Layered Governance in Investing

i3D Protocol
3 min readMar 8, 2022

Ensuring Data Provenance in the i3D Protocol

In any investment decision making and especially in the poor data environment of alpha start-up investing, where data comes from and how it is stored is very important. In the i3D Protocol, an investor's access to data reports via an NFT smart contract is only the final part of a process. Equally important is the process during and after data is collated, how reports are generated, and ensuring data provenance and data lineage.

Image from Bernard Willer’s article on data lineage https://medium.com/@bernard.willer/data-linage-the-lost-child-of-data-science-4990d11425c6

We refer to data provenance & lineage as the origin of the data and the process by which it arrived in the database in which it is collated and finally securely stored. In other words, what happens to the data as it moves through an analytical process and the tracing and recording of it from origin to report generation.

In the i3D Protocol, we are constructing a robust methodology designed to ensure the process is tamper-proof. While we have already built a platform that allows consensus of a network in scoring a process, we are building a Layered Governance stack to further strengthen the governance. This includes protocols such as Rapid and Expert analytical processes designed to ensure Wisdom of the Crowd, Factor Equilibrium to ensure one factor cannot skew an analysis, and rapid analytical and Reputation Management to ensure the integrity of analysts.

The above processes imply substantial resource allocations which are generally typical of traditional style Due Diligence Processes which rely on a layered process of increasing levels of experience from the origin of the process to final report signoff i.e., junior analysts through to senior partner signoff, all with costs being layered on top of one another. While this process works well for serious investments generally from Series rounds and upwards where larger sums are being considered, it does not work well with alpha investment decision making.

Solutions to the resource problems

With the advances in Blockchain and Data Sharding, a solution is now available to address these problems. We are now able to use the benefits of a large network’s opinions on the viability of an alpha start-up by coding and recording with the protocols of data provenance and lineage being strictly enforced. We complete this process by:

· building our own platform that shards the data process amongst a much larger number of analysts than required for a Series round, and achieves a consensus rating for report generation ensuring data lineage,

· integrating with the Nevermined.io protocol which ensures and records the provenance process — both report generation and retrieval, and

· constructing a stringent Reputation Management Protocol recorded on the blockchain and within Nevermined.io and the i3D Arena to ensure strict protocols are adhered to by the analysts.

When an NFT holder wishes to access a report, their pull request first calls on the Nevermined.io protocol where a report stored in Filecoin’s decentralized data nodes is validated as genuine and free from tampering after it was created. This whole process ensures that any report coming from the i3D Protocol is as robust as can be and far more extensive and cost-effective than traditional methodologies.

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i3D Protocol

i3D Protocol where we are passionate about community investing and building innovative platforms to collectively dodue diligence and democratize venture capital