Understanding Web 3.0 Solution Swash: Empowering Users to Control Data Ownership
Swash enables users to control the ownership of their data and profit from it, unlocking more potential value from data, the "oil and diamond mines of the 21st century."Source: Rhythm Research Institute
Background Introduction
Web 3.0 is a term that has recently become familiar to everyone. Its biggest difference from Web 2.0 may be that we can have ownership of the output products, including text, videos, and data, etc. This article will focus on data, which, as the core resource of the digital economy and information society, is hailed as the "oil and diamond mine of the 21st century." It has become one of the five production factors alongside land, labor, capital, and technology. However, people lack ownership of data; individuals cannot control the direction of their data, cannot control the processes of collecting, using, and selling data, and cannot obtain any profits generated from the data. On the other hand, businesses are also troubled by issues such as data silos and expensive data intermediaries, and data scientists waste a lot of time and resources on trivial tasks like data cleaning and data loading. So, how can we solve these problems? Perhaps the project Swash introduced today can help us answer some of these questions.
Project Overview
Project Introduction
Swash is a tool and an ecosystem designed to reconstruct data ownership, enabling individuals, businesses, and developers to unlock the potential value of data by integrating, securely sharing, and monetizing data. For individuals, they can regain ownership of their data through Swash and earn passive income while surfing the web; for businesses, they can scale up the acquisition of high-quality first-party data through the Swash platform, saving time and money by eliminating intermediaries and reducing the impact of ad fraud and bots; for developers and data scientists, they can conveniently develop and provide data solutions through the Swash SDK, and they can also deploy custom algorithms on the Swash platform, using the vast amount of data on the platform to "feed" the algorithms and accelerate innovation.
Solutions
The solutions provided by Swash include: Data Union, sIntelligence (in development), sApps (not launched), and sCompute (not launched). The specific details are as follows:
Data Union
The Swash Data Union is a hub for user data. The Swash browser extension is the first and largest data union of Swash. By installing the Swash browser extension (similar to a wallet), users become members of the data union, and relevant data from their web browsing will be automatically captured and uploaded to the data union after a customizable time. Users can also view the data waiting to be uploaded in the Swash extension. When businesses purchase data from the data union, 70% of the revenue will be distributed to the users who contributed the data. Additionally, individuals, teams, and companies can create their own exclusive data unions. Currently, the browsers supported by Swash include: Firefox, Chrome, and all Chromium-based browsers (Chromium, Microsoft Edge Insider, Brave, UC Browser, Opera). The Android and iOS mobile versions are currently under development.
The earnings users receive will be distributed in the form of SWASH Tokens, which can currently be withdrawn to the Ethereum mainnet and xDai. After using Swash for about a week, I earned approximately 0.1 SWASH as a reward (about $0.03).
Swash Main Interface
While browsing the web, Swash will automatically upload data to the data union, and users can view the uploaded data on the data upload interface. They can delete data according to their preferences or upload data after a customizable time (default is 2 minutes).
Data Upload Interface
sIntelligence
sIntelligence is primarily aimed at enterprise clients. Businesses need to fully understand their industry, market, and competitors to gain a competitive advantage. However, commercial giants currently monopolize a large amount of data. The sIntelligence platform from Swash aims to break this unequal competitive landscape. By analyzing the vast amount of data aggregated in the data union, the sIntelligence platform can provide businesses with a series of indicators, including demographic composition, cross-traffic, basic upstream and downstream metrics, summary reports of searches and clicks, channel conversion rates, market share at the subcategory/SKU level, and more. Additionally, the sIntelligence platform can provide businesses with regular trend data for their industry and market, helping them make better decisions. Businesses can also customize the sIntelligence dashboard and generate tailored market reports. When businesses pay for the sIntelligence platform, most of the revenue will be distributed to the data contributors.
sApps
Developers providing data solutions can join the Swash ecosystem by developing Swash applications (sApps). The SDK provided by Swash allows application developers to communicate directly with users to better understand them, and users can earn rewards by using sApps. Swash will initially develop five types of sApps, including: sAd, sPoll, sRecommender, sAdivisory, and sAirdrop.
sAd (Swash Advertising Platform): sAd is a fair, transparent, and efficient advertising platform created using the underlying architecture of Swash. Advertisers can push ads to users who join sAd, and users can earn rewards by watching ads.
sPoll: Polls and surveys are important sources of primary data, but people lack motivation to fill out regular surveys seriously. Users of sPoll can earn rewards for completing surveys, while businesses can collect more valuable and insightful data.
sRecommender: The Swash recommendation system can accurately recommend content to users by analyzing user behavior data, and similarly, data contributors will receive rewards.
sAdivisory: Primarily helps online businesses establish their own consulting services, providing suitable products and services to customers.
sAirdrop: Provides token airdrop solutions for cryptocurrency startups.
sCompute
This solution is mainly targeted at data scientists and developers (especially in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning). They can deploy their algorithms on Swash and use the vast amount of data in the Swash data union to "feed" the algorithms and accelerate innovation. This solution can save data scientists and developers a lot of time (such as in data cleaning and data loading tasks), and they do not need to pay for data purchases; they only need to pay for computation and access results, which are included in the dataset. They can also resell these datasets to gain additional revenue.
