COMP4801 Final Year Project by Jason Lo

This is a project website for a Final Year Project Under the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hong Kong

Project Topic: Blockchain Research and Implementation

Student: Lo Cheuk Yin

Supervisor: Dr. S.M. Yiu

There has been rising number of AI development projects that require huge amount of data to train the models. And data are not only highly demanded in AI development field, there are demands everywhere in other areas such as retail, banking and marketing etc. where companies want more data to facilitates companies decisions. In fact, the process to gather data is not easy. There are insufficient data available, or data are scattered around which greatly hinder the development process. I believe the lack-of-data obstacle could be overcome through extensive cooperative research. However, traditional centralized server-client model is not suitable for data sharing and exchange because of the ambiguity in the ownership of data. Data sharers have to bear the middleman risks when using centralized solutions. This motivates me to study the opportunity of blockchain technology in tackling the problem as blockchain has the potential to eliminate the middleman risks and ensure complete data ownership by participants of the data exchange. Thus, giving me this idea to develop the Decentralized Data Marketplace.

The objective of this FYP is to build a fully decentralized data marketplace application powered with blockchain technology and to study the feasibility to bring the fully decentralized application into the market through analysing the pros and cons of such application. The application consists of the following components:
1. Web interface/Hosting Server
2. Storage layer
3. Smart contract
This project will also study the feasibility to bring this fully decentralized data marketplace into the market through analyzing the pros and cons of such application. Eventually, there will be a conclusion on whether such decentralized application is desirable.

The system consists of 3 layers:

Client Layer

The major responsibility of this layer is to govern the interactions between users and the system, which mainly serves as a user interface. There will be a web interface for users to interact with the system.
Consensus Layer

Consensus Layer handles the system logics and settle transactions. In this project, the Ethereum network is adopted for building the decentralized data marketplace application. Therefore, this layer is implemented with Ethereum Smart Contracts.
Storage Layer

This layer is responsible for data storage, where data are transferred to this layer through consensus layer and the client layer.

System Structure

Transaction Flow

Security
This application has better security as no extra login credentials and third-party payment service are required as wallet address and Ether are used. Also, data will not be lost and will stay forever because of Blockchain.
Trust
There is no trust issue, as in theory user has the ability to read through everything to be executed within the transaction. No middleman is involved and everything is set based on Smart Contract.
Low Hosting Cost
As computing and transaction handling falls onto the client side, hosting and operating cost of such service is low.

Long Wait
Blockchain requires confirmations of block data and the process takes time. In this project, it is observed that transaction confirmations are slow and this affects user experience.
Potentially High Cost for Users
Transaction cost is found to be high when the operation is complicated on Smart Contract, where users have to bear the cost.
Transparent Only to Knowledgeable Users
Blockchain is transparent only to knowledgeable user as general user might not have the ability to read through codes and logics.
Gargae Data Lives Forever
Data on Blockchain will live forever, garage data will also stays forever.

Cryptocurrency is Not Common
Cryptocurrency is not common among general public. As cryptocurrency is the only mean to pay and receive reward in this application, it would require a learning curve for users to understand how cryptocurrency works such that they could directly use the decentralized application by themselves.
Drastic Price Fluctuation in Cryptocurrency
There are often drastic price fluctuations for cryptocurrencies. It implies it would also induce fluctuation for pricing in data assets.

Given the pros and cons in the analysis, it is recommended to release the application to the market given its low hosting and operating cost and to further polish the application with user feedbacks to enhance product quality, eventually the shortcomings of the application will hopefully be mitigated.

Completed - Preliminary Research

Completed - System Analysis

Completed - System Design

Completed - Development

Completed - Testing and Finetuning

Completed - Ready for Deployment

Project Completed