Mobile finance platform Toss will work with Blockchain-based decentralized artificial intelligence (AI) data infrastructure corporations Poseidon on a user-participation AI data business. In Toss's AI data business, users who provide data in the Toss application (app) receive Toss Points, which can be converted into cash, as a reward.
Toss said on the 26th that it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Poseidon for a user-participation AI data business. Poseidon provides infrastructure that tracks the rights and value of data contributors, and Toss implements a financial system that allows users to participate directly in the data economy.
Toss users can take part in building AI training data in the "NUMO" mini app within the Toss app. NUMO posts data collection tasks in various formats, including voice, photos, and video.
Users can choose a task they want—such as recording voice—and provide data, and check in NUMO how much value the data has. Each task has a set reward. When the quality of the data a user submits is verified, Toss Points, which can be converted into cash, are paid as a reward.
Chief Executive Lee Seung-yoon co-founded the Data ($DATA; formerly Story) Foundation with Poseidon as an AI and data Blockchain project. Poseidon is an affiliate of the Data Foundation. Poseidon collects AI training data, and the foundation serves as infrastructure that records and protects this data as intellectual property (IP). The virtual asset Story ($IP), listed on major virtual asset exchanges, changed its name to Data.
In July last year, Poseidon raised $15 million (about 21 billion won) as an AI infrastructure investment from "a16z crypto," the Blockchain investment arm of global venture capital Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). At the time, Chris Dixon, a16z crypto's founder, said, "Poseidon provides fair rewards to creators and contributors who supply diverse data needed for next-generation AI systems, and will become the new standard of data infrastructure that can resolve bottlenecks in AI development."
Lee founded the English-language web novel platform Radish in 2016 and sold it to Kakao Entertainment in 2021 for about 500 billion won. Since then, Lee has established and operated the second company, the Data Foundation.
Through its partnership with Poseidon, Toss plans to collect diverse formats of Korean-language data—initially voice, images, and video—via the NUMO mini app, and gradually broaden task categories around areas with high demand. In particular, it aims to secure and supply data for areas that require real-world data, such as Robotics (robotics) or Physical AI (AI that moves in the real world).