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Winner of the Parcel Bonus prize

This is part of an ongoing series featuring the winners of the Quest for ROSE hackathon. You can find more information about the competition and all the winners here.

Tell us a little bit about yourself (where you’re from, what you’ve previously worked on, etc.)

Hello I am Apple Choi . I am working as a software engineer at Forbole as well as a final year student at Swansea University. At Forbole I mainly work on BDJuno, a chain data parser aimed for Bigdipper to show the blockchain data in the UI easily. Also, I am working on my final year project as the microblogging recommendation system based on the blockchain dataset from Desmos, which Desmos is a chain designed for functionality of Social Media platform. We would like to introduce a no tracking decentralized social network. Such the users on Desmos can all be anonymous.

When and why did you first get excited about blockchain technology?

I learn about blockchain technology when I become a part of the team with Forbole. While working and implementing blockchain apps, I am really fascinated with the concept of blockchain technology: decentralize, democracy, anonymous and privacy preserving.

People are worrying the speech on the internet will be monitored and linked with your personal information. There is a need to build a secure social media so that people can have a peace of mind when they are posting on social media platforms. That came up with an idea of implementing a microblogging system with blockchain technology, such as bringing the advantage of blockchain technology into social media.

Tell us about your project (what is it, how does it work?)

When the user is browsing the posts on social media, they would want to get recommended. In order to do recommendation, some personal big data will be collected but the users may be concerned about privacy as well. Therefore, Parcel SDK may help with managing the data access with user consensus. The project is an interface to bridge the data on Desmos to Oasis which allow users to control their own behavioural data.

The project is a prototype of a social media system — users can view posts, like and comment in the app. Then, the program would send the user action, like which post reacted and the comment to a lambda server. On the server side, data would be parsed to the users’ account on Parcel.

When the user is required to get the personality test result, the server will download all the user’s data from Parcel, pass the analysis machine learning job to Parcel, and return the result.

Personality tester is actually a part of my final year project. The ultimate goal of this project is building a recommendation system with Parcel SDK and blockchain dataset.

What key real-world problem does your project aim to address?

The privacy problem in social media nowadays is the main real-world problem we are aiming to address. Since most of the social media platforms are free, selling advertisements is the only way that the platforms can gain profit from. That means the personal data are sold to the companies that put the advert on the platform. The problem of this economy is that users cannot choose what data and which company they are going to sell. Parcel SDK allows people getting their control back.

On Desmos, the ad income will be shared to the end users based on their social engagements. With this mechanism, the ads can be delivered to the right target audience without sacrificing their data privacy.

What made you interested in building on the Oasis network?

I like the idea of the Parcel SDK — which user can see the log that the data is being accessed by whom. In nowadays social media, people just click on “I agree with the terms and conditions” without reading it. The whole authorise process of Oasis portal can gain awareness of the users that what privacy the user authorises.

Why are privacy and confidentiality important components of your project, if at all?

Everyone agrees that personal metadata should be confidential and privacy preserved. The user log, which where they view/ click and like is stored in Parcel.

How does your project use the Parcel SDK to create a responsible data economy, if at all?

Parcel SDK allows people to get their control back. The user can see what data can be shown to which company and what they sold.

On Desmos, the contents and reactions are recorded. And to protect user behavioural data, Desmos don’t record or analyse any user behaviour. With Parcel SDK, end users can choose what data from the touchpoints they would like to share to the app. The server can make analysis based on those data and delivery content or ads to the end users without knowing the identity. Data owners also have the ability to know what data have been shared.

What’s one of your favorite Oasis network features that you’ve discovered while working on your project?

As far as I only tried out Parcel SDK, I found that Parcel Steward is amazing that not only the data submitted can be viewed, but also the processed data. The users may know what the data processed and what to do with these data and the data result. Also, users may delete the record they don’t want anymore. And that is amazing.

How can others try out your app or learn more about what you’re working on?

If you want to try out Personality Tester just download it from Github :)

The ultimate social media platform (Mooncake) that would use Parcel SDK as a data collector is still in process and not available right now. Keep in touch with Forbole and get updates!

Anything else you’d like to share?

There is still a room of improvement from the SDK itself to increase its usability. I really look forward to the future development of Parcel SDK!

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