Project Team (Including Consultants)
Swash is a project incubated in the UK, co-founded by four co-founders. Team members have extensive work experience in technology, marketing, software security, and other fields. Additionally, collaborating consultants can provide guidance on policy, compliance, strategy, and more. Below are the detailed information of core team members and collaborating consultants:
Swash Co-founder and CEO Reza Naeeni: Reza Naeeni studied business administration at Multimedia University (MMA) in Malaysia for his undergraduate degree and pursued a master's degree in education at KU Leuven in Belgium. After graduation, he worked as a project manager at the Iranian software company Gam Electronics, providing technical deployment and digital transformation advice to public service enterprises. He later served as the personnel and organizational process leader at Novo Nordisk, a publicly traded pharmaceutical company.
Ioana Surpateanu: Chief Strategy Officer of the Swiss non-profit organization DIA (Decentralised Information Asset), previously co-head of government affairs for Citibank in Europe, with over 15 years of experience in blockchain and cryptocurrency, specializing in strategic design and implementation as well as EU policy-related work.
Gilbert Hill: Privacy technology expert, co-founder of financial data solution provider FinFlo, founding member of the Data Privacy Protocol Alliance.
Swash Co-founder and CTO Ebrahim Khalilzadeh: Has over 10 years of experience in software security, previously worked at Behsazan, a company providing banking solution software development, as the head of software security.
Swash Chief Marketing Officer Chloe Diamand: Has over 6 years of experience in technology, art, and blockchain, primarily engaged in digital marketing and user experience, helping tech companies understand their audience through targeted content creation and publishing, social media and community management, and building brand and user identity. Chloe Diamand has worked at the Museum of Contemporary Digital Art (MoCDA) in London and Stockomatics (generating investment reports through AI data analysis).
Swash Co-founder Masoud Sarabadani: Swash DevOps engineer responsible for managing computing infrastructure in artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Swash Co-founder Mehrdad Abdi: A PhD student in computer science at the University of Antwerp (UAntwerpen), researching the synthesis of xUnit test cases using intelligent algorithms.
Funding Situation
Swash Partners & Investors
According to public information, Swash has completed two rounds of financing so far, raising a total of $19 million. The specific financing situation is as follows:
On November 3, Swash raised $12 million through IDO, with the SWASH Token IDO sale price set at $0.24, selling a total of 50 million tokens (5% of total supply).
On October 8, Swash completed a $7 million private placement round, led by Kucoin, Outlier Ventures, and Streamr.
Token Economic Model Analysis
Token Distribution
SWASH Token Distribution Mechanism
The Swash protocol token is SWASH, with a total supply of 1 billion. The current circulating supply is approximately 85.5 million tokens, with 47% of the total tokens allocated to investment institutions, team members, and consultants, and 28% of the tokens used for the development of the Swash ecosystem and community. In terms of token release, most of the early investors' tokens will be released linearly after the project starts, with approximately 426 million tokens unlocked one year after the project starts. The specific allocation details are as follows:
Total Supply: 1,000,000,000 SWASH
150,000,000 SWASH (15%): Foundation (released cliff after 24 months of project launch)
150,000,000 SWASH (15%): Founders (released linearly after 5 months of project launch)
140,000,000 SWASH (14%): Ecosystem and DAO development (released linearly after 1 month of project launch)
140,000,000 SWASH (14%): Community and platform rewards (released linearly after project launch)
100,000,000 SWASH (10%): Team and advisors (released linearly after 3 months of project launch)
90,000,000 SWASH (9%): Pre-seed round investors (released linearly after 5 months of project launch)
30,000,000 SWASH (3%): Seed round investors (released linearly after project launch)
50,000,000 SWASH (5%): Strategic round investors (released linearly after project launch)
50,000,000 SWASH (5%): Pre-sale investors (released linearly after project launch)
50,000,000 SWASH (5%): Public sale investors (no lock-up period)
Token Value Capture
The Swash protocol token can be used for participating in protocol governance, incentivizing ecosystem participants, trading data, and staking to provide liquidity, among other uses, as follows:
Governance: Holders of Swash tokens can vote to support projects they wish to receive funding from the Swash DAO fund, decide on new roadmap developments or modifications, and participate in token-related decisions.
Incentives: Participants in the Swash ecosystem can earn tokens as rewards for participation.
Trading: Data trading on all markets, platforms, and applications of Swash can be settled using SWASH. This includes the Swash business intelligence analysis platform (sIntelligence), data computing environment (sCompute), and various solutions developed using Swash technology (sApps).
Other Uses: SWASH tokens can be staked to provide liquidity, allowing stakers to earn more passive income from their data; SWASH token holders can benefit from data reward conversions between Swash and other products through collaborations; SWASH token holders can also support humanitarian causes through the donation feature in the upcoming Swash applications.
Project Roadmap
Swash Future Roadmap
Regarding data contributors, Swash can currently collect user data to the data union through its browser extension, but the sIntelligence platform for data buyers is still under development. In 2022, Swash will launch sCompute, sChannel (a channel for sApps to communicate with users), and release the first sApp.
