AllianceBlock & Ocean Protocol Proof of Concept — Bridging Traditional Finance with Decentralized Finance Through an Enhanced Data Tunnel

6 min readDec 15, 2020

With one of the first concrete use cases where we leverage the AllianceBlock Partner Ecosystem, we have started working on a generic and decentralized data market. Together with Ocean Protocol, with whom we have announced a partnership earlier, we have established a roadmap that will help drive adoption of data providers, where they can easily share their data, monetize it and stay in full control of their data throughout: the AllianceBlock Data Tunnel as part of the AllianceBlock Protocol’s Data Governance Layer.

The Opportunity

There are a lot of organizations that own, collect or process large amounts of data while it’s not always very obvious that this data can be useful to others. These datasets are in all kinds of different formats and therefore can be hard to monetize. And once you do go down that road, it’s easy to lose control over your own data. Ocean Protocol technology allows data to be shared, without compromising control or security for the data owner, while ensuring traceability, transparency, and trust for all stakeholders involved. Ocean allows data owners to monetize data while keeping control over their data assets.

Leveraging Ocean Protocol technology, AllianceBlock is building a low barrier data marketplace, with the advantages of a decentralized protocol, while still being easy to use, understand and control. This includes the ability to pay with fiat, publish data without needing to understand blockchain, MetaMask or a private key (thus, driving adoption) and a predictable output format that will significantly simplify usability for data consumers. Through Ocean Protocol, retail banking APIs will be able to connect to DeFi in a way that is compliant with financial regulations such as PSD2, resulting in new, exciting open banking solutions and a new generation of fintech and decentralized finance projects that will be able to leverage this opportunity.

With this data pipeline built on top of Ocean, user data such as KYC/AML/KYB will be stored and users will be able to use role based access control to give access or/and revoke access to data. This product is part of our use case to bridge traditional finance, like private banks, and users from decentralized finance applications.

The Ocean Protocol Data Layer would be a key aspect in building the infrastructure of the future of decentralized capital market and decentralized banking. This first product will lead later on to the global protocol.

AllianceBlock is aiming to become a major player in decentralised open finance and open banking. Through this partnership financial institutions and DeFi platforms would use the Ocean Protocol Data Layer through the Allianceblock Data Tunnel. On top of that, we also see the opportunity for SMEs to unlock new possibilities for publishing data that currently remains inaccessible (this can be virtually anything: all trees indexed in a city, water quality measurements of a country, traffic flow on a highway, etc.). In addition, Core Banking System (CBS) providers will be able to leverage the decentralized data layers therefore creating new opportunities for the next generation of decentralized banks.

Proof of Concept vetted by Ocean

Last week we have completed a prototype, fully utilizing Ocean Protocol using React and NodeJS, with the following features:

Allow publishing of CSV files
Automated conversion to JSON data
Automated generation of JSON Schema data
Easy publication of data to Ocean Marketplace without using MetaMask
Easy consuming of data from Ocean Marketplace without using MetaMask
As one of the first to utilize the option to enable a subscription model for data consumers

“Financial data is one of our top goals, so we’re confident AllianceBlock’s proposal will drive adoption. AllianceBlock utilized mechanisms in the Ocean toolbox that few have, displaying their deep understanding of the tech along with the stellar quality of their code and the speed of development. We’re eager to see what their engineering team delivers in 2021.” said Alex Coseru, Bigchain DB’s VP of Engineering for Ocean Protocol.

Following the successful Prototype, we will deliver a Proof of Concept (PoC), vetted by Ocean, in Q1 2021 that will contain:

A generic data tunnel (REST API, as part of the AllianceBlock Protocol’s Data Governance Layer), that accepts a wide array of types of input data and data sources.
Data conversion to a generic and light output format, that can be easily understood and validated by automated interpreters.
Dynamic datasets with a subscription model (optionally through recurring fiat payments); data changes constantly, so it doesn’t always make sense to pay for each new update, especially when you are interpreting this data real time.
A Single Sign On integration that will enable users unfamiliar with blockchain (wallets, MetaMask, etc.) to use the Data Tunnel without any hurdles. A deep dive on this will be released in another article in the near future.

Additionally we lay the foundation for a full-fledged decentralized, reusable and anonymized KYC/identity verification service built on top of Ocean. More on this will be shared in a separate future article.

Ocean Shipyard program

In addition, AllianceBlock has received a grant, from the Ocean Shipyard program, which helps developers and projects in building on Ocean.

Razvan Olteanu, COO of Ocean Protocol, said: “Our relationship with AllianceBlock continues to flourish. In addition to receiving a highly-regarded development grant from Ocean Shipyard, AllianceBlock is working with Ocean on a token swap deal to further promote and strengthen the partnership and our shared mission of advancing Web3 and DeFi development.”

Post Proof of Concept

Immediately after the PoC we will continue to work on an MVP version that will be released on mainnet. Specifics on this and future versions, including their roadmap, will be released before the end of 2020.

Good News for Developers

As laid out in our article about the ALBT token Vesting Schedule, a specific allocation of tokens is reserved for the “AllianceBlock Fund”. This fund is meant to engage developers from the community that can contribute to the AllianceBlock Ecosystem. In order to attract data publishers and data consumers to use the Data Tunnel, it makes sense to implement a wide array of connectors, convertors through industry vetted best practices.

Matthijs de Vries, Founder & CTO of AllianceBlock said “We believe we can accelerate adoption of the Data Tunnel even more, which will turn out especially beneficial for SMEs. From experience we know there are a lot of brilliant minds inside the community that are capable of developing innovative solutions, that will be needed for the Data Tunnel, which will directly benefit organizations that are looking for a straightforward way to share their data to others that can build something meaningful on top of it”.

Keep an eye on our social media channels in order to stay up to date about the AllianceBlock fund and how you, as a developer, can contribute to our ecosystem.

About Ocean Protocol

Ocean Protocol builds powerful Web3 apps for the emerging data economy. Founded in 2017, Ocean Protocol connects data providers and consumers, using blockchain technology. Ocean Protocol technology allows data to be shared, without compromising control or security for the data owner, while ensuring traceability, transparency, and trust for all stakeholders involved. Ocean allows data owners to monetize data while keeping control over their data assets. Ocean Protocol Foundation is based in Singapore.

About AllianceBlock

AllianceBlock is building the first globally compliant decentralized capital market. The AllianceBlock Protocol is a decentralized, blockchain-agnostic layer 2 that automates the process of converting any digital or crypto asset into a bankable product.

Incubated by three of Europe’s most prestigious incubators: Station F, L39, and Kickstart Innovation in Zurich, and led by a heavily experienced team of ex-JP Morgan, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs bankers, and quants, AllianceBlock is on the path to disrupt the traditional markets with its state-of-the-art and globally compliant decentralized capital market.