How TIKI works
The technical concept behind TIKI is property rights for data, issued and executed against at the edge.
At the time of writing, the front page of our website says:
Decentralized infrastructure to create private, safe, and compliant data transactions between people and businesses.
Let’s break that down to what it really means (skip to the techy stuff).
Decentralized
Data does not flow through TIKI; it’s exchanged directly between people (originators) and businesses (licensors). This is critical for two reasons:
A centralized data exchange is an enormous liability for everyone involved—data privacy, security, storage, and geographic legalities, just to name a few of the challenges.
A decentralized, edge-based approach means TIKI’s tech runs client-side (apps, web browsers, etc.) so adopting companies do not have to change their backends, data structures, APIs, or data pipelines —deploy in minutes.
Data Transactions (Private, Safe, and Compliant)
We create legally binding (digitally signed), immutable (can’t be changed) data ownership, consent, and licensing records. These records enforce what data leaves a user’s device, where it goes, and set the terms for how it can be used.
Records typically (they can if you want) do not contain the raw data itself, instead including data identifiers (pointers) and metadata such as licensing terms or tags describing the data content (i.e., email_address, not mike@mytiki.com). My favorite analogy is when you buy a house, you don’t pick it up and give it to the buyer —you fill out paperwork that transfers ownership (a deed). Same concept, but for data, in crazy high volume.
For businesses, these records reduce risk and liability through documented, explicit user consent. They also open up new models for the utilization and monetization of data. You’re limited legally and by platforms (Apple/Google) on what data you can collect and what you can do with it via implicit consent. Explicit consent is entirely different; a user can sign a contract with your company, allowing the collection, use, and monetization of any dataset in exchange for a discount, royalty, access to premium content, or any other form of fair trade.
For users, records provide a transparent record of where your data is and how it’s being used. Transparent records also mean contracts can be terminated if you no longer feel you’re getting fair value for exchanging information. And no, you can’t just take something back, but you can stop it from continuing. That would be like if you were a pineapple salesman, sold someone a great snack; they ate it, and then you were like, “hey! give me that back.” Explicit consent is the power most users have been craving; you can hold out for fair compensation.
Infrastructure
This is not a service where TIKI manages your data transactions for you. TIKI is software you add to your “stack” to simplify data transactions. Use our tech to build new features, add revenue streams, and delight users. You wouldn’t set up your own payment gateway, handle compliance and certification, optimize UX, and mitigate security just to take a credit card payment on your website —you add Stripe. Same idea, but for data.
The Techy Stuff
The technical concept behind TIKI is property rights for data, issued and executed against at the edge.
Key Requirements:
Immutable records. Ownership, consent, and licensing records are all legal contracts; once digitally signed by participants, they cannot be changed.
No impact on UX. In aggregate, user data is sizable and continuous —ownership, consent, and licensing resolution must happen without degrading application performance or user experience.
No messing with the flow of data. Getting in the way of or requiring changes to application data is a non-starter for most businesses and developers.
The underlying technical innovation is a novel blockchain-inspired no-consensus architecture that runs entirely at the edge —it’s a blend of traditional heterogeneous distributed systems and blockchain data structures. The easiest way to conceptualize it is your phone only needs to care about the scope relative to you (aka the data you own). Using a blockchain-style structure and signature model, we create and resolve immutable records at the edge with sub-millisecond latency.
With records at the edge, resolving consent and licensing becomes trivial —we expose a single function that you pipe any outbound request through. If the user has given consent, data flow as-is; if consent has been revoked, the request is denied.
Pseudo-code example:
tiki.apply(onSuccess(), onBlocked())
We complement this decentralized and immutable data structure with Layer 0 services and SDK abstractions.
Layer 0 services in the web3 world are simply underlying functions enabling interoperability and connectivity. For example, TIKI provides a l0-storage service, which offers WORM-style (write once read many) immutable block backup and access APIs for backend systems. Useful for recovering records in the event of a lost phone or if a company is looking to resell data on a secondary market and needs to resolve consent/licensing.
You never have to use TIKI’s L0 services; our code is 100% open-source and configurable. We build them as value-added services to simplify implementation and maximize value out of TIKI’s infrastructure.
At the edge, we provide native SDKs (iOS, Android, Flutter, JS, React, etc.), wrapping record creation and resolution up into intuitive APIs for integration with existing applications —1-line function calls for tasks like assigning ownership, applying consent, issuing a reward, etc. Our SDKs include pre-vetted and configurable UX and data licensing agreements to get started in minutes.
As a recap, our ultra-light blockchain runs natively on users’ phones or in web browsers with sub-millisecond latency and near 0 compute overhead. It creates and resolves immutable ownership, consent, and licensing records (contracts) based on explicit and consensual user-business data transactions. Our L0 services connect our decentralized infrastructure to your backend, and our SDKs simplify the front-end, making it a breeze to drop TIKI into your application.
Choose better data. Go build something cool.