Introducing Ocean Protocol South Africa
Ocean Protocol South Africa Community
The advent of blockchain & Web 3.0 technologies has spawned some interesting and exciting opportunities for industry and civil society in general.
Banks can now make cross-border B2B multi billion-dollar transactions at the fraction of the cost and time. This is evident in Standard Bank’s partnership with Hedera Hashgraph. You and I have the opportunity to build unique businesses on top of the technology or simply invest in the cryptocurrency market to diversify our sources of income. The possibilities keep growing.
Because of the decentralised and secure nature of the underpinning technology; the creation, ownership and transfer of value have been flipped on their heads. The rise of Decentralised Finance (DeFi) has revolutionised and democratised investment and financial markets and made them more accessible. A great example, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have opened up the previously exclusive art collectors market. Anyone can invest in a collection of digital art pieces they like with unhindered protected ownership rights. Or invest in exclusive Fashion-inspired NFTs at RTFKT.
In a similar fashion, the creation, ownership, and transfer of personal and enterprise data have been disrupted. For the first time ever, the average person can get direct value from their personal data as big tech companies have been for all these years. Thanks to Ocean Market, by Ocean Protocol. Ocean Protocol is a decentralised data exchange protocol that unlocks data for AI. Ocean Protocol uses advanced blockchain technology that allows data to be shared and sold in a safe, secure and transparent manner (see: Compute-To-Data). For years our personal data has been a valuable commodity, until now there has not been a viable technology to enable us to realise this value.
Enter Ocean Protocol South Africa
Mission
Our mission is to facilitate conversation and awareness around the Web 3.0 data economy and its promise to South Africans and local enterprises. We are building a vibrant and sustainable community of Data Scientists, Software Engineers, and Enthusiasts with a shared mission of helping South Africans solve their problems with this technology.
Why South Africa?
Because of our unique history, South Africa has the highest income inequality in the world. Simply, the rich are too rich, and the poor are too poor.
We have an unemployment rate of more than 30%, and an even worse youth unemployment rate of more than 50%.
By utilising Ocean Protocol, we aim to introduce creative and innovative ways in which fellow citizens can unlock direct value with their personal online information.
According to the South African Social Media Landscape report by Ornico and World Wide Worx, at the beginning of 2020, more than 64% of adults in South Africa were using the Internet, amounting to 38,19-million users.
These numbers coincide with the user increases reported by each of the top internet services providers.
Therefore, the most growth in Internet use — and therefore social media use — can be attributed to ubiquitous devices like mobile phones.
Furthermore, the explosion in social media use coincides with an explosion in the use of mobile apps.
This directly results in an explosion of user personal data that is streaming the Internet — and therefore an increase in user data use cases.
The government has initiated the auction process for spectrum, which will make the cost of accessing the internet significantly cheaper.
Ocean Protocol South Africa understands the tremendous value that would be unlocked by the result of all this.
We have a mission to help fellow citizens drink from the faucet of the reservoir that holds the value of their private data.
South Africa as an innovation hub has a competitive advantage to see this through because of our robust innovation ecosystems in Western Cape and Gauteng — and still growing.
We are home to a one of its kind Data Science institutions, Explore Data Science Academy, which produces world-class Data Scientists annually.
We intend on the optimal utilisation of our inherent advantages, and various other unique networks and ecosystems to realise the project’s mandate.
Contribute to the project
We encourage anyone and everyone who would like to find out more and get involved in this innovative project to reach out to us:
Email: oceanprotocolza@gmail.com
