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Episode 3 · 4 years ago
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Episode 3 · 4 years ago
Hashing It Out #3: Fabian Vogelsteller
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Entering work. Welcome to hashing it out, a podcast where we talked to the tech innovators behind blocked in infrastructure and decentralized networks. We dive into the weeds to get at why and how people build this technology and the problems they face along the way. Come listen and learn from the best in the business so you can join their ranks. All right, episode three of hashing it out. Your host Corey Petty, and we have Colin Collins. Say Hello. Hello, what's up guys? Today we're interviewing fobby and vocal stellar, a developer for the etherium project. He created the mist wallet or the etherium Wallet, and and in the misclient. And you currently works on Web through JS. Actually, a long time ago, or one of my first actual projects, I read a lot of your your blogs involving using meteor JS as a framework for developing smart contracts, which helped me kind of get up and running really quickly and to produce results. So I've been following what you've done and the things that you've written for the community for quite a long time. So fartherly, don't you give yourself a quick introduction and we'll get started. Yeah, hello, everybody. And Yeah, so I'm foving for we Stella and working with the film foundation the last three years and, like you said, I'm built initially the Miss Browser, I built the them wallet, I wrote a book about meteor and cam initially, like from building Javas. Good applications in meet you of the years before and yeah, I also propose years. You twenty token standard and not so recently, the years and seven to five identity standard, which is currently discussed, and currently I'm working on founding my own project called look so, which is passion industry blockchain. That's interesting. So you got this, the fashion industry blockchain. What, what problems are you trying to solve in the fashion industry with, I'm assuming etherium right now? Yeah, so the idea is what I came across in the in the recent years is being on a lot of conferences since the last two years and explaining people the blockchain basically over and over again. What I came across is that people are really interested in the blockchain, especially businesses. They would like to do something with blockchain, but they don't know where or what. They really have no idea what exactly how they should take this on and as we know, like most, basically most businesses and most groups currently doing something internally. They have their R D teams. They're building like private block chains that testing around, building little POC's and doing little experiments where they like have three different players and they interact together to figure out what works and what doesn't. Well, I think we are coming now, in the next few years, more and more into actually business blockchains in the sense there would be conglomorates like consociums coming together and forming their own blockchains and creating blockchains around specific topics or industries and with look. So we basically just do right that so so basically the idea is to build a block chain for the specific industry to bring all the use cases and players around that on that blockchain. And the main reason is that they see a network and the main networks and Bitcoin and others are rather full and the current scalability will still take time. And even if we would have shotting and all the stage channel improvements and so on, today it's not the civil bullet which solves all the problems. So what we need is kind of dispersing the load on many blockchains and also the next phase we see right now is that we see umbrella blockchain ideas like Poul Gun, Polka dot and chain links, where you can connect all of these different networks together to form some kind of like an Internet of block chains, and the idea is not to basically compete with the main networks. So the public main networks we see today, they are kind of like the open field and the so called, you could say, like the Internet. But we will see a...
