Why Ethereum Won Argentina's Digital Identity Battle with Diego Fernandez and RJ

Transcript

Governments do understand and institutions do understand the need and the advantage of having sort of a portable identity that you can use in several other places and that is happening all over the world. I think we're in a phase where we're living the it's very clear we left the the white west and we're seeing a new wave that is everyone coming to the same technology that we have been using. It doesn't mean they will live in the same world. It means they will live in the same technology. You know, government institutions oftent times they're pre-web 2, pre-web one, even they're web zero, you know, like they're still on paper.

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yourself. Simpler crypto UX, verifiable AI agents. Newton.xyz. [Music] Introducing asset runes, the future of decentralized finance. Stable coins natively on Bitcoin. Hedge against volatility. Diversify your portfolio. All directly from your Bitcoin wallet. Secured by ZK technology. This is asset runes available now exclusively on Starknet live from can. Beautiful. I think it's beautiful people. You know, it's hot. It is warm. I'm sweating underneath, but I think beautiful skies, beautiful people,

beautiful beaches. No complaints from my end. R.J. Diego, it's pleasure to have you guys on the rollup. Uh we're not going to be talking about some infrastructure 1001 L2. We're going to be talking about real tangible use cases employed by some infrastructure that keeps everything very secure but also makes tangible use cases happen things people really want to use. Guys, what what is your impression of the conference so far? What is what is your opinion of can and uh then we'll we'll get into it.

Thank you. Thank you for having us again. And yeah, I think it's so far it has been great and a little sweaty 100%. I'm not a very summer person, so I I'm doing a lot of effort uh to being here, but I think has been good. We met with friends catching up with our partners like Dio and we're happy that we're in a stage where we can talk more about the things that are built on top of us and yeah talk about use cases users and moving to the next phase of crypto right yeah that's what it's all about Mr.

Diego, former secretary of innovation at Buenos Audis among other things uh founder of Cork ID uh as well as part in partnership. You guys have created the trust stack and so uh please I'd love a background on yourself and uh how you got up until this point going through the former you know the the secretary of innovation and working for the government and uh yeah we'll we'll get into the trust stack as well. Well, cool. Thank you very much and I love being here with uh Roberto and I'm partners and in the ROA which is a podcast which I listen to every week. So I love it.

I held a three and a half years tenure as secretary of innovation in the city of Buenosarees. I went into that job because I was kind of obsessed with the identity part and that was in early 2021 which in it wasn't that popular the identity thing that became popular in the last kind of two years and I'm happy about it because basically I perceive the strong friction that you have in order to KYC to verify who you were and the enormous risks that the centralist systems have for individuals, for institutions and I felt that there was a better way of

doing things and that was when the cork idea became to fruition and we made an open call to to the Argentine and worldwide crypto community. We Argentina have a strong uh crypto background in cryptosabi users and and developers land the class and the language has been an example there and we got a very very warm welcome and we started thinking about how to solve this and two years afterwards we had the first running version of cooperative which today it's an open source protocol so anyone can use it is also a world this is a public good in the UN in the

digital poly good alliance so everybody can use it is a completely open and free protocol today is being used in the city of Bonosirus with over 700,000 users it was it was launched in October 204 and uh today people in Bonosirus have their driver's license their citizens credentials and more than 70 other official government documents as for example birth certificates within the wallets under their realm That is of course the government has the information in order to issue those documents but the document the credential is under the users's control and there is a huge difference.

Yeah it it is incredible and just before we started this this recording today you guys were telling me about a a story that really pertains to the significance of decentralized control of these documents. There was was it a government server that had gotten hacked? Maybe you could tell this story as well because you know sometimes decentralization we think oh you know it's kind of overkill. It's like oh we don't really need all that but you guys have a very real scenario and story that goes along with that and and it presents why this is an important solution.

Yeah. Just to be clear here, we we we do a combination between centralized information systems and decentralization because it's a kind of contradictory. Hey, governments institutions are centralized. How how are you you going to decentralize that? Oh, the thing is just take the example of the city government. Before using Quark ID, what you had was a server with a lot of information from citizens opened to the internet which where you needed a set of credentials and say a login in order to access that server. But the you had an open door to the internet in order for users to download those documents on the fly. With this new scenario, of course,

governments still do have the information, but the only thing that you have is a door that you open. You mean your credentials and you close it. So, you don't have an open door connected to the internet all of the time, which is completely hackable. And that's the sort of thing that we need to change. Why? Because governments, institutions get hacked. You get news all around the world every year of billions and billions and billions of information, personal information getting leaked and that is so so and with AI is so dangerous because at the end of the day in the digital world ourselves is data.

