Andrew Yang, an Ex-US Presidential Candidate, Joins Web3 Platform Pool Data as Adviser

Pool Data, a platform to help people monetize their data using tokens and cryptocurrency payment systems, has added former U.S. presidential candidate Andrew Yang as an adviser while also releasing a new suite of Web3-focused data marketplace tools.

Pool Data’s market infrastructure, comprising payment rails that use the USD coin (USDC) stablecoin, as well as consumer-facing apps, aims to be a foundational layer for so-called “data unions,” the growing communities attached to apps that return control of data to users and mine value from it. These communities lack the means to scale towards making millions of small payments to individuals, for instance, Pool Data CEO Shiv Malik said.

The steady transition from the existing internet to a more crypto-friendly and decentralized Web3 world means the surveillance economy’s days are numbered. It’s an idea that’s close to the heart of Yang, who founded the Data Dividend Project to establish data-as-property rights under privacy laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

“We’ve seen over 120 share-to-earn data unions pop up, some of them with tens of millions of active users,” Malik said in an interview. “Andrew [Yang] has already taken a legalistic rather than a tech approach to data control and monetization, so Pool Data is a perfect project for him to support as a base layer rather than backing any particular data union.”

Yang says that while individual consumers are massively outgunned and out-resourced by trillion-dollar tech companies, the data economy is on the verge of a dramatic, once-in-a-generation shift.

“It makes sense for consumers to come together, pool their data, and form data unions that can negotiate collectively and command a fair share of the data economy for all,” Yang said in a statement. "Pool Data is the best solution I have seen to solve the existing problems in the data economy because it provides the tools for data unions to form and scale.”