How to Successfully Build a Product on Blockchain with Dr. Johannes Schweifer

Transcript

hey hello everyone welcome to the crypto valy Association startup working group event it's very nice to have you here uh let's wait a couple minutes so we can let more people in uh we still have some people in the waiting room so we keep adding them to this room now so nice to see you guys here nice to see you hello hello well we really have a lot of people in the waiting room is good to see W okay cool all right maybe I'll just start with the introduction so um after while

maybe after the introduction um more people will be let in and then johannas Scher which is our uh guest today and he will start a presentation so the topic of today's Workshop or we could Workshop or webinar is called how to successfully build a product on blockchain and our guest today is Dr johannna schwier he holds a master degree in chemistry and PhD in distributed computing and Quantum cast chemistry from the Technical University of Vienna and he's a Serial entrepreneur he co-founded Bitcoin Swiss in 20 2013 developing his foundational infrastructure in 2017 he founded corger AG to expand blockchain applications

Beyond Finance he's passionate about problem solving and Dr Johanna schrier is dedicated to use blockchain technology to address Global challenges and demonstrating its true potential through practical Solutions and through the work at cger and they have accumulated a lot of experience helping companies to build products on blockchain and from today's uh Workshop I hope you guys can G gain a lot of insights from him and we will leave the uh Q&A session at the end so you can ask all the questions and then if you would like you can also book a free of course free consultation call with collegers blockchain experts later on and uh a little bit about myself so my name is

yasi Jang the co-chair of crypto value Association startup working group uh some of you have in attended the events in the past that I hosted uh I am the co I'm the co I'm the co-chair of this group but also I have my own company it's called Market it's a web three marketing company to help blockchain startups go toket market so help them Define strategies and our execution so without further Ado I'm going to pass the mic to Dr johanes Scher he will start a presentation and if you have any questions feel free to leave them in this chat and then at the end we will uh select the relevant questions and then he will answer them and if uh we run out of time if we finish at six mon out of

time and I will leave a link where you can book a call and to discuss with them about your projects and your challenges okay so here we go hanas thank you very much it's a big pleasure to be here today um and also to see so many of you normally I give technical presentations and with my engineering background it's just a few people attending because it's too technical um Now with uh let's say my really long history in crypto valy I'm one of those old dinosaurs yai has already said it um my history with Bitcoin actually goes back to 2011 um I can I've really seen a lot and can tell a lot of stories not just the technical ones um yo as yai has already said I've

chosen the difficult part it would have been much more easy if I had just stuck remained with tokenization and selling tokens of uh everything and and their dogs right uh but this business model is um kind of pretty limited what we do at College here is actually um wait a second uh get some notification what is this which language am I talking English I hope Austrian Engish yes so um yeah technology so I'm going to share my slides um just a second so today's topic is how to

successfully build a product on blockchain and as I already started to explain um I got a lot of experience in the past um because of our involvement in Industry projects um I'm going to tell you a little bit about our company um what we are doing why we do it and then the interesting part um what we experienced so far why blockchain projects fail many reasons um how to align a product and a product idea with market trends you might have experienced um it yourself already that market trends especially in crypto they come and and go and it's a pretty fast and and and highly frequent cycle um of

course how to choose the right technology it's not so easy most people in the past um decided to just run things on ethereum until ethereum became too expensive and then product idea died right so this is a big big topic actually I repeat it many times so it cannot be missed um the funding I very important topic the most important of all but not not um um I mean it's it's it's part of the bigger picture right so it's not just the funding it's every piece and of the puzzle and then of course how we can help you succeed if you want and need some help questions and answers afterwards um so what does our company do we focused on industry

applications of course we can also do simple token projects but essentially about bringing value with blockchain technology and helping our customers to build their software um why would you want to build something uh on blockchain or with blockchain simply because you might be able to offer cheaper and more competitive products um or make them available globally it's a big topic or accessing new customer segments always keep in mind I'm not just talking about tokenization and speculation so one big topic here is data data is the new gold some say it's the new oil doesn't matter um the point is blockchain technology can um secure

ensure the the value of that data whether it's certification or um creating unforgeable uh audit Trails of something or notarization of uh data on blockchain or yes tokenization some the creation of a token economy a PARTA Market and what not else um we are present in many different um Industries so from Finance to um okay gold trading so real real world asset tokenization we prefer the term digitization because there's a certain special element in it which makes it easier to um get through regulation then

of course circular economy real estate again um notarization I already mentioned block sense is a battery passport digital battery passport which we implemented on internet computer technology uh IP tokenization um and digitization and a lot of different things our core technology is built on on the Microsoft uh technology deack and of course U we are using different blockchains as infrastructure underneath the whole technology that we built is blockchain agnostic so we can run on pretty much any blockchain as long as it supports a touring complete programming language see I'm getting too technical so let's jump into the first interesting

topic why projects fail three main reasons issue with a business idea you bet on the wrong technology or the most common you run out of funding I mean the first one business idea there were many projects uh on blockchain that hatched already in 2013 and when there was just the Bitcoin blockchain I remember everledger the audit Trail for diamonds I mean that was a very good idea but a little bit too early and that happens many times it's mostly not not your fault to be too too much of a Visionary but nonetheless one of those reasons right then uh of course the pricing

