Open Conversations: Don’t Build in a Blockchain Bubble (Aaron Sanchez, Exponential Science)
Funding the Commons Open Conversations · 1:37
Blockchain builders should start with the problem rather than assume the technology is the answer, the speaker argues, because industry insiders operate in a jargon-filled bubble. Drawing on a government blockchain academy run with UNDP, he says education must reach senior officials and their teams, with facilitation toward a common goal. He adds that blockchain is often unnecessary or not yet ready, while calling digital finance “the hype of this cycle.”
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From Funding the Commons Open Conversations, hosted by Funding the Commons.
Transcript
A lot of people in blockchain particularly, they need to start at the basics always and multiple times. I think we forget that we live in our little bubble and we speak the lingo. I'm Aaron Sansone, I'm head of strategy and partnerships at Exponential Science. The backbone of what we do is blockchain research, but we've expanded into innovation activities such as running hackathons. We have a VC, we do a lot of innovation activities and the key project that I'm running right now is the government blockchain academy. In this academy, we worked with the United Nations Development Program, the UNDP, and we worked together to educate government officials and their teams because we find through our experience and through the UN's experience, we
found that education needs to happen both at the top level, the senior officials, but also their teams and then having facilitation activities to really get them to work together towards a common goal. It needs to be solution driven. And so I think the industry and builders can easily get caught in we have a blockchain solution, but it's only for blockchain people. You need to think about what problem are you actually solving and is blockchain needed? And many times I think blockchain is not needed, at least not ready for that to be the solution applied. I think people want blockchain to be a solution now when it's actually going to just needs to take a longer time. We do need to focus on what are the current problems, what can we solve and what are the quick wins? And where we're finding that digital finance obviously, that is
the hype of this cycle.