Portex Overview

Our goal is to start with a complete vertical, from data collection and ownership all the way to data commercialization. Let's break down how this works.

In order to seed our marketplace with data, we are providing a way for Web3 users to fetch and take ownership of their data from the Web2 world.

However, as covered in Previous Attempts, simply offering ways for users to own their data is very niche and at this stage does not provide enough utility to build a user base. What's more, as evidenced by current Web2 behemoths, users produce valuable data when they interact with applications that provide immediate utility, like social media platforms.

That's why we're building Pledges, a set of fun applications that combine onchain primitives and real-world data. Pledges are connected to Web2 APIs and make it easy for users to take ownership of their data while using their favorite applications. Pledges provide immediate utility, help users fetch their data, and seed data in our marketplace if they desire to do so.

Data from Pledges is written into a Vault, an encrypted onchain contract owned by users that stores their data. Our work on Vaults is ongoing and we will share more about it soon™ but a simple analogy is that of a password-protected data folder that lives onchain. Vaults are also being designed to support enterprise data sellers and Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) companies.

Our Marketplace enables data to be exchanged atomically using a novel mechanism. We envision this marketplace to be used to commercialize a plethora of data products. However, in order to beat the cold start problem of bootstrapping a market, let alone for data, we are starting with a highly focused data product, Wilbur, which enables onchain applications to identify Sybils.

Wilbur is based on our research around Reputation Oracles, a specifically trained feed-forward neural network (FFN) that classifies smart contracts as Reputable or Malicious with 94% accuracy, 87% precision and 85% recall. Wilbur applies the same classification principle to addresses in order to determine behavior as Sybil or non-Sybil. Wilbur is a natural buyer of data produced via Pledges as this type of data can serve as a pseudo Proof-of-Personhood (PoP).