Model H every idea that launched in the very early days was kind of a pilot um um um attempt to to bring something to the market the easiest one was of course um speculative and creating speculative tokens right buying or or even better than that buying facilitating buying and selling of tokens defi markets Etc so that was often regarded and still is as the killer application of blockchain technology that was easy but building something new that um had a certain industry not the finance industry as its Target that was difficult so if you had runaway costs for your operation maybe

the pricing wasn't very very attractive for the customers and just didn't work or also not really needed um I've long been in the crypto Valley now and I've seen so many ideas come and go and uh also many of those which were not really solving a problem um the the one that haunted us the most and still does is regulatory challenges um so many things that would be really nice but the regulator simply doesn't doesn't allow it without a costly permit or doesn't allow it at all um and things which are for example possible in Switzerland might not be allowed in Germany um now miit and Mika sorry Mika

um this allow things that were possible before um make it simply more expensive to run a business model so this is really um one let's say stumbling stone that that often becomes a problem with new ideas technology also not the easiest thing I mean um in most cases people say well we just develop it and then we will see yes true um often you also see that the blockchain technology on which you build is maybe not as mature as you thought it would be ethereum for example was very long in a pretty much better state also Bitcoin I mean it it worked there was never a real failure other

than waiting for I remember a couple of days for a block to be generated but that was all kind of better stage nobody really had a chance to stress that uh before so when you build on something just keep in mind a lot of that is early stage transaction costs gas costs um that became a trap for most people who built early stage on ethereum also keep that in mind uh almost no blockchain gives you a permanent guarantee that the gas fees will always remain low so when you build on something it could happen that sooner or later you have to migrate so keep the migration option in mind um development and maintenance most

people underestimate that building something some smart contract is one thing but creating or building it in a in a in a Enterprise ready state and also maintaining it over time especially when you combine different technologies that could become um nail in a coffin simply because you have exactly these runaway costs and um what is true for the costs is also true for the time so when something is underestimated which happens quite often with blockchain projects then also the time to Market is underestimated the time it takes for maturity that could also be the killer for a project running out of funding the

classics um development takes too long you have to pay for your team the entire time until you earn the first Frank and not only the first Frank but also many more in order to uh fund your your entire operation that's bad um finding investors before you are Break Even or even worse before you earn your first Swiss rank is really difficult it's easier to get early stage funding than to get funding during development I know it from own experience um also difficul is to find customers that goes back to the issue with business idea I mean if you build something that is not really uh solving a problem in the market for

which people are willing to pay for or if the market cycle has already um Turned the page right then you might also find it very difficult to sell your product um same with the business model itself if it's not plausible or too difficult to explain I always advise keep it simple as simple as POS possible something that is very special to blockchain technology it's our um let's say boom and bust Cycles right or the market Cycles um if you happen to need money when there is a a bearish trend at the moment that is bad because you will not really find investors especially for the very specific topic

of um technology finding investors who invest in tokens which are promising is sometimes far more easy than finding investors in a in a technology idea you of course and then clear the team the product positioning Etc if you're not attractive enough for for investors for a variety of reasons you will also sooner or later run all of funding I mean these are no brainers more or less but I wanted to put it on the slide it's just that they are not um forgotten um the hype cycle you might be familiar with the Curve it's the hype cycle of emerging Technologies and here we have also seen a lot of different stages I witnessed the early earli

earliest stage where people used products which were barely usable at all just a bunch of lines of code but nonetheless I me the work thread so um okay blockchain protocols were not exactly a bunch of lines of code but um most of them were just copy and pastes from from the Bitcoin blockchain such as the Litecoin blockchain right and it was easy to just sell something based on a shitty web interface if there was an interface at all or just the copy paste solution trading remittance exchanges the earliest business model here it just had to work most of those who used those tools or exactly who bought into tokens

or Bitcoin at the earliest stage they had no idea how the technology worked so it was the easiest business model to help them um buy tokens buy Bitcoins or sell them well yai already said it my background is being one of the co-founders of Bitcoin Swiss right so that was the foundation of Bitcoin Swiss success to just help people cope with a difficult technology and there it really didn't matter how difficult it it was because of the were the experts helping them for premium so that was easy um early tokens icos also easy helping those token uh sellers to to succeed or to thrive by providing a token sale

