KuCoin AMA With Navigate (NVG8) — A New Era of Data Collection: Exploring a Decentralized Intelligence Model

Dear KuCoin Users,

 

Time: February 25, 2025, 12:00 PM - 01:18 PM

KuCoin hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session in the KuCoin Exchange Group, featuring Ali Husain, CEO and Co-Founder of Navigate, and Milton Lopez, Co-Founder and CPO.

Official Website: https://nvg8.xyz
Whitepaper: https://token.nvg8.io/ 

 

Follow Navigate on X, Telegram, and Discord

Q: What inspired the creation of Navigate?

Ali: In this age of AI, the most important thing in our view is data. Whereas it is hard for individuals to get together and set up a data center to compete with the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic etc. What is possible is that we come together, pool our data, and get power that way. It also enables us to earn from our data since that data is critical in this day and age and used to train and finetune AI models

Q: How does Navigate differentiate itself from traditional data marketplaces?

Milton: Of course. When you look at what we're doing with Navigate, it is very Web3-focused from the data sourcing side. We enable our community to contribute the data that they generate on a daily basis. This means that the data that is offered within our marketplace was sourced directly from the creator of this data.

The other difference is that our model is built out to reward the individual with each transaction, ensuring that the contributors are constantly incentivized to provide fresh data. That's what really sets the quality of the data.

Q: Could you walk us through how a typical transaction works on Navigate?

Milton:  A typical transaction within our marketplace consists of 3 things. 

- Sourcing the data from the community of data contributors

- Packaging the data through the network of developers within the ecosystem 

- Licensing the data by traditional enterprise.

For the initial phase, contributors use our Navigate Rewards browser extension, which operates within the browser and enables them to opt into various data channels. For instance, if I have an Amazon account with over 10 years of purchase history, I can opt in. The extension will then extract the purchase history, contribute it, and reward me accordingly. Through the participation of each community member, we collectively source the necessary data.

Next comes the packaging of the data. Through the growing community of developers on our platform, we introduce AI Agents and other ways of using that data. The developers take that data that was contributed and train up an AI system that can answer questions for the end consumers of that data, the enterprises.

Finally, the end consumer of the data comes into the picture. To them, this transaction is very straightforward. They have questions/problems to solve within their business and they need the data to fill in the blanks for them. The AI Agents and other AI systems that have been built on the data contribute to those insights and they pay for access to the AI system and the underlying data. This then brings outside money into the ecosystem to ensure that the developers and the contributors are rewarded for their efforts.

Q: What are the different ways participants can earn $NVG8 tokens?

Ali: Currently, the most effective way to earn tokens is by downloading our Rewards browser extension, which is compatible with any Chromium-based browser. You can find all the necessary links here. This extension facilitates passive data contribution. We are initially focused on retail datasets; therefore, if users have accounts with Amazon, Etsy, eBay, or AliExpress—and Shopee, Lazada, and Flipkart, which are currently in beta testing and will be released soon—this is the simplest method to earn points that convert into tokens.

All of this is done passively, so that users are actually earning from data they have already generated that is just being used by large online retailers at the moment. There is also Data Quest, our RPG, where users can actively label datasets. We will be opening data labeling up again in the future. Data Quest is a very rich world and there is a lot to build and share there. 

Q: What's the process for becoming a data contributor?

Milton: We've made it super simple to become a data contributor. All that's required is to install the Navigate Rewards extension. You can find a link here. Once that's installed on any chromium compatible browsers, the users create an account and opt into the data sources that they would like to contribute from. Data sources are the different online services that we use every day, such as online retailers. This list continues to grow as we bring more data sources online. That's essentially it for setup.

The extension passively sits on the browser and checks once a day or once a week, depending on how you set it. It'll collect the data that you've opted into and contribute it on your behalf. The user then sees the rewards balance automatically increase as the data is shared.

Q: What types of data can people contribute?

Ali: Today people can contribute retail data. The extension also collects data from reddit, as an example. Our objective is to keep enhancing the extension and support community members being able to share data from music streaming services, video streaming services, social media, and more.

We also love to hear from community members on what data sources to prioritize!

Ultimately the goal is to allow all of us to collect our data, data that currently sits with a number of different companies who monetize it for themselves, and use it to benefit us.

Navigate is a coordination layer that allows us to come together, pool our data, create large datasets that companies will want to license, and earn from it.

Q: We want to know what types of AI applications can be built using $NVG8?

