Event Recording

How to Make the Blockchain a Reality

Name: How to Make the Blockchain a Reality
Uploaded: 2016-05-24T12:00:00+02:00
Duration: 27 min 20 s
Description: Blockchain is not yet ready to support industrial use cases. In this panel session we discuss the requirements across industries and how to improve and accelerate the maturity of this shared ledger technology through an open and coordinated approach.

Management Consultant

Chappuis Halder & Co.

Posted on May 24, 2016

Video Description

Blockchain is not yet ready to support industrial use cases. In this panel session we discuss the requirements across industries and how to improve and accelerate the maturity of this shared ledger technology through an open and coordinated approach.

Show Transcript

Okay. And we begin with the next session to those of you who haven't been here for the further, for the primer sessions. I make a very short introduction to everyone, but now we are changing.

I, I ask everyone to make a very short introduction of his himself, me and Catarina. I'm Karen, this is Catarina.

We are, we are moderating you today. So this is very shortly. We give it to our guests. Don't we? Yeah. So I would like to hand over to you as a new Yes, thank you. My name is Andre KRA. I am CIO of Zazai I'm information security consulting. Since more than 10 years, I have a strong background in identity and access governance and management. And this is also why we are interested in looking into use cases around blockchain technology for identity and access. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Yvon I'm Ivan Ivani lead Analyst at caper Cole.

I have much similar background in identity access management and security consulting, and as a recently blockchain as well. Okay. I'm hand this over. I'm Sebastian Munk. So I have an engineer background. Then I worked in as an it project manager for a ministry of defense in France and also in a bank. And after that I became a consultant and I moved to more and more business cases and strategy.

So now my, I try to really analyze the impact of technology on business, you know, banking business. So that's so I do, I, I meet a lot of startups, a lot of, you know, technology providers, so that can really work with banks to help them implement new businesses. So for those of you who haven't been in the prior session, my name is your touch Dyna, a co-founder of a company called Ecor that's the slides you can see here. I'm the COO. I have a technical background.

I'm a mathematician by training, worked for a couple of years, but for McKinsey after my PhD, and then joined the blockchain world and worked for Ethereum where I managed the security audit. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's let's hand over to, to you Utah, if I might say, in a nutshell, what does the current limitations of blockchain are in your opinion?

Could you, could you try to figure out we, we talk about a lot about use cases and we try to figure out how mature they are, what are the actual limitations and yeah. How to cope with, or perhaps limitation. Okay.

I mean, for like, there are several things that can be actually already built on, on top of a blockchain, like some sort of management of IDs or the supply chain case. I mentioned earlier, I guess, long run.

If, if this is to power, like the future decentralized wet, we need solutions for scalability and, and privacy that are probably a couple of years away. Yeah.

That's, that's sort of on a technical level and then regulation is going to be interesting. I mean, so as a, from the frontline, what we, what we see so far is, is kind of a competition between regulators as well. There are some jurisdictions like the, the UK and Singapore who are quite advanced in their thinking. So the UK will try to be the most friendly environment for incorporating, so to speak decentralized autonomous organizations that I earlier spoke about, which is quite a good thing.

If they AC actually execute on that while like in other jurisdictions, we, we see very little or, or things going against this technology, which is kind of frustrating, but yeah, I guess in terms of making this a reality, then, then it's, it's yeah. A good education on the regulator side, I guess, and not regulating too early. So this round table is supposed to be about real values. I'm constantly asking myself the question when, when it comes to blockchain, I'd like to have your input on that.

Do you have any concrete examples either of economic value created by blockchain, but it could also be social or anything else? I mean, it's not all about the money, even though most of the time it's about the Money.

Well, yeah, sure. I think it's going to become a social phenomenon. So we think that if you create an identity on the blockchain based service, it will become a potential for leveraging this as a central identity to attach access rights to it. I'll get if you're more comfortable, sorry.