platform was the next easiest thing to do this only worked as long as the icos were still possible regulatory possible now they are not I mean nobody talks about icos they changed their name simply because well um uh it became tainted so we are not talking talking about um okay stos that's also different product security token offering that really that never really worked because of this legal and Regulatory barrier in kyc AML um wrapping around it it's it's it's a hurdle uh but nonetheless I mean we heard I mean there were different terms minted for that like initial exchange offerings and so forth nonetheless um speaking about the early

stage um it was possible to make money with very simple Concepts or highly technical concept cepts with bad user interfaces then uh when the mainstream recognized oh there's are new technology and people can make money with that technology new ideas came on top ah nice and also with ethereum right um so with the emergence of programmable blockchains second generation blockchains you could create really nice things games um rep your token into a nice business model utility token concept right then also white label to RS appeared exchanges wallets and so forth um nfts came and went and of course the real world asset oranization

started to get some some traction and steam then we went into the bare Market um that's the trough of this illusionment I think is the name of this pattern um so it took quite long um until the industry also picked up that topic keep in mind the industry is very slow so it takes years okay years it takes decades before the industry and I'm not talking about the financial industry financial services industry it takes decades until the General Industry like manufacturing and and what not else pick up new technology and want to implement it and integrate it into their

products and product uh and and and general business processes and they only do it with the help of third parties so they normally don't code anything themselves or let somebody code anything for themselves because that's Legacy software they prefer to combine things that already exist in some way and um that's of course um topic for web three infrastructure providers and and and having Simple Solutions that can be used uh in the form of an API or something oh yes and there was also the metaverse I think um many people saw blockchain and metaverse Concepts as a natural fit they somehow vanished um I haven't heard

anything about that now we are talking about AI plus blockchain but it's a different topic anyway so this third um era or part or pattern in our hype cycle is mostly reserved for well-designed well thought through applications and platforms making money with a simple token is these days I would say pretty much impossible um but I'm happy to be proven otherwise so the right product um what we can say from own experience is that um can you still still see my screen okay um what I what we can tell

from from own experience is that a lot of people are looking into real world asset tokenization as a way to sell otherwise illiquid assets um well um real estate is here topping the list um also we get a lot of requests for doing that the most important thing is that tokenization alone is not uh the the the the solution so it needs a little bit more than that but more about this later also gold and gemstones or Collectibles uh fragmenting cars fragmenting art Etc um data security and inte authenticity Etc so actually being able to prove that

some data was genuine some some entry some whatever recording was genuine um is actually topping our list um so um we have many of those projects which are in the area of proof of origin um where it's important to augment the quality of a product by giving it an unforgeable seal why on blockchain because of exactly this unforgeable tradeit and there are really many different applications digital product passports I mentioned one uh the digital battery passport from Blen so that's only one example these things um come not because Industries really really desperately

want that but because of Regulation I personally I personally really hate the topic of Regulation sorry and this is now on record um anyway so but because of Regulation many companies who said uh years before what unforgeable records we don't want that now need to have unforgeable records and that's actually a business model for blockchain technology of course third place Financial infrastructure um many different remittance and payment services so this is still a big topic um especially when it comes to integrating blockchain technology and crypto into already um existing Legacy software for banks banking backbones

Etc core banking systems that's a a big topic with a lot of work and investment also going on at the moment um of course token sales we also have many token sales um and um simple stuff utility token circular economy not to be not to be omitted here if you use a blockchain that is not generating too much CO2 right then uh it also makes sense from a financial perspective to use kind of tokens and incentive to not buy something but rent it from somebody or vice versa rent it out to somebody Etc so these um are just examples from our

own experience at the moment um projects that are in our books actually the slid is a month old so the numbers are not correct they are big bigger at the moment um avoiding the pitfalls so um regarding think the target group um you have to keep in mind that real world asset investors have really a problem with tokens why because real world asset investors they are pretty happy with a with a yield of 5% 10% per year that's fine so this is what they unless there is huge inflation but in the absence of that U degree of inflation um 5 to 10% maybe 20 totally fine and this is what

you could in theory make with a real world asset these people they are from normally from an older generation so they are familiar with um those real world assets they believe in real estate they believe in Gold they believe in this and that they don't really understand why they should first of all risk this asset with I mean by by by the having it the the the the potential to lose the private key the handling is normally not really good especially if it's non-custodial right if it's custodial then a lot of cost come on top for the custodian and um if you see it from the other way around uh the the other

perspective those who like tokens classic token investors who are familiar with the technology who have no problem to actually take responsibility for their own asset they are not satisfied with 5% 10% yields they want plus 100 plus thousand so what they were um used to when when the token hype went off in 2017 and 18 so um they will not buy into real world assets it's just not really a yield for them I mentioned this at CV Summit when I was invited to a panel speaking about real world assets and I was kind of an eye open actually that um the target group needs to be taken into account when people tokenize something tokenizing a real world asset does not

