If you are an earth dweller, you have most likely heard one or two or all of these words: web3, blockchain, decentralized, etcetera etcetera. Sometimes, we are left wondering what will become of other industries that we have poured our time and resources into. In this article, you will find a not-too-lengthy explanation of what will happen to data science with the advent of blockchain technology and hopefully, a just argument that the blockchain will not wreck your job but boost it.

To clarify you, web3 is a terminology used to describe an evolution of web technologies where users can own their data and decide what to do with it. In other words, our data will no longer be at the disposal of a few powerful institutions, thanks to a technology that allows us to transact with one another (peer-to-peer) without any intermediaries like banks, popular social media platforms - blockchain technology.

Blockchain Technology

On the blockchain, data pieces are stored and distributed across all its users, that is why it is called a distributed ledger or a global spreadsheet. This decentralizes all information (no one entity gets to hold large clumps of data) and ensures transparency and security. Each person can see what everyone else is doing and any attempt to change any block has to obtain the consent of other users. There is so much more to this, so you can learn more about this here.

Data Science

Human existence breeds unthinkable amounts of data in the form of activities, transactions, observations, characteristics, and more. Data science, therefore, is the systematic study of the structure and behavior of data; and using all these observations to create new ways of modeling and understanding future activities. Data scientists spend their lives deriving meaning from different forms of data sets and applying the information to solve real world problems.

Data Science and Blockchain Technology

Data is at the core of both blockchain technology and data science. The blockchain will be non-existent without data. It is data that is distributed across several databases in the form of blocks. It is just a new way of handling data. They are complementary technologies.

Data science still has a mountain of problems to surmount. Scientists have to deal with silos-full of data that determine the smooth running of various institutional operations and day-to-day activities. The data leaks and hacks we keep experiencing can drop classified information in the hands of the wrong people and put the people and organizations at great risk. Data scientists still encounter some bottlenecks while dealing with data including data opening, data sharing and privacy protection. Blockchain technology has brought along solutions to these problems in the following ways:

1. Security: When data is stored in a centralized database, it becomes easy for fraudsters to target and which can lead to varying cases of data loss. The decentralized system makes it difficult for cyber attackers to access and manipulate large amounts of data without raising alarm.
2. Traceability: Since all users can see the different activities going on on the chain, it becomes easy for data handlers to trace the origin and destination of data.
3. Privacy: Everyone on a blockchain can see all transaction data including the time, address and amount attached to it, but the user’s identity remains separate from his/her address. This helps to maintain a form of anonymity or privacy while transacting on the chain and creates balance between privacy and accessibility of records.
4. Credibility: The invention of smart contracts (special purpose pieces of programming codes that are designed to carry out predetermined actions when certain actions are met) reduces the activities that have to pass through human beings when certain transactions are carried out.This in turn means that the results can be trusted because as we say, ‘numbers don’t lie’.

All of this shows that blockchain technology does not scrap the need for data science. In fact, it improves the way we process and analyze data. We do not assume that blockchain will solve all data-related problems without bringing some of its own, as we know that the implementation of these ideals may gulp down our much-needed resources. But we are certain that if we merge both technologies, neither of us will be the worse