Unregulated digital economy

Digital advertising and personal data is share a particularly unique complementary relationship. We are able to access online content freely, or use a lot of applications for free because these websites are able to earn money from advertisements. As a result, we are able to get quality content because of digital advertising. If all the websites carried out digital advertising in a transparent way, then the issue of data monetization would not be very divisive as it currently is. The explosive growth of digital advertising has attracted bad actors and malpractice, resulting in profit motivated mischief. The lengths to which most of these websites go to obtain our data, without our knowledge or consent, is what is unsettling. This data can be our location, our device, our interests and so on, and is used to create a digital identity that is sold to companies who need it for their product advertisements for example. It is not straightforward to calculate how much our personal data is worth but a few numbers here put this in perspective:
📌At the end of 2017, Facebook and Google, control about 73% of all digital advertising in the United States. This is particularly important considering Facebook and Google’s main source of income is from digital advertisement.
📌It is estimated that an average American online user’s personal data is about $240 per year. Just from browsing from your smartphone or your laptop, you can sell your online footprint for that much.

Personal data can be used for various purposes, including but not limited to advertising, market research, credit scoring, healthcare, and even the more popular training of AI systems.
It is a thin line between empowering online platforms for their services and the extent to our online privacy invasion. The rise of Internet giants built on digital advertising, and who go on to even misuse our data for more malignant purposes makes it even more important to reduce the freedom with which we can act.
It seems that the (hidden) price we pay for the applications we use daily is our personal data. Ideally, most of these applications are companies out here to make profit one way or another. A more direct way would be through paid subscriptions for their services. However, since we use their platforms for free we pay through the quality of our interaction. Some of the most notorious applications come to mind such as Facebook and Google are also the ones that have become the most used daily.

Regulation catching up with Technology: GDPR

Effected on May 25 to internet companies offering services to EU citizens, GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) regulations are a good place to start for the new era, offering a professional framework for internet companies to abide by that protects and respects our privacy and rights. This empowers users to have more control over their personal data. Personal data has to be collected legally, and in an approved manner. Organizations not respecting these will be liable for heavy penalties.

SWIPE

Swipe is a blockchain project that seeks to create an all-inclusive ecosystem for all participants in the digital economy. Current data monetization is channeled by app developers to corporations through centralized intermediaries, a process which does not occur in a very transparent manner. On the other side, the inability of the data buyers to verify the data integrity and its origins creates another problem. Not to mention, the inability of users to monetize their personal data.
App developers are able to use Swipe’s decentralized app marketing tools including swipe ads and swipe marketplace that can be used in Swipe’s decentralized data marketplace. Swipe can be easily integrated on top of mobile platforms, empowering users with the next generation of rewarding mobile applications. Data is anonymized and encrypted through Swipe’s protocols, with the added advantage of being digitally signed making it possible for buyers to track the data, but no one able to siphon the data during the transmission.
To show proof of concept, SWIPE has already launched two lockscreen engagement platform since October 2016, AgilaRewards in Philippines and cepatswipe in Indonesia, reaching out to a million users in Asia. And this is just the beginning, successful implementation will be the precursor to global domination.

Swipe is carrying out an ICO to raise money. More details to be released later.
• Ticker: SWC
• Token type: ERC20
• Total Tokens: 100,000,000
• Accepts: ETH
Based in Singapore

Team and Advisors

Swipe has a stacked team headed by the Co-Founder and CEO Clifford Lin and Co-Founder and CTO Andrew Marchen.

Some of the most prominent names in cryptocurrency space headline Swipe’s advisory board. Including Jehan Chu, Managing Partner Kenetic Capital, Ivo Giorgiev Co-founder/CEO of Adex and Yaron Velner, CTO of Kyber Network.

Partners

Recently, Swipe has announced a partnership with Bluzelle.
With Bluzelle’s database solution, user data collected from SWIPE’s SDK can be stored in a decentralized and secure way. Some of the other partners are in the picture below.