Itheum — Telegram AMA — March 07
On Monday, March 07, we had the pleasure to welcome to our Telegram chat:
Mark Paul
We asked him questions about the development of Itheum.
Some sentences have been slightly edited for readability but the meaning has been conserved.
Introduction
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Awesome. Please introduce yourself. What did you do before crypto and did you have any other previous venture in crypto?
A — Mark from Itheum: My name is Mark Paul and I’m the founder and CEO of Itheum. I’ve been in blockchain technology for over 6 years.
Prior to this, I have worked in mainstream technology for over 20 years — ranging from companies like MSN, FOX, and the Australian Government’s digital health technology division.
My background is in large-scale software development, big data, AI, and distributed systems development.
But I’m fully dedicated to making web3 tech mainstream and this is what I work on these days. Itheum has been in development for 3 years.
About Itheum
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: What is the Itheum project about in a few simple sentences?
A — Mark from Itheum: yes.. we have been in “stealth” mode for a long time :) but this is what makes our project unique In the single sentence:
“Itheum lets you own and trade your data in the Metaverse”
but let me break that down a bit more. Most people don’t know this, but their data is being taken from them and sold by centralized data brokers in a “shadow data market” valued at over $200 billion.
Itheum provides a much-needed solution to this problem: an end-to-end web3 data technology stack empowering 8 billion people around the world with the means to truly own and trade their data in the metaverse. Compared to the other projects in the blockchain space, Itheum provides 2 features that set us apart:
1) Real-world utility: We have a feature called the “Data CAT” (collection & analytics toolkit) that is already live and enables real-world companies to build data collection apps that “bridge data” into web3.
2) Viral bottom-up adoption: Once the data is collected into web3 via the Itheum technology stack (Data CAT), a user can claim ownership of it and attach it to a feature called “NFMe ID Data Avatars”.
These NFMe ID Avatars make data ownership “fun and sexy” and will bring many new users to our platform as it’s exciting to use.
These NFMe ID Avatars are the next generation “profile picture NFTs” and they provide many cool use cases in gaming, metaverse, and any web3 platform that requires an avatar or identity that’s backed by verifiable personal data.
Here is what they look like
Q — Telegram user Anastasia Vector: In your Data Metaverse EcoSystem, there are many key products. Can you please explain about Greenroom protocol?
A — Mark from Itheum: Thx for asking about our Greenroom Protocol, As explained, our NFMe ID avatar is an NFT based version of yourself that can be used in web3 and the metaverse. The real value for this would be within 3rd party metaverse platforms like Decentraland and the Sandbox.
The greenroom protocol is our interoperability initiative to work on making our NFMe ID avatars portal to these platforms. But initially, it will be our own 3D world for you to interact with other NFMe ID avatars and trade your data backed accessories
Eventually, the Greenroom will let you teleport to other metaverse platforms and share data
Q — Telegram user Gutierrez04: It caught my attention that Itheum will be very useful in the field of health, so could you really explain to us in what aspects Itheum can help today’s health and medical care systems?
A — Mark from Itheum: This is a great question. Itheum has many use-cases but health data ownership has the most value as it can change lives.
Itheum already has people using it to unlock “heart health” data and help medical providers to collect data like blood pressure and stress levels direct from users.
When used with our Data Coalition DAO technology — we can unlock many more large health datasets as we can coordinate the trade of bulk health data
Token
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: What role will the token play in the ITHEUM ecosystem?
A — Mark from Itheum: We have a utility token called ITHEUM, and it provides “4 groups” of functionality
1) Data Trade (unlock access to data)
2) “Itheum DAO” Governance
3) “Data Coalition DAO” Governance
4) Stake / Bond / Farm for rewards via the “Data Coalition DAO”, “Itheum DAO” and launchpad partner’s incentive products
The specific details are provided in our whitepaper here
Funding
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: Did you raise funds so far? If so, how did you handle them? And are you planning to do any future raises?
A — Mark from Itheum: We have strong interest in our platform from the community as this issue of data ownership affects everyone on earth. So our “target market” is pretty much the world’s population, so it’s a huge market. We have raised a seed round and are closing our private round right now.We have used our funds to grow the team to 15 people and are actively still hiring. We are planning our token launch towards the end of March.
Competitive Advantage
Q — Twitter user @Mdbiplobvai02: Can you list 1–3 killer features of Your Project that makes it ahead of its competitors? What is the competitive advantage your platform has that you feel most confident about?
A — Mark from Itheum: Great question, We are building the core data protocol for web3 and the Metaverse era and have addressed the end-to-end technology stack needed for this vision to become a reality.
Key Features:
1) Data CAT (collection & analytics toolkit): An app development tool for anyone to build real-world apps that collect and bridge high-value personal data into web3. This is already live and used by enterprises. e.g. OkPulse
2) Data DEX: A Multi-chain DApp that allows for anyone to claim ownership of their web2 data and trade it peer-to-peer as DataPacks (Datasets), Data NFTs, or via Data Coalition DAOs (Jointly run by community and enterprise members with a goal to bulk trade data)
3) NFMe ID Avatar: All your web2 data (once ingested into the Itheum platform) will be linked to an NFMe ID avatar. This is a “Soulbound NFT” and cannot be sold.
But you can lease it (i.e. shave off parts of the data connected to it and trade those as Data NFTs) or use it to gain access to web3, gaming, metaverse DApps that require personal data to provide a better experience.
Business Development
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: You’ve been working for 3 years, and token launch is in March. What else should we expect in the upcoming weeks and months?
A — Mark from Itheum: another great question, thanks for asking, We have been working on the tech for a long time. Our Data CAT and Data Adaptors (SDK to build and bridge high-value personal data from web2 into web3) are already LIVE and used in the industry.
Our cross-chain “Data DEX” is already in 7 testnets (Ethereum, Polygon, BSC, Avalanche, Harmony, Parastate, PlatON) and we are working on non-EVM support now (Elrond and Hedera).
Our “Data NFT” technology is already been built and released to the testnets
We are now working on the NFMe ID NFT data avatars, this will be the 1st feature that we release to mainnet — which is planned for Q4 2022
Q — Ayeley from GAINS: How important is the community to Itheum and how can we collaborate or help you with the development of the project?
A — Mark from Itheum: We are building an open data protocol to allow everyone around the world to own and trade their data in the web and metaverse world. As such; it’s a fully open protocol and we NEED the community heavily involved in building it.
We have built an organic community that helps us trial out our new features and we provide a “weekly townhall” to demo new features that we ask the community to try out and give us feedback.
We also run campaigns that incentivize the community to test the new technology we release. We coordinate these campaigns via our telegram and Discord so you can join these to learn more and participate.
Thank you Mark for coming into our community, and taking the time to answer our questions. Do you have any final words for us? Where can we follow you to stay updated? — Ayeley Commodore-Mensah from GAINS
Thank you all and the GAINS community for organizing and having us.
We appreciate your support! Please come on over and join the Itheum community — and help us build the technology to give you ownership of your data and to enable you to trade your data in the metaverse.
You can find us on Discord |Telegram | Twitter
We also have multi-language communities as linked here
— Mark Paul from Itheum
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