About the Project

This project, funded through a £18,662 grant from NEMODE – New Economic Models in the Digital Economy, Network+, aims to provide pilot studies through open innovation to access feasibility and evaluate the impact of Blockchain* and cryptocurrencies (underpinned by Blockchain) on a live (distributed peer-to-peer) personal data exchange ecosystem based on RCUK-funded Hub-of-All-Things (HAT) project. The HAT’s essential design principles has led to a Really Distributed Personal Data Exchange, which is more compatible with Blockchain than other personal data stores.

In particular, this project will steer open innovation towards innovative applications that can leverage both, by nature, distributed peer-to-peer exchange driven mechanisms (HAT to provide contextualised personal data configuration as the unit of exchange and Blockchain to enable such exchange with an essentially matching transactional mechanism and distributed consensus). This work will advance the understanding of personal data exchange ecosystems and blockchain related technologies on empirical, analytical, computational and practical aspects, as well as support the acceleration of UK business innovation.

Activities

There are plans to hold fully-managed hackathon events for a three-month period from Jan 2016 to maximise access to a large quantity of innovative ideas on the following three objectives:

• Deploying Blockchain-enabled transaction script and distributed public ledger to facilitate live HAT2HAT (contextualised) data exchange in a distributed consensus;
• Developing Mining-alike process to discover contextualised packages for personal data configuration as the basic unit of exchange (in comparison with mining coins in Bitcoin); and
• Experimenting with Smart Contracts (Szabo, 1997) with embedded cryptocurrency payment (such as Bitcoin) for the HAT personal data exchange transactions in the ecosystem.

The hackathon events are expected to produce READiPEDEX applications are Blockchain (related) technology enabled. Six applications – two addressing each objective – are anticipated to be offered to the global HAT community. The applications will be tested and evaluated by the HAT and HARRIET teams against Innovatively, Compatibility and Scalability (as assessment categories), to derive one winning and two other shortlisted teams against each objective.

Research Team

Funding

Project Timeframe