...lot of kind of special purpose internets in the future and they will be connected to the main net through either transitioning tokens and values through them or connecting with services on the main blockchain. But at the same time, yeah, like kind of like having the specific use cases for that industry, for specific use cases on also private chains to run on their own networks. And the reason why that makes sense it's not only to offload the load on two different networks, but also the kind of like enable different industries to come together to form their own network and have the same network, in fact, like we saw on all these public networks already. So currently, most of the industries, for them is really kind of like to have an ununwell feeling moving to a public network, because they don't really fully understand the decentralization and trustless nest and this kind of like nobody's in control. At the same time, they don't feel comfortable being on a on a place with everybody else, so they want to be on a place with their kind of group, on their their kind of actors, and that's kind of what these industries blockchains will enable. So what we do here is we do a separate network, firm base, with a bit different governance and so called public permission blockchain, so more or less permission. The ideal is to take this permission blockchain, means that there is some kind of proof of stake or proof of authority and transitioned that over time due to more decentral system, and it's kind of like, you know, you take these these brands by the hand and you show them, Hey, look, this is what the blockchain is, that what it is, what it enables, and over time you transition them into the decentralized future, because as of right now they are not willing to completely jump on that and they will experience this this this network growth, and they will experience this dis benefit of actually acting on the same network altogether. Like how how creating all these new cool things and interactions together great even more value for everybody, because the old business world is really thinking to silos, into Ip into isolation and the blocks, and is this great enable or indoperability t and then shows what can be done when things are compatible, when they're working together, when it's not about like building walls, but rather building bridges, and this is kind of like what we are doing. Then for this specific industry, the fashion design industry, that's that's really cool. So are you working directly with the fashion producers to build this federated blockchain networks? Are you working with like clothing designers? Are you working specifically with raw material like our how our? How do you kind of plan on marrying these industries together through the blockchain? So the idea is to go to the brands and work with the friends. I mean the obvious use case for blockchain for them is to outtendicate their goods. Right, being able to especially in the fashion industry, being able to attendicate is this a real or is a fake? And once you have actually this digital item, the real and the fake, like the digital twin, off that object, you then also can tract the ownership over time you can build new customer relation interactions. You can build like the new things, you know, the new instagram, on the blockchain, because suddenly you have this kind of data structures available which everybody can access, and all these setups can come up with new kind of gamification modes of how you interact with them. And this is when, then everybody sees of how this goes so well together and how this is great. It's actually an abundance of new ideas and new, you know, new possibilities, and the idea is to go with the brands, go with institutions from the space, going with producers and retailers and actually like incentivate, incentivising them to work on that particular blockchain on their use cases. There's already a lot of startups wanted to something on blockchain in the fashion space. So if there's an industry blockchain for exactly that working based on the EVM, which is the greatest developer community out there in the blockchain space and hand most stuff and most research, then it's, you know, like you've basically just take that what's already there, and now they can can build all of this, what they are planning to build and probably planning to build currently on the main net. They can build this on this specific industry and then you can have chain links to the main net as well, and it's like creating this this this playground. Specifically what it is in the something you mentioned, and it's not really. Yeah, it's not meant as a competition to the main Thatt it' is more like an addition. Right. Yeah, like to.
I use this analogy quite often when I try to explain this. I guess maybe better movement of how development works or how the infrastructures spreading out, and it's very similar or akin to what happened with the beginning days of the Internet, and that it's people use this analogy because it works and it's when the Internet and it's very early days was wild and crazy and wasn't quite developed and didn't scale the way it needed to to scale, a lot of company is, incorporations and enterprises didn't feel comfortable putting a lot of their information on there, especially in term, especially for privacy concerns and vulnerabilities, so they made their own intronet which allow them to have an Internet amongst themselves that allow them to do Internet like things like share information, but not expose it to the open world, because the Internet wasn't capable of handling all the things they needed to do in terms of privacy and scale and such. And we're seeing a very similar type scenario being played out in the blockchain space, because the main public, trustless blockchain, such as a theorem, can't quite scale to the point we need it to, doesn't have privacy options that enable people to Tran transact without showing everyone in the world that it happens. And there certain transactions don't really need to go into a open, trustless, forever ledger because they're not that important, so they don't need that massive consensus network behind them. And the problem that I that I see as this kind of continues to happen, is exactly what you say. Those bridges, those links between the private chains or the intranets and the public chains, the Internet, those need to be done really, really well, because we're talking about value exchange and not just information. How do we get that