Project Coral | Core Tech Improvement + DeSci // OceanDAO Berlin Hackathon | Round 17

OceanDAO Round 17
#1

Project Name

Project Coral

Project Category

Build & Integrate

Proposal Earmark

General

Proposal Description

For round 17, OpSci requesting funds to award completion of the Core Tech Earmark integration of Ocean Market with Filecoin archival and IPFS data routing. We are also requesting funds to support a DeSci // Ocean Protocol workshop at DeSci.Berlin this May.

Ocean’s Problems

  • Datatokens do not provide strong proof of data availability. Alice purchases a datatoken, the URL to the google cloud instance has expired and is unable to claim the asset she purchased.
  • Large scale deposition of valuable data on Ocean Market depends on centralized data storage providers
  • There exists little incentive for individuals to operate data provider services for Ocean Market.
  • There does not exist a niche community of power users around Ocean Protocol

OpSci’s Solutions

  • Pinning published datasets to IPFS generates a unique content identifier (CID) that prevents URLs resolving to datasets other than what was requested

for example: <drive.google.com/dog.jpg> switched to maintain a cat image after the datatoken is published

  • Archival of published datasets on Filecoin provides cryptographic proof of “spacetime.” This ensures the requested content is available and matches the description in the marketplace.
  • An easily deployable data provider stack with an embedded IPFS/Filecoin node with automated deal making integrated with Ocean Provider enables anyone to become a data provider on an Ocean Market instance and receive payment for services rendered.
  • Hackathons within the DeSci (decentralized science) community will bring a pool of data power users into the Ocean DAO.

Previous Work. Core Tech:

We have previously integrated Filecoin + IPFS support for Ocean Market front-end by adding a Data Locker feature. The Data Locker is an additional UI on the Ocean Market that allows users to drag and drop any dataset and generate a unique CID, submit it for archival on Filecoin, and make it available for publishing on Ocean Protocol.

Behind the scenes, we are operating an access control server. All HTTP requests to upload, modify, or delete files in the data locker goes to this server. Currently, the server just checks for a specific auth token. If the request is from an authorized source, the server checks a database for the permissions of the crypto address specified in the HTTP request.

For upload, this means checking whether the user has an upload limit > 0, or in other words is white-listed to use the free data storage cloud service. The server also handles interactions with Estuary, so only authorized users can upload to Estuary. A database is maintained on this server that stores some metadata for every file, the crypto address it belongs to, the filename, the CID, and the Estuary requestID.

Data Locker Demo

Previous Work. Outreach:

OpSci has hosted numerous community outreach programs to grow the DeSci movement and encourage early adoption of Ocean Protocol. Most significantly, we co-organized the first ever DeSci conference at ethDenver, supported the second DeSci conference at Devconnect ethAmsterdam, and now we are working to bring DeSci to the Berlin community on May 23-25th.

References

White Paper: A Distributed Data Layer for Interoperable Scientific Workflows and Apps

DeSci Berlin Conference (upcoming; funds requested)

DeSci Denver Conference (Feb 2022)

DeSci Amsterdam Conference (Apr 2022)

Grant Deliverables

  • Core Tech Improvement: IPFS pinning embedded within Ocean Market
  • Core Tech Improvement: Automated Filecoin archival for Persistent Datatokens
  • Core Tech Improvement: Token gated / verified account access control for data services
  • Community Outreach: DeSci Berlin Workshop for DeSci Data DAOs and Markets

Project Description

OpSci Commons: A Distributed Data Layer for Open Science Web Apps

Description of the project and what problem is it solving

OpSci Commons is a decentralized science repository and cloud services marketplace. Researchers can publish and own their intellectual property, permanently archive their work, and execute cloud applications on scientific data.

For round 17, OpSci requesting funds to award completion of the Core Tech Earmark integration of Ocean Market with Filecoin archival and IPFS data routing. We are also requesting funds to support a DeSci // Ocean Protocol workshop at DeSci.Berlin this May.

Motivation

Thousands of petabytes of data on human health, economic activity, social dynamics, and scientific observations of the universe and our impact on it are siloed in legacy institutional web infrastructure.

