For our first blog post, the team at OXIO wanted to talk about the platform we are building. We call it a mobile data connectivity exchange. “Quite a mouthful”, some might say. Let us unpack.
We refer to mobile data connectivity as any technology that offers physically untethered information transfer. The most common example is cellular data which has been democratized by smartphones. Wi-Fi connectivity is another obvious example but many other connectivity technologies exist such as satellite, long range low power wireless (LoRa), pre-established and future Mesh networks, etc. Each of these technologies have prompted the birth of an ecosystem, with connectivity suppliers, brokers and buyers. Suppliers usually own or operate the infrastructure. They have laid down the cables, installed antennas or sent telecommunications satellite into Earth’s orbit. They offer data and expect a return on their investment. Buyers can be individuals, or entire organizations. Buyers have a need for this wireless connection and they spend money acquiring it. In-between this supply and demand stand other actors who will sometimes buy, and sometimes sell. Brokers usually do this in bulk. As a broker, you need capital to buy large portions of data.
So there is a buy side and a sell side. Valuable items are being transferred from one party to the other. It sounds like a marketplace, doesn’t it? We thought so too. This is why we are building an exchange for this connectivity. We want buyers and sellers to meet each other in a transparent, virtual place and trade with each other. How do we do this?
First we introduce connectivity vouchers. Vouchers are a virtual representation of mobile data. Suppliers can define vouchers with the following criteria: location, start date/time, end date/time, medium and unit size (minimum divisibility). These are created on the blockchain. This allows them to change ownership just like any other non-fungible token on a blockchain, like an ERC 721 token. Voucher authenticity is a guarantee assured by the blockchain, with immutability preserved even as such tokens are traded and change ownership.
Then, the OXIO platform implements an “off-chain order matching/on-chain settlement” model which combines the speed required for quick order creation and execution with the security of a blockchain transaction. Executions, committed to the distributed ledger offer transparency and the ability to audit. Connectivity suppliers wanting to sell their vouchers on the OXIO Exchange must have created the voucher on the blockchain first. Once verified by the OXIO Exchange, the order is publicly listed and added to dynamically generated order books in accordance to the voucher’s criteria. The order can then be found by order identifier and it can be matched to an opposite order by a query to the order book (e.g. “I want all orders for Boston, MA with at least 300 MB”). With the appropriate funds, anyone can submit a bid on the exchange to buy a voucher. Once two orders are matched, the transaction is created by the OXIO platform and each actor signs the transaction before it is submitted to the blockchain. The OXIO platform not only matches two orders together but can bundle multiple orders with aligning interests into one transaction for a single execution. For example, if a supplier sells a 100 GB voucher at a discounted price with a unit size of 1 GB, one hundred buyers looking to buy 1 GB can be combined in order to buy the voucher together. This is made possible by the use of multi-signature blockchain transactions.
We have been working on this for the past 6 months. We are excited about the tremendous opportunity in this effort. If you want to learn more, we recommend you download our whitepaper. And if you want to get in touch, please contact us.