right? I mean the current technologies we have is if you have a POA network for examble, you can have the same people, basically who security network can also secure information on the main network. So you already trust them by interacting on their chain, so you can also trust them to be the bridge in a way, and as they cannot minipulate the data because always the data's always signed and it's always, you know, coming actually only allowed from the source. So they act purely as a transfer mechanism. It's like a fairy let's say. And but on the other hand, the goal, for example, of looks so is to create a public permission chain. And ideal, it's not permission ideal. It's a proof of stake like system which can transition over time to be more and more decentralized. But it's in somewhat permission because the stake will, on the beginning lie with the big brands in the one who basically have the bigger shares in it, but on the end it will be a public permission and this means everybody can run and full note and actually verify the full note, and this is super crucial, and this probably differs a lot of this kind of private blockchain solutions because you need to be able to verify it, and we have already a few tools in play. So there's like Foxambur chorum from Japie Morgan, with the Constellation Network. There have some kind of privacy in that Scotton Constellation Network, and parities also working on a solution where you have some kind of encryption, but verifiability it obviously, as we don't have completely super fast running or generating proofs, and so get snarks. It's not the perfect solution yet because you not everybody can verify that it's correct without looking inside, in this case only the parties interacting with it. We will verify it, but is already better and then nothing, and know that at the same time it's very important that there is distrust so that you can verify it. And therefore our idea is to create a public network. So it will be a public network which you can publicly verify, but industry specific and with some measures of privacy, for example, like what parity allows. But at the same time, so you're thinking something more along the lines of a delegated proof of stake consensus mechanism for this. So we are still testing out between proof of authority and proof of Sake, probably not with with a delegation. So the exact governance is not fully finalized yet, but it could be something like this. The most important thing for me is to make sure that it cannot be taken over by the consortium because eventually, and this is the good thing, when it's a public network, if the public can verify the blockchain and also have all the data, if the consortium would do any bad thing or would go in the direction the public doesn't like to consider, the public could always fork off and, you know, change concerns are good that make themselves the boss, and this is very important to have this kind of power balance between the two groups and the public to being popped like and being able to verify is like a core of making that at all attractive this network, because if...
...you have a purely private network, this is a pure trust. You know, this is like us running today's servers and then we just trust, you know, that they give us the correct data. So it has to be public. And yes, this this clashes with some kind of with the old world, thinking of Ip in your own my data and I don't want to reveal it. Therefore, we are we are fostering together standards and use cases which allow this kind of you know, let which put pay that on it, which is not that sensitive. For example, when you're a friend and you're listing the authenticity of objects. These object on the blockchaine or only IDs. You know, they are only identifiers. If you're concerned as a brand that maybe you can see how much you produce per per year, for example, you can simply add fake ID's as well, so you can just increase your number and then you don't know anymore if the number is to correct one, if of it's just a made up a number of addition and mock up items. Right. So there are ways of how you can obfuscate this. At the same time, the user is not really known, is sut numbers. Still, he might be known to the friend, or maybe not even because he doesn't even need to for the brand to interact with it. But at the same time you have this kind of like it mean, it works pretty well on Bitcoin and and theorium. We all interacting on this Super Transparent Global Ledger and before you would have thought like hey, that's impossible, nobody will act there because it's way to open and you feel, way too observable. But at the same time the reality tells us, yes, people do interact. We all interact on the BITCOIN and the theom block chain, other blockchains, knowing that technically in the future to its could be built which trays everything and then build patterns and then correlate things, and I think this is kind of I mean, I like to compare it to you know, you can also sit on the sidelines of the street and watch the street all day long, and I'm pretty sure you would figure out who works where and who does what just by sitting there's very true, you know, and this is sick. Same with like a blockchain, you know, you sit on the sideline and it's like a public common ground where we can interact and we end act interact in some kind of pseudonymity. Ideally we have more privacy than we have today, but at the same time, like you can also sit on the street and we don't like close up all the windows or paint them like just because we think, you know, privacy super important in public places. So I think it's like the current way how the blocks and works pretty nicely mimics actually how reality in human societies is. So I'm not sure if it's that of a bad thing, you know. I mean, even if you would have super privacy stuff, we would probably also opt in many cases for the public fashion of doing things, because we want to have the Verifi ability and the transparency, because this is what gains even more trust. Well, this, you know, to take it to something else, I know that you've worked on. Let's say you walk up to somebody on the street. You don't necessarily know their name, you don't know how old they are, you don't know where they're from. You need a sort of mechanism to sort of store pieces of information about people on the blockchain and make claims against them without actually exposing that data. And I think you propose the standard for that is a seven hundred and twenty five, right, your c