OriginTrail DKG: Decentralised and Scalable Knowledge Graph Economy Tools Supporting the "Trusted, traceable and transparent ontological knowledge on blockchain — ONTOCHAIN"

Motivation for the project:

The last two years were challenging in many ways and it also put a light on the currently broken state of the data economy. The only way we can achieve sustainability for such a data economy is by turning data into knowledge and enabling all, organisations and individuals, to take part in the upcoming knowledge economy in a sovereign, human-centric and privacy preserving fashion. With our project, we seek to propose a rounded approach adding to ONTOCHAIN’s distributed storage, core protocols and application protocols stack to facilitate transition from a broken data economy to a trusted, semantic, human-centric and privacy-by-design adopting knowledge economy. We are building our proposition on Trace Labs’ multiple years of work turning data into structured, connected and trusted knowledge with OriginTrail Decentralised Knowledge Graph (OriginTrail DKG). 

Generic use case description:

The OriginTrail DKG proposal is aiming to vastly improve ways data and knowledge are being exchanged in a trustworthy, privacy-preserving and inclusive way in vital sectors such as supply chains, eScience, eCommerce, eInfrastructure and eEducation. This proposal is focusing on the Open Topic aiming to “Develop scalable blockchain, decentralized reputation systems and semantic web technologies, in order to achieve trustworthy content handling and information exchange as well as trustworthy service exchange in the next generation Internet/social networks for vital sectors of the European economy”. 

Essential functionalities:

Crucial knowledge tools allowing of turning scattered, underutilized data into trusted knowledge to have a significantly larger impact are:
-  Knowledge tokens: Knowledge tokens are built utilizing standardised cryptographic (fungible or non-fungible) tokens that act as access control tokens, while having all the characteristics of other cryptographic tokens (e.g. transferability and usability in smart contracts). Anyone holding certain knowledge which is valuable can create a kToken tied to it.
-  Knowledge wallet: to keep ownership over one's knowledge - “own your keys, own your knowledge”. Initial prototypes of the concept have been implemented through the Decentralized EPCIS repository, developed together with the Swiss Railways SBB (at TRL4).
-  Knowledge marketplace: A meeting place of the supply and demand for knowledge. It is a crucial mechanism that facilitates knowledge exchanges, especially in cases where stakeholders do not have a direct connection.
-  Knowledge tenders: By defining key components of the required knowledge (specific domain ontologies, data models, identifier schemes, identity frameworks etc), participants in the Knowledge Economy can use knowledge tenders to crowdsource knowledge.

How these functionalities can be integrated within the software ecosystem:

OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph enables Ontochain core protocol functionalities of identity management and authorization, secure decentralized data storage, certification and knowledge graph semantic services such as verifiable data linking using cryptographic connectors. OriginTrail supports the necessary ontologies and data models such as GS1 CBV and EPCIS standards (to which the Trace Labs team also contributes in developing), and W3C promoted Web of Things, Verifiable Credentials and Decentralized identifiers. Multiple blockchains for the distributed ledger functionalities of Ontochain architecture, initially prototyping using Ethereum VM implementations of smart contracts, currency and identity primitives. However, as Trace Labs is part of the Substrate Builders program (Parity blockchain building framework), an additional implementation through a Substrate based blockchain will be explored (Starfleet).

Gap being addressed:

With our project, we seek to propose a rounded approach adding to ONTOCHAIN’s distributed storage, core protocols and application protocols stack to facilitate transition from a broken data economy to a trusted, semantic, human-centric and privacy-by-design adopting knowledge economy. 

Expected benefits achieved with the novel technology building blocks:

The tools are particularly impactful for individuals and organizations who either have valuable data locked up or have been providing such valuable data to partners in their supply chain (or other business networks) without being compensated for the business value it generates.
We will thus enable individuals and organizations to, on one hand, unlock the dormant value of their data by turning it into knowledge and monetizing it, and on the other hand, access knowledge provided by other Knowledge Economy participants to generate business value. While the Incentivization Tools are built on the open-source OriginTrail technology, we will streamline the way individuals and organizations can utilize by introducing easy to use interfaces into nOS, which is already being used by enterprises like BSI and SBB. This will reduce the complexity and allow the Knowledge Tools to be used with existing as well as new customers and use cases. In other words, we will enable anyone, not only the tech-savvy, to benefit from Knowledge Tools and generate business value - for themselves and other Knowledge Economy participants.

Potential demonstration scenario:

We believe that sustainable interactions are only possible through enablement of trusted knowledge exchange. For that purpose, we will engage with some of our key partners (BSI, Swiss Federal Railways, Oracle, Parity Technologies and others) to validate the OriginTrail DKG approaches and tools. We will utilise our working relationship to ensure that our user interviews will be carried out with relevant stakeholders, increasing the chances of long-term success of the OriginTrail DKG and creating good grounds for dissemination activities.