Blockchains important for data ownership

Enhanced safety and reliability. Greater financial control of your data. Full authority over how your data is used online. These are the benefits blockchain delivers. A new kind of technology infrastructure is going to help us secure our online data and give us more control over it. The magic word is blockchain. How will it work?

Joona Kauranen, a researcher at the University of Oulu, and Nate Holiday, CEO of Space & Time, has the answers.

It's a distributed network that stores data between multiple independent, autonomous and distributed computers. Once an application is created on a blockchain, it is no longer under the control of any single party, not even the creator of the application. This allows transparent, secure and reliable applications to be created. These applications will then be under the collective maintenance of independent service providers. What does this mean in practice, and what impact will it have on the lives of consumers? We talk about digital assets, but what are they?

"The concept is very broad. It covers anything that can be owned in a digital format. Personal data, files and images are all part of the definition. It can also include money, shares and other securities, real estate in the land register or a car registration certificate," says researcher Joona Kauranen.

"At the moment, we only own such digitally registered things through intermediaries. We cannot send money or a security directly to another person the way we send a file or an image. We own the image directly, but the money or security only indirectly through a bank or other middleman."

From consumer to seller?

"Blockchains allow internet users to truly own digital assets and transfer them securely without intermediaries. This gives them greater financial control over their data," says CEO Nate Holiday.

The same is true when it comes to AI and personal data. Today's internet services collect our data and files for free and use them to create valuable AI.

"We don't get paid for it. The goal is to develop blockchains in such a way that they, in turn, allow you to manage your own data directly," reflects Holiday.

Read here the Technology Report Blockchain: From Concepts to Application