Yeah, Sure. And I think with this identity management, having a momentum, gaining a momentum and providing a single sign on like a global scale single sign on that, you can bring your own identity to a company that you work for. It will become a bandwidth in effect. And I think this is a great chance for getting a global identity management system. Okay. And do micro, but I'd like to have the input of everybody. I'll take my political economy background and say that globally, we've been putting off, we've been facing monetarist problems of greater import.

And everyone's looking for the next industrial revolution to sort of kickstart an economy which monitors supply side economics has just not worked for. So we're kind of hoping in the blockchain to be that, but I think we're, we're facing bigger conflicts around the use of money and as a sustainability of economics and as well, the, the information economy which need to be taken into consideration, we can't apply the blockchain to unsustainable business models on the data economy, I think. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

When I joined, when I joined a bank, I was so shocked because, So you say when I joined a bank and you smiled. Yeah. I was shocked. Cause really, I mean, you expect a bank, you know, you to manage your accounts, everything like, you know, every cent should be, you know, correct. But then in fact, the figures in a bank, they, they never match impossible.

You, you cannot match any numbers. So the banks, they, they use a lot of, a lot of money, huge amount of money just to reconcile at every level, all the transactions, the, the accounts, the numbers. So I think blockchain can help in that, you know, imagine in terms of account accounting, reconciliations, we must do something. So I guess it could help, you know, to have one leisure, everything synchronized replicated reconciliation. So that's my guess. Okay. That's your guess? So actually it's not happening yet. Not yet. Okay.

So I think that this supply chain use cases is very interesting and people then also start speaking about the trade finance case for, for using this, this technology. So for several reason, the supply chain case is interesting you and different jurisdiction. So it's really hard to operate a system that's, that's kind of bound to one to one country or to trust one entity.

So, and yeah, that's what I, I think will be, will develop quite quickly. So I figure out actually, is that for the moment, there are not really that concrete examples yet for value creation, actually either economic or, or social, if I Forget this. Right.

Well, I mean, so I think, yeah, I mean, I think there are, what we are seeing right now is kind of people trying to see where they can reduce cost through this technology, which we often see. So that's the first thing where you start, but then in the next step, I mean, this, this style is quite interesting.

So, and how far this can actually help to make, make it easier for people to trust each other and, and like start projects. So we've seen that already, like in the, in the past couple of years with things like Kickstarter, so this whole decentralization, but still like bound to, to centralized infrastructure, centralized server, this will become more smooth. Perhaps UW, you might explain a little bit about this slot it case, because I think what I read is they are productive. Aren't they? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. One real case. Yeah. It's a re case.

So slot, if you go, you can maybe help me, help me with the website, what the, what the URL is for the website and not when you wanna learn more about the project, but I is for slack it, but for the Dow it's anyway. So slack, it is a project.

They, they wanna build IOT on top of the blockchain. So they're started with a, with a lock that you can build into your door. And for example, integrate easily with something like Airbnb. So you hand over the, the digital key that will unlock the, the, the door through a blockchain. Once you receive the, the transaction or the payment for your, for your apartment. So that's a very smooth integration.

And they, they were also quite forward thinking in this decentralized autonomous organization work. So where you, if people are interested in getting such a solution for their homes, why not? Why not like find other people that can implement it and manage this whole project through this decentralized autonomous organization. So that's life, you can, you can buy into it. There's some you should, I, I don't wanna become, so some people think there are regulatory issues with it, so make sure you know what you're doing when you do it.

But, but yeah, it's an interesting project that, that that's worth checking out Doub.org. Yeah. Yeah.

So yeah, you can you get, so what you need to do in order to, to, to become part of that kind of become a sort of shareholder. What I wanna be careful with this terminology, because it can be misunderstood is you buy some ether on an exchange. Like there exchanges, like Rakeen, just sign up, buy some ether.

