Chain Reaction: Blockchain as the New Currency

Transcript

[Music] And hello everybody. What a beautiful, bright, and warm room. Hope everybody's hydrated. Um, what a pleasure it is to be here today. I was on the Nexus stage last year, about 100 months pregnant. Um, and it was a hot day. So, it's great to be back. um and talking about blockchain as well and such incredible evolution over the last year um of what these amazing people have been working on. And we're going to talk a little bit about purpose first. Why why blockchain? And also why are you driven?

Why are you doing what you're doing? So with blockchain technology, the reason I got into it in the first place place was because of Satoshi's paper in 2008, the white paper and the philosophy behind it was trust, integrity, um democratization of systems, uh open integration and opportunity for everybody. And I hope that uh we're going to get some real deep insights from our panel today. So over to Jean Viev from Agri Ledger. And by the way, if anybody here was at Blockchain Ireland uh conference over the past couple of days, everybody here was speaking uh on different panels. So uh we were nitty-gritty in the tech. Yeah.

Over the last couple of days and now we're going to talk a little bit more about the philosophy side of things. So Jean Viev first over over to you. Please tell us a little bit about your why and how Agriddger came into existence. Sure. Uh I'm my why was food. Food. Uh I recall, you know, like I know when I've been very hungry, couldn't find food or I got sick from food because I didn't know where it had been. I've actually had where I've lost twice 25 pounds from tainted food. Wow. So I that then took me back with the fact that today our food doesn't come just from next door to

us. Even if you live in a country like the US, you might be thousands of miles to get to the food. And what we also see is that the farmers many a time are the least compensated while they're producing. So how could you create a trust system to not only know where things are coming from but also assuring that people are getting a fair return for their work. And that led me into working with the World Bank and the Haitian government and really working with the poorest of poorest which were the farmers which were growing mangoes in their backyard. And that really is my why. How do we, you know, because you

you must eat to live. Yeah. So, how can we tackle this? And trust and accountability are such a huge part of that and technology is a tool to use. Um, and one of the things that I heard you say yesterday which really inspired me and by the way, I've known John Viev since 2017 in the London blockchain scene. Um, there's some great merchandise back in the days, but it was al always for guys. We need some more female merchandise. Um but on a more important note um one of the statements that you made yesterday is that you have helped the lives of 5,000 farmers in Colombia.

Um so we haven't we have worked with the Colombian government to look at how to and what actually this journey has led me to is back to my roots which is finance and understanding that you know most of us now know about what's happened with the USAD. USAD was a catalyst toward creating financial liquidity in projects. So now what happens is that investors trust when they understand and have traceability or transparency in what's going on. So we can now start bringing investment not only to the

farmers but also to the processors and creating closer to source value chain to retain more of that in there. So it's what what the aha moment was for me is without money things don't move. Yeah. And value is something that we will talk about um across the the conversation because what is value when the commodity that you currently value for instance gold at the moment um has been uh factory made for one of a better phrase uh from lead by scientists. So what does that mean to the value of the global the global uh gold supply if scarcity is

what is what creates value? Now we're looking at food security, water security, etc. We'll look at some optimistic things as well and then over to you Kieran. We really want to hear about Olas Foundation and love what you're the trust that you're bringing but why in the first place? Yeah, sure. Um just a bit of background. I've been I guess I'm what you call cryptonative. I've been in the blockchain space for quite a while and while I was buried in that, I was watching with interest the struggles of of media. Um, advertising revenues were dwindling in the internet age. They're having to compete with so many more things for attention and obviously the internet is also a hub and spoke model where Google and Facebook

are the hubs. Um, long story short, advertising revenue per reader is something like 15% of what it was in the heyday of print media. Subscriptions did stem the tide for certain big players, but only there that's because they can invest uh take investment and then run subscriptions at a loss for a certain amount of time and then invest in sophisticated customer retention techniques. Smaller players just don't have that available. And even if they did, um, a lot of people have subs subscription fatigue. It's quite a stressful, uh, business model. It forces you to buy bundles of stuff. Some of it you only want, you you only want some of it. Um, so we believe, uh, a lot of

money's been left on the table there. The the industry shrinking. Um, then you have a trust issue as well and that's tied to the economics. Um, when companies are being squeezed, they start taking shortcuts and they're also trying to compete with more sensational stuff than social media. So equality's gone down and then in a lot of countries press freedom is in decline as well. So there's three major problems I'd sum up media is facing and being buried in the web 3 space. I've kind of been watching a suite of technologies come together.

