Breaking Into the Enterprise Market: The EEA Playbook for Ethereum Startups

Transcript

[Music] Perfect. Uh, good afternoon. I'm going to have to switch to English. I was just chatting in French a little bit. Um, welcome everyone. Thank you for being here. So, I'm Redan. I'm was elected the executive director of the EA about six months ago. And today I'm going to talk a little bit with you um to highlight a little bit what we've been doing for a few months. What we think we should need to do for the Ethereum ecosystem to win the enterprise adoption and also I want to have some time for some question and conversation because uh I think it's uh easier to interact in those

presentation. So I'll start first actually by the thesis so you know what I'm going to talk and what the end goal is here. Um we think like right now to win the enterprise adoption we need to show as a united front especially around the L2s and to do that work collectively and I'm going to walk you through why. So first I want to maybe clarify or give a little bit of overview of the Ethereum ecosystem and how different entities work together. So you have first like some nonprofit organization.

Those are going to be the Ether Foundation or the EA. I'm actually a trade organization but not going to go in technicalities in here. Then you have some different commercial entities. And here you see for instance Etherealize a product a product company focused on Ethereum. You have Lido doing all the staking. You have also consensus that do a lot of multiple things. All of those actually are all members of the EA. So we already work all together and then you have also like the L2s that provide that infrastructure the scalability and I think a good way to maybe summarize you have Ethereum foundation you're the builders really like the

long-term vision what is going to be the structure of Ethereum and what we need to do to make that system like the new financial backbone then EA think about like more the diplomacy like how we can go in different rooms connecting different with different entities and then the commercial entities they're the fighters they're the one that going to go sign some contract make some market get some users do really like the artwork of like selling and so all of us we work together to make Ethereum win I think we already know but yes the public chain the private chain

experiment in the in the trati hasn't never take off and so now we know for a fact that they're going to progressively move to public infrastructure and here for instance like there's some quotes that I got from DTCC uh who knows here who is DTCC you raise your hand four people okay so DTCC is the biggest clearing house in the world that's a company that clear about $2 quadrillion dollar of securities per year and they hold hundred trillions dollars of securities in their books.

So that's a massive financial institution that actually like is a backbone of the financial world. And so DTCC recently released like a app chain and their their global head was saying you know like our collateral app chains allows asset to be issued on any network private or public and actually about two hours ago my friend Zach over there was giving a presentation of that product which I highly recommend you to take a look. Then you have some people at city banks uh at consensus and what they're saying is like well if every time someone is selling me their network I would not need to work anymore which is like everyone is going one by one to go to financial institution to get their

thing together. So we have a kind of fragmentation of the message they're on boarding here is a little collection of like few um few headlines I think if you haven't heard you know JP Morgan and SAP they did a partnership to actually allow crossber payment if you never heard about SAP some numbers about like 85% of global commerce go through SAP at certain point and JP Morgan is the biggest bank in the world and every day there is 10 trillion dollars of money moving through their URLs. And so they just created like a they never mentioned blockchain web three or anything digital payment and they did that at the sapphire conference

where of course like stripe and bridge recently Robin Hood and arbitrum and so like things are moving you know like the regulation also is bringing some clarity like this is really like the moment like we never had before and a little bit of a step back and overview like we've seen like depending on how long you've been in crypto So we've seen like ecosystem grow and grow and it's remarkable what we achieve in like less than 20 years. But if you look at the actually market you know we're talking about replacing like having the glo global finance finance all over the world like those are like estimates but you see for instance like global money supply 123 trillion right now we tokenize 0.2% 2% of that. So, it's very

small. And you see that that little little red dot in here. Well, this is the entire crypto market cap. So, it's like everything like Bitcoin all all of it. This is what it represent. So to give you a scale of like the pi that is accessible to us. But now all of this room we know like Ethereum is the best. you know more than 60% of stable coin on Ethereum like 80 90% of real world assets we have the best cryptography technology EVM is the standard when I go into rooms with institution like there is like EV is no question like you have to build on EVM

and so that's the reality we have of course like the best uptime all the stats we can talk about long time but the thing is like that message like I go to some floors and talk to some payment providers like they clear billions per day. They're like big institution. They barely heard they heard about Ethereum but if you start to go like arbitrum like super chain TPS like sequencer all of that they don't know about this and so then on top of that we had like a messaging of like 80 different L2s and maybe more that go everyone pitching with their own maybe different language that creates some confusion and a lot of noise that's difficult for them to actually like grasp like what is these term guys are you all together is this