So if our data is sort of spread around is kind of ourselves being available to anyone and that is so so bad. We need to change that ASAP. Was there a situation where that happened? Do you feel comfortable sharing? Yeah, I mean it happened two or three times in the last two or three years in Argentina, but I mean in many other place and the one that I'm most familiar with is Argentina. You had this telegram service for example in which you enter the driver's license number and you got the picture of the grabber license back.

Crazy. All of the data of the well on the national people's right got lit sort of like two years ago those things in the digital world shouldn't happen anymore and we need to work towards that. Yeah. Absolutely. Arju when you know you kind of you you saw Diego's work as secretary of innovation um and also the necessity from having worked in the in the space kind of what what was your first impression of the technology and and was it an automatic oh this is an important ledge work together how how did the partnership between cork and Diego's you know uh services here come come to be with lambda class and a lock

yeah so for me was a no-brainer in the sense that you are updating a protocol that every single government has, but you're using new tools in order to make it more reliable, right? And also, it allows you to be a have like actual ownership for certain like credentials you actually own. Um, for example, the city of Onosire probably in Argentina has the best digital kind of stack for different things, but you needed um like a next step, right? And all of these things is measuring using these tools by your proofs and actually um verifiable servers or blockchains is um is something very interesting for me because you are bringing the real world

with the technology we know how to use and how to develop on top of it. And what I love about the the vision that Diego usually shares that I sh like I also share a lot and we talk about a lot on on online is digital trust or bringing down the cost of trust in different sectors of uh humanity and I think this is great like we were really excited because we're using the tools that we know how to work with lambda and align and present them to people who they want to do the best for the citizens but they don't know or they don't have the tools in order to do And in many cases there's a lot of technical debt not only for web three but also for web two and this is taking like a zero to one scenario for

outdating the whole stack. Um so yeah we met because of the Argentinian kind of ecosystem and since then we have been thinking how to work together and help deal uh make and and use a very scalable solution uh for the solution. Yeah. and we're we're wearing the send proof stats, right? And so as of 202 October 2024, the Argentinian government in Borosis is using Cork ID for digital identity. Now we're building together something called the trust stack. And my understanding of this and I'm sure we can get into some of the details is that now Lambda class and aligned is augmenting cork ID and the digital

identity framework with rollups with ZK and and maybe even with wallets too. So So now I'm curious RJ you know we have digital identity provided uh to the citizens of Buenos Audis through cork ID. what do they get in addition to what they currently have now that aligned is providing additional infrastructure? Yeah, so the first thing is because of DOS's uh use cases what they need is a very scalable infrastructure and they also need privacy. So what we're offering and we're working uh together with lambda is packaging and producing uh tech around defects that is an L1 and L2 exhibition client that works also a rollout stack in order to offer them an

infrastructure is easy to use and it's scalable and it's also future proof because many of the things we're doing is not only for today but for the future. So we want all of this technology to be part of Ethereum like everything we do is Ethereum native as the O says and it's going to interoperable with Ethereum is going we will have a base roll and um yeah we want to offer the best one-click solution for them in order to on board as many governments as they can and in the future institutions as well and that needs authentication with wallets that needs execution as rollups and that needs like a very scalable and affordable infrastructure. So, you need services like proof verification and proving uh services as well.

Okay. I I think we'll we'll get back into some of the verification and ZK things as well. But I'm curious, Diego, you know, RJ just mentioned that the uh why everything has to be Ethereum native. And I'm curious from your perspective, the future proofing, you know, we've had a lot of announcements around Ethereum at ECC. Of course, Robin Hood made a great announcement on Arbitum. There have been all of these all of these great announcements for Ethereum and its rollups. I'm curious from the perspective of not only the Buenosardes government, but governments in general, why is it very important to use something as censorship resistant, as decentralized as Ethereum? Maybe you could unpack a little bit more why