One of them being blockchain. Yeah. Where about two years ago I could kind of see a path where I could individually solve all those problems I guess. So that's where we landed where we are. Very incredible. And it's interesting, the wave of blockchain uh acceptance versus uh rejection has swung in roundabouts. I've been on two vouts of um maternity bouts. It's like an illness. Two vouts of maternity leave since 2017 and every time I come back there's a completely different market opinion about what's going on with blockchain um and uh the adoption of crypto as well and even the attitude. Um and one of the points that we talked about briefly on the phone um uh a week or two ago was that trust piece and since 2016 obviously with Brexit and

Facebook and Meta um uh and even what's going on in the the geopolitical environment at the moment. I don't mention the T-word. It's it's not in my vocabulary. Um but uh yeah, we want to get a little bit further into that and also how you're how you're validating that trust. Yeah, sure. Um, if I was to sum up the reasons why there's been a degradation in trust, I guess. Yeah. Couple of things. So, since the dawn of the printing press, powerful people have tried to buy media platforms for a reason. Gives them huge influence for their other businesses and what they write that influence might not necessarily be the truth. And people are aware of this. So, they know platforms have an agenda and I think they're

increasingly aware of that. And then there's just the realities of the economic model in the internet age. The analogy I always give or the story I tell is that before the internet two when comp newspapers were compete comp competing with each other, it was that moment somebody walked into a store and they looked at the shelf at all the newspapers. So the headlines were sensationalist. But once the newspaper was bought and the person took it home with them, they had their attention. Yeah. So the second, third, fourth, all the rest of newspaper could be more balanced or more, you know, objective and just factual reporting. Exactly.

Where now it's on a per article basis like attention warfare in the internet and they have to to compete. Everything kind of has to be sensationalist, often negative because that's that's what gets clicks. Um, and again, we have a lovehate relationship with this because we do click it. That's why it happens. But then we're left unfulfilled. So the stats are unequivocal. You know, trust in media is in freef fall. Um, so what we're hoping to solve it with is first of all, we take this will be the first media platform in history that will never be owned by a human, completely autonomous, totally decentralized. So it cannot literally cannot have an agenda.

It's a DAO. Um, it's not even a Dow. It's just going to be a computer code. Okay. No, no human. No bot. We're not naming it. No, it's just uh what we call Vitalic calls autonomous scripts. Did you hear the name drop? He said Vitalic. Okay. Um so that's the first uh solution. Second one is the best tools humanity has to improve the quality of information or aggregate information or markets and reputation. Okay. So we're going to subject every single article to a market. We'll tie it into the revenue model. So let's say you read an article, get to the bottom and we're going to introduce microp payments thanks to blockchain. Okay? And you'll tip that article 20 cent. And then you'll also

give a bit of feedback. You'll say that was a factual error. that was lacked context etc. The best performers will get rebates from the protocol every month. But the long and short of it, we'll be able to score articles according to markets and then the writers reputation score will be either updated up or down. So there's accountability that doesn't exist right now. Now we're not naive enough to know that you still need to sell the product. So we can't just get rid of any type of entertainment. But the idea is to swing the pendulum back or bring back the line you can cross uh before you know you're held accountable. And it's as society changes and morals and values and uh I guess we're we're all part of cultural change

at the moment. Um we're seeing things in different geo locations and Vartica, you've been doing a world tour over the past few months and uh Vartica and I met uh through Sean in the room. Hello. H just a couple of days ago. Um, and we were speaking on this panel, but we also got to speak in blockchain Ireland and get to an investor room yesterday. Um, so a very dynamic and agile lady I have to say. Uh, and please tell us your your why and how you got here today and all the things that you're doing. Sure. It's first of all, thank you for having me and it's great to be in Dublin. Um so my why for blockchain is collaborative consumption

eliminating the role of a middleman. I got into building on blockchain some 10 years ago was super early failed miserably um and the only way solving for trust solving for trust between strangers on the internet. Yeah. Uh because that was I was coming out of my first startup and I figured that's the main problem and here's we have this magical technology that can solve for trust. And we built on top of Ethereum and did all the fun stuff. Uh 2018 ICO crashed, things crashed, pivoted into AI. You were almost going to move to Ireland back then, did you say? Let's not talk about that.

