Many of us have been buying shoes from big retailers off the rack forever because they are affordable and custom-made shoes to fit our feet are quite pricey for plebs like me. This is quite unfortunate because anyone that has ever experienced custom-made to fit shoes understand what a game-changer they really are, they increase comfort for different foot archetype, enhanced foot support for different surfaces, getting the style that fits with your wardrobe.
I recently came across an interesting patent filed by Adidas on how they might further individualize footwear and at the same time create economies of scale for producers that are cost-efficient for the consumer at the same time.
How does it work? Through various questionnaires, analyses, 3D foot scans it captures various data such as:
Anthropometric data (e.g body mass, foot length, etc)
Biomechanical data (e.g user’s playing style, motion analysis, ankle instability, etc)
Personal preferences (e.g toe allowance, fit perception, traction)
Which then will be converted into manufacturing instructions that enable the individualized footwear to be produced on top of using AI to improve the algorithm for converting input data into manufactured shoes.
My hypothesis is that with so much personal data required to provide upcoming hyper-individualized products, it is not practical to have all of this information on top of your head while filling out 10 pages of forms to get to that level of personalization.
I would also not want a company or entity to store all of this data about myself on their database and I believe this is where decentralized innovation will play a big part on top of technological advances converging in the coming decade. So, what might we do about this dilemma?
Turn your personal data (in this case, health) into NFT, have it securely decentralized stored on-chain, and you actually own your data. Why is this important?
No one has access to your NFT unless you authorize them to interact with your address, it is possible to tokenize these personal data. ERC-1155 standard also enables various functions such as future revenue, royalties, and maybe appreciation in value in certain niche cluster users.
During 2020 and 2021, the number of unique crypto wallets increased at a rate of around 20 million per year, making the count stand at around 80 million today. That means that in only two years, the number of people involved in the space has doubled. People are slowly getting used to navigating non-custodial wallets, adoption has been exponential.
Privacy control is getting very tight in Web2 space. Apple’s additional privacy features might cost Meta billions this year. Also, Google's new privacy restrictions will limit sharing of user data with third parties. This might imply that companies that were comfortably targeting very specific users are going to have to beg for these data to be able to deliver their hyper-individualized products as these data might not be as easily provided.
Decentralization narratives have rocketed in the mainstream after the whole Canadian gov’t debacle on freezing protesters’ bank accounts.
Understanding how ERC-1155 and ERC-721 standard differs and keeping close attention to use-cases/future implications in different industries such as gaming industries and emerging music NFTs can potentially be worth our while. As these social use-cases get adopted by non-techie creators, onboarding experiences are going to be massive friction that we can help contribute in.
Non-custodial wallets are going to be one of the first touch-points frictions that web3 builders are constantly improving, the word ‘wallets’ has also been a topic of major discussion as it doesn’t properly reflect how digital inventory works in web3. There are going to be massive information architecture problems popping up which present a massive opportunity to build our portfolio further.
Businesses are going to have to provide incentives for us to relinquish our tokenized personal data and it’s up to us to support businesses we trust with all of our information. As adoption increases within the space and NFT use-cases expand, there is potentially revolutionary tech on the brink of breaking out. I’m excited, no more utilizing my data for free, Zuckie.
**update 25-05-2022: **It’s here. **