Decentralized Knowledge Graphs

OriginTrail and Golden Protocol

Golden is a Web2 company with big VC funding (20M$ on the first rounds, 40M$ on September 2022) with names such as a16z, building a canonical knowledge graph, attempting to become the Wikipedia of Web3. The canonical knowledge will be offered free to the public and charged to the commercial entities.

Traits	TRAC	Golden
Whitepaper
Open source
Permissionless
Decentralized
Knowledge Graph
Run a node
Multichain
Neutrality
Usability
Inclusiveness
Mainnet
Token
Own your data

Upon digging into their ecosystem, here are a few notable yellow flags:

• Golden protocol is a crypto-based decentralized storage, with centralized ownership, meaning the graph is owned solely by Golden. Traditional databases can do a similar job by incentivizing users with tokens to contribute to the centralized knowledge graph. Decentralized storage does not solve a real issue.

• Users cannot run nodes since the Knowledge Graph is Golden's property. They can only submit triples (data) into Golden's KG to receive part of the rewards.

• The value proposition is just not here. Golden claims that Wikipedia is owned by ~500 admins and not decentralized enough. However, Golden is a single entity itself and aims to replace it?

• If Golden is the decentralized Wikipedia and is replacing the ~500 admins with a single directionally-centralizing DAO controlled by two companies and one government while driving up the cost of all information, then it is a badly incentivized (expletive) coin project.

• If the consensus algorithm resolves to a single bit ('true' vs. 'false') and is executed at an instant, the core game is basically a Beauty Contest, played by the mob. Golden is a different mob than Wikipedia's, but seems like a really marginal improvement.

• You cannot be a decentralized KG with so many VC backings. VCs do not invest without profit motive, and the profit motive will corrupt the project much more than the faults Wikipedia has. This is an inherent flaw, and way more complicated than it needs to be.

• Golden is not Web3. Web3 is about ownership of data, and Golden owns those triples and the entire KG. If they go under, you lose access to your triples.

Compared to OriginTrail, 2500 nodes operating across the globe owned by users such as myself are permissionless, open, neutral, equal and cannot go down. In order to manage humanity's data in a trusted way, the protocol itself must be completely open to decentralized trust, and this is what the core team of OriginTrail is building, alongside Advisors such as Dr. Bob Metcalfe, rather than big VCs with profit motives.

ESG DAO

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing is used to screen investments based on corporate policies and to encourage companies to act responsibly. In other words, it is viewed as sustainable investing.

ESG DAO revealed their project in August 2022, with the goal to build a radically transparent ESG system that serves the planet and people, not just companies. In other words, ESG DAO's objective is to restore public trust in businesses and the current system through a transparent OpenESG scoring system co-developped by scientists, NGO leaders, business leaders and government bodies, running as a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) for neutrality, transparency and inclusiveness, and incentivizing engagement around ESG between businesses and consumers. Currently, ESG scores are underused and often times misreprensented; and, therefore, an OpenESG system could serve as a new global ESG standard - enabling public and private entities, Web3 projects, all industries and all regions to embed similar ESG metrics into their individual systems, permissionlessly.

As of October 2022, there is no whitepaper nor token release, and very little detail is known about the technicalities of the openESG Decentralized Knowledge Graph.