So people, so of course it's like maybe a bit cumbersome still to get some digital assets, some digital to token, but it's not that difficult. Actually, once you sign up on Rakeen or polo X it's, it's quite easy to get some Ethan, then you sign it to the Dow, you download a wallet. It's it's we also try to make it relatively easy to get the wallet to, to then send money to the do. If you have questions I have to help. Yeah. Sorry. No worries. Worries. Fine. We had some exchange. Okay.

The, the audience, if you have question, please raise Audience last time. There was, yes, Please, please feel free to intervene. We're supposed to be Interactive a question that was raised just at the end of last session, which was really interesting and it was, it was raised and it was the question of how can you argue for sovereign identity and then user permission, blockchain.

So you, that was a really interesting question that then it was right at the wall. So yeah, I wonder what's anyone's thoughts on that. And it raises the question of, again, types of consensus mechanisms of only the ever people were still here, but there was that question.

If, and also I wanted to refer to yours as well of the blockchain. Isn't all that strange, actually, that your reconciliation cases clear last, I worked for a bank in Dublin and they were still hiring in 2009 cobalt engineers to, to, to manage their old system. So using reconciliation and blowing away the Swifts and the Western unions of the world is, is, is that the business case is clear cut. And on Monday we saw from Carson, the regulatory framework, the legal framework doesn't specify the implementation.

It just specifies when a, when a dispute happens, how can we assert that something was done and the repudiation elements to it. So it's, it's really not, it's not that strange though. It was pretty clear. Cut. You guys are actually anticipating my next question a little bit, because what I was wondering is like coming back to real value and concrete examples is like, okay, blockchain, the, like it emerged from, from financial services, kind of like Bitcoin, et cetera. And what I used to think is that banks I had and use usage of blockchain actually.

And if I hear you speaking, I finally think that no, it's actually not the case. It's like financial services are not more or less advanced in using blockchain than anybody else, Ryan Wrong.

So I, I think, yeah, I think the reason why financial services are thinking so much about blockchain is, is more or less by accident because Bitcoin, I mean is more or less accident because Bitcoin was the first implementation of a blockchain. And, and so this is what struck them. So there's now this system we don't wanna, we don't know how to manage it. It's like decentralized, there's no governance.

And what's this thing while, while there's much more use for other, for other use cases like, like the energy sector, for example, IOT, I, I, I think, I do think we will also see financial services use cases, but, but this won't be the first thing where we actually see, see value. So I think they underinvested in it in the past years. So they have like a legacy of thousands of systems, different systems co still. Yeah. And actually it's just, okay, it's a new technology seems like very promising efficient.

Let's do it, but actually we could solve, I think we could solve most of the problems in financial services, the existing technology. That's just because it's, you know, a lot of hype architecture, you know, simplify, really get rid of the legacy. That's a good thing.

No, I, I agree that blockchain is mplementation of existing technologies. And we must remember, I'm surprised that there's this unholy Alliance of FinTech, blockchain, FinTech, and big financial sector because blockchain let's remember Bitcoin was invented by crypto libertarians who absolutely hated the very notion of Fiat currency and wanted to create specifically E gold. So it's quite ironic that now banks have taken the, these strange bed follows is blockchains and the very institutions, which the Bitcoin creators absolutely despised and loads. So it's really interesting.

And, and it's true. It's, it's not new technology at all.

It's, let's almost avoid using the term blockchain and more discuss decentralization, consensus and, and responsibilities frameworks. Okay. Andrea opinion or statement to this. Definitely.

Well, I think the banking industry suffers from a couple of things and I totally second, your opinion, there is some kind of legacy involved, right? And if you want to solve the legacy clean up of certain infrastructures, including identity management, you have to significantly invest. And if you have now a new technology that may be the server bullet to solve all these problems, then obviously they're keen on adopting. So everyone in this industry has now a team of thought leaders to look into the blockchain technology.

