Vana, a San Francisco-based startup that puts users in control of their personal data, has launched a data decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for social media platform Reddit.
Called Reddit Data DAO (r/datadao), the platform rewards users who contribute Reddit data and lets them vote on what to do with their collective data, including leasing the data to AI companies to train models. The DAO is also the first data launch from Vana, Anna Kazlauskas, the company’s CEO, told The Block.
The DAO offers Reddit an alternative to negotiating contracts with AI companies to sell user data. This allows Reddit to generate $60 million in revenue per year. Over the next few years, Reddit could generate more than $200 million in revenue by selling user data to third parties to train AI models, according to a Wired report.
“Why is that $200 million going directly to Reddit and not to the users who actually generated the data?” Create a Reddit Data DAO on your website. “r/datadao could use our data to start its own version of Reddit, sell our data directly to AI companies, or use our collective power to vote for Reddit to pay us directly.”
Users integrate their Reddit accounts and personal data into the DAO. The DAO then rewards users for uploading their personal data and Reddit Karma, or provides a community points system that reflects someone’s reputation on Reddit. Users can claim points from their cryptocurrency wallet. “The more you contribute, the greater your share of karma points,” the DAO added.
Funding News
Vana also announced Wednesday that it had raised $18 million in a previously undisclosed 2022 funding round, according to a company spokesperson.
Paradigm led the round, with additional support from Casey Caruso, Packy McCormick, and Polychain Capital. Kazlauskas confirmed that Vana’s total funding to date is $20 million.
“Major Internet platforms are often storing user-generated information and content and using that data to build the next wave of technology without users’ permission,” Kazlauskas said. “At Vana, we believe that users should have control over their data and ownership of the models they help create.”
“Today’s launch of the Reddit Data DAO is an effort to build a community-owned data treasury where users can sell their data to AI companies, leverage the treasury to negotiate compensation from Reddit, or provide seed content for new data. It is part of a , user-owned platform,” Kazlauskas added.
Vana Data DAO
The Reddit Data DAO is Vana’s first data offering as a way for users to take control of Big Tech companies’ data.
“Data DAOs are decentralized entities that allow users to aggregate and manage their data, rewarding contributors with dataset-specific tokens that represent ownership of specific datasets,” Kazlauskas wrote in a post Tuesday. “It’s a bit like a union for data.”
Vana’s name comes from the Buddhist term “Nirvana” to refer to free setting data. According to Vana’s website, the company was founded in 2021 and has since amassed 1.1 million users and trained more than 700,000 AI models.
(Modifies the number of users in Vana.)
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