And and and so post and exit. So we pivoted into AI, that whole thing, and post and exit now. So now how I think about blockchain is uh it's not a technology that will solve for trust. It is a technology that will make the need for truth cheaper than the lies. Close. So, it's it's it's more about the timestamped evidence of data that people can use to collaborate and have uh believability on each other. So, it's really not about trust. There's a lot of aspects to trust. I got into this subject deeper like almost doing a PhD

without having a real degree for it. So um you know there are a lot of other human aspects to it and I don't think AI AGI or you name it any technology will ever eliminate what we humans can do and you know what we humans bring onto the table and what are you seeing because you advise large organizations with serious not just budgets but accountability as well as smaller yeah so that variance of emerging ing technology. And by the way, it's not just blockchain. It's quantum computing as well, which I'm fascinated by. Uh something that changes and moves every day is just incredible because you

can only be an expert for a minute. Uh but you're the expert. Please tell us a little bit more about what you see in that variance between those smaller uh clients that you deal with, those small entities versus the the large scale groups. Yeah. So the smaller entities have a lot of opportunity by how they can use the data and move the needle faster by uh you know without getting into the weeds and using large data sets to get to the same level of predictability uh with or without blockchain. And on the other hand large organizations have to think a lot about eliminating risk from a security regulatory privacy angle. they're dealing with large

unstructured structured data sets. So they have a lot to lose and so you know that reduces their speed of operations and uh they have more viable optionality to use bring in encrypted use of blockchain to you know retain their customer base or find new revenue streams. So uh you know when when it when it's about going to the market and looking at different use cases the smaller startups have more opportunity and optionality the bigger ones are thinking about how do we derisk and how do we make use of technology that helps us with retention with our customer life

cycle management and those things. So the challenges are very different and there is something good on both sides of the table and it's legacy versus agile now innovation. Exactly. Are so polar opposites and Jean Vivv you know about that from coming from a a corporate banking regulated background as well. Uh we had the fun times. Um but tell us a little bit about the journey for Agri ledger and the ups and downs of building in on blockchain from the beginning and sticking with it. Um in my viewpoint what happens is that I actually don't think louder sorry I I don't think the technology is where we actually need it.

Yeah. Right now most blockchain takes very small amount of data and we only have two real DLTs where data is on onchain. There is a debate that we started having Kion and I about where is data being stored. Yeah. And I do not believe that if data so having been in corporate knowing where your data was and not having to go chase it in different servers was key. So what happens is that I think we need to almost rethink how we design love that for this new technology

nodal who owns the data privacy there's so many layers and I think right now it's actually getting um you know the AI aspect everybody now is trying to gather as much data I don't know what I need this data for but you know I might need it later And so we're no longer taking aspect of the sanctity of the who does this data belong to. Um I think we are what I'm liking that the last you know fail like I said 2020 the last three years there hasn't been a lot but there have been people building which are going to be DTS which go after the two that exist right now which is

hyperledger and R3 quarter and those two the difference about them is that it allows you to capture as much data or metadata as you think is necessary. neessary to be able to do the next thing. And what I'm also not hearing anymore much of is confidential computing. So we are at the cusp of a new dawn you would say. Uh I know where it worked for me but I also knew the failures. They were the failures of the technology but the ultimate failure is what is the stick or the sweet the carrot that I'm giving to people to use it. So until

people feel that there is something out of it for them they have no reason. So yes the farmers liked it the government liked it but everybody else in the middle was going like and even the buyer it was like why do I need it? It works. Yeah. Yeah. Fundamentally the opportunity that there is is we need to think of the greater south. Yeah. When we think of a place like Africa which is going to have 2.5 billion young people looking for job looking for information they're going to say I'm not sure I want to give you my data. And so we need to have system which are going to create