Ali: Oh, this is a great question! There are many examples. I'll share a few. Everyone is familiar with AI agents—they are essentially applications we can interact with through text or even voice.

Imagine an AI Agent, a new app, that's optimized for you and gives you the best suggestions for movies or TV shows to watch. HBO would never say, 'Hey Rami, you really liked Silicon Valley. Did you know that Jimmy O. Yang has stand-up comedy specials on Amazon Prime? Would you like to watch those?' Because HBO wants to keep you within their own ecosystem. But you don't really care about that. When we're relaxing, we just want the best thing we can watch.

So, that is one example. There are many others. We can apply the same concept to retail, food delivery, and virtually anything you can imagine.

The underlying thing to remember is that data makes all of this happen. And we want to build a world, where all of us can come together and create our own Big Data company! Because companies like Meta, Amazon, Apple, etc. all want data, and when we have large datasets, we become very sticky and enable long-term earnings for our community.

Free-Ask from the KuCoin Community to Navigate

Q: Given the rapid evolution of AI and the increasing demand for high-quality, diverse datasets, how does Navigate ensure the integrity and reliability of the data collected through its gamified platform, and what unique incentives are you introducing to attract a wide range of contributors while maintaining a high standard of quality?

Ali: This is a great question! Apologies it took me some time to get started as I was going through the entire list. There's lots of good questions!

I think you hit upon a key point here "maintaining a high standard of quality". That really is the name of the game. If we have a situation where the Navigate community is not collecting high quality data, then potential customers will see that as "No thank you. We're not interested". So it is incredibly important to us to ensure that the datasets we build with the help of our community are high quality and have good product market fit.

Remember, the same dataset can be used for multiple customers. This is actually why we started with retail data. The idea is that people would be getting rewarded for something they are already doing and have done so in the past. For example, I've contributed over 2,000 orders to the Navigate database from my Amazon account. This is also data that is hard to fake and is high quality.

Q: What is the income model of Navigate? Many projects like to talk about "long-term vision and mission," but what are your short-term goals?  What are you focusing on right now?

Ali: This is another excellent question. To be very direct, our short-term goal is to establish an exceptionally high-quality retail dataset that we can license to established customers in the Web2 space, such as Walmart and Target.

Our priority is to acquire customers and generate revenue as quickly as possible. We believe that this approach will ensure long-term sustainability.

There were questions pertaining to the whitepaper and requests for further information.

This is our main website. It contains all the links necessary, including tokenomics, social media, and extension download links

Q: How does Navigate plan to leverage its decentralized, gamified approach to data collection to not only compete with established AI data providers but also address the ethical and privacy concerns that users face in traditional data marketplaces, and what specific milestones can the community expect in the next 12 months to see this vision come to life?

Ali: One of the things we're doing is making sure you know exactly what you are contributing. Whenever we introduce new data sources that you can contribute, we do not automatically opt you in, like most companies do. Our main objective is to give our community members the option to participate in the way they feel comfortable doing.

There might be instances where a dataset requires gender information or age information, and if the community wants to, they may provide it, if so, great! That is a new earning opportunity for the community.  If not, then it will not be a dataset that we can support effectively.

As long as we can provide information, we believe users should be making the final call.

Q: Many investors only focus on the price of a token in the short term instead of the real value of the project. Can you tell us about the benefits for investors in the long term and the reasons for them to stay motivated?

Milton: When you look at what we're doing here, it has real long term staying power. The business model of licensing data has been proven again and again when you look at Meta, Amazon, and all of the other tech giants. What we are building at Navigate works off of the same principals, the only difference is that we're looking to reward the individual who contributed the data. 

Our model has the value of our token reflecting the success of the business, the more we license data, the more Fiat is brought into the ecosystem and converted into $NVG8. 

This approach helps ensure long-term value to all holders.

Q: Why was the Polygon network initially chosen, and what led to the shift to Base for building the platform?

Milton: The reason we're on Base is because of their excellent community of developers and the builder mentality. Additionally when looking at working with large enterprises when licensing this data. Base offers enterprises the confidence of working with a project on a network they can trust.

Participate in the Navigate AMA quiz now for a chance to win 135.20 NVG8.  

Fill In The Form

The form will remain open for five days from publishing this AMA recap.

KuCoin and Navigate have prepared a total of 26,000 NVG8 to give away to AMA participants.

1. Pre-AMA activity: 9,880 NVG8

2. Free-ask section: 660 NVG8

3. Flash mini-game: 5,320 NVG8

4. Post-AMA quiz: 10,140 NVG8

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