Key challenges for unlocking scientific data include workflow gaps, infrastructural capacities, and cultural inertia, such as:

Technical Hurdles

  • Expensive ingress/egress fees with traditional cloud storage
  • Insufficient tooling for dataset management, preprocessing, and archival
  • Lack of easy-to-use interoperable workflows & protocols for sharing data
  • Needs for dataset provenance that ensure requested content is the content that is received

Cultural & Organizational Obstacles

  • Cultural inertia for laboratory procedures and protocols
  • No rewards for sharing data, enhanced risk of being “scooped”
  • Institutional compliance and regulatory protocols that gate-keep sensitive data based on academic credentials

Our team is currently developing open source dataset processing and archival tools for archiving up to massive volumes of open source data on the decentralized file storage network, Filecoin, free of charge as part of the Filecoin+ service.

OpSci plans to establish the largest collection of high quality open source data that can be found on Web3 - a decentralized data commons that streamlines access to permanently archived digital knowledge.

Our mission is to make fundamental scientific observations and insights open to global citizens that are united by a vision for collective scientific discovery. A key missing piece of this vision is a data commons that supports search, find, and execute operations on datasets defined with standard specifications that support interoperable workflows.

Project Activities & Deliverables

  • [ ] Launch an Open Science Commons with 250TB+ of open source neuroimaging data
  • [ ] Research and design deployment of an open science data DAO to govern the OpSci Commons
  • [ ] Plan and execute open science hackathons to deploy data and compute services
  • [ ] Launch OpSci grant DAO to fund open science research
  • [ ] Establish partnerships with institutional market operators
  • [ ] Integration with distributed compute standards and HPC providers
  • [ ] No sleep till automated on-chain science protocols

Performance Metrics

Our primary goal is to empower the scientific community to share, analyze, and review data with web3 tools. To reflect this goal, we propose the number of scientific research objects that are published to the decentralized web as a KPI.

How does this project drive value to the overall Ocean ecosystem?

Our project brings together the DeSci community with the Ocean DAO, opening new use-cases, avenues, and sourcing novel intellectual contributions. Our project is an impact initiative intended to address and solve issues with the persistence of the scientific record, enhanced search and discovery tools for researchers, and capture the value of scientific knowledge with tokenomic feedback loops.

As part of our roadmap, we are improving Ocean Protocol core tech to solve problems such as:

  • Persistent Datatokens: cryptographic guarantees that a datatoken contains a URL that resolves to the asset requested by the consumer
  • Decentralization: A key limitation of Ocean Protocol is that the vanilla market deployment does not contain incentives for decentralized data providers. As part of our roadmap, we will provide tools for Market Operators to run their own data storage + compute services. Users will be able to choose from multiple storage providers when publishing their datasets, increasing the level of decentralization.
  • New Revenue Streams for Market Operators. We will make it easy for market operators to deploy their own data provider services and solicit payments from marketplace participants.

Funding Requested

USD$20,000

Proposal Wallet Address

0xf023D9b047243B911e132E4B5877b5f09B8B66B9

Have you previously received an OceanDAO Grant?

Yes

Discord

Opscientia

Email address

labs@opsci.io

Current Country of Residence

USA

Final Product

OpSci commons will be the largest collection of high quality open source data that can be found on Web3 - a decentralized data commons that streamlines access to permanently archived digital knowledge and captures the value of scientific research.

Value Add Criteria

Our project adds value to the Ocean Ecosystem by adding core tech improvements that solve multiple problems regarding user experience, decentralization, and expanded market operator revenue models. For this round, we will also be engaging with the DeSci community by linking them with the Ocean DAO ecosystem.

Core Team

Shady El Damaty , M.Sc., Ph.D.

Kinshuk Kashyap

Caleb Tuttle

Nanak Nihal

Funding Requested
20000

Minimum Funding Requested
1000

Wallet Address
0xf023D9b047243B911e132E4B5877b5f09B8B66B9

1 Like
#2

Hi,

Thank you for submitting another update for your previous proposal! Your Grant Deliverables have been reviewed and look to be in good condition.

We have also looked at your Project Standing, it looks to be in good condition and ready to apply for another grant.

We would like to thank you for your positive contributions to the Ocean Ecosystem and I look forward to reviewing future proposals from your project.

Thx & All the best!
Christian Casazza