Ruben Verborgh.
Abstract: Personal data is being centralized at an unprecedented scale, and this comes with widely known and far-reaching consequences, considering the recent data scandals with companies such as Equifax and Facebook. Decentralizing personal data storage allows people to take back control of their data, and Semantic Web technologies can facilitate data integration at runtime. However, such data processing over decentralized data requires far more expensive algorithms, while at the same time, less processing power is available in individual stores compared to large-scale data centers. This article presents a vision in which nodes in decentralized networks are incentivized to collaborate on data processing using a distributed ledger. By leveraging the collective processing capacity of all nodes, we can provide a sustainable alternative to the current generation of centralized solutions, and thereby put people back in control without compromising on functionality.
Keywords: decentralization; collaboration; Semantic Web