In the physical world, value is easily evident, albeit often subjective. As a society, and as human beings, we are eminently comfortable with the notion that physical objects can possess value, and through the related concept of ownership, how this value can be transferred between individuals and groups. The development of the Internet has, however, given rise to a world that is entirely digital in nature, and our long-held understanding of what can and cannot be assigned value is in dire need of updating. The latest paradigm to emerge from the Internet- enabled machinery of communication – blockchain – is re-defining and potentially introducing the concept of digital value, whether it be digital gold (Bitcoin), money (cryptocurrencies in general), financial products (DeFi), digital goods (NFTs), or digital real estate (the metaverse).
The digital world does not preserve the “structure of value” in the same way that the physical world does. This introduces unnecessary costs and risk into digital systems, affecting the phys- ical world a myriad of ways – causing procedural headaches and inefficiencies for automation in industry, government, and the private sector alike, as well as interfering with international trade and logistics. Identifying a reliable methodology for ascribing value within digital systems would alleviate the substantial hurdles currently faced by content creators, organisations, and industries in regards to compliance, capital raises, client engagement, cybersecurity, data rights management, and more.
So what is the solution? Blockchain technology allows the digital world to catch up to the physical world in terms of rights and ownership, if done correctly. Digital content, files, and data cannot live on a blockchain, but they can be put under blockchain governance. Thanks to developments in blockchain and cryptographic protocols, files (and more generally, data) can be managed from the blockchain ledger through a decentralized file format known as Smart Data. Zenotta has developed this technology as part of a Layer 1 solution to the double spend problem for data – how to ensure that a file can be traded peer-to-peer in the way that coins and tokens can; and how the rights to the file, and the file itself, can move concurrently from owner to owner.
This ability to impart a unique identity to data and to consign the record of that identity to an immutable ledger allows for a form of ownership that is identity-based rather than access-based. The Smart Data file is a new approach to data that ensures that access is no longer the defining characteristic of ownership, with a form of binary DNA constituting the unique identifier and allowing for verification of the owner without granting access to the content.
The uniqueness of our data protocol, combined with our universal two-way ledger, and the Pisces network gives rise to the first peer-to-peer electronic trade system for the movement of digital goods & services across Internet-enabled communication infrastructure. Solving the problem of transferring items of value across the Internet (the ‘data double-spend problem’) through giving practical ownership rights to digital assets, moving those rights on a consensus-defended layer-1 blockchain, supported by a scalable network architecture, makes peer-to-peer digital trade a reality for the increasingly digital world.
If you want to find out more about our unique solution, the next steps, and how to get involved, please visit www.zenotta.com.
