Ocean Protocol (OCEAN), a decentralized data exchange protocol aims to connect massive amounts of data with those who can benefit most from it. According to the UN, we create more than 289,000 GB of data per second. Today more than 99% of data produced goes unused, sitting on servers around the world, never to be analyzed. Most data is often owned and hoarded by large AI companies, worried about gaining the competitive edge and their bottom line. Or worse, some of that data which is quite personal to us is simply sold off to the highest bidder without our permission.
Ocean Protocol held to their decentralized ideals and decided to create an equitable and fair process to deliver, share, price, monetize, and utilize data. After all, data needs to be used for mankind to make real significant advances in health, technology, living conditions, environmental sustainability, socio-economic conditions, and just about any measurable metric out there. The protocol allows thousands of different marketplaces and exchanges where all interested parties can access the same data.
But what if this protocol on the web3 blockchain sounds so incredibly confusing and alien to use? How is anyone supposed to actually utilize it if they don’t know what it does nor how it functions? With most new tech there are user interface challenges, as most AI and blockchain programs are complex for potential users. There is no guarantee organizations or individuals will use the protocol especially if they don’t understand how to use it.
Enter the Ocean Academy. An organization built by a community of passionate supporters of the Ocean Protocol with the extraordinary desire to get this tool into the hands of those who can use it most. People who have leveraged their talent and knowledge and whittled some of it down into learning modules directed at instructing users on how to actually use the marketplace. The team provides free instructional data tools and quizzes to ensure comprehension and most recently released a secondary data module instructing users on how to create their own data token.
Users sign up to take the free 1-day module, Data 101, and receive an NFT (non-fungible token) as certification of their newly acquired knowledge. After successful completion of the module, members can opt in to become ambassadors to the academy, supporting the more than thirty colorful and robust community members consisting of coders, developers, marketers, data scientists, super fans, and much more. The idea is to help increase awareness of Ocean Protocol’s tech in one’s local community all while staying up to date and contributing to the academy’s ecosystem.
The academy’s core organization consists of high-level achieving individuals utilizing AGILE methodology project management tools allowing for free-flowing ideas and independent time management. It is a welcoming and friendly community ready to help find the right task suited for individuals based on their particular level of skillsets.
In the four months after successfully relaunching a new website and more robust learning modules, the academy has issued hundreds of certificates of completion and is currently working on their much anticipated third module detailing compute to data.
Anyone interested in learning about how blockchain, web3, and smart contracts work and relate to data is encouraged to head over to oceanacademy.io and sign up.