necessarily mean that it's much much better than a speculative token backed by nothing actually it needs to be really carefully considered what you do and what you have in mind and what utility concept comes on top in order to be successful there um also whatever you do I mean if you tokenize real world assets keep in mind you should build a prototype as early as possible because building too much technology building too much software here and then trying it out in real life two or three years after you started building is not really uh a good advice you should focus always on your core functionality and ignore the

additional features if people like your product then they will also like it already with the core functionalities and are happy if you supply additional features later and then yes uh the user experience it's absolute key so I also often fall into this trap because I'm an engineer so I like to go into the details explain also the nitty-gritty details right so how things work why they work this way Etc and people users will not appreciate that they judge you by a number of pixels uh or the right color or I don't know or a small missing feature right um okay I talk about missing features but

anyway um you should keep in mind that users are normally not impressed by the technology that's fact so the simple it is the better and uh also my advice from from long years of experience avoid a token unless you really need a token most people start a project because they want to sell a token and then build a project around it that will not work and um yeah also the user experience uh versus security is a is a topic um whatever you do keep in mind um when people have a risk to lose their Fortune by just

clicking on the wrong button that could also be an issue and uh speaking of of user experience and and and security uh it makes a huge difference uh first of all in uh yeah for the for the end user whether he is responsible for his assets and has to write down for example a seed so that's the non-custodial approach okay the most widely used uh approach to do something non-custodial to have the private key on a on a on a customer device nonetheless it's an uncomfortable one so um you might want to prefer the custodial one it's easier for the uh end user much easier they only need password and uh login on password the problem is

just then a regulatory one and uh if you keep the private key for them well um then you could be a very juicy Target for a heck keep it in mind uh timing well um regulation has changed a lot in the last couple of years U when Bitcoin swis started it was very simple to do um to to trade Bitcoin and well okay trading Bitcoin is still pretty much simple so you only needed um a membership with a self regulator regulatory organization and that's one of the biggest benefits actually of being in Switzerland but nonetheless whatever you're working with um when you

do something with financial products just calculate the budget and a significant budget for legal and Regulatory clarification you will need it um 100K plus is normally normally required depending on um the kind of business you do just don't underestimated it that is my message and also add some some additional time if if you need a license or if you need even okay you never get approval from the regulator but uh at least you get non non-action letter right um so if you need a non no action non non no action letter from finma or another regular body it takes time from om experience um

ker also tried we didn't need to do this in swizerland because we are in in lonstein but nonetheless we tried it in Switzerland it took 18 months until they reacted simply because the technology that we implemented was so new that they had no idea what to do with it um hype Cycles be careful with that um in the time so at the time when token sales were very popular many people tried to um create token sales platforms but well it it it it was in the making for some time and um um when when those token sale platforms were ready the hype cycle was already over also if you build

something where your main argument is for marketing this might not work um we also actually have to admit that at the very beginning tried to sell blockchain technology and blockchainbased product as um an additional market value the industry is not buying that so writing blockchain inside on a product does not really help you with selling it um yep then the token s trap I already mentioned before so if you don't need a token don't do it and uh if you only want to sell a token and build a business model around it uh this

will only rarely work U I have seen I've seen it work in the past um I have not seen any current examples um don't be fooled by some reports that there are successful token sales yes there are some of those are really done with significant marketing budget or already existing uh groups of buyers or they are fueled by a preceding private sale where people buy their own tokens from the private sale money and so forth so a lot of a lot of things happen around token sales which modify the number in such a way that people believe

that token sales are still a good deal mostly they not I'm not saying I'm not excluding it but um I just want to say be careful with the numbers okay um yep and what we also see these days especially well with blockchain foundations is that they use their own tokens their reserves in order to bolster the business model which is sometimes research sometimes development uh sometimes Grant uh it's also often companies being built out of a huge stash of um their own tokens um or actually a huge stash of money from

their own token sale when this runs out the the reserves they are digging in the problem is just that's not sustainable so if you only thrive on your your reserves that you um putting to the market then um it is either a problem with your tokenomics the token price is continuously suppressed or it's a general problem if you're not making enough money from your business model so that you constantly need your reserves tapping into your reserves to help your project grow that's a different topic so if you're sustainable even without selling those tokens then it's that's fine

um yep and I mentioned already the timing of course if you are building something that is needed right now so it fulfills a need and and and closes a gap right now then put it to the market um as soon as anyhow possible simply to see whether or not it works there's no problem in in in realizing I mean no problem of course there's some loss of money right and loss of time but um what what the Americans also say is fail fail early um if your product is not fit for the market if you're not finding any buyers you want to see that as early as possible so that you don't waste too

much too much time and money on it um on experience I did that a couple of times wasting money and waiting too long until um I found out that something didn't work but this is the fate of a serial entrepreneur and I learned from it so therefore I tell you if you have the possibility to check something on the market to maybe put a prototype out there just to see how the the um potential customers react do it technology um at the moment well um everything Cycles around scalability and low transaction cost because a lot of people also realized well it is pretty expensive to run things on on ethereum

