosis. 

People’s unbridled participation in the internet economy – where every view, like, click, and retweet is collected into a veritable treasure trove of articulable insights – has created an incredible data deluge that is causing tension in 2019. 

Collectively, people are creating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day, big data is bigger than ever before, and this creates both risk and opportunity for the companies that possess it. 

Indeed, cybercriminals and bad actors know the value of these data stores, and they are targeting companies with sophisticated combinations of malware, phishing attacks, and other methodologies to wrestle this information free. 

This is expensive for companies, and it’s terrible for consumers. IBM’s 2019 Cost of a Data Breach Study found that companies can expect to shell out nearly $4 million for a data breach. At the same time, global privacy regulations are aiding with consumers, giving them more power and control over their information and charging companies to protect it.

AI and predictive analytics – two data-driven necessities in today’s globally competitive economy – grow in prominence, they are directly intersecting with these problems. 

To ensure a best-of-both-worlds approach in which companies get the insights they need without compromising consumer privacy, something has to change, and that functionality is occurring through decentralization. 

Decentralizing Big Data 

Today’s data sets are already established, and companies are now scrambling to protect this information while still garnering the critical insights that it reveals. Consequently, the case for decentralization has never been more apparent. 

While this term has taken on many meanings in the era of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, decentralization for the data economy represents disbursement and empowerment.

To put it simply, when no one controls data, everyone is empowered to glean from its insights without compromising security or privacy. Endor a platform providing AI-powered business is at the center of this transition towards decentralization. 

The company’s services, often compared to the Google of analytics, have already been applied at enterprise initiatives including The Coca-Cola Company and Israeli intelligence services. Their Endor Protocol strives to secure and improve data analytics by providing a fully-decentralized platform. 

Ethereum co-founder and Cardano CEO Charles Hoskinson recently joined the project as an advisor, and he conveyed recently discussed the importance of decentralization in an interview with Endor co-founder and CEO, Dr. Yaniv Altshuler. 

Noting that that today’s internet economy is dominated by middlemen that clog the process and create opportunities for compromise, Mr. Hoskinson advocates for decentralization as a methodology for empowerment that improves the experience for both companies and consumers. 

Describing them as “middlemen of necessity,” Mr. Hoskinson notes that “they take, and they take value out of the transaction, they aggregate large amounts of data they do whatever they need to do for their particular business model.”

Endor is disrupting this business model by allowing people to upload information directly to that platform. This data is encrypted and analyzed, protecting privacy at every step, essentially making it a GDPR compliant solution. Dr. Altshuler sees that “Whatever you want to know, you can ask, and you don’t need to disclose the semantics of your questions.”

In other words, it’s a powerful privacy initiative through and through. 

Capable and Secure 

Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are disrupting virtually every industry, but none may be as affected as big data. 

As companies increasingly rely on this information to make strategic decisions, they have to find a way to gain critical insights without compromising personal privacy or data security. 

Decentralization is the best way forward. 

Doing this without compromise is incredibly challenging. Endor is relying on its native EDR token to provide the incentive to create a dynamic platform that can meet this modern challenge, and already, the solution is being put to the test. 

A South African banking network is deploying the Endor protocol to make lending decisions. Moreover, Endor won Metlife’s 2019 Innovation Challenge, and they will partner with the insurance giant to bring a new approach to data analytics to reshape the insurance industry. 

Moreover, as Dr. Altshuler told Mr. Hoskinson, “we already work with several SMBs that can analyze their data or public data sets that we support with Endor Protocol in order to ask predictive questions.”

Today’s data landscape isn’t showing any signs of slowing down, but decentralization is the way to make it work for everyone, something that Endor is setting out to prove one metric at a time.