And I think they obviously come up with financial scenarios where they want to address problems or find solutions for. But if you go to, well, my remit, again, identity management, there's a lot of potential to solve these problems as well. And if you take a look into identity and access, how it is done today, it's, decentral, it's cluttered, it's addressing cloud scenarios in a not so ideal way. And if you think about having a blockchain identity based management, then this could solve a couple of these things directly.

And I'm not talking about identity as a service, which is still centrally organized. You can do it in a decentralized fashion, which solves a number of other issues as well. I think Sebastian already showed some of those solutions before in his compliance session. I'm very sorry if you weren't there, there were some explained a little bit, which parts of those is already existing as a proof of concept so far as I, as I understood, perhaps it's the next question we prepared was the question of, well, you, you know, I, I dropped this.

Okay, okay. I dropped this because we just spoke about, perhaps it's not so ideal to have this banking and blockchain always together having this as the most interested branch industry in the moment. So perhaps switch back to what we also would like to know. Are there special use cases demanding for special architectures of this permissioned UN permission stuff? Do you think there are examples where only one solution fits despite of Bitcoin?

Of course, for courtesy, because this is obvious this, this is obvious, but other parts of use cases who are demanding for special properties of those blockchain, anyone too, too difficult question. Not, no, I was, I was concerned with what you mean by value. I suppose there's another, I shouldn't, I shouldn't ask it. That's Okay. But if you, if you are not addressing financial value, go ahead.

No, no, I, I'm definitely all about addressing financial value and reducing the costs of maintaining these giant legacy systems. Okay. That that's then go ahead. Excellent.

But, but I can't, which Is fine too. I mean, You can, you can do that. It's It's okay.

I, I don't think I can't make too much comments on that To, to provoke you a little bit. So everyone who's then, and at the moment, developing some blockchain variant is right for every use case coming.

So, or do you think there are special situations you are building something for and then it has, it has special attributes? No. Well perhaps, well, well, Well I think you can, you can build on the existing Bitcoin blockchain also services that address different needs, right? So thinking about, well, publicly available solution called block stack, but you can register names similar, like LA coin. You can address the deficiencies that maybe the existing blockchain technology has by adding on top of it.

So having like a blockchain on the blockchain, but I don't know if this goes into the direction of the question too much. Anybody else with an idea?

No, come On. I, I continue to return to the, the notion of routing protocols and as we use them today and the business would never question today, what routing protocol are you using to solve a specific issue? Because it's been modified, it's not, it's not the hot topic anymore. So I think as well, if we wanna extract value, the starting point should not be what routing protocol to use, but whether the best, no one will ever question or we're using O S P F versus BGP, it's the business won't ever get. They shouldn't get involved.

That that should be, as you mentioned, like when you, when you see what's going on in the kitchen, you get shocked that there's so much like, you know, when what's actually going on that, that kind of should stay to an extent you should. We should ask as good consultants. We should always stick to the business use cases and the functional specifications and, and leave the technology to the people who understand it rather than start with the technology. So it to your audience, it's all about trust to the technicians so far.

I mean, any solution that we are going to see built on this stuff will not just of course, have be built on the blockchain, but have different technologies as well integrated. But I mean, what it excels at is to commoditize trust, like to make it really easy and really low cost for people to interact with each other over the internet and know, and know how they, and that they can transfer value, create strong economic signals, which have, which we have lost on the internet.

I mean, a distribution of information is really cheap. So distributing data is cheap, but making a strong economic signal, you can use this technology for. So creating scars resources. So one interesting example is also you could build a dating platform on top.

I mean, it's just a, it's just a tool. It's just a, kind of a place called example where you actually can, for example, limit the number of likes I can give to a person. So right now, if you wanna build something like that, you, you put, you have always an entity in the middle that polices that like there's Facebook limiting of something strange goes is going on. And like people get likes, whatever, like they get removed, or I dunno, or you have, you have actually like a dating platform sitting in the middle that limits, like how you tech with a, with, with a person.

