Citizen Sci

The Pinata API allows for decentralized storage of research data but not at the cost of losing control and privacy over the data as the access to it stays protected via gateways provided by Submarine.

Submarine.me allows NFT-gated access to files. In our case, the user gets a NFT-badge as reward for effort to validate a data pile. Not only does the NFT-badge serve as “proof-of-contribution” but can also later be connected to future results such as AI-algorithms, which make use of the verified data sources and therefore increase the overall quality of the research output. Putting the data on IPFS via Pinata allows for the traceability of a data object (e.g. a picture) - beginning from the stage of raw & unclassified, to verified and the impact as it is used in different research projects. Data scientists usually spend up to 80% [https://blog.ldodds.com/2020/01/31/do-data-scientists-spend-80-of-their-time-cleaning-data-turns-out-no/] of their time cleaning data, which could be used more wisely for creating useful insights for society. For the user, they can display their contributions as a collection of different badges similar to the idea of an on-chain CV to showcase their interest and skills. The difference to the "old world" is, that these cannot get lost or destroyed as they are stored decentrally and allow for unique benefits based on the effort of the user, i.e. early-access to research papers to which people contributed.

#crowdsourcing #wisdom of the crowd #open science