New Blockchain Platform Designed to Monetize User Data

A new online platform is seeking to replace user data with biometrics.

Called Nuggets, the platform was developed by former Skype and Microsoft executives Alastair Johnson and Seema Khinda Johnson. The idea is to use blockchain ledger technology tied to biometrics to facilitate online transactions in which no user data needs to be shared.

But users can decide, on an item-by-item basis, what pieces of personal information – or ‘nuggets’ – they are willing to share; and users are rewarded for sharing such information with Nuggets Tokens, the platform’s cryptocurrency. In this way, the platform is designed to systematically liquidate personal data into its own kind of currency.

Nuggets is a finalist in the BBVA Open Talent 2017 Global Trends competition and has been approved for testing in cohort two of the UK Financial Conduct Authority’s Regulatory sandbox program. And in a bold plan to raise capital for its eponymous platform as it moves toward launch, Nuggets is now planning to sell Nuggets Tokens to prospective users, with a pre-sale scheduled for October 24th and a public sale launching on November 14th. The effort is being organized by Argon Group, an L.A.-based investment firm “specializing in the field of cryptocurrencies and the ICO market,” according to a statement from Nuggets.