Internet pioneer Bob Metcalfe joins Trace Labs' advisory board to help apply Metcalfe's Law for linked data value predictions

HONG KONG, July 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The core development company of OriginTrail – Trace Labs – has expanded the advisory board with one of the earliest Internet pioneers, professor Bob Metcalfe. Dr. Metcalfe invented Ethernet and is famous for "Metcalfe's Law". As the OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph gains traction among users worldwide, Trace Labs welcomes Dr. Metcalfe to help apply Metcalfe's Law to predict the value of linked data based on the network effect.

The visionary engineer and professor Dr. Metcalfe is often referred to as the father of Ethernet, one of the first computer network systems. Ethernet was created in 1973, long preceding the adoption of personal computers and the spread of business machines. Ethernet today is the most widely installed local network protocol and international computer industry (IEEE) standard, which has revolutionized the way businesses operate across the globe.

Dr. Metcalfe has been a key player in the space since. In 1979, he co-founded the multibillion-dollar networking company 3Com, now part of Hewlett-Packard. He has received various awards, including the IEEE Medal of Honor and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation for his work developing Ethernet technology. Dr. Metcalfe is famous for formulating Metcalfe's Law, which states that "the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users". As the physical cost of the network grows linearly, its value grows exponentially.

The Trace Labs founders were introduced to Dr. Metcalfe through his mentorship during the 2017 Food+City innovation competition in Austin, Texas. Trace Labs has since launched the OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph (DKG), a novel system designed to enable efficient data silos bridging and data integration across IT systems using the principles of interoperability, interconnectivity, and integrity. At present, the multi-chain DKG is deployed in productive applications used by Fortune 500 enterprises, governments, and transnational consortia.

Applying Metcalfe's Law to predict the value of linked data in OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph

Novel Knowledge Graph technology utilizes graph-structured data to enable interoperability between any systems and flexible connections between data points. It is used by the most successful data-driven organizations – such as Google, Facebook, Uber, Amazon, and others – enabling them to attain enormous value from their respective knowledge networks; everything from search, recommendations, data integration all the way to AI and ML applications.

As the OriginTrail Decentralized Knowledge Graph aims to provide a general-purpose, public decentralized knowledge graph, it enables everyone to benefit from shared knowledge by contributing data, extracting insights, and powering applications in their own specific domains.

This global "graph of graphs" presents a unique terrain for forming a large global knowledge network by constantly synergizing, growing, and indexing new and existing data points from various data sources – existing enterprise systems, knowledge graphs, or even personal devices – and generating enormous value from the emerging knowledge networks. The best method to describe such growth is offered by Metcalfe's Law, which explains how the value of a knowledge network grows exponentially with the number of data points within the same knowledge network.

Combining the principles of Metcalfe's Law with exposing datasets to decentralized markets and proven techniques such as the Google PageRank algorithm for website value estimation, we expect to develop comprehensive data value predictions.

Dr. Metcalfe to provide contributions to the upcoming OriginTrail white paper

The intuition presented above is under active research by academics and industry experts within the context of the Trace Alliance. The research will soon be published in the upcoming OriginTrail knowledge economy white paper. Dr. Metcalfe is actively advising Trace Labs on building the theoretical framework and providing his valuable insights for the paper, which will be released later this summer.

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