seven and twenty five or word if you could talk a little bit more about your intent behind that and how you'll be working that in the flux. So, yeah, yes, this seven hundred and twenty five. The idea is, I mean this is something which I came up I think, two years ago so, and it's stuck in my head and I just thought, you know, eventually, you know, somebody will come up with this as well, and you know and proposed this and as there are identity provide us and other groups, they will probably do it. It turned out they didn't, so I just felt the need, I should write it down and proposed specification. The idea here is to have an identity on the blockchain it. So you could see it as like you public linkedin profile, so something which you don't write out everything in detail what it is, but it's like a public access point about information about yourself. What exactly you reveal their or what you only like put there as the being able to be verified. It's completely up to you. In the normal scenarios, the claims you add your identity a purely claims which somebody says something about you without revealing what exactly it is. But in most cases, if I want to know something about a person, I don't necessarily need to know how he looks, where he lives, how old he is exactly or any I think of the like this. If I ready can see, okay, he's, let's say, over eighteen, and that's enough for me. I don't care when he's born. He's a human, you know. I don't need to see how he looks like and maybe has an address, and for many of the KY C checks that's already pretty pretty okay. Or they're things like, okay, he has it like a good reputation and...
...because it's a reputation system I attached to your identity or, for example, if this identity would be for an object, you know that this is like it has a good problems because it has a certain certificate attached, or there's what, for example, let's say Chanel saying that this is one of their originals, but this tells me things about these objects or people without that, and actually need to know the data and in most cases I don't care about the data as long as I know somebody checked it which I trust, and this is kind of, you know, a very different approach of how things are done today, because today you share always everything in order to create the proof. But if I have systems which reliably can tell me that the proof is correct, I don't need care about the actual information itself. So I think this is where we're more moved towards in the future. It's a very similar to like what blockchain has has done for financial systems. It's plate, it's it's not getting rid of trust, it's just putting trust into a agnostic system as opposed to someone who could potentially take advantage of that trust that you're putting information into something that can be verified by something that doesn't care about that information, so you can do those checks without having to worry about whether or not the verification process was done properly. Is that? If you could put your information into something like that, it's it's still hold on to who gets the check it and how they check it. Then you no longer create these kind of large centralized places that then feed off the information that people give them, such as, you know, controversies and facebook that we see these days. Yeah, I mean, for example, I mean, I mean you still care about that the person who verify the verify the correctly, otherwise you would not trust it. Claim is sure right, but on the other hand, what it allows is that that we will care less about the actually details of the information itself, but care more about that it was correctly valued by somebody. And I mean the Nice thing is once you have to in in the common data structure and agreed up on standard, then you know, like you can suddenly imagine things like automated KYC check on ICOS, universal lock in in the Internet and never type in your password again because you don't need to. You can just go around with your identity, go to any system which need to authenticate you. You they sent you a random message. You sign this message and therefore you can prove that you own the key. Then you can point them to identity. They can check, okay, this key belongs to this identity in this at the claim issuers which issue a claim on this identity, which I is important for me or whatever. I trust it. Climb issues or it must be fine. You know they are. I checked this and it's right. The topic or whatever I'm looking for. And and we can also have systems where people would start claiming things about each other. It doesn't have to be always the important, you know, like die hard like solid data, like your your residency and and whatever. It can be just really like fun stuff, for example, what game, game or clan you belong to, or what kind of, you know, marathon you participated in it, or something more fun which is not that hard, complicated every or like possibly vulnerable evidence. And Yeah, and once we have these kind of you know, once we have this framework, people can start playing with it and then it's when the real fun start and the real cool new cook to Kitty, like identity, whatever, stuff starts to happen. And this is actually the thing I'm looking for. I mean obviously years. The seventy five works pretty well also for objects. On the looks of Blockchain, it's the same evm's, that's the same standards can be applied to WHO. Obviously, object can have identities, obviously companies can have identities and and users can have identities, and it gives you this kind of sod numity or also unonumity, and you can also be super public, so you can creep great reputation over time. For example, if you look at linkedin today, we rewrite almost everything there. You know, the only differences. It's purely fictional because you can verify nothing of that, except you go about and you know, search each fact. You know really look with are really in this company. A blast start to call people and so on, but right now, you know, can just write everything about yourself and Linkedin and people just take it as fells face value. And it would be way nice if this could be automatically checked and you know that's correct what it's written there, because the originator, the person to who you actually was. Maybe the company claims to yes, he worked for us, and so we already actually putting a lot of information out there. And if you, for example, look at the day's facebook scandal and so on, which I think is completely overhyped, and I'm...
