AMA Recap: Swash meets CryptoFury

This Monday, Swash’s CMO joined the CryptoFury Community, a group of crypto and blockchain enthusiasts looking to learn more about solutions like Swash.

The first phase of the AMA session featured pre-selected questions, followed by an open Q&A from the CryptoFury community on Telegram. They covered everything from the origins of Swash to the future token launch, partnerships, and full roadmap.

Read more for the entire conversation with CryptoFury.

From where you get the project name? What does it mean to you? And, why did you choose this name for your project? What is your mission and vision to build this project? What do you want to achieve through your project in the future?

Chloë:
Swash is a movement for reimagining data ownership. It is an ecosystem of tools and services that enable people, businesses, and developers to unlock the latent value of data by pooling, securely sharing, and monetising its value.

Swash’s live product already has over 60K users! It takes just a few minutes to install and is available on all major browsers. Swash allows for people to capture, pool, and sell their data while receiving their share of the profits it generates, while they surf the web as normal.

• People can share their data to earn without compromising their privacy.
• Businesses can access high-quality, zero-party data in a sustainable and compliant way.
• Developers can set up and build systems within a collaborative development framework with ease.

As for the name of Swash, you can read more about the concept of Swash here (https://swashapp.io/brand-assets). Swash is the name for water as it washes up on the shore. We see Swash as the first step into new lands, exploring uncharted waters while recognising the power of people working together — one drop may not seem like much but no one can deny the force of the entire ocean.

Swash’s mission is to create a fair data economy by giving profits back to people. It’s a movement for reimagining data ownership by enabling all actors of the data economy to earn, access, build and collaborate in a liquid digital ecosystem for data.

Do you have any coin burn/buyback system or any token burn plan to increase the value of the token and attract Investors to invest?

Chloë:
Yes, as demand for $SWASH will increase alongside network adoption, the generated value may be used to balance the token supply, likely through periodical token “burning.”

Users often care less about technology, but rather the value of the token. How do you manage to strike a balance between developing the technology and also improving the value of the token?

Chloë:
The value of the token depends heavily on the success of the Swash ecosystem. The ecosystem, which will have a variety of products and services (our “First Wave Solutions”) will put Swash at the bleeding edge of what’s possible in the data space. This, plus prioritising incentives and friendly user experience for non-crypto audiences will be what leads to adoption of the Swash ecosystem and, as a result, the $SWASH token. You can read more about this in our whitepaper.

Selected questions from the community

Asia, Africa and other communities are non-English speaking communities, how will your project create a global adoption to more local communities?

Chloë:
Great question. We have started working on translating our content to different languages and are working on making Swash as accessible as possible! We will also be working with some regional influencers too, watch this space!

Who can benefit the most from Swash’s sIntelligence?

Chloë:
So the sIntelligence platform is aimed at businesses. It will be a web-based platform for businesses to start accessing high-quality data that’s given with explicit knowledge and consent, while enjoying a full range of reliable, up-to-date, and cross-sectional metrics.

Read all about it here!

Can you list the outstanding features of Swash that you think are the strengths that will help the company to succeed? In the future, will the Swash token be developed with more utilities?

Chloë:
No problem!

Sure. Some of Swash’s unique features are:

• Working with some of the best minds in the web 3 space including Chainlink, Streamr, Ocean Protocol, Outlier Ventures, Boson Protocol, Amasa, 1 World Online, Tapmydata, Crunch Digital Media, and the DPPA. Read more about our partners here.
• Operating on a ‘better-than-free’ model where users are paid for something they already do.
• A working product with over 60K users, all benefiting from Swash’s data value redistribution.
• A pipeline of innovative products and services (Data Union, sIntelligence, sApps, and sCompute) — check the website for more details!
• Swash believes in people power. It’s community-driven.
• Beyond-blockchain solution, on the way to mass adoption.

The Swash token will be a cross-chain utility and governance token. It will have multiple uses within the ecosystem, including:

• To Incentivise: As an incentive system, Swash tokens are used for distributing revenue to users in return for their participation in the ecosystem.
• To Transact: All data transactions across all marketplaces, platforms, and applications will be distributed in SWASH. This includes value generated within the business intelligence and analytics platform (sIntelligence), the data computation environment (sCompute), and solutions developed utilising Swash technology (sApps).
• To Multiply: People can individually and collectively contribute the value of their data to social development causes and use it for value exchange both within and outside the Swash universe, such as redeeming earnings for products or by staking liquidity.
• To Govern: Swash token holders can vote for projects they wish to see receive funding from the Swash DAO fund, decide on new roadmap developments or modifications, and to take part in token-related decisions.

Are you a global project or a local project? Currently, which market are you focusing on, or are you focused on building and growing to gain customers, users, and partners? Can anybody anywhere use this project?

Chloë:
Swash is completely global. It brings value to anyone with an internet connection! There’s no particular market that we’re focused on, but we have more user growth and action in Europe as that’s where most of our team, advisors and partners are based. Anyone can use Swash, it’s available on all major browsers.

Many newbies want to learn about projects and are interested in blockchain technology. Do you provide educational videos related to your project and the blockchain technology guidelines? How friendly is your platform to new users?

