The Common Crawl Foundation, renowned for its vast internet archive, has entered a strategic partnership with Constellation Network, a prominent Web3 blockchain ecosystem. The collaboration aims to leverage blockchain technology to enhance the transparency, accessibility, and utility of Common Crawl’s expansive web-crawled data, particularly for artificial intelligence (AI) applications.
Expanding Blockchain-Backed Data for AI Development
Common Crawl has amassed nearly 9 petabytes of data from over 250 billion web pages, making its dataset integral to the development of large language models (LLMs). Approximately 80% of these models rely on Common Crawl’s data for training. This new partnership with Constellation Network seeks to add critical layers of immutability, provenance, and auditability to this data, ensuring greater transparency and security as AI technology continues to evolve.
The decision to integrate blockchain technology into Common Crawl’s dataset comes at a time when the AI industry is rapidly growing. Experts predict the industry will be worth $3 trillion by 2030. The collaboration is designed to address increasing concerns over the security and authenticity of the data used to train AI models, especially as the demand for responsible AI development grows.
Strengthening Data Security and Trust
One of the primary goals of the partnership is to secure the trusted distribution of Common Crawl’s data. The integration of Constellation Network’s decentralized Hypergraph network will enable developers and researchers to verify the authenticity of open datasets, an essential requirement for training AI systems. The partnership highlights the use of blockchain not just in cryptocurrency but in a broader context, showcasing how Web3 solutions can support a data-focused, zero-trust network for mainstream applications.
The collaboration will be rolled out in phases, starting with a customizable subnet, referred to as a “metagraph.” This metagraph will integrate a subset of Common Crawl’s data and is currently being tested. Eventually, it will transition to Constellation’s public Hypergraph network, offering developers and organizations new opportunities to work with a blockchain-backed data archive.
Building the Future of Responsible AI Development
The partnership between Common Crawl and Constellation Network represents a significant step toward ensuring that AI development remains transparent and trustworthy. With AI playing an increasingly central role in various industries, the need for reliable and verifiable datasets has become more pressing. This collaboration seeks to address those concerns by providing an immutable and auditable source of web-crawled data, ensuring that the information used in training AI models can be trusted.
As the initiative progresses, further details about the deployment and participation options for developers and organizations will be released. This collaboration is expected to contribute to the broader adoption of blockchain technologies beyond cryptocurrency, offering solutions for the rapidly growing AI sector.
By enhancing the utility and security of open datasets, the partnership between Common Crawl and Constellation Network is poised to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of AI development, driving innovation while ensuring responsible data usage.