Turning Vision into Reality; Quadrant launches the Data Smart Contract
By: Mike Davie, Quadrant Protocol
Tags: Payments, Smart Contracts, Blockchain, Ethereum, Big Data

At Quadrant, we are firm believers that data, in the right hands, can spur innovation and growth. But the real world does not work that way. Good data is hard to access, and the data economy is fraught with problems including a lack of transparency and organisation. To solve these problems, we developed Quadrant Protocol in 2018 which uses Blockchain to map and authenticate disparate sources of data. We then launched our Service Credits which allowed organisations to purchase credits for our services using fiat currency, ensuring that they remain in compliance with traditional book-keeping and accounting structures. The next part of our vision for Quadrant Protocol is our ‘Constellations’, or Data Smart Contracts.

Data Smart Contracts increase the supply of data by solving the problem of data monetisation, by making it easier for data producers to be remunerated for the data they provide. By rewarding those who produce data and making it available on our platform, we increase the supply of good quality, authenticated data for users. Importantly, we also facilitate the mapping of disparate sources of data further spurring innovation and new products.

Companies acquiring data typically buy on a recurring subscription basis — it is not a one-off purchase — as many firms want behavioural insights into their customers over many months or years. To address this, we make our data available through a subscription model for buyers, who purchase data on our platform from data producers. The data the producer provides is vetted for quality and volume before being delivered to the buyer. Once the transaction has been completed and a report generated, we then remunerate the supplier as per the contract terms. We are now bringing this payment module on the blockchain via our Quadrant Data Smart Contracts.

To kick things off, we are continuing to transition our clients over to the Data Smart Contracts which provide a smooth and easy way to facilitate the flow of quality data between supplier and buyer and brings enterprise contracts onto the Blockchain. Importantly, they are already working, and Quadrant.io has had the first module of our Data Smart Contracts, the Payment Module, running for the past two months, where our buyers purchase data with fiat currency and our suppliers are paid in QUAD.

How does this work?

Here is how our Data Smart Contracts currently work:

Data Smart Contracts’ Payment Module explained

Enterprise clients pay us in fiat currency Suppliers choose if they would like to get paid in fiat or QUAD Quadrant purchases tokens from the open market The Data Smart Contract is executed Suppliers get paid in QUAD or converted to fiat from company cash reserve Converted QUAD is held in platform balance sheet as asset

Impact on eQUAD

Month One — April 2019 Subscriptions

The first set of subscriptions we ported to the Data Smart Contracts were worth US$509,471.52 in Annual Recurring Revenue(ARR). This resulted in us executing in April, US$42,455.96 worth of enterprise data subscriptions. With this, we purchased ETH244.977 that we then used to purchase 13,779,825 eQUADs to distribute to our suppliers.

Month Two — May 2019 Subscriptions

Our ARR from the Data Smart Contracts for May increased to US$628,728, equaling US$52,394 worth of enterprise data subscriptions which was used to purchase ETH195.167. From this we then brought 14,193,450 eQUADs for contract execution.

In both months we were able to transfer USD to cryptocurrency and then purchase the requisite eQUADs that enabled us to pay our suppliers for quality data. In April this came to just over 4.1% of CoinMarketCap (CMC) circulating supply (13,779,825 eQUADs bought out of 335,888,909 circulating), for May’s contracts this came to 4.2% (14,193,450 eQUADs bought out of 336,438,430 circulating).

In total, our Data Smart Contracts have resulted in 27,973,275 eQUADs purchased (coming to 8.3% of CMC circulating supply). Our CMC ranking is 746 from 1,075 prior to contract execution (April 11, 2019) and our CMC market capitalisation has increased by 7.43x to USD $1,683,816 (from USD$226,627).

Ranking before implementing the Data Smart Contracts Payments Module

Ranking after two-month pilot period

Where do we go from here?

We truly believe in the power of Blockchain and its ability to allow access to safe, authentic and quality data. While this is a marathon, not a sprint, our journey so far has seen us build solutions that are tightly aligned with the needs of enterprises: providing authentic, quality data; making it easier to access this data in a way that is in compliance with both regulations and standard accounting structures; monetising data production and facilitating the flow of data from producer to user.

Already in the two months that we have implemented our Data Smart Contracts Payment Module we have brought over USD$600,000 worth of enterprise subscriptions to the Quadrant Blockchain — our next milestone will be US$1 million in Annual Subscriptions. This is not just about deep technology, it is about understanding the needs of our customers — enterprises — and building solutions for them to use. We will continue to do this.

Our next solution in the pipeline for Q3 is our Data Smart Contract Compliance Module, which will focus on bringing transparency and user privacy protection to data transactions.

Data use will only grow as we become ever more connected and digitised and Quadrant’s technology will grow and evolve too. We have come a long way and built some truly game-changing solutions that are being used by major enterprises to solve their data problems, and there is much more to come!