those uh trust factors for them. And there's so many elements within that. Uh but one I honed in was is the I heard on the a stage upstairs um when I was uh judging one of the pitching competitions uh a stat from one of the AI uh startups was that in Europe 90% of the data that is held is actually uh held by other non-EU states. So where is it? Where is our data and what's happening with it? Who is using it? Uh that was a bit of a an enlightening point. Uh not something I consider too much. Um but the other uh point I suppose is how the next generation are um and particularly the

creator economy and how they're changing how income is made and um it's more the nano rather than the macro. And this is something that really excites me about um how the programmability of money and particularly crypto can uh at at some stage when it's cost-effective allow those deciles of incomes on a mass basis that can be traced for gaming for ads for data sale like your information that 90% of your data that's internationally somewhere that you could actually sell that and generate income on it. And this is one of the things that I was told about blockchain probably about six or

seven years ago and I thought this is great but it was in a room full of public sector people and they were disgusted that they would never ever sell their data. They had no interest in it. Well, it's just generational I suppose and if it's available there um what are your thoughts on that Kiron in terms of how pe how the new business models with cryptocurrency and that programmable money opportunity can change? Yeah sure. Well, like even the quick wins for example, you could build a substack right away now. Uh you are no one could people are I'm not I'm bit more ambitious I humble brag but but it's it's much harder to do a do a newspaper setting because you have to do review protocols as well but you can do a substack quite easily and by taking

out the middleman take they've got like a 20% take rate so that'll be a quick win. Um but yeah, I think it's going to be the gig economy on steroids. For example, all anyone riding on Olus won't be uh employed by anyone. They're self-employed. Um, so they will be professional journalists, but it will also be, I guess, lay people, but we'll be able to trust them as well because they will be subjecting that information to our marketbased quality control that you can only really uh use on a blockchain because it's micro markets just simply wouldn't be viable on traditional infrastructure. Wouldn't be cost effective. You have to get a license in every single jurisdiction you're operating in. Um, so that's kind of how it's revolutionary for us and and

I'm sure many others. I'm hoping the speed of quantum computing is going to help with that. That's my hope. Well, our big worry is that quantum computing is going to break the security. So, that's what keeps us up. Oh, no. Let's talk about the opportunity, not the risks. We're on the wrong stage. Okay, Vartica, tell us a little bit about what you're hopeful for at the moment with blockchain and what's driving you right now. So we had a great session before around the buy of work and um you know I have a portfolio of careers and I've done almost everything and anything. Uh so I feel the 9 to5 work is changing and when you talk about the creator economy everyone has a channel everyone is trying to create something original or

using AI so there's a lot of data that's getting generated on the internet. Now the point about monetization of the data and how do you make your skills more monetizable and you know have a side gig going alongside your 9 to5 career because careers are no longer stable and so when I see blockchain if we get something to a minimum viable centralization and rebuild the trust in the institutions we can create small clusters of sovereign sovereign identity on the internet.

Sovereign identity. Let's let's break that down. Okay. Because this is something that brought me to blockchain in the first place when I heard about um refugees and displaced people. Where are we with that, do we think? Yeah. I mean, just look at the the world that we are in today. Uh right. Uh Google recently launched the ability to interact. Yeah. 23 million users in counting. Like it's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. There is just so much opportunity. Language is no longer a barrier. You know, uh you can now speak in whatever language transact. There's so much of talent mobility around the world. Yet, we are stuck in a political scenario where there is uh protectionism

sort of happening, right? Yeah. And so technologies like blockchain and creators and entrepreneurs are the ones that will take us to the next uh changing world order reglobalization of sorts. So we're getting there. It's just we're not seeing it but there early signals of everything if you get into the weeds. Uh we're getting there slowly and you know this is exciting. There is risk. There are a lot of regulatory and governance challenges and there's lot of work to be done. It's an absolute sorry it's an absolute essential part of what we're doing because otherwise sovereignty well yes and proof of unique human as well. So you'll have a sovereign ID but you'll also only have one account because oh

