An all-female startup called ChainCollective has announced its soft launch on International Women’s Day and is using blockchain tech to help people control and monetise their data.

Oil and other tangible commodities are being pushed up in price right now due to the war in Ukraine, but data is increasingly thought of as the most valuable resource on the planet. In fact, “data is the new oil” was a phrase coined by British mathematician Clive Humby some 15 years ago.

Growing exponentially with the rise of social media, data is a somewhat bewildering resource – one that has vulnerabilities with the potential for exploitation from large, centralised entities such as Facebook and Google.

And that’s what ChainCollective, which is based in Sydney, has in mind as it tests the waters with a limited “soft launch” of its service. The company has been set up to create a transparent data-sharing framework for consumers and businesses, with fair profit in mind for those involved.

The idea is to enable consumers to gain greater control over how their data is shared and to monetise it to earn a passive income, charging companies a fee to market and advertise to them directly.

A basic overview of ChainCollective’s interoperability with the Web2 and Web3 worlds. (Source:ccollective.io)

 

Co-founder Jenny Walker, said: “As the blockchain becomes more the ‘internet of money’, the functionality which follows should improve control of our financial opportunities and decisions, our online privacy and security.

“ChainCollective believes data privacy and safety is a fundamental right,” continued Walker. “We aim to improve personal data governance in an easily accessible way, driving equality, opportunity and freedom.”

Greta Menzies, the company’s other founder, added: “We’re offering an alternative approach to enable companies to provide transparency of where and how they are using customer data.”

 

A booming consumer-data market

According to figures from a “Global Customer Data Platform Market” report released by Marqual IT Solutions in 2021, the consumer-data platform market is estimated to be worth US$3.5 billion.

And that’s a figure forecasted to grow to more than US$20.5 billion over the next five years, as businesses face higher costs due to an increase in governance, with consumers demanding more transparency on how their data is used.


ChainCollective will begin trialling its beta platform product later this year in its push to democratise data and simplify the nebulous concept of data as a resource.

 

Read MoreBlockchainData Centre

You might be interested in