Background & Problem
Understanding the current data economy landscape and why Glain exists.
Last updated
Understanding the current data economy landscape and why Glain exists.
Last updated
Imagine you’re a kid with a lemonade stand, and you created a special recipe that everyone loves. Now, big companies are taking pictures of your recipe, selling it to others, and making lots of money - but they’re not sharing any of that money with you.
That’s not fair, right?
H/T Midjourney for this fabulous illustration (with typos).
This is exactly what’s happening with data today:
People create valuable content on platforms like Reddit and Twitter
The original creators get nothing in return
Glain is building a fair marketplace where:
If someone uses your data, you get paid
It’s cheaper to store and process data
Everyone knows exactly how their data is being used
It’s like creating a new lemonade marketplace where:
You can sell your recipe directly
You get paid every time someone uses it
It costs less to run your stand
Everything is clear and fair for everyone
Wow - what a beautiful world we can live in if Glain meets its mission.
The current data marketplace ecosystem faces several fundamental challenges that affect both individual users and enterprises:
A significant ethical and economic challenge exists in how user-generated data is handled:
Content creators receive minimal compensation for their data contributions
Platforms sell user data without revenue sharing (e.g., Reddit’s $200M data deal)
Limited transparency in how user data is monetized
No standardized framework for data rights and compensation
Traditional data platforms like Snowflake and Databricks present several obstacles for organizations:
Complex procurement processes for data acquisition, specifically for the datasets that actually matter like Twitter / Reddit
High operational costs for data storage and transformation - Snowflake / Databricks charge 80% product gross margins, spend for most start-ups / SMBs is way too high
Limited monetization opportunities for proprietary datasets. Too hard to share data into the hands of the right, paying customer
The data marketplace landscape is ripe for innovation due to several factors:
We are finally at the right time to build a data warehouse using blockchain primitives.
Notably, you need two things to build an effective data warehouse - storage and compute. The modern hyperscaler has had both of these primitives since the early 2000s - only over the last 12-18 months have we bootstrapped these primitives in crypto.
The key primitives that enable Glain’s data warehouse are:
- Up to 80% cost reduction vs. AWS S3 - No egress costs - Enterprise-grade durability (11 9’s) - Geographic data sovereignty - Pay-as-you-go pricing
Decentralized Compute
- Up to 85% cost savings vs. AWS EC2 - Global compute marketplace - Automatic failover - Native container orchestration
These foundational technologies enable us to provide:
High-performance storage solutions
Cost-effective compute capabilities
Enterprise-grade SLA guarantees
Reduced operational costs (up to 70% savings)
The market demands new approaches to:
Data ownership and rights management
Fair compensation for data creators
Efficient data procurement, ingestion, and transformation
Enterprise data monetization
Glain addresses these challenges through our product suite that properly aligns incentives between enterprises, users, and content creators.
Big companies collect and sell this data (to AI use-cases - )
Decentralized Storage (specifically a )
&
, AWS (back-up)