Ethereum and not any one of these other 01's. Oh yeah. I think it's a no-brainer. Ethereum because of its size and it decentralization and censorship resistance. I would say that is the decentralized computer. So why would why would you call the second best if you have the decentralized computer with the greatest economic security and the greatest decarization around. So it's kind of a no-brainer for me. Hey, the the big decision from an institution/government perspective is not if Ethereum or any other 01 but is should I do a kind of private owned by me

type of type of yeah type of blockchain which was something kind of quite popular in 2021 2020. Fortunately, that is kind of getting out getting out of fleshing down that out of the system because and I had this discussion several times having a private control by yourself blockchain is a doesn't make sense for that. I mean, you can have your own bare metal server with your database and that's the same thing. Doesn't make sense to have your own database controlled by yourself and call it a blockchain. Yeah. So if you dare control it yourself, you can do a database that you have and that's fine with me. If you if you need something provable, then you need something and it

sensors your persistence because otherwise it's your own proof and you proving yourself doesn't make sense at all. So that is for me the the reason because why choose Ethereum if you're a big institution and you need reliable trust. Mhm. I think the the dilemma comes when some of these other rollups or L2s, they offer a significant grant, 25 $50 million in order to use their L1 instead of something like an Ethereum. Did anyone ever offer you or maybe you know even if not how do you reconcile oh this shortterm you know injection of capital versus this long-term future proofing?

I had a kind of a long journey why the government and that is the reason why I'm here today alpha government doing something different but I have a long journey when we started developing the protocol they say hey which should be the blockchain in which you will anchor the pro the protocol and I had a conversation with several ones several ones and at the end of the day they were just discussing about specs which honestly speaking I don't think that's a point of course you need something scalable then then that's a must that's the reason why with lambda class and all you need to be able to scale it but you as a as a decision

maker in the institution you're not going to make your decision based on TPS or whatever other technical specific features you need to look at the big picture because things change so fast this technology moves all markets within scale. So you need to think from a much more broader perspective and when you come into touch that broader perspective definitely ethereal packadorship resistance and the 100,000 plus loads and so on is in my humble perspective by far the most suitable and logic choice.

We have been building you for the last four years and happy to do that and uh I am really excited of what I'm seeing uh today with the momentum that uh has gained in the last five months. Of course we to keep it to keep it up and keep push it forward but I think that uh my first impressions to this conference were precisely that. I mean there's kind of a much bigger in injection of energy and and and hope in the ecosystem which is something that we definitely needed.

Yeah. But I think we we can all feel it. It for a long time there was things that were happening around Ethereum. This conference it feels like in Ethereum things are happening again and it's very very exciting. um general just kind of you know things that I'm thinking out loud. It's like okay well we want to maintain this trust this trust stack you know I'm curious what else are we missing what else maybe is lambda class building or Diego maybe things that you're thinking about as you guys are kind of seeing some of the energy and you know you're feeling the energy you're seeing these these project working here today and and throughout this entire week you know what do you

think are some of the things that you're going to continue to build some of the things you're going to continue to think about yeah if if you might. Yeah. Let me say something kind of controversial. Uh I consider myself a lion of two worlds. Maris this is the crypto world and I consider myself a part of the crypto world and the industry and then there's the normalist world in which institutions make their decisions and uh and that is the reason because I like created so which is I think that a big mistake is that we're in a crypto band and we also pick in this mambo jumbo that nobody outside of our world understands. You probably

take anyone in the street and bring it into this ecosystem into this congress and they wouldn't even know what we're speaking about. The thing is that those people outside are the ones making decisions. So the big leap that we need to do is hey decision makers in institutions that is public officers in governments CEOs and decision making guys and girls in banks and so on. They're not into the technology. They're not my technology.

They're just they just need use cases to solve a problem that they have which happen to use crypto infrastructure and that's okay with me. I mean what do governments what do institutions need? They need to solve a problem. Okay seeing people hey I need people to trust one another. I need to trust who's on the other side of the line when somebody's doing whatever with everything with the government or with my bank or with whatever. How can I do this? Okay, you can do this with using this tech stack and at the end of the day you're making the decision based on the problem that that text that is solving and then maybe with the co or whoever is the tech guy

on the other side somebody gets into the details on how the text tag is implemented. But I I think that one big thing that the crypto industry and Ethereum community needs to do and I think that initiatives of as etherealize for example are for me very very very interesting and the right way to go. We need to go to institutions and offer them solutions to real world problems that they do have. Yeah. And that is what we're doing with all the lambda plus collaboration with Sabra. We're providing them with a no code platform in order to visualize their interactions with citizens as for example getting a working permit uh the store legally open

to getting driver's licenses birth certificate we provide them with a software ID which is made of work ID that is a new product that we're working out with with lambda plus with the so wallet using align services as a wallet as a service and with an Ethereum layer 2 client FX proof with a re and SP1 in order for for assuring that all of that information is immutable but at the end of the day all of this technical part again doesn't matter what institutions are buying hey we can have in a secure way and provable way our users documentation and they can

exchange that documentation with one another And that's that will create this kind of mesh of trust in which friction is extremely reduced and businesses and get sort of uh in haste. Yeah. Okay. All of that. Spoken like a true innovator. Thanks. Reduce the friction allow allow everyone to grow as a result. And so same question to you R.J. you know a as you're thinking through you know the most important things to innovate on right and and making sure that these things are solving real real problems for real people you know h how do you think through these things?