But if there's a decentralized dating platform where you can only send out like three likes per day or three likes per week, and this is encoded in the platform, that's an interesting case and makes, and this could be like, I mean, it would take probably a good technician, like three, four days to implement like a basic prototype of that on, on top of it. So yeah, everybody everywhere where you need to commoditize commoditize trust and remove this middle man.

So that, that's where it excels. If you like the best time, just make your statement.

If, if not, That's fine. So I'd have another question regarding this value creation and talking to the business. This is very interesting because some in, in my job, I also talk to the business and generally I'm in front of bankers when I do this. And then I say, okay guys, this is blockchain. Let's talk about. I was like, no, I don't want to, how do you manage this?

Actually, it's like, whenever you get to talk to the business to show them the value of this thing, how do you do this? I think it's very important to share this actually, because it's, when you talk to the business saying you create value. If they understand what blockchain can do for them or cannot do for them, what's the limitations. Then you actually succeed. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. I think they are maybe not yet ready for this kind of discussion. So probably everybody has to absorb how to work with this kind of thing. Right?

Understanding decentralized trust is a hard thing to, to get into if you have not heard about it. And if you, if you want to, to discuss something that you don't really know enough about, then everybody backs away. But then they form obviously their teams that are, have the time to dive into it and evaluate, use case, evaluate business opportunities. And then it may get better over time. But maybe we are not yet there. Okay. Before we just speculate anybody here from banking industry, perhaps want make another proof is willing to say he's from a banking now Or from any other business.

I mean, this is just as fine to share experience with us Or questions Based on the value proposition. I think decentralized trust is already two abstract concept for bankers. It's it's poor guys.

You know, they, they weren't really taught abstract thinking. But what I mean to say is like, what we can raise is the case of in of rogue traders. There's been some cases since 2007 of billions of dollars going unnoticed. So that's a clear value is say, would you want another one of those? And one can even cynically question is the business culture enabling that. And then only when someone gets caught, does he get singled out? So is there really a desire to stop what's going on currently or so should or not?

So I think it depends on the, the culture of the bank and also, you know, case by case. Some people are quite fond of technology. So it's easy to engage with them. Some banks have a lot of purchase, you know, innovation labs, and they're really willing to experiment to explore. So that's easy.

And so, and then, okay, usually when you talk to a, a business person, of course, he wants to see values. So if you just, if I just bring slides, it will say, okay, you are nice guy. I have 10 consultancy coming, you know, to present me a blockchain. So what do you bring? So usually they want to see something, you know, more concrete. That's why I try to bring startups to them and organize the moves. Because if you can really show the value, show something more than slides, then it's easier.

But yeah, That's perhaps it's a little bit about this play around. And especially in the banking industry, there's no one used to play around, you know, and you, you force us a little bit to, to play around with blockchain, to get experienced with it. Yeah. Might be that, that case, but to make a stand for banks, there are banks out there, not blockchain ones, but they're very, very innovative ones like, like Rabobank from Netherlands. For example, if any Netherlands here, they are very innovative. And perhaps it comes to the point, the Spanish banks Too. Yeah.

Spanish banks too, might, might be sharing. You know, that there are so also some, some good ones. I think when it comes from the, from the top, it's much more easier. So it comes really from the CEO and the CEO is fun of technology.

Then it's, it's very easy, but in some, some other banks, they very traditional and they, they don't want to hear about it. You know what? It comes back to the problem of every project. It depends on the people who are involved in this project. So perhaps we should take this with us because this is a very old problem for every technology project we ever made to change organizations culturally. So if you don't mind, if there are not any longer questions in the audience, we would welcome this. Then we would close this session.

Many, many things for sharing your knowledge with us, being with us gorgeous, gorgeous panel. And we are going for the next panel and all those guys not sitting yet here in the front, there are several places free. We would like to have you here. Thank you. Thank okay.

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How to Make the Blockchain a Reality