Knowledge portability is a commonly-repeated promise of crypto. “Take your followers and social graph throughout the web.” “Carry your online game gadgets throughout video games and platforms.” “Log into any web site with a single, unified identification.” These claims have excited builders and builders, however haven’t but gone mainstream.
Latest platform shifts have highlighted the fragility of our digital lives. With talks of a possible TikTok ban, creators face shedding years of content material and viewers relationships in a single day. In the meantime, as US customers embrace new AI fashions like DeepSeek, inbuilt China, they face comparable questions on the place their information lives and who may get entry to it.
These are signs of a basic downside: customers do not really personal or management their information. We reside on rented land.
A lot of in the present day’s main crypto traders wrote about information portability and person sovereignty within the early days of Web2. This imaginative and prescient of an web — the place customers, not platforms, management their digital lives — was one of many driving forces behind crypto. Whereas crypto has succeeded in monetary functions, this promise of moveable information and a self-sovereign web stays unfulfilled.
We have seen many makes an attempt: NFTs letting you carry gadgets throughout video games, decentralized social networks like Farcaster and Bluesky promising moveable social graphs, and verifiable identification requirements. None have (but) seen widespread adoption.
The fact? Whereas early web thinkers care deeply concerning the rules of information sovereignty, most customers have a less complicated query: What can I truly do with it?
With out AI, most information is barely related inside the walled gardens of the platform it’s on. With AI, it turns into a valued digital commodity and a device to energy practically each utility. Your message historical past helps AI perceive your writing model, your preferences, and your relationships. With many customers storing their information in self-sovereign wallets, builders can construct AI experiences which are really personalised. AI lastly gives the “why” on information portability, within the type of a greater product expertise reasonably than ideology alone.
There may be nonetheless a chilly begin downside. It’s inconvenient for customers to attach their information. And for builders, the mindset in the present day is: in the event you persuade customers to add their information to your platform, why would you make it simple for them to take it elsewhere? This creates a cycle the place every new platform turns into one other walled backyard, recreating the very downside they got down to resolve.
That is the place new incentive buildings might lastly break the extractive cycle. DataDAOs create a direct alternative for customers to port their information by way of monetary incentives, fixing the chilly begin downside, as long as the info is onboarded in a self-sovereign, interoperable approach, like on Vana. As extra customers carry their information into these interoperable methods, builders can construct functions that weren’t doable earlier than.
Think about a customized well being coach that may analyze your sleep information from Oura, your exercises from Strava, your vitamin from meals supply apps, and your stress ranges from communication patterns.
Or, an AI assistant that actually understands you as a result of it might entry your full digital historical past whereas sustaining your privateness by way of granular permissions.
This solves a vital downside that has plagued previous makes an attempt at information portability. Customers will not export their information with out clear advantages, and builders will not construct for moveable information with out customers. Knowledge DAOs break this impasse by making it instantly worthwhile for customers to attach information.
Extra importantly, as soon as customers make their information self-sovereign, totally new sorts of functions turn into doable. AI brokers can entry your full digital historical past to offer really personalised experiences. Builders can construct functions that mix information in ways in which weren’t doable when it was siloed throughout platforms.
We all know there’s a number of demand for AI coaching information – many main mannequin suppliers are poised to hit a knowledge wall quickly, making them seek for publicly unavailable datasets to coach newer, higher-performing fashions. New fashions like DeepSeek have proven the worth of top quality information, with rigorously curated human-generated examples to bootstrap their novel coaching technique. On the identical time, person information insurance policies like GDPR and CCPA legally require platforms to permit customers to export their information in a usable, standardized format. Networks like Vana enable customers to monetize their information by collectively bargaining with mannequin trainers in want of worthwhile coaching information now not out there on the general public web, and make it interoperable for true information sovereignty.
Two forces converging – the proliferation of AI, and new monetary incentives – create the potential for each customers and builders to learn from information portability. The pursuits of customers, builders, and information networks lastly align. Customers acquire rapid worth plus higher AI experiences, builders get entry to wealthy person information to construct new functions, and networks develop stronger with every new participant.
For the primary time, now we have each the expertise to make information portability worthwhile and the incentives to drive adoption.
Crypto has but to ship on its authentic promise of a self-sovereign, interoperable web the place customers personal their information, unfettered by Web2’s walled gardens. By creating monetary incentives to carry information onboard and leveraging AI’s capabilities, we lastly have a window of alternative to make the web really user-owned.