Yeah I I agree with you and I think once you make all of these other protocols in society composable with having the as a financial back end in crypto I'm really excited to see those new applications. So if you want verifiable finance, you also need verifiable credentials from any of these fakes. Like if you want to create new lending protocols that are overcolateralized, you need to bring the trust of other systems like the existing governments or whatever and bring them on chain so people can build and make them composable. Um, I think that's one of the things I'm really excited like bringing the real world to the same back end so we can reduce the friction and also allow other people to experiment because if not the the way you innovate uh

without all of this is by changing certain regulations or going to certain people and if the governments or institutions can use protocols instead of paperwork and bureaucracy I think that unlocks a lot of things I'm really excited about like I want to see new fintexs using this for example using the financial back end and things like web firing credentials in order to build new tools for people and that will go really fast because I think we're in a phase where we're leaving the it's very clear we left the the white west and we're seeing a new wave that is everyone coming to uh the same technology that we have been using it doesn't mean they will live in the same world it means they will live in the same technology um and we are really

excited in LA to have the stack that that would allow that to happen with less friction possible. Yeah, one click, one solution. And I want to see the other next phase that I think it will be new companies building on top of solutions like DO and especially going to be interesting uh with AI and all these things creating problems for us uh with old protocols and I think this is going to be amazing. Innovating finance, global, institutional and onchain. Deep liquidity to drive capital efficiency.

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A AI will certainly accelerate this innovation as well. Uh do you I have uh maybe just a couple more questions as we as we come to a close. I I'm curious you know you have had a role in the government of Buenosis. uh you have agency because you have you know a role in that government in some of the other governments just around the world you know looking from the outside looking in you you know aren't able to make the decisions directly but I'm curious what kind of advice might you have for a government that might be looking at this solution they're thinking about it you know considering maybe implementing something what kind of advice would you have from for some some of these other governments well we're happy to share that today

we're working with several governments in Argentina, in Mexico, in Colombia, and were in conversations with several governments from the region and from all over the world. There's a lot a lot of interests, a lot a lot of interest, and governments do realize that first they get to start digit digitalizing what they don't have. It's crazy that today you go to do whatever thing even a government or institutions like you need to sort of do paperwork. It's kind of not even 21st century from 1990s is crazy but you do have it done. So they are really conscious about that and uh the other thing is okay if

we're going to do it if we are going to do it we need to do it in the right way because of course there are several different alternatives on which to do this and I think that the type of solution that is proposing has the advantage that is a kind of cutting edge technology which is much more cheaper and easy to implement than previous web two solutions and that is amazing because previous web two solutions maybe they've been these huge sort of databases and central servers and so on that were really hard to to implement and really expensive to maintain at a long time so I think it's there's a lot

of interest governments do understand and institutions do understand the need and the advantage of having sort of a portable identity that you can use in several other places and that is happening all over the world. I was in the Italai event in New York last year, this year, sorry, a couple of months ago and I met with two or three different government officials from the US and they were looking at the same problem. Same thing in Europe, same thing in Africa. Everybody's looking at the at this same problem. I think that we're going to see, as we saw in the last two years, a huge evolution of the identity arena. This will keep on accelerating in the next two to three years.

Honestly, I don't think there will be a solution. There will be several solutions. And the challenge that we solution providers do have is we need to be enable of being composable, interoperating, speaking to one another, not not trying to build sort of a closed decentralized silo. That's not the way to go. We need to interoperate with one another and that would provide users with what users and by users I mean end users and instit users need which is a web free technology with a web to UX and that for me is a crucial point and I I would say

the same thing if in your solution in any part of your UX flow users need to send a transaction another what whatever you fail right you have co chance of success outside of this congress here maybe you're pretty successful do oh I wonderful I will sign with my wallet and then I will confirm the signature with another wallet that won't work with my will say the same thing with my 86 year old models which before downloading an application in her she calls me hey son this is safe yeah ma'am if if it's in the app store is safe so you need to provide we to provide users with a seamless experience and the right technology under the hood.

