Data Stewardship: The Untapped Potential of the Internet

The idea of data stewardship seems especially relevant given the increasing ability of, e.g., adtech companies to construct models of their users with the end goal of having a brain-in-vat-style replica used to optimize ad placement.

The article doesn't go into much detail about the mechanism, but it seems like one would bring together the computation and data in a trusted environment, orchestrated by the blockchain (nb: you'll have to click the CTA link at the bottom to find this information). The environment is trusted hardware in the case of the Oasis Protocol network, but crypto methods would also work, depending on the algorithm.

The separation of consensus from (trusted) execution cleanly divides the concerns of durability+auditibility and confidentiality. However, it might be useful to go one step further and unbundle the two entirely, so to increase the flexibility of the computation (e.g., introducing non-determinism) and reduce the reliance on a particular root of trust. In such a model, the service provider and user would suss out the TEE out of band, and commit only the provenance and (shielded) results to the blockchain. Downstream data consumers would use the latter based on their trust in the former.