Today, VLD became available for trading on both Bitfinex and Ethfinex. This marks the completion of an important milestone on the VETRI project roadmap. This is also a good opportunity to take a moment to reflect on what we have already achieved and where we are headed from here.
What is VETRI
In 2006, the six most valuable companies in the world were in the oil and energy industry. A little over a decade later, the top 5 spots are occupied by data-rich tech-giants. Collectively, these companies have a market capitalization in excess of 4 trillion USD. They are part of the data economy which the European Commission projects will be worth nearly 1.2 trillion USD by 2020. With data becoming such a central part of conducting businesses, the companies with the strongest data collection and processing capabilities are the ones best positioned to reach market leadership in their respective industries.
VETRI aims to restore control over personal data back to its rightful owners – the users.
By using VETRI, users share their data willingly in return for monetary compensation. By placing the user at the center, previously siloed data is now unified. This can contribute significantly to creating a more accurate digital profile of the user. This generates additional value in the data economy by allowing data consumers access to more relevant data. Furthermore, since data is shared with the explicit consent of the users, data consumers have the opportunity to obtain user data in a compliant fashion.
The VETRI marketplace acts as a bridge between users and data consumers, allowing both to directly connect with each other to engage in data transactions. This data is valuable for advertising, surveys, or other types of research. All the user data is secured through data encryption, enabling users to share data in an anonymized form.
Where do we come from
VETRI is a project of Procivis AG, a Swiss digital identity solutions provider. VETRI completed its ITO in March 2018, raising an equivalent of 10.7m USD. Since then, we have rapidly scaled from a team of 8, to a team of 28 highly skilled experts located in Zurich (Trust Square) and Prague. We recently presented our proof of concept to potential partners at the 2018 Web Summit in Lisbon. With the basic ecosystem design completed ahead of the timeline, we considered it a perfect moment to add another – bigger – exchange for our token, to increase accessibility for future users – both data owners and consumers.
Where are we going from here
In the upcoming weeks, we will publish insights about the set up of the VETRI foundation as well as its governance board. With both the tech and the legal framework in place before the end of the year, we are very well positioned for the roll out of our MVP in the D/A/CH market in April 2019. Over the course of 6 months, we will then implement additional features for roll out of the full product in October 2019.
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