okay fees went down but nonetheless it's still it's still expensive so uh second layer Protocols are are very attractive polygon Avalanche I learned today in a in a sales Hall that for financial products in Germany it's mostly polygon Stellar um just popular for that reason um then of course internet computer if you're familiar with the techology um it has a really remarkable scalability I'm not talking about the token very often I hear feedback from from our customers that um they are not happy about the ICP token performance ignore this performance just look at the

technology it's it's pretty good and also the the transaction fees are pretty low um I cannot talk much about Solana because um we serve industry clients so Solana is very popular with meme coins and so forth so the tokenization project um our industry clients if they know any blockchain technology at all um never talk about Solan uh liquidity of course we hear that very often people prefer to um launch on a on a on a blockchain or using a technology where they have also access to additional liquidity of course if you want to do a token sale you need

liquidity otherwise it's mostly about creating closed ecosystems Z own systems where people can trade from one um cized asset into something else but it's your ecosystem right so you won't necessarily need that liquidity uh and also launch pads of course um okay but that's not our primary business um ethereum is of course still highly popular um for its existing liquidity and that's don't want to say it's unmatched but um there's still a lot of liquidity on ethereum and there are um all the dexas and def5 Facilities that you could imagine um yeah Solana I already

mentioned so source of funds that is a big topic for the the the choice of Technology because blockchain foundations um are very generous with grants well not any longer I learned simply because they also found out that um many of those projects uh just drain their reserves and might not bring added value to the ecosystem because just having yet another token on the blockchain doesn't really help so what they are looking for is um also sustainable projects games industry projects things that will stay there for a longer time and also have a commercial

traction that's important so blockchains are basically giving Grant they never pay the entire um development um or they never fund the entire development they only fund apart so that people also have a skin in the game but nonetheless they uh give grants for your project so that you can um well develop on their chain they want you on their chain um and also if you uh if you are um um incubated um somewhere if you have um whatever the chance to um work with an accelerator then they also have already existing Partnerships and might and this might also influence your uh

choice of platform um the most important me message is keep in mind that whatever you're building on right now it might be a choice that you might have to reverse at some point especially if it's kind of exotic because not all blockchains Will Survive that's a fact um well there are many bit Falls here especially with the technology um people love to build I know that from my own experience I'm also an engineer so before I do research okay that was the past so like 10 years ago before I I I looked around if somebody already had something that I could use I wanted to

build it because it's a challenge don't fall into that trap it's just expensive um I made I burnt my finger us now a couple of times so I know it from experience so keep in mind there's often an opportunity to buy something or even components that you can assemble and uh if you build it yourself then be careful with your budget because remember what I mentioned before people judge you U on the basis of what uh how the product looks and how the user experience is and not and will not appreciate any of your technical details and Engineering um skills so 80% of your budget will go into things that people

will never ever see and never appreciate or thank you for uh don't skip the PC really I advise you to do to to not do that because um PC allows you to try out the product check it with some early users the test users so to speak but then you can also get a feel on how the product looks how people react to it if you buy if you if you skip that step then you pay that many times later in the in the project uh yes I already mentioned an interesting challenge so yeah don't for into this STP of doing something just for the sake of doing it

because it's it's interesting you will regret that um and your customers may want an audit so if you don't have an enormous amount of budget I see somebody's drawing on the screen yeah um yeah guys please there is this um anate like this button at the lower left hand probably you click that um please do not draw anything on screen thanks for your collaboration I was already wondering where this was coming from because there was this this red I don't know what it is hook or something um on the on the top is it possible that you can delete it otherwise I cannot see

them my screen okay anyway um I just continue but if there are questions are there already questions oh yeah in the question someone asked what is your advice on selecting a blockchain with the lowest gas fees depends on your use case so um I cannot give you any advice on this without knowing what use case you have in mind um if it's Financial maybe polygon is a good choice if it's super technical internet computer might be a good choice let's dive into this later but are there any urgent questions which justify all those those check marks no yeah there couple discussions

on um real world asset asset organization but I guess if there was some concrete questions on that topic you you can type it in the chat function then we can t on that after the Pres presentation please please stop making check marks um okay what was I uh something with audit press um so it's cheaper to do to have your supplier do the audit and not yourself um that is also costly in our case cost it 150,000 or something so that's not insignificant um the technology um people often forget that I mean you could try to do everything yourself but uh very often you need help in your

project so you need additional people and the more Technologies you combine the more people you need and uh well many people cost a lot of money especially in Switzerland so you might want to keep it as simple oh thanks as simple as any possible um what else exotic technology yeah that's a point I mean often people like to try out new stuff we ran into real troubles using samarin which was very popular back then and at some point Microsoft just stopped support okay it was not exactly exotic but nonetheless it's just one of those examples that you have to keep in mind if you build a lot yourself you also have to maintain it or upgrade it or

