Masa’s Avalanche subnet to power decentralized data marketplace
Knowledge community Masa Finance, which describes itself as architecting the “decentralized Google for the AI period,” is ready to launch a decentralized information community and market in Q1 2024.
Masa is collaborating with the managed blockchain service AvaCloud to deploy a gasless Avalanche subnet (application-specific blockchain). The customizable blockchain will probably be designed to deal with excessive volumes of zero-knowledge encrypted information effectively and cost-effectively, in keeping with an announcement.
Masa beforehand secured $3.5 million in pre-seed funding to construct its decentralized credit score information protocol in Could 2022.
The subnet represents an growth of Masa’s current information protocol. The venture, the group says, goals to offer customers management again over their private information and be compensated for its use. “We have been doing credit score information in early 2022, after which generalized the know-how for all consumer information beginning August 2022. This [subnet] for information analytics is extra of an growth in scope,” a Masa spokesperson advised The Block.
“We explored totally different choices out there when deciding on the infrastructure to construct a devoted Masa blockchain,” Masa co-founder Brendan Playford stated. “Constructing on Avalanche utilizing AvaCloud, Masa is ready to launch a gasless self-sovereign chain which allows excessive throughput of transactions and powers use instances that devour excessive volumes of personal information – all at a low value.”
Masa can also be receiving assist from the Avalanche Basis and funding from Avalanche’s Blizzard Fund to assist develop the platform. The funding quantity was not disclosed. This comes after NodeKit lately closed a $1.2 million pre-seed spherical to additionally construct an Avalanche-based community for rollups.
How Masa works
Masa’s system makes use of a zero-knowledge soulbound token (zkSBT) that acts as a private information locker — a digital instrument designed to securely handle and management a person’s private information. It encrypts and shops people’ digital footprints and social graphs to make sure privateness of their exercise, comparable to participation in web3 communities or use of decentralized purposes.
The group claims that over 890,000 consumer wallets have permissioned greater than 8 million information occasions on Masa over the previous yr. With the launch of its zk-data market, customers will have the ability to view their data of their zkSBT locker and share that information within the market by way of staking in return for compensation. As an example, customers might permit monetary establishments to entry their Masa zkSBT for age verification with out accessing their delivery date.
“That is the right structure to assist our zk-data community and market,” Masa co-founder Calanthia Mei added. “By deploying on a devoted Avalanche subnet, main monetary establishments, AI startups, and large-scale shopper tech purposes can entry safe, scalable, zk-encrypted consumer information with out paying any fuel.”
Masa argues that the proprietary silos of massive tech firms exploit private information with out consumer consent or compensation — one thing that’s worsened by the proliferation of AI as demand for peoples’ private information grows exponentially to coach fashions and brokers.