Chloë:
One of our top priorities when building the Swash browser application and now the First Wave Solutions is to make it as easy-to-use and accessible as possible. It’s the only way to achieve mass adoption and to bring in more diverse and broad audiences.

The browser application, for example, takes just a few minutes to install and everything is explained in a simple, step-by-step way. We also create a wallet for users and will soon allow for them to automatically make donations to their favourite social organisations, so they can enjoy Swash without needing to understand crypto or blockchain!

Open questions from the community

While you build your project, do you take into account community feedback and demands?

Chloë:
Yes, community is at the heart of Swash.

Swash is a community-first project. It’s entire ethos and model is built on the power of redistributing value back to everyone involved.

Swash works because all ecosystem stakeholders — people, businesses, and developers, are incentivised to participate. We’ve been building in public from day 1 and are lucky to have an enthusiastic community behind us who offer a lot of support and feedback. Join us!

These are great questions, thank you everyone!

Would you be happy to tell us a little more about the team and some of their profiles? I have personally seen many potential projects but quickly failed because of inexperienced team members?

Chloë:
I’m proud to be working with one of the most skilled and diverse teams in the blockchain space, all with strong backgrounds in software dev, cybersecurity, and blockchain. The team have been working together for over a decade across various industries including enterprise, research, application security, media & advertising, to name a few.

We’re lucky to count our advisors as part of the team too. We work closely with them and many of them are founders in the space already so they know what works. Others are coming more from a data privacy and even a data buyer perspective, so we’ve got all angles covered. You can find out more on the website.

Can you tell us more about the identities of the partners for which your project is working? Do these partners commit to you that they will go the long way with your project? Does your project have a reserve fund now and where does it come from?

Chloë:
We work with some of the best minds in the space. Our partnerships include Chainlink, Streamr, Ocean Protocol, Outlier Ventures, Boson Protocol, Amasa, 1 World Online, Tapmydata, Crunch Digital Media, and the DPPA. The world of decentralised data is an incredible, collaborative space to be! We’ve been working with some of them for several years already. You can read all about them and the work we do with them here.

What are the key milestones on your roadmap — both, things you have already achieved and things that we can look forward to? Any partnerships and short/long term technical milestones that you want to talk about or bring some attention to?

Chloë:
The first milestone on our development roadmap is Rise, where we launched and grew Swash to a community of 60K+ people who believe in our mission through the first application (browser extension). Now we’re evolving Swash into a universal data ecosystem. Our roadmap spans until 2024, which you can read more about on our website and whitepaper.

The key stages are:

• Rise (Q3 2020 — Q1 2021) — Swash application growth
• Surf (Q3 2021- Q4 2021) — sIntelligence platform development
• Flow (Q4 2021 — Q3 2022) — sCompute and sChannel launch
• Surge (Q2 2022 — Q4 2022) — First sApp releases
• Onshore (Q1 2023 — Q3 2023) — sApp development and upgrades
• Swash (Q4 2023 — Q2 2024) — Swash smart contracts

Only getting users, holders etc is not everything. In my opinion, a project needs to deal with solving a real world issue or problem. What is the problem that your project primarily focuses on? Please share with us!

Chloë:
The issue of data is something which affects all of us, whether we are interested in it or not. When we use the internet, we create data every time we click or search and that data is valuable. According to the EU Commission, it’s worth TRILLIONS.

The people who generate that value — like you and me — don’t receive anything for their efforts. Here you can learn more about the problems Swash solves for people, businesses, and developers:

For people:
People do not have ownership over their data. They are unable to control what happens to it; how it is collected, used, and sold, and do not receive any of the profits it generates. They lack the technical capabilities to regain control and to get remunerated for their contributions, leading to a lack of balance and an extractive approach to data collection. As a result, an estimated 81 percent of adults feel like they lack control over their data.

For businesses:
Businesses, like advertisers and brands, market intelligence and analytics companies, AI/ML startups, hedge funds, and agency networks, currently pay for expensive, low-quality data that is collected without user consent or knowledge. They are burdened by data silos, slow and expensive intermediaries, and wasted resources on advertising fraud and bots.

For developers:
Developers, like data scientists, struggle to access large amounts of high-quality data and spend 45 percent of their time cleaning bad quality datasets. These resources could be spent on innovation, which would be an estimated six times faster with improved access to data sources. Tech entrepreneurs are limited in their ability to communicate with their users and to reward them for their contributions. They also lack access to a developers environment that caters to their needs at different stages.

About Swash:

Swash is an ecosystem of tools and services that enable people, businesses, and developers to unlock the latent value of data by pooling, securely sharing, and monetising its value.

People share their data to earn while retaining their privacy. Businesses access high-quality, zero-party data in a sustainable and compliant way. Developers set up and build systems within a collaborative development framework with ease.

Swash is reimagining data ownership by enabling all actors of the data economy to earn, access, build and collaborate in a liquid digital ecosystem for data. Stay tuned for the latest updates on the IDO.

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Originally published at https://swashapp.io on September 23, 2021.