great Twitter account because otherwise you would have a journalist writing an article and then having a thousand accounts voting for themselves. So it would kind of defeat the whole purpose. Thank you. A solution. Fantastic. And and it's a blue sky. I just want to do a plug here. I do run a fund around sovereign internet and identity. So if there are any entrepreneurs in the room, find me. And I just want to a question on that as well. Uh we were in an investor room yesterday and this is for anybody raising at the moment in the crypto world. Um that crypto is finally on the radar of the traditional investment uh world. So people that may have said no to you in the past, go and

have a conversation again because they're seeing how uh the rise of crypto uh is uh an important opportunity for them. Now it's not a dirty word even though I was afraid to say it when I was making the introduction yesterday. I then realized I missed an opportunity myself. Um okay, we're in the last five minutes. We would love some questions from the audience, please. Probably should have allowed that a few minutes earlier. Um, but if do we have a microphone? Thank you, Margo. Any questions, please? Yeah, we got one over here. Supermarket sweep.

Thanks. Sorry, it's not particularly exciting, but just a moment ago when you're talking about the recent Google release, you spoke over one another. I didn't quite hear what that was. You said something's just been released. 23 million users. Sorry, just a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, you could hear it, could you? just about. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, World ID. Um, I don't know exactly what the question was now, but I can tell you a bit about it. Yeah. Um, it's Oh, you didn't know what it was. World ID. I lost all of that. I couldn't hear it. It was. Okay. Is there any other questions? No. Okay. So, we got a couple more minutes to ourselves then. Fantastic.

Jean Vivv, what would you like to say? two minutes of what's happening now for Agra ledger and blockchain opportunities and what will happen over the next year. So I'm waiting for the next platform that I can build on and uh really I'm I'm hoping to see there's a few I'm seeing coming out and really being able to see what's happening there. But also uh I'm doing a lot of work with Africa. Um and it's just not just about what I can offer them, but for them to understand the technology because I think they're at a deficit.

uh we tal you know you kind of said well I don't like to talk about crypto as a dirty word but for many governments they see it as a dirty word and they're trying to stop it when it's only one part of the technology and when you know I sat last week and I was a couple weeks ago I was in DC and the IMF Zombia was talking about how they were trying to get the companies to give them trade data And that is a great case for blockchain because you would be able to use sort of a anonymous way of getting information and get those people to actually trust

that that information was not going to be used to hurt them because that's not what the purpose of the government was. So I think that where there is an opportunity now is more teaching because technology can be built very easily but also you need to build it well because trust can be broken in two minutes if your technology fails. So pick the willing of who's willing to uh be open-minded about it. Yes. Yeah. Perfect. And then Kieran over to you. What's happening over the next year that we need to look out for? Yeah. Sure. uh immediately and within the next month or two, we're going to showcase one of our novel pieces of our tech uh which is opinion markets based on a

decision-making sciences technique called Beesian truth serum which is way too complicated to explain in 30 seconds. Um but essentially allows us to settle markets on unverifiable events. So opinions essentially interesting. Um, we're going to showcase that tech in it through a competition where people will be able to earn OLAS tokens that well earn reward tokens that it'll convert tokens when we launch next year. Um, and the only thing you have to do is be honest. The way this thing is designed, your most profitable strategy is to tell the truth. So, we're going to run that for about two or three months. Um, check it out.info and we're protocol on X and we'll announce it there soon. Well, I

can't wait to see how you audit truth. I'm looking forward to that. So, congratulations. But, uh, Varica, over to you over the next year. What's what's happening? I think for the next year, uh, what what's going to come, uh, is more of a focus on the security and the encryption side of things. So, quantum cryptography is, uh, ready in the applied world. So we are going to see a lot of quantum safe application and blockchains are going to get more and more secure. Uh so yeah that's that's what's in the short term and also taking fielding calls from the people you've asked to pitch to you and your fund.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Even that make sure you have a line item of is it is that quantum proof. Okay. Uh well 25 seconds left but thank you all for being an engaged audience and um enjoy the rest of the conference. feel free to talk to us. Thank you very much. [Music]