90% of the world's data today has been created in the last two years and the data stored is growing 4 times faster than the world economy. Currently, this stored data is owned and stored in huge silos by large private organizations where it can be easily used for selling, tampering, and extracting. The Datum Network proposes a network run on a smart contract blockchain that would allow anyone to store structured data in a secure way. It empowers its users to retake control of their data, and not just the personal and habitual data they produce every day, but also data from the (IoT) devices that they control.

The Datum network wants to give researchers, companies or individuals the most efficient and frictionless access to data while respecting the data owner’s terms and conditions. Each piece of data in the Datum network is marked with usage terms during the encryption, which allows the user (the source of the data) to control in what way their data is to be shared and used by others. The usage terms are controlled by the DAT token smart contract.