even move technology um also availability if you have the possibility to just let all the complex part be done by somebody or use existing components right and then build with simple Technologies like weap stuff or some app development it's much better um than than do something exotic and yeah if you use exotic Technologies then you also need an audit in this this technology right and these guys they very expensive and they know that they're expensive um so time to launch um many impacts Administration um if you have um I mean one thing is that most projects

are done in an agile way these days but also keep in mind you cannot start uh in an agile way at the very beginning you normally start with a classic approach need to do some some designs Etc so getting your ducks in a row is something that takes some time also the team the larger the team the longer it takes to perform so you also want to keep it small building something on immature outdated technology poof yes um same thing that I said before the more pieces you need to in to have I mean the more pieces that need to interact the more costly it gets and also swapping some some technologies also takes months if not

years um what we always advise people is to avoid integrating to new technology or to old stuff um always take something that is has already proven itself and also that the same is true for the blockchain infrastructure prototype I already mentioned um it people underestimate it or actually get it wrong U they think start already with the product productive build at the very first stage is the thing to do because that's faster that's not true so doing a prototype or an MVP means you have the chance to steal your product a little bit getting feedback integrating that feedback integrating a

feedback into a POC is much cheaper than integrating feedback and changing your scope or something or adding features to an already productive version of your product um yep Al basically whatever you do keep in mind Technologies change a lot the hype cycle is always your enemy basically you never know when the next bare Market might might come last time it was triggered by the Ukraine war it was just a trigger I mean it was already around the corner but nonetheless you don't know when it when it starts and you want to be on the market already earn money um before that happens so in other words don't waste time um now um I wasted already I'm

sorry in the beginning so let's um I will move on here now a little bit more quickly so um I already said a lot before um raising money I mean of course uh money from Grants I already mentioned that but blockchain projects blockchain foundations they prefer these days good and sustainable projects they don't give funding for token project um also doing a token sale it's hard these days um you really need to have a really good project and well prepared and keep in mind it costs a lot of money to prepare it also in marketing Etc I yai can tell you guys much more about that because she's professional in that area so yeah

that needs a lot of preparation token sale is not what we normally recommend as funding if you plan something that has more to do with industry than incubators and accelerators is may be a good place to go because that is a way to get early stage money and also have somebody who has skin in the game and might look for follow up investment it's much more difficult if you fund your stuff yourself I know what I'm talking about because I funded many projects myself fending followup money is then always difficult if you don't have anybody El having skin in the game um classic way is uh well often the best with classic projects which use blockchain just as a

technology um big problem here um those who invest in blockchain projects they are looking for 10x 100x in a few years um and and and that's normally not what you can provide them with if you build kind of a classic project um for the for most of the classic investors blockchain is not uh the best word actually it's often a b a red flag so um what I want to say here is um the number of investors classic investors VC I mean VC investors Etc who invest in blockchain uh projects which are not token projects

giving them I don't know what in rewards is a very small number um pitfalls here yeah cost risk time I already said that many times so you can save a lot of money by developing things yourself but then you lose time right as a a startup founder you should actually look for um fundraising opportunities or winning early customers of course um you can save money by hiring cheap labor um not especially talking about Indians but the other regions which are much cheaper than Switzerland that might be true or of course you have to keep in mind that you don't want to Outsource the

most critical parts of your project smart contract to people you have never met you can hire the experts but that could also cost a lot so balancing cost risk time is a big big thing um fundraising well it's it's always it's often a lucky punch actually until you happen to find the one out of the hundred that you ask uh who is willing to give you a million or more in theory it is possible to just get fund go fundraising with a concept um just recently um I became involved in a project which exactly did that um with a concept on paper yes but normally there is more than just the concept that is needed reputation etc etc um don't just

don't bet on that because it's really a lucky punch um classic investors want to see that you can deliver that is true in most cases so they want to see a prototype they want to see that you're really building something and not just asking for money you could of course get that money at an early stage keep in mind then you will for out a lot of your company um token sales I'm not mentioning again so I already how many times three times four times I don't know um so you know my opinion about token um project planning uh of course affects cost timing I said it in the previous slide so investors want to see

a prototype and actually only if you can show them what you're going to build and convince them with that that you have the skills and capabilities then they give you money of course you need the money to build the product so normally we recommend a cycle like you start from a concept you go into a PC do an MVP and then the last one um is the final product and then come all the features um it is an illusion um that starting from the paper and then directly um developing the final product is cheaper because it's not uh it's much more costly to fix errors in in the final product than or then scrapping a PC or

