The cryptocurrency market is experiencing a period of tremendous growth, with many new creative cryptocurrencies getting introduced. Bitcoin (BTC) was the very first digital currency, and it is essentially used as decentralized digital cash. However, not all currencies are created to replace cash. Many of them are developed with other aims in mind, such as the protection of personal data.
Dock.io (DOCK) is one of the most fascinating projects that aim to offer individuals more control over their digital credentials and professional accomplishments. It’s a decentralized data crypto exchange protocol for business social media networks that makes use of blockchain technology to establish a safe and transparent credential-sharing environment. Consider it a decentralized version of Linkedin, where the user has full control over their data.
Dock.io’s developers seek to contribute to a future where individuals have complete ownership and control over their personal data, where businesses can exchange data rather than just store it. Individuals have complete discretion over what parts of their data is available, and businesses are prevented from storing data for their own benefit. In a nutshell, DOCK helps businesses source their workforces through their decentralized platform. Continue reading to learn more about DOCK and what it offers to users.
What Is Dock Crypto?
Dock.io was launched by a group of professional developers from around the world in 2017, and it’s headquartered in the United States. Nick Macario, a marketing expert, and co-founder Elina Cadouri started the Dock.io project aiming to build a truly decentralized and safe digital environment for professional data sharing. Although Dock.io was founded in 2017, it wasn’t completely operational until the initial coin offering (ICO) in 2018, when the DOCK token, an Ethereum-based ERC20 token that is the official token of the Dock.io’s ecosystem, was issued.
Dock.io is a new decentralized data exchange protocol for professionals from different sectors that are built on the Ethereum network with smart contract functionalities and numerous use cases. Dock.io utilizes blockchain technology to incorporate any type of shareable data with the goal of incentivizing the exchange of work experience, achievement, professional network contacts, and verifiable credentials in a transparent and safe platform where users are in control of how and with whom they get to share their data.
Dock.io’s open-source exchange platform is easy to use. Users can choose to encrypt the information that they wish to keep private while making basic information like their name and contact information available to the public. Additionally, the DOCK network acts as a proposal and voting mechanism to help drive the Dock.io exchange’s development and improvements. DOCK owners can make suggestions and vote for or against modifications and upgrades that they want to see adopted by the platform.
How Does Dock.io Work?
Dock.io’s concept is simple: individuals and businesses connect through the Dock.io platform like they would on popular business networks such as LinkedIn. Unlike LinkedIn, however, users may save whatever data they want on the exchange and control who has access to it. Each user and application interaction on the platform is recorded on Ethereum blockchain via smart contract, allowing users to pick what data they want to share with each third-party software application. This is a significant difference from present centralized systems, where individuals have little control over what data is shared with other users and 3rd-party applications, and where the platform has complete access to all their data.
Users can share some of their information publicly, without any encryption with Dock.io, and make it visible to everyone on the data exchange platform. This is information that the user does not deem confidential, like their name, university degree, career history, and so on. It’s important to understand that once data is made public, it stays that way, i.e. the data cannot be removed from the public domain.
Users can add layers of encryption to further protect their data privacy. Other than that, Dock.io encrypts data automatically. Only the owner or an application with permission to decode the data can do so once it has been encoded. As a result, the user retains complete control over their personal data. According to Dock.io’s whitepaper, the information uploaded can include various types of data such as identity, employment history, performance, education, and achievement, and the users will be free to choose what they want to include in their profiles. Some experts have debated how effectively this would work and have recommended that the data format should be standardized. Dock.io utilizes a system of data format called “Data Format Signaling”, which helps show which data formats the application can support.
The Dock.io API
Dock.io offers developers the platform and tools they need to build applications for issuing and verifying credentials on the blockchain. Dock.io continues to deliver a variety of features for developers, including Decentralized Identities (DIDs), credential revocation, interoperability, and more. Here are some applications that are built on Dock.io:
- Certs: Certs is developed by the Dock.io team. It’s a reference web application that is built to show how simple it is to create, issue, share, and manage verified credentials using Dock.io’s technology. Certs is designed to be adopted by various sectors such as healthcare, education, and workforce management. Furthermore, Dock.io’s blockchain technology and W3C-compliance system will ensure that the credentials can be verified even if the issuing institution goes out of business and that these data records can still be used with other W3C-compliant systems.
- W3C: Dock.io has built the world’s first universal verification app for World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards credentials. W3C is an international organization that develops open-web standards. This standard specifies a format for expressing safe, privacy-preserving, and cryptographically validated credentials. The W3C verifier app is open-source, free to use, and publicly available. On GitHub, Dock.io offers a collection of open-source software that can be used in conjunction with third-party API development.
Dock.io Reward System
The DOCK tokens incentivise the platform’s growth. However, as stated in the whitepaper, users are not eligible for token rewards since it could lead to fraud and deceptive behaviour. Basically, this was done to emphasize the value of private data. Users should not be concerned about the worth of their personal information. If users were to engage in the token economy, then they would need to evaluate and consider transactions involving their personal information every day.
The DOCK platform aims to make the user’s experience as simple as possible by encouraging applications to do the work, rather than the people. So, apps will have to pay tokens to users in order to gain access to the data of individuals. Additionally, payment will be prompted in the Dock.io exchange protocol each time a user’s data is transferred to a 3rd-party app. To put it differently, the system will give users control over their data rather than the apps that use it. Additionally, in order for multiple apps to use the same information, users must verify that they have been paid in DOCK tokens by the initial app that used their data before giving permission to other apps.
The Dock.io model proposes an incentive system that encourages data exchange while discouraging information hoarding.
A Few Final Words…
Dock.io is on the mission to support user information privacy and decentralized identity marketplaces. This signals that Dock.io’s long-term potential is something bigger than a mere professional network platform. DOCK aims to simplify data privacy and give the control of sharing personal information with 3rd parties to the user. It’s no surprise that this technology has gained a lot of traction since its launch. Its mission is to partner up with platforms that want to use this network to make data transfer simple, secure, and promote innovation via the rewarding exchange of user data.
