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A company called Vectorspace Biosciences/Vectorspace AI’s revenue and technology model is based largely on crypto/blockchain. They’re focused on helping to faci

A company called Vectorspace Biosciences/Vectorspace AI’s revenue and technology model is based largely on crypto/blockchain. They’re focused on helping to facilitate scientific discovery through what’s essentially AI data analysis, so knowing when and why data changed is critical. Blockchain and their token are used as part of their dataset provenance and security pipeline to help keep track of dataset modifications and history. It also acts as a licensing mechanism, so that tiered API access is granted based on how much of the token is held in the user’s wallet. Disclaimer: I’m an investor.

ArtTimeInvestor 3y ago
This sounds like a persiflage. But I have the feeling it's not? How do they use blockchain? Can you tell it without jargon?
- mrweiner 3y ago
  Sorry, didn’t mean to make it jargony. The licensing API key part is fairly straightforward. A customer holds X amount of the token in their crypto wallet, and then the wallet address is used as an API key. Different service levels, etc, can be granted based on the amount of token held in the wallet. And API access, customer datasets, etc, can be associated with the wallet-as-an-API-key. By provenance, I just mean that somebody who’s leveraging a dataset can see the exact history of where the data came from, when it was manipulated, etc. I believe the way it works is that each time data in a dataset is manipulated, a corresponding hash of the dataset is generated and stored on-chain. So if a you had a dataset representing the relationship between some proteins, and a study was published that provided additional data regarding one of those proteins and potential relationships, then the dataset might be updated to reflect the new information, and a hash of the dataset would be created to represent the updated dataset at that point in time. Like a git commit hash. Then they do some proprietary stuff that associates the dataset with the customer wallet address noted above, and that is stored on the blockchain in a transaction using their token. Does that make sense?
  - ArtTimeInvestor 3y ago
    Thanks for the explanation. When you say "see the exact history of where the data came from", what does that mean? When I publish the string "Dogs have two ears" on a blockchain, that notarizes that I published this string at a certain time or earlier. But how does it tell where the data comes from?
    - mrweiner 3y ago
      If I understand your question, it’s just a part of their data pipeline. So a new paper is published, they ingest it, and then their language modeling/analysis/etc see that, and your dataset is updated. Presumably what caused the change would be discoverable via the hash. I should be able to give a better answer, here, but I’m not sure that I can. Not sure that this helps, but this is the non-technical overview currently on their site: https://vectorspacebio.science/technology/ https://vectorspacebio.science/technology/
      - ArtTimeInvestor 3y ago
        I think all that lingo just makes things more muddy here. The "dataset" is a string, right? A sequence of characters. Like "Dogs have two ears". But what does it mean when you say "know where the data came from"? If someone publishes that string on a blockchain, you know they published it. Because they signed it. And you know when. Because the blockchain timesteamped it. Fine. But "where it came from"? What does that mean?
        mrweiner 3y ago
        So let’s say 1000 scientific papers were published, and we want to see how two proteins relate to one another based on those papers. When I say underlying data or “where the data came from,” I’m referring to the papers. Those 1000 papers would be run through the data analysis pipeline to generate a “dataset” representing the relationships. For instance, a CSV file of the relationship information. That dataset is what is hashed, and that hash is the “string” that is published on-chain. It would be like if you had a bunch of papers about how many ears animals have, whether they have fur, where they’re from, etc, and you want to find out how those things relate to one-another. The info about ears and fur is the “data that changed” and the “dataset” is essentially vectors for how the information relates to each other. Then that dataset is hashed, etc, and that hash is what’s stored on chain. Then when another paper is added, the relationships csv changes, and that is re-hashed and published. It’s hard to describe this without some jargon, just because of what we are discussing. I left another comment before with a diagram that might or might not help.

ArtTimeInvestor 3y ago

This sounds like a persiflage. But I have the feeling it's not? How do they use blockchain? Can you tell it without jargon?

mrweiner 3y ago
Sorry, didn’t mean to make it jargony. The licensing API key part is fairly straightforward. A customer holds X amount of the token in their crypto wallet, and then the wallet address is used as an API key. Different service levels, etc, can be granted based on the amount of token held in the wallet. And API access, customer datasets, etc, can be associated with the wallet-as-an-API-key. By provenance, I just mean that somebody who’s leveraging a dataset can see the exact history of where the data came from, when it was manipulated, etc. I believe the way it works is that each time data in a dataset is manipulated, a corresponding hash of the dataset is generated and stored on-chain. So if a you had a dataset representing the relationship between some proteins, and a study was published that provided additional data regarding one of those proteins and potential relationships, then the dataset might be updated to reflect the new information, and a hash of the dataset would be created to represent the updated dataset at that point in time. Like a git commit hash. Then they do some proprietary stuff that associates the dataset with the customer wallet address noted above, and that is stored on the blockchain in a transaction using their token. Does that make sense?
- ArtTimeInvestor 3y ago
  Thanks for the explanation. When you say "see the exact history of where the data came from", what does that mean? When I publish the string "Dogs have two ears" on a blockchain, that notarizes that I published this string at a certain time or earlier. But how does it tell where the data comes from?
  - mrweiner 3y ago
    If I understand your question, it’s just a part of their data pipeline. So a new paper is published, they ingest it, and then their language modeling/analysis/etc see that, and your dataset is updated. Presumably what caused the change would be discoverable via the hash. I should be able to give a better answer, here, but I’m not sure that I can. Not sure that this helps, but this is the non-technical overview currently on their site: https://vectorspacebio.science/technology/ https://vectorspacebio.science/technology/
    - ArtTimeInvestor 3y ago
      I think all that lingo just makes things more muddy here. The "dataset" is a string, right? A sequence of characters. Like "Dogs have two ears". But what does it mean when you say "know where the data came from"? If someone publishes that string on a blockchain, you know they published it. Because they signed it. And you know when. Because the blockchain timesteamped it. Fine. But "where it came from"? What does that mean?
      - mrweiner 3y ago
        So let’s say 1000 scientific papers were published, and we want to see how two proteins relate to one another based on those papers. When I say underlying data or “where the data came from,” I’m referring to the papers. Those 1000 papers would be run through the data analysis pipeline to generate a “dataset” representing the relationships. For instance, a CSV file of the relationship information. That dataset is what is hashed, and that hash is the “string” that is published on-chain. It would be like if you had a bunch of papers about how many ears animals have, whether they have fur, where they’re from, etc, and you want to find out how those things relate to one-another. The info about ears and fur is the “data that changed” and the “dataset” is essentially vectors for how the information relates to each other. Then that dataset is hashed, etc, and that hash is what’s stored on chain. Then when another paper is added, the relationships csv changes, and that is re-hashed and published. It’s hard to describe this without some jargon, just because of what we are discussing. I left another comment before with a diagram that might or might not help.