The Problem: Finding Expert to generate Data-driven Insights

Over the past years, data-driven innovation has become a key driver of economic growth in the EU and globally. Data-driven innovation is enabled by data collection in local systems, and data analysis executed by specialized data scientists. Yet, finding specialist data scientists is a hard task. Most data scientists stay as in-house specialists for a maximum of 2 years with the same company. This fast turnover rate causes large overheads. The consequence would be to hire freelancers. Yet, this is mostly prevented by the fact that the confidential data is highly valuable and that there is a large portion of trust between the data owner and the data scientist needed.

The Solution: A secure marketplace

KnowledgeX is a secure marketplace for data science. This means data owners can outsource data science tasks to independent contractors without risking the loss of data. Independent data scientists can make offers on proposed tasks without getting any access to confidential data. Currently, data markets are hampered by confidentiality requirements due to competitive (e.g., cost data) or regulatory (e.g., personal data) considerations. Data scientists have to be employed in-house or are contractually restricted by non-disclosure stipulations, which tend to be ambiguous and costly to enforce. KnowledgeX aims to solve this problem via a process where data privacy and contract fulfillment are technologically guaranteed, so the need for non-disclosure agreements does not arise. Therefore, KnowledgeX utilizes blockchain, decentralized cloud computing, and trusted execution environments (TEEs). In addition, the KnowledgeX project aims to track reputation decentrally to avoid a “lemons market” scenario where only low-quality data scientists and data owners interact.

Our Product: Next-Generation Data Science

The JadenX team implemented an end-to-end solution for KnowledgeX. This includes:

• Requirements specification
• System design
• Setting up an authorization and authentication concept
• Data integration
• Blockchain Smart Contract
• Orchestration of decentralized Cloud Computing
• Integration of different external services
• Creation of a web application

Technology Used

Java (backend), AWS, React.js (web application), Auth0, Ethereum (Smart Contracts), iExec (Tees)

The Impact: Actionable Insights

We run KnowledgeX as our own startup with customers utilizing data science services to supercharge their businesses.