Machine Learning
for dApps

“Apps” today
Identity: email, social, phone
Data: Centralized, Opaque
Logic: mix of client / server

dApps = decentralized Apps
Sovereign identity using blockchain
User controlled storage for privacy

250+ Apps 3000+ Community
Strong, engaged, global

Most ML today is
centralized
Data moats (often user
generated)
Expertise
Resources

Most ML today is
centralized
Data moats (often user
generated)
Expertise
Resources
Democratize ML?
Users control data
Limited expertise
Limited resources

Blockchains
(source: https: //dilbert.com/strip/2017-10-17)
• (mostly) Immutable ledger [good for transparency]
• Coordinate without trust [good for markets]
• Tokens + Smart Contracts [good for incentives]

Readily available datasets
Off-the-shelf models
Commercial APIs
(e.g. image classification)
Easy, right?

Readily available datasets
Off-the-shelf models
Commercial APIs
(e.g. image classification)
Easy, right?
Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen, “Excavating AI:
The Politics of Training Sets for Machine Learning
(September 19, 2019) https: //excavating.ai

MSR: Decentralized & Collaborative AI
on Blockchain
“framework to host and train publicly available machine learning
models” — July 2019, https://github.com/Microsoft/0xDeCA10B

Cold Start Problem
No Data and/or
No Models
Limited infrastructure
Privacy limitations

Cold Start Problem
No Data and/or
No Models
Limited infrastructure
Privacy limitations
Blockchains can facilitate
effective marketplaces

Cold Start: No data
(source: computable.io)

Comprehensive Marketplace for Data & Services
An ecosystem for the data economy and associated services,
with a tokenized service layer that securely exposes
data, storage, compute and algorithms for consumption.
(source: oceanprotocol.com)

• Jupyter instance at https: //datascience.oceanprotocol.com
• Data Marketplace at https: //commons.oceanprotocol.com
• Participate in the Data Challenge! https: //
oceanprotocol.com/challenge/

Strange Loops
dApps
(leverage Blockchain)
ML Challenges
(data, models, resources)
Blockchain-based
Solutions

Thanks!
Questions?
@diwakergupta