Enabling Monetization of Depreciating Data on Blockchains

In this paper, we introduce a protocol to securely exchange data on chain while varying its price according to their freshness, maturity and lifetime. The exchange protocol, implemented as a smart contract, is best applied to crowdsourcing systems for fast depreciating digital goods, in which information is publicly shared after a given delay. The smart contract acts as a trusted intermediary to make sure that the funds of a client are delivered to the provider if and only if the data were really transferred. It also ensures that the data will be freely shared on the blockchain when the data has sufficiently depreciated. We demonstrate our work with an available prototype for specific space tracking data exchange.