Yesterdays I watched the video from Introduction of OpenMined by Andrew Liam Trask. Wow, it’s so interesting. Some notes:
* First of all, unlike similar projects. There is no ICO. It’s a genuine open source projects with a vibrant community.
* The idea is quite explainable. It’s a marketplace between data scientists and miners who want to provide data. The key question Trask tried to figure out is to protect data privacy from the user, at the same time allow data scientists to train model securely.
* At first I thought it is just an idea about federated learning combined with deep learning. But Trask has augmented the idea with homomorphic encryption and smart contract. I am still in the process to learn why the last two concepts but briefly homomorphic encryption allows model to be securely to miners without getting stolen. Whereas having smart contract would genuinely allow an open market place.
* What if miner tries to come up with fake data? This is actually an FAQ on OpenMined.org. As it turns out, a data scientist can also specify a test set on the smart contract. This ensures data uploaded by miner improve a model.
* Another question I asked to their slack community is how everyone is paid without a coin. Currently the project would rely on USD, ETH and BTC. Fair enough.