Proposed Ocean Market Outreach Pillars and Tactics

The below strategic plan and its tactics were developed together with the support of various Ocean Protocol community members.

The Data Ocean

General Objective

The proposed pillars may serve as a foundation of general outreach tactics surrounding Ocean Protocol technology and specifically the Ocean Marketplace.

Based on discussions held with community members from a variety of backgrounds, we aim to summarize our insights in the following article.

Current Challenges

The asset class of Data Tokens is a “niche within a niche” of the blockchain and cryptocurrency eco-system. Furthermore, the underlying asset of “data” may not be as visual as for instance artworks that build the foundation for the success of NFTs. Data exchange, possibly one of the most promising use-cases of blockchain, may be difficult to understand and requires a great deal of explanation to support the opportunity of unlocking the full potential of Data Tokens.

Potential Target Audience

To understand the effect our outreach tactics have, we first need to analyze the various participants that play a role in the Ocean Protocol eco-system and Ocean Marketplace.

• Data Curators: This group has a variety of objectives. Firstly, data curators are looking to make a positive financial return with their activities, which include trading cryptocurrency or earning a passive income through “farming” and “staking”. We assume that this audience aims for the highest possible return with the lowest risk. Their role? Over time, curators evaluate the underlying datasets of Data Token liquidity pools on the Ocean Marketplace and allocate their $OCEAN tokens towards the Data Token assets that prove the most promising utility. They act as AMMs (Automated Market Makers) and provide liquidity to Data Token pools, earning passive income off Data Tokens with the highest utility / lowest risk. Curators may also buy & hold Data Tokens, signaling an increased demand for the most valuable datasets.
• Data Publishers: This audience aims to generate a positive return by offering their data or algorithms on the Ocean Marketplace for consumers. They own the commercial rights to the dataset and create their own Data Tokens as a medium of exchange for their asset. Data publishers may primarily have a financial objective and we assume that they wish to offer their data at the lowest risk with a balanced price / data value ratio to encourage as much data sales volume as possible. Their role? Supply valuable data towards the Ocean Marketplace, which is well maintained and attracts data consumers.
• Data Consumers: This audience visits the Ocean Marketplace to access the underlying datasets with the help of Data Tokens, in order to serve their purpose. Data consumers may include data scientists, researchers, companies, governments or individuals looking to solve challenges and make predictions with the help of methods like machine-learning. Currently, this audience visits a variety of digital services that offer publicly accessible datasets. The challenges with such services include that the data is not well-maintained, download links expire or data may be inaccessible due to certain restrictions. Generally, utility of data markets are important to this audience, as researchers commonly call data streams through a line of code or download the whole dataset at the click of a button, before training a model. Adding the layer of onboarding to using cryptocurrency, which buys access to the dataset, may lead to challenges, unless the underlying datasets are valuable and “requested”. Their role? This audience provide the foundation of network value, as utility and demand of both Data Tokens and $OCEAN will increase with increased dataset downloads. Therefore, publishers and curators alike will benefit from this audience. A summary & list of current platforms has been created by Ocean community member Salem and can be reviewed here.

Ocean Market Outreach Pillars

In order to establish effective tactics, we discussed the various pillars that affect our respective target audience groups. Naturally, these are assumptive and some findings may be generalized.

1. Outreach Channel

• Depending on the content, social channels appeal to mainly data curators, especially since the Ocean Marketplace and Ocean Protocol in general can be linked to cryptocurrency. We have identified above that adopting cryptocurrency to buy access to datasets may be a hurdle for data consumers to onboard to the Ocean Market.
• General PR, blog-posts and news articles may have a broader reach towards all three target groups, depending on the publishing entity.
• Targeted digital initiatives and search engine optimization may have a positive effect on both data publishers and data consumers. Supported with the right content and analysis, effective keywords related to accessing datasets and data-streams could lead to a broader adoption of the Ocean Market. Here, we are targeting existing users of the platforms outlined here. In-person or virtual attendance at events targeting users of the existing “Web2” data economy may also have a positive return.

2. Content

Content is key. In order to capture the highest success in adoption of the Ocean Market, we assume that only content surrounding the utility of the Ocean Marketplace will have the greatest outcome, as it has a positive effect for all three target groups. Therefore, all general outreach initiatives should surround the Ocean Protocol Marketplace or include an educational aspect covering the Web3 data economy and the underlying asset class of Data Tokens.

General Condition: Positive ROI

Every outreach idea or tactic should aim towards a positive return for the Ocean Market. Digital activations can be tracked through engagement, leading to better insights to assumed returns.

Outreach Tactics

Based on the above and with the help of Ocean Protocol community, Data Whale established the below outreach tactics that play an integral role for the OceanDAO Round 10 Proposal.

1. Third-Party Service: PR Agency

We aim to collaborate with a crypto-native PR agency and have reached out to several companies, such as Luna PR or Hype Partners, to support our endeavors to distribute educational Ocean Market content across media. Our last Medium article about the Web3 data economy was picked up by the Middle East’s leading blockchain news outlet and created engagement across other channels, such as LinkedIn targeting data publishers, data curators and data consumers alike.

2. Ocean Market Impression Mining

Targeting the group of data curators, we have proposed a trial of the Ocean Market Impression Mining program, which is based on Index Coop’s incentive structure.

3. Targeting Data Consumers

With the help of our PR agency and SEO specialists, we are aiming to optimize our channels towards targeting users of existing data exchange platforms and highlight the benefit of using the privacy-preserving, secure Ocean Marketplace.

Above tactics and article is work-in-progress and will be implemented gradually in case Data Whale is eligible to receive the proposed grant for OceanDAO Round 10.