Ontology (ONT) is a public blockchain and distributed trust ecosystem that provides a modular framework to verify identity, access data securely, and run applications for the NEO smart economy.
Ontology can be used to verify the identity of people, objects, assets, and applications on the NEO blockchain. Identity verification is needed to establish ownership for digital items, reduce fraud, buy and sell data, and create consensus with user data.
Ontology’s “trust ecosystem” lets its users manage their own digital identity, share their data securely with apps, manage distributed ledgers, and build decentralized applications that can interact with multiple blockchains.
Established in November of 2017, Ontology has already built a long list of partnerships. These partnerships include venture capital firms like Sequoia China, decentralized applications like CarBlock, and the private equity firm, Tembusu Partners.
6 dapps are currently being built utilizing Ontology I.D. services. They include CarBlock, Contentos, DAD, COT, NAGA, and NurseToken.
Here, we take a look at how these partners are utilizing Ontology’s digital identity services to empower content creators, prove digital ownership, create consensus, and build trust among users.
6 Dapps Using Ontology Technology
CarBlock
A new dapp utilizing Ontology’s tech is called CarBlock.
CarBlock is the world’s first decentralized car marketplace, based on vehicle data. It is a system where parties can interact with, collect, manage, and even sell their own vehicle data. By providing driving data to CarBlock, a user can be rewarded with CAR tokens based on the value of the data contributed.
Selling data is similar to a form of mining for car owners. Ontology establishes identity and ownership for a car’s digital information. This allows the data to be sold. CarBlock uses Ontology to link a user’s identity to digital data. This gives value to the data and will allow car owners to recover some of the costs of driving.
Car tokens will be airdropped to owners that are certified by Ontology, to sell their data. This driving data can be used to train machine learning algorithms for self driving vehicles, as well as provide information to help auto manufacturers improve their cars.
In addition to building a data marketplace, Carblock is building sensors and hardware for data collection. They’ve become a member of the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative along with BMW, General Motors, Renault, and Ford with the goal of equipping vehicles for data collection.
Contentos
Contentos, another Ontology partner, is building out a “digital content ecosystem.”
This ecosystem allows its users to get paid for the content that they produce and distribute. Copyright is validated in a decentralized manner by the ecosystem, and the value generated will be credited back to the original creators of the content.
Ontology restores copyright and gives ownership to digital media, which is distributed on the NEO blockchain.
DAD
On June 26, 2018, DAD (short for Decentralized Advertising) announced a partnership with Ontology. DAD is building a new blockchain platform for digital promotion.
This blockchain-based ad network will improve some of the common problems currently associated with digital advertising. Problems with current ad systems include: fake traffic and fraudulent clicks, poor ads which users dislike, and lack of privacy for users. Fraudulent traffic can eat up over 50% of an advertising budget!
With the Ontology I.D. system, users can also be used to provide feedback and voting, to help achieve consensus, and to supervise the platform. This decentralized consensus can only take place if a user’s identity is verified by an identity service like Ontology.
Chain of Things
On May 29, 2018, Chain of Things (COT) announced its partnership with Ontology.
COT is an IoT solution that provides answers to problems of identity, security, and interoperability for devices. COT is also planning to build a smart hardware infrastructure platform for IoT.
COT is building a service to gather data. This might include the temperature of a delivered food item, the amount of power generated by a solar panel, or even to track CO2 emissions of a vehicle.
Ontology allows the collected data to be securely linked to an identity. This data can then be stored, shared, as well as be bought/sold.
NAGA
A fintech organization called NAGA, is using Ontology’s tech to build financial services on the blockchain.
The services that NAGA is building include: an exchange for crypto/digital goods, a wallet, a social network for traders, and payment card. NAGA even allows you to send cryptocurrency from or to an email address.
Nurse Token
Nurse Token (NURS) is an Ontology powered dapp that matches nurses with healthcare centers in need. Digital identification will be used to access credentials, documents, make payments, and receive rewards.
With NURS, a smart contract can be created, where a nurse would automatically earn NURS tokens for completing a required task, or receiving good reviews. Reviewers will also be rewarded with NURS tokens.
Eventually, NURS will be forked to work with other sectors like police, doctors, and teachers.
Ontology Has Been Expanding its Network of Partners
In April, Ontology announced partnerships with venture capital firms like Sequoia China, Danhua Capital, Matrix Partners China, and Zhen Fund. These partnerships will explore decentralized app development, community/business outreach, and incubation.
The Ontology Olympus Accelerator was announced in early June. Along with the Ontology Foundation, they will invest over US$1 billion to work with startups utilizing ONT. These tokens will be used to support the teams and startups in the accelerator program.
Conclusion
Ontology is making strides to become the main protocol used to verify the identity of people, objects, and assets for the NEO economy.
It will allow digital assets (like data), to be linked to the identity of an individual. These digital items can then be owned and sold, just like physical items. This will open up large new marketplaces for virtual items. It will verify ownership for these items, and allow them to traded between platforms.
The success of Ontology’s protocol, greatly depends on the success of NEO. As the NEO smart economy grows, Ontology’s identity services will become more heavily utilized. Heavier use of Ontology’s tech will likely increase its demand, as well as the value of the ONT token.