fixing something in the PC and um mention that also you want to succeed early but you also want to fail early if you're deemed to uh doomed to deed deed to fail so anyway if your project uh well doesn't have any success on the market you want to see that as early as possible if you are already well funded that's fine so having a lot having a stash of Bitcoin especially at today's prices right um but if you do not then you want to start small little money is fine because it's easier to get little money than 50 million right um if if you can get it take it but don't aim for that amount it's just hard to get um

talk with investors early and even if you don't have anything or don't look for investors keep them warm um because initi initiating uh the the contact with investors is very hard so um if you have somebody who is interested in you as a skillful person um and says okay if you ever do something then um I might be willing to fund you keep that guy warm keep close well now first uh or last minutes um how we can help you uh basically what we already built is a platform and an really powerful um operating system that covers these 80% um that people normally

don't see it don't appreciate but needs to be there and needs to be functioning which is um absolutely Enterprise great and and highly scalable and runs on different blockchains solid you can only focus on the backend sorry back end and front end part the things that are easier to do and are and can be done with available resources on the market web Developers app developers Etc we did it in such a way that we segmented the functionalities that are needed on blockchain in a clever way so that even smart contract development is not necessary uh if it is then the existing solution can just be extended without writing everything from scratch

that allows us to be much much faster so Theos supports everything around documentation proof of whatever you want to prove uh with an audit trail with cryptographic linkage which almost no solution um supports um all different kinds of quantities which is the decentralized accounting part so nfts fragmentable nfts um fible tokens and what what else governance and compliance was built in um with the possibility to have custom rule sets now with internet computer we could also do um live outbound calls to kyc AML databases Etc and even integrate an AI model on the

fly to say yes or no to a transaction which is pretty cool um so this is something that involves oracles um or live uh outbound calls uh implementing rule sets and the last one is unique Trading algor GMS here we even have a def um patent it's called token warp don't want to go too much into details if you want to know more about it just um get into a talk with us um important is um that the system itself is blockchain agnostic can run pretty much anywhere we built it on ethereum and launched even our own network uh called sparket um simply because when ethereum

became too expensive it we needed something where we could guarantee the um the gas price and here the gas price is zero um Theos is also already available on polygon and soon on internet computer that was the biggest migration we did so far there's an API to integrate blockchain commands into Legacy applications so you could easily also power your wireframe with it doing rapid prototyping which is one of the biggest assets actually that we can bring to the market um and we have a couple of white labor tools even more than those but these are the most important ones to help you build a blockchain project how we work um there's a free Discovery call um where

we listen to your problem and propose some solutions um we normally do kind of an exploration which is small scale consulting which allows you to see uh all the the the uh potential Solutions impacts and what not else of your blockchain project and how we would propose to to build it um we can supply with a PC um which you can use to pitch to investors and of course we can build the Life Application um that's basically it um here you see the link um and I think we should could also send it out you can type it from the from the

screen here anyway you can book a free Discovery call with us and anytime we're happy to help you link is sent in the chat um we have a question from Martin and I asked that oh okay which example of good and sustainable projects do you recommend to look at for inspiration good and sustainable blockchain project well uh it all depends what you're looking for are you looking for financial projects or um I'm a bit biased here so you can send a couple of examples later um defi specifically

defi again what because if we are talking about the financial market and making money then um Unis swap is a very good project because they just published a smart contract and um are constantly making money from it and it's highly sustainable so things like um defi exchanges the I mean um um dexas um which are fully running on blockchain without even an U um identity behind they are really perfect examples I wouldn't recommend that though we have another question from Stewart it seems that you are advocating layer 2 Chain what security do you build in and how do you address uh

composability comp posability uh okay I don't really understand what the wor here means in this context but uh well I mean Layer Two Chains yes we can build on pretty much any any any chain what we normally recommend is a non-custodial solution which means uh users are in charge of their own security and their own private key which of course comes to the detriment of usability and here internet computer helped a lot with internet identity it's much easier um to use that and integrate that in own projects what we normally recommend is avoids to have

many private keys on one place so having a custodial solution again internet computer helps because this is the place where we for example um are kind of pooling um private keys and Building Bridges what did composability mean in context uh who wrote like isn't it the B ability to address a chain or sequence of events instead of with smart contracts you are limited to one on one no I'm going do that I don't fully understand the question though or steart you can switch on your

mic yes steart please play it live hi youis okay uh on composability one of the things which uh we're doing at the moment is the ability to look at um different scenarios with um smart contracts it's almost like a supermarket you buy a whole bunch of things but you've got one lane for onions one lane for potatoes one lane for carrots as you check out whereas what we're doing is looking at it and saying whatever you're going to give me I can handle in the one lane like you would at a real Supermarket

so um with smart contracts you generally have if this happens pay this or do this MH but you need to do more for business that's why blockchain is not really taken off in Enterprise is because in Enterprise you have a number of chain events that have to happen like I pay you money you ship something now de increment your inventory your inventory now goes out and orders more from the supplier I increment my inventory by one of your products I decrement my uh accounts