something different how are you connected And so that's where like there is a challenge for for our community and one of the key thing that we witness is like we are underinvesting in some big forum where actually big enterprise and trafi are going and so here is a list for instance like who has ever heard about cyos one person is the annual swift conference that happened in Germany swift it's actually the dowo of Stratfi. It's like 11,000 members and it's a messaging system that power like the global finance you know when you when you want to make a payment

you're going to use Swiss messaging that conference here this is all the bank executive no one from Ethereum is here but you have some guy from Salana and Ripple Nasha this is more like US- ccentric it's the AC payment conference so it's like the equivalent of like SEPA for my European 86 trillion a year. No one was I mean actually we went this year with the EA um but otherwise never been a presence over there. Ripple was here. The same with Sapphire. Sapphire you know like the big SAP conference all the CIO the CTO's all the the commerce of the world no one here like I showed up like just by myself and went around on the floor.

The same from Singapore Fintech week. all the other ecosystem they go as a united front with a clear messaging and they go and they invest like millions and millions of dollars and so this is really I think like the slide speak for itself. We need to be more present in this room and to show like Ethereum as a united front. So maybe a few word about like like the difference between like crypto go to market and enterprise go to market because this is very different you know on one side you have some very long cycle like you talk to someone it's going to come back three year three three weeks after when they have talking

to some different different people you have to sign an NDA then there is some legal everything is very long the cycle is very long but the rewards can be pretty high also you need to have a clear messaging Like if it's if if you go and just talk about you know like the same that you approach like your your peers here at Ethereum they're not going to understand anything and your message is going to like land flat also and the same in here Ethereum is a very engineering focused you know community and that's remarkable that's how we've been able to create like that beautiful system but you cannot go to enterprise and talk about technical things when you're going to go deeper and you start signing the contract and

talk with like engineering team. Yes, but that's not how you sell. However, this is a lot based like like that's a major aspect of our sale when we pitch you know in different startup. I work for chain safe for four years before I was leading their developer tooling program. So I know firsthand you know like you talk about your tech how your tech is good that's not how it works in enterprise you need to go really in value how you going to make some money how you going to integrate with me and also there is a lot of procedure you know working with big institution is going to require like a a lot of things that the engineers in the audience are going to find pretty annoying because you're going to have some approval you're going to need to to go through a lot of different hoops and one one

analogy I love to use is that if you build. If you build as a startup, you take a blank page. You can write whatever you want. It's your own story. But when you work with enterprise, you have to integrate a chapter inside a already existing story. They have their own paper. They use a different ink. You can use specific inks. You have to be sure about like a specific style in your writing. So that brings a a lot of different complexity. And so what enterprise needs also from the conversation I've been having the last couple of months it's really like simplification like two weeks like a week ago I was in New York at the Mastercard uh Linux Foundation decentralized trust privacy so it was like a closed private event with central

banks big institutions and one of the key message that came out is like well we love for instance like zero knowledge proof and those cryptographic technology but this is very hard to understand you know we are like at the forefront of this like the spearhead of innovation and we need to actually bring that technology and explaining this to those institutions so they can embrace it. The social the social proofing is very important when you sell to enterprise your tech and all those thing that matters a lot in Ethereum might not matters that much like if you have an example working with Bloomberg with uh Franklin Templeton or doing a PC in different sandboxing that's going to

matters because they know that you've been working with people that they know also the compliance at the end they want to there is no like an evil like big hands that decide to do different thing. They're under regulation. They have some law. If they don't do it, they're going to lose their license. They're not going to be able to do business. So, they want to be compliant, not because they don't believe in the ecosystem, but because they have to follow the rules for their business to continue working. So, we need to be able to integrate that. There is definitely, you know, some some conversation and it's important also for us to to sometime maybe make evolve that compliance because we don't want to destroy the primitive of our systems.

But that's another conversation. I'll go more into detail and packaging you know what we do making some clear offering like hey this is what it's going to look like you have a P this is the different phases then you can look at that and then after we can look at an implementation in production and the post development support because I was talking to a central bank recently and they were telling me like well yes it's awesome we've been building that but the big challenge that we have is like after after the implementation where's going to take care of this do I need to hire and train 10 engineers that's going to take care of that infrastructure Is there some companies that can do that?

