AQUASTREAM: A Decentralized Data Marketplace for Secure Sharing and Access

Abstract

The exponential growth of data driven applications in domains such as AI, healthcare, and IoT demands secure, transparent, and decentralized platforms for sharing high quality datasets. Traditional centralized systems suffer from opaque pricing, privacy risks, single points of failure, and lack of verifiable ownership, limiting trust and scalability. This paper proposes AquaStream, a decentralized data marketplace that leverages blockchain, the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), and Ethereum smart contracts to tokenize datasets as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), ensuring verifiable ownership and tamper-proof traceability. The system employs dual-layer encryption (AES-256/RSA) to safeguard data during storage and transmission, while IPFS provides distributed storage to improve availability and reduce on-chain storage costs. Smart contracts based on ERC-20 and ERC-721 standards automate secure payments and access control, eliminating intermediaries and enhancing transparency. A React.js-based interface with MetaMask integration enables intuitive dataset management for both technical and non-technical users. Experimental evaluation on the Ethereum Sepolia testnet and Polygon Mumbai network demonstrates significant performance gains, including up to 73.6% reduction in gas costs using Layer 2 scaling and dataset retrieval latency as low as 4.2 seconds. These results confirm AquaStream’s efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and scalability. By bridging the gap between data providers and consumers, AquaStream fosters a collaborative ecosystem that promotes data ownership, privacy, and equitable monetization, offering a robust foundation for future decentralized data economies.