EpiK Protocol, the world’s first decentralized storage protocol of AI data

7 min readAug 1, 2021

The dilemma of the decentralized storage ecosystem

With the subversive innovation of Filecoin, the entire decentralized storage ecosystem has seen an unprecedented booming. However, as the size of practitioners and devices scale soars year after year, the decentralized storage ecosystem (hereinafter referred to as “ecosystem”) is facing a dilemma:

A large amount of physical storage is wasted and the ecosystem lacks valuable data. Providing meaningless data is allowed and even incentivized, which leads to the abundant of useless data in the ecosystem. Lacking effective sensitive data review mechanism results in the storage service not being open to customers. Therefore, the ecosystem service provider can only seek expansion in business client base.
In the current ecosystem, the business model of providing archive data storage services has not been verified. Although the costs are reduced, the decentralized storage provider still lacks the ability to compete with similar services from centralized Internet giants; performance and credibility need to be examined over time.

After further discussion, we found that the advantage of decentralized storage technology based on blockchain is not in providing larger storage nor better privacy, but in creating an unprecedented ability to share reliable data without a trusted third-party.

Before the advent of decentralized storage, there was very little data that we could credibly share based on Ethereum, and the data was expensive. But with such limited data scale, we have developed a thriving DeFi ecosystem around ledger data.
After the emergence of decentralized storage, with the help of IPFS technology, we can theoretically have an infinite amount of dependable shared data. Do other data have such tremendous business value? We believe AI data deserves its name.

The dilemma of the AI data ecosystem

In 2021, the global AI market value has reached $3 trillion with an annual growth rate of 20%. In the entire AI market, 15% -30% of the capital is invested in data labeling every year, and the scale of this business is growing at 30% per year. It can be seen that the key to AI intelligence is no longer the innovation of algorithms, but the quality of the data used for AI training. Due to the sharp increase in demand for data, the AI Data industry is facing many constraints:

Rising labor costs: The demand for data is becoming more and more specialized. From recognizing voices and pictures to labeling data from various industries such as healthcare, finance, and education, there is a tighter requirement on the knowledge base of labelers.
Rising management costs: Data-labeling companies are unable to enjoy data ownership or share in the future realization benefits of the delivered data. They can only rely on labor to maintain current cash flow, draining the room for appreciation and expansion. With more competition in the industry, most labeling companies fail to operate at full capacity, increasing the window of no work for employees.

EpiK Protocol, the first “AI Data + decentralized Storage” solution in the world

There are two mainstream solutions to the AI data labeling industry dilemma: the odd job economy and the sharing economy. The odd job economy is to use crowdsourcing to label data, and the sharing economy to help people who participate in data contribution to obtain data cashing revenue. Both are the solutions that decentralized storage is best at creating, and are the perfect directions for the application of trusted data sharing capabilities. It is based on this status that we initiated the EpiK Protocol, which combines decentralized storage and AI data to create the first decentralized storage protocols for AI data in the world:

Decentralized storage requires a sustainable and efficient data production mechanism, and the huge market for AI data can fill this vacancy.
The AI data market needs a platform to run a sharing economy, the powerful data authentication capability of decentralized storage can resolve this problem.

A typical EpiK Protocol runtime flow is shown in the following image:

The data from different data sources are labeled by the AI data labeling system provided by EpiK, and those who participate in data labeling and data acceptance can get EPK. The accepted data are stored in the AI data storage system provided by EpiK for decentralized storage, and the devices that participate in data storage can also get EPK. When the application needs to use the data, they pledge EPK to access the data. The EPK obtained for the contribution of data is actually the equity of the data. The greater the demand for data, the higher the demand for EPK. The EPK will appreciate in value, and the EPK holder will benefit.

Why EpiK Protocol is more recommended than Filecoin?

First, EpiK Protocol has two great innovations compared to Filecoin.

