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The manner in which social media platforms dealt with consumer data has been a subject of controversy. Last October, the US Senate summoned Google, Twitter, and Facebook for a hearing about manipulation of consumer choices through fake advertising. Furthermore, Facebook’s CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the Senate’s Commerce and Judiciary committees earlier this month to discuss data privacy, following the blowout of Cambridge Analytica’s data scandal. To avoid such kind of issues, former Google engineers Duran Liu and Cheng Li launched a new project, named Atlast Protocol – a decentralized digital marketing protocol built on the Nebulas (NAS) public blockchain.
The project, which was launched in New York, was envisioned by xGoogler Blockchain Alliance (GBA, xgba.io), a newly-created blockchain community for former employees of Google. Atlas Protocol will be the first application-layer protocol developed on Nebulas, leveraging the open source, public blockchain platform’s decentralized ranking algorithm.
Unlike the current digital advertising paradigm, Atlas Protocol seeks to give full data ownership to users through a decentralized model. Being implemented on blockchain, the Atlas Protocol network will be fully transparent for users, publishers and advertisers, in contrast to the “black box” set up that characterizes the current industry landscape dominated by digital giants.
Atlas Protocol is already gaining traction with leading mobile internet and blockchain companies. Dolphin browser, a web browser with over 200 million users, is collaborating with Atlas to build the decentralized advertising ecosystem. Likewise, the decentralized virtual gifting protocol Gifto, supported by the popular live streaming platform Uplive, is also working with Atlas on user growth and monetization.
Key members of Atlas Protocol are:
• Duran Liu (Founder): Head of Nebulas Labs, former Senior Software Engineer at Google HQ where he lead multiple machine learning efforts, and former Senior Software Engineer at FreeWheel where he played a pivotal role in initiating the first-generation of mobile video advertising products.
• Cheng Li (Co-founder, CTO): Former Senior Software Engineer at Google NYC where he worked on Google Play quality and helped launched the Play Books audiobook service on Google Assistant, and the former Director of Engineering at FreeWheel NYC, wielding many years of experiences in building advertising systems for the Internet.
• Haoshuang Ji (Engineering Lead): Former Staff Engineer at video AI and analytics platform Conviva. Worked at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), where he was part of the team of scientists who discovered the Higgs boson (aka God Particle), culminating in a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013.
• Rose Ren (Marketing & PR Director): Former Marketing Lead of Bodhi prediction market blockchain project, and former Investment Manager at cryptocurrency fund Continue Capital.