Yeah. Absolutely. And and you know government institutions often times they're pre-web 2, pre-web one even they're web zero, you know, like they're still on paper, right? That's an advantage. I always say the same thing. I mean when governments I speak with governments we hey you know what we don't have anything we do most of our things paperwork and say hey that's a huge advantage why because it's much more easier to start from zero in the new technology than to modify old technology legacy technology that you have been running for the last 10 years and that's a pain you know changing I don't know whichever what to infrastructure centralist we have you

have two different uh data centers. Changing that is so hard. You don't have nothing. Oh, it's so much easier. The same thing as I always give the same example. If I need to build a brand new modern house, I much more prefer to have a flat land on top to which start building from moment zero as I wish to do it than modifying a house that will build in the 1800s. and technology evolves in 20 years and in 200 years in architecture. So having nothing is an advantage. It's not a disadvantage.

Yeah. Guys, la last question here. Uh the the next major you know Ethereum native conference is uh hosted in your home country of Argentina. It's uh DevCon at Buenosades. Uh very very exciting. I've heard lots of positive expectations. Everyone about can was like, "Oh, maybe I'll go, maybe I won't." I think it's great, but I've heard only positive things about Buenos audience as a city as well as the the conference coming up there. Everyone's very very excited. So given that it's you know in in your home country is there anything that you know maybe we you know maybe us outsiders I'm from the US you know from for some of the other

other guys the foreigners in the in the uh community here at at ECC what what should we expect at uh in Buenosades at uh at DevCon? Um and generally what what are you guys most excited about? Yeah, you should expect very good meat and wine for sure. No, but also I think we we have the opportunity to show people who are working from Argentina that are part of the Ethereum community uh particularly from our side. Many of our developers are there and they are we kind of travel with everyone right and they are part of this movement and they are very passionate people as well. I don't think people realize that like the amount of people that work behind things

like Ereex and Alite is insane and all of those people actually care about Ethereum and they use Ethereum. That's one of the interesting things we're building tech that we use. I mean do and I use build is something that we are using and many of the the solutions apex that we see we do them because we actually use stable coins. We actually use all of the fix. We are a niche maybe as power users in Argentina, but we're very passionate because we want to fix problems we have and and I think that's something that is going to be valuable meeting us and people who are not from our companies that also work in Argentina, Latin America. I think that's going to be very interesting. I'm excited to Yeah. for people to meet us

and and talk to other young people as well. Yeah. Yeah. We're already as well. Uh let me share a piece of history. We really straddled and fought in order to win Defcon 2022 which was Bogotaa. We lost again our Colombian brothers. Anyway, but this time we I mean the whole community in Argentina made every effort possible and we're so happy that the EF decided to to host FC the conurtory in Buonosirus. of course stressing what Roberto says, excellent food, especially made excellent wine that that's that's a given in in Buenosirus.

I think that I love my so I pretty biased but uh most of people from abroad that do do not know will finally get positively impressed. beautiful city, a beautiful, beautiful city. And if you have the time and that's a strong recommendation, take couple of days to visit some places in Argentina. You have amazing places to go in Patagonia, in Mosao, the wine country, uh, in the northern part of Argentina and and you have amazing places to visit. So, if you can make the time, uh, that will be my strong recommendation. And last but not least, as Roberto was saying, we have a huge

community, a huge Ethereum focused community. And one interesting thing is that that community sort of lives Ethereum in a very Argentine/socker style. So you find this kind of uh energy and and passion about things which is more like in a soccer stadium that is a crypto. And that's amazing. Uh, I think that the Bible will be incredible. People are really excited. We're gonna have thousands and thousands of people from 15 years old to whatever.

So happy to be there. So, it will be an amazing event to to your 86 year old mother. I've been using Ethereum. Well, guys, keep up the great work. It's incredible. I love R.J. what you said. You're building things that you guys use yourselves. You guys have the digital ID wallet on your phone. You're using it as your form of ID. This is incredible to see the the technology in action in practice. You guys built it yourselves. Congrats and thank you. And uh you're making uh you're making Argentina proud and you're making fellow Ethereum community members proud. So, thank you.

And thank you for coming on today. Thank you so much for coming. Yeah. Thank you guys. Yeah. Cheers. Cheers.