payable and I now change that into a different invent uh the part into a different inventory perhaps I'm buying a steering rack for a car and so I'd put it in the car so I'd associate it with something else so I'd have a unique number all the way along that's composability that's not available with a smart contract true but here you need here you actually want to exploit one of the core features of blockchain technology and um again we are talking about classic blockchains second generation um which is exactly this sequence of events which is also unfort um in an example that you

describe I wouldn't use blockchain that way I would to a lot of it offchain and only proof stamp something that is relevant for the business process on blockchain um then it doesn't matter it's it's always a way how you apply the tool it's just a tool uh on internet computer for example you can do it totally different because it's it's rust programming you can build whatever you want and here I think the that's not entirely true yeah name it would be possible so yeah it it's very much uh a way how you design the business process to micro recommendation is actually well Enterprise is not going to

redesign their backend systems just to go on black uh blockchain they want PL and play yes that is true and mostly they want to retain the the Legacy software and only correct spice it a little bit with blockchain technology where it makes sense example um we are currently also working for um a company in in Germany I don't give any details there and um they are in the manufacturing industry and everything is pretty much from I mean decades old um and now they are looking into blockchain technology in order to add value to their customers products and it's a a very let's say little bit that they want

to add but this little bit has a business value for them in the area of hundreds of thousands per month so um the element that we need to add is really needs to be perfectly placed at the right spot that's all I can add here so it really it it goes into details normally such questions can be answered by yes or no I hope you're satisfied with my answer I need to know more about your business case uh in order to answer that I'll talk offline okay happy to do that um we have one we can take one last question we're running over time so uh maybe one small question before that is uh someone is asking if this your technology open source or free to

use um well um we built our technology with a budget of like 10 million so no it's not open source um but we have open source um code um I mean not everything is open source but tiny bits um which which can integrate with with our technology I mean smart contracts you can compile them right and look into them um but in general it's not open source close s and um Tatiana is asking if she understand it correctly that uh you advise not to go into tokens but to investigate smart contracts topics that this is the trend now so could you could you please give examples of smart contract ideas that are now in the

air drer my name isana I'm here that's the question I'm asking um very interested recently in the whole crypto space I'm now doing a course on crypto um and just thinking about ideas like I have a team of really interesting people who are ready to do something so we are now just thinking in which direction to start moving so maybe you could advise okay it's a very good question actually but but you're you're you're partly asking the wrong person because um I was always skeptical about the tokenization projects and to my surprise this hype cycle oh no they they they they

um were pretty successful more successful than than I expected and um many people just came up with new tokenization ideas for this and that and people bought that um I am advising to look beyond that because at some point either um because of regul Regulation or sooner or later people run out of money right and and all the the the speculative money will be gone um industry will take over what I can say from own experience that topics which satisfy the regulatory needs for documentation uh are increasing such as

product certification supply chain uh management tracking um um Logistics tracking and so forth because you need to prove where your your raw materials came from that this was not forced labor that uh it was recycled and so forth especially the EU is very much um into that and this also generates a lot of business for blockchain ideas um I can refer you for example to to block sends with whom we're working that's the battery passport um also to give you a perspective in the EU this is already uh law so you need to have a battery passport on every for every battery which is above I don't know how many amp

hours so uh like a couple of of of ebike batteries in Switzerland this will only become law in 2027 Roans discovered that this is a business so they started to build it already now so we are still talking about future business but it's it's now coming I can tell you many more examples unfortunately not on record definitely because it's um customer project so I can talk about this in public but yeah certification documentation proof of origin uh quality certificates Etc especially if you save money on that and especially if you're for example accessing external systems um which require um a certain

kind degree of security which is one of the reasons why we build the battery passport on internet computer because of their cyber security features so we save on other part that we normally need on such a um um technical architecture without blockchain firewalls Etc thank you so much thank you I hope this was this was helpful um it was of course I have a lot to tell much more than I have time unfortunately but really I encourage you um either write me on LinkedIn U make a discovery call if you're interested to talk with us I'm really happy to discuss ideas also or contribute to I don't know what you're

doing right now writing some papers whatever you're based in Suk yes bar okay that's great okay pay us a wi it would be happy um we don't have other question we don't have time for other questions but in case I apologize for talking so long sorry so in case if you have U followup questions or you would like to discuss with call about your projects maybe ask some questions regarding the technology or you not sure which direction to go feel free to book this 30 minutes Discovery call uh it's nonbinding and then I think they're happy to just get to know each of you or discuss potential

new business ideas together so feel free to book one um and I hope you enjoy this session uh again welcome to crypto value Association events and I hope you guys uh take some useful information from this session thank you so much for being here and thanks you uh Dr Johanna Scher for your time thanks thank you bye