Do we already have like some structure contract for this? Those are like some real question that actually can slow down adoption and of course they want to make money and and I know that sounds like very obvious but if you keep that in mind like how you can help them make money that's the best question you can ask yourself. But now what I learned in front of you like the last few months I went to SAP Sapphire. I went to some privacy um workshop with Mastercard, some privacy workshop at GP Morgan. Uh also we did like a lot of side events with EY on different like at East Denver at consensus also some in New York uh for DAS and there is no doubt that the institution and big enterprise they see

Ethereum as the place for distribution for building like the future and it's it's it's obvious it's sure for them like everyone is saying that and also like everything is accelerating with the regulation and all of this we went to the Nasha conference so I brought like um linear and polygon and we had like a panel where we presented like the different payment solution that they've been doing for institution. Um Jamal and Daniel are like some veteran in the payment industry. So I learned a lot about how it works behind the scene. But also I learned you know being on the floor and going from stance to stand like doing some really standard like bitty work like hey I'm a crypto guy Ethereum what do you know people like

they they don't know that much. they know about Ethereum a little bit but the the gap in knowledge is very big and um and we have so much opportunity in here and also something I'm very happy you know um for the first time at ECC uh during this conference ERC 3643 which is like emerging as the the the real world asset standard from the industry implemented like already in four different legal framework about 35 billion of assets they came to ECC and gave a presentation to present the work they're doing. Uh Dennis and also DTCC with their hundred trillion dollars of assets. They came also for the first time in here in our community to present the work and engage with us

and I think that's that's a pretty exciting success. But so now what's your plan for the enterprise adoption in 25 and 2026? So our proposal is to create like a L2 enterprise outreach program and having a united front Ethereum base at big enterprise forum. So that means like we got align with the L2 around a messaging. So we can make sure like we all say the same thing and work from like one united voice crafting some Ethereum sales narrative together. taking all the tier one L2s what I do best use cases and building

some sales collateral together and show up as one as those different enterprise forum so the challenge for us is like if we don't coordinate now people will do it for ourselves and if we want to preserve the Ethereum ethos and make sure like we keep growing that beautiful piece of technology that Ethereum and the whole ecosystem we need to actually be in the room influence institutional standard and to do that we need to be collectively as a group and unified front it's not going to be like just two or three L2s

that talk with Franklin Templeton DTCC JP Morgan other financial institution to discuss we need to come as a united voice because I'm telling you like the Like if you Ripple, Solana and those those guys, they're investing billion millions of dollars and they're like pushing pushing pushing and yes we have beautiful and best technology but that's not enough. we need to really come together and so that's my final my final take you know like Ethereum enterprise narrative we need to build it together and that will be my key message and I think now uh I'm ready to for question thank you very much this is a calendar of like the different

events um that we put on the schedule. So there is also like here a BIS it's the um sorry there is a question or not? No. Yeah BIS is the uh internal like bank of inter settlement. So they have a innovation hub that's going to happen in September. this a private event closed doors and um we're going to try to be present over here to represent Ethereum and I think maybe I have there is a I don't know if there is a question or if like no okay CES sells by Southwest you know who was at East Denver

I think someone great you Yeah. Um, one question. Um, how engaged are you in Europe and are you interested in probably expanding the footprint of EA in Europe? And we participate. Yeah, I'm French. Uh, but I'm based in New York, but uh definitely, you know, like the the the main of our focus is like Europe and the US. So expanding in Europe is part of like what we want to do in Sorry. Yeah. Well, with the with Mika and all of this like it's really also Yeah, that's what I heard too. Thank you.

Yeah, I have a a a question in terms of what you're marketing. Um because so I work on uh an Ethereum client team and you know to some extent we're asking the question as a software provider how do we address the enterprise market because you know okay you're selling the ecosystem but in the end there ought to be opportunities for us as software providers delivering um you know into these institutions and effectively you know for our long-term survival we're a kind of independent business, you know, selling to enterprises is probably an alternate revenue source for us than, you know, going to all the foundations

and effectively saying give give us a grant and the question is like how do we, you know, how do we join that marketing process effectively? A very good question and I was talking to my friend at lowar recently about that. Um so I think you have my contact we can keep in touch and it's definitely something also like the more we're gonna like we're going to work with institution in implementing like they're not always you know do their own their own client implementation but I think you know with the the clarity around staking um and stable con this is going to change and so they might start to be interested say hey I want to run my own client which one I'm going to use and then from here talking to all the different you know

bringing all the different protocol client teams in front of those institution to discuss about those needs is definitely something like also I would love to do yeah it's it's absolutely interesting and you know for instance like the staking is that like why they couldn't do staking for a long time is because it was not allowed to have that on their books like what do I do when I get some uh some rewards and everything but this is going to change so that's probably going to also open the gate for a lot of thing because the ISO they go with third parties and I have to cut. Thank you very much for your attention guys.