In this loop, dapp builders can help their users make money; data scientists can earn directly; and crypto enthusiasts can catalyze the first two if incentivized properly (e.g. to curate valuable data).
### The Data Value Supply Chain
**If we unroll the loop, we get a data value supply chain.** In most supply chains, the most value creation is at the last step, right before the action is taken. Would you rather a farmer in Costa Rica selling a sack of coffee beans for $5, or Starbucks selling 5 beans’ worth of coffee for $5?
Therefore, **for data value supply chains, the most value creation in the prediction step.**
To the question “How do people make money in the open data economy?”, the “create value from data!” almost seem like a truism. Don’t fool yourself. It’s highly useful in practice: **focus only on activities that fully go through the data value-creation loop.**
However, this is still too open-ended. We need to dive deeper.
### Which Vertical? How To Compare Opportunities
There are perhaps dozens of verticals or hundreds of possible opportunities of creating and closing data value-creation loops. How to select which? We’ve found that two measuring sticks help the most.
**Key criteria:**
1.**How quickly one can go through the data value-creation loop?**
2.**What’s the $ size of the opportunity**
For (2), it’s not just “what’s the size of the market”, it’s also “can the product make an impact in the market and capture enough value to be meaningful”.
We analyzed dozens of possible verticals with according to these criteria. For any given data application, the loop should be fast with serious $ opportunity.
* **Small $, slow**. Traditional music is small $ and slow, because incumbents like Universal dominate by controlling the back catalogue.
* **Large $, slow**. Medicine is large $ but slow, due to the approval process. Small $, fast. Decentralized music is fast but small $ (for now! Fingers crossed).
