The Problem

Every day your data is being collected through both online and offline channels and sold to companies for various uses. However, if someone asked you what data you've consented to be collected, how your data is being used, or who your data is being sold to, the chances are you would have no idea. This data could include behavioural information, like what websites you frequent, purchasing records, like what you bought and when, or personal details, like your age, location, religion, sexual preference and so on. You have 'agreed' to this on most occasions, but the terms of content have been hidden among complicated Terms and Conditions documents that the regular person doesn't understand.

The data is sold to brands and companies for research, marketing and targeted advertising by internet and media platforms or 3rd party data providers. However, this is often a less than perfect experience for businesses as they do not know how accurate and complete the data is or if it was acquired legally. They cannot be sure that the data they have purchased is of the quality required to improve their customer experience or marketing efforts.

Solving these two issues serve as the basis for APEX, a new blockchain powered data and interactions exchange built on NEO. APEX is a product of Chinapex, a company that offers a real time AI powered customer data platform for marketing, personalization and analytics. Chinapex is headquartered in Shanghai with offices in Beijing, Hong Kong and Silicon Valley and is already processing 47 billion data points and 360 million unique consumer data annually.

The Solution

APEX will be a platform that allows consumers to maintain control of their data and who can use it. The main touch point for consumers will be the Consumer Client App (CPX rewards wallet), which will enable users and brands to interact, with the user maintaining the the power to decide who they like to share their data with and what data they would like to make available. Users can set a price in CPX tokens for access to their data, which will be accumulated as the data is accessed by brands. The amount of CPX earned can be scaled by increasing the number of brands that have access, how much data is shared and the number of interactions had with a brand.

This passes the value of data back to the consumer. Instead of their data being collected and sold for profit by third parties, the user can cut out the middle man and receive profit on their data usage in the form of rewards. Brands can also provide offers to consumers through the application that will be redeemable in CPX.

The result is a 1 to 1 engagement between users and brands. This is highly beneficial for businesses as it provides rich, high-quality data that is not possible through third party data providers. APEX provides an Enterprise Client App called NEXUS, that enables brands to manage target customer scope, data acquisition scope, cost management, rewards management and management of messages and engagements. Brands are then able to analyze and activate the data collected using features such as real time advanced analytics and productized machine learning and AI models.

To build out the ecosystem, APEX will also provide an SDK that will enable brands to integrate the data and value exchange functionality into their own applications, and a NEXUS APEX Module API to allow enterprise partners to embed particular capabilities surrounding APEX transaction management within their own application or platform.

Why Blockchain?

Chinapex have decided to use blockchain technology for APEX as information and value is required to be exchanged across the ecosystem without any middle men. Smart contracts are a natural fit for providing trustless consent of access to data, and the CPX token provides a suitable reward system for the sharing of information and redeeming of offers. APEX chose the NEO blockchain for the efficiency of the dBFT consensus mechanism and because the built in identity features will be useful in the long term development of APEX.

The Company

Chinapex already have over 200 enterprise customers using their real time AI powered customer data platform in the financial services, banking, travel, automotive, retail, ecommerce and internet sectors such as Standard Chartered, BMW, Hilton, Chevrolet and Casio. Chinapex's technology, infrastructure and data ecosystem partners include Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Alibaba Cloud, Baidu, Tencent and Oracle.