EpiK Protocol not only has the storage capacities of Filecoin, but also adds a collaborative network for AI data processing. This change allows the EpiK network to generate a constant stream of valid AI data for continued value creation in upper layer applications even when the community is fully autonomous.
EpiK Protocol revolutionizes Filecoin’s business model, from selling storage based on a decentralized network to selling AI data in a decentralized manner. The storage market has been saturated since the Internet era, but the demand in the data market is still huge, and the market growth rate is considerable.

Even so, EpiK Protocol and Filecoin are not in competition, and the valid data produced by EpiK Protocol is completely open to the Filecoin community in the hope of building the decentralized storage ecosystem together.

Secondly, EpiK Protocol has the endorsement of the industry’s top advisory group and first-rate investment institution — the data security and stability are guaranteed.

Ben Goertzel, a famous AI scientist, founder of SigularityNET, and chief scientist of Sophia the robot citizen, is an expert advisor of EpiK Protocol, assisting EpiK to promote the data market in Europe and the US and helping to build a high-quality AI data ecosystem.
In addition, the influx of capital from well-known industry institutions: FBG Capital, JACKDAW, 1475, ChainUp Capital, 7 O’clock Capital, etc. has brought decentralized storage of AI data back into the public eye with new momentum.

Third, EpiK Protocol has global partners from the head of each field.

Open Knowledge Foundation: The world’s largest NGO open-source data organization, which cooperates with EpiK Protocol to label global government open data, promote the open data movement, and explore the direction of open data applications.
OpenKG: The world’s largest Chinese knowledge graph repository which cooperates with EpiK Protocol to label Chinese mainstream domain knowledge graphs and explore the frontier topics and applications of knowledge graphs together.
Tsinghua University: The Big Data Knowledge Team of Tsinghua National Research Center for Information and EpiK collaborated to develop the “Health Chain” to promote trusted data collaboration in the medical field. The “Health Chain” was presented at Tsinghua’s 110th-anniversary celebration as an outstanding research achievement.
SingularityNET: The first decentralized AI service network, creator of Sophia, the world’s first robot citizen, and creator of Grace, an intelligent medical robot, cooperates with EpiK Protocol to focus on labeling AI data needed for universal medical robots, including knowledge graphs and facial expression data.
Ocean Protocol: The world’s largest decentralized data exchange protocol, working with EpiK Protocol to advance a global decentralized marketplace for AI voice data.
iMerit: One of the world’s 50 fastest growing technology companies. It is a data annotation company based in India that works with EpiK Protocol to promote efficient data annotation, improve data annotation efficiency and incentive for data annotation practitioners.
OpenSLR: The world’s largest open Chinese speech data community, working with EpiK Protocol to advance the annotation of Chinese speech data and add more subcategories.

How to participate in EpiK

The EpiK Protocol has two major systems, AI data annotation and AI data storage, which correspond to two main ways of participation.

The first way is to participate in AI data annotation and become an EPK bounty hunter. Spending about 1 hour per day to participate in data annotation needed for different AI fields. The more tasks you complete, the more EPK you will earn. You can also have a chance to win a knowledge badge NFT by answering questions, with which you can participate in furthur EPK airdrop activities. Now, invite your friends to participate in AI data annotation and get a 30% rebate on Level 1 and 15% on Level 2. For more details, please go to epikg.com and download the APP.
The second way is to participate in storing AI data and become an EPK storage node. You can participate in the storage of valid AI data using idle storage devices. The more data you store, the more EPK you will earn. If you have a public IP, you can get an additional bonus for providing data-downloading services. Now, EpiK main-net is going to launch, configure your machines to participate in the early bird stage of mining, and get a satisfying reward. For more details, please visit the wiki for machine configuration tutorials.

Summary

EpiK Protocol is the world’s first decentralized storage protocol for AI data. Through the integration of IPFS storage technology, Token incentive mechanism and DAO governance model, it creates a global open autonomous community with four core capabilities of trusted storage, trusted incentives, trusted governance and trusted finance. It organizes global community users to work together at an extremely low management cost, continuously producing high-quality AI data that can be jointly built and shared. It aims to broaden the understanding of AI, and promote the arrival of the era of cognitive intelligence.