Insights Network

What is Insights Network?

Insights Network brings together what they call "Requesters" and "Providers" to enable individuals to monetize their data, and give organizations the opportunity to get feedback quickly and efficiently- at an extremely affordable price. The "requesters" are the organizations who request the information from certain demographics and compensate them for their data in INSTAR tokens, while the "providers" are the "average joe", like you and me, who comply with the data request given to them.

The Team

The Insights Network team looks fairly accomplished, and some of the top executives on their team have been working together for years now. I will be taking a closer look at three of their team members: Brian Gallagher, Brandan Zaucha, & Kurt Nielsen

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Brian Gallagher

Mr. Gallagher is currently the standing CEO of Insights Network, and he helped to found the platform along with his two other Co-Founders: Brandan Zaucha, & Darwin Lo. Prior to working with the team at Insights Network, he worked with GrubHub as their Chief of Staff. I think that having this understanding of the food industry will greatly benefit him with building connections with restaurants, and other organizations looking for purchasing this type of data at reasonable prices. He also has history in entrepreneurship; he was a co-founder of "Underground Cellar" with Brandan Zaucha.

Brandan Zaucha

Mr. Zaucha is in charge of Business Development for Insights Network, and he has had experience working together with Mr. Gallagher for about 3 years now. They collaborated as a team when they founded Underground Cellar together. Underground Cellar is a marketplace where people are able to buy and browse through different premium wines. I really like this "wombo combo" of a team working together as they have had previous experience working together in the past, and I think that could lead to a fruitful platform for them to build for the future.

Kurt Nielsen

Mr. Nielson is in charge of Strategy and Operations for the Insights Network team. He gives a unique addition to the team as he has worked as a professor in Copenhagen for the last dozen years! One of the things that he would be able to do by having this connection is get students and individuals at the University to look into their platform. I can assume that the majority of the data that the requestors are looking for are people in college, or from the ages 18-28.

The Platform

When I first came across the Insights Network project, the first thing that came to my mind reminded me when I first heard about Earn.com. It functions in a very similar way, except this uses blockchain and smart contracts to enable the transfer of the data. Oh, and did I mention that Earn.com was bought out by Coinbase recently for about $100M? Insights is basically the data version of Earn, and has a token implemented into their platform also!

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The way the exchange of data works is actually fairly simple. I can't say how many whitepapers I have read that from different organizations that makes absolutely no sense, while this is very straight forward. The Insights Network has completely simplified the process with how their platform works.

So how does this platform actually work?

The Requestors give their budget for how many INSTAR tokens they would like to delegate, the demographics for the individual they are trying to reach, and then the question they want to get people's opinion on.
After these questions have been placed onto smart contracts on Insights Network's blockchain, they are then sent to the certain demographics with the poll
The Provider receives the poll through the smart contract, gives their answer, and then submits it
After completing the poll, the smart contract verifies that it was completed appropriately
This is the step that everyone cares about- mostly because you get paid! The smart contract then sends you the INSTAR tokens for completing the survey and sharing your data
The Requestor in the end receives all the data and is able to retrieve the information from the smart contract, allowing them to make smarter decisions in the business world.

One of the issues that I first thought of when I saw this platform was the issues they could have with verifying individuals on the Insights Network wallet. They are able to use multiple different parties to be able to verify who they are, as well as their demographic. This is all done while keeping their private identity safe and secure for the providers. This keeps the requestors to have the peace in mind that they are receiving information from real people and not bots.

Roadmap

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For Insights Network and their team, other than getting organizations to want to ask for information from individuals, one of the most importants apsects about their platforms is on their mobile app. Their app is available on both the App Store and on Google Play!

The app is fully functional, and they are actually going to release the V1.1 soon. The V1 wallet is available for anyone (assuming your country allows it) to download, and you can get early access to the V1.1 wallet here! Huge kudos to the Lead Wallet Dev, Sebastián León, who has done a phenomenal job in building a fully functional application!

The Token

The Insights Network ecosystem revolves around their ERC-20 token, INSTAR, which is built on the EOS blockchain network.

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The token currently has a circulating supply of 127,348,933 INSTAR, and a total supply of 211,068,638 INSTAR. The token is used as the intermediary of exchanging your data by completing simple survey questions on the Insights Network app.