...not exactly sure why the media is now going so hard against mark as don't see the point in that actually, because everybody already using facebook knows that he's putting pay his information, you know, to somebody in the Demo I hold on. It's actually it does a good point. They know, but they're not in control, and I think that's what you're trying to accomplish here, is that by putting your information on the blockchain, by putting this whole I can know who's accessing my information through the transaction record, you can know where your data is being used, you can know who has access to it, you can revoke that access. Right now, as it stands, we're being farmed for our information, and I think that's where the problem with Mark Zuckerberg is currently coming in. It's not that he did something we didn't know about. It's that the use of that data, even though we knew about it, was of a trail of our trust to some degree. Now it's what degree that's up to whoever's listening, or even if it was, I'm not going to make a comment on that, but I will say that centralization of it, putting it in one person's hands, in one vision's hands, enabling other organizations, from government organizations to private organizations to state actors, to have access to this information with regardless of whether or not the even have access to facebook's database. That's kind of a that's kind of a problem. Yeah, but so except. But this is exactly correct. But at the same time, you we don't know what NSA has access to. I don't you know, like they probably just absolutely all, without question, the keys or whatever, everything inside as they wish and they create their own I mean, like Snowden said it, that they have some kind of like an internal facebook. You can just look up any person and almost yeah, data and like listen to its phone called at any point. Totally. But I want to bring it back to like what you're doing, and what you're doing is actually putting that power, that that control to know, and sers to only know, to know what's available about you out there. So the to regain that control, to get some ability to to rope that in or at least do some damage control on it. Absolutely. I mean there's two aspects to it. So one is, yes, the seven to five itself as a standard is meant as kind of your public profile, because there could be some kind of correlation in some kind of are you? So I'm sorry if I'm sorry to interrupt you're you're saying your see, so is seven hundred and twenty five or seventy five, seven hundred and twenty five, seven hundred and twenty five. Okay, sorry, go ahead and I say always seven two five, but seven hundred and twenty five. So the point is really that even through the let's say you have an identity and this identity has like a claim issuer being whatever, you know, the the federal posts saying that they know where you live and and it doesn't say well, but they say that they know. When there's the Hash and you can go to the to the API of the federal serve, and then there's some kind of excess control of I hope I can allow the access to this information or not. Well, ideally in the future it's in the your knowledge proof containers so you can simply, you know, send a request to it and use get back like yes or no, without seeing the data yourself, but knowing that it was giving you the correct answer. But through only seeing, like who issues claims about you, you can already like create some kind of pattern about people and therefore years, the seven to five itself, because it's it's on a public blockchain, is meant as a more public profile. You can at the same time still have your claims in the ID specification documents of chain, which can also be a reference for some of them through a mercle tree from your public identity. So then you can go around and you can say here, you know, you want to have a proof of this, here I give it to you. Peer to peer. You can verify not even the data. You don't even need to see the data again, you only see the proof and that's enough for you. But it's not like stored on the blockchain. So they can be all these off chain peer to peer verifications and they can be also the on chain thing. What you would put on your years, seven five identity as claims, even though the data is not written out still, is only the stuff you feel comfortable about sharing with the world, not necessarily data, but like who claims what about you? And what I actually foresee is that there will be claim aggregator, so claim issuers who aggregate certain collections of issues and put them one claim on your identity, saying yeah, we verified is in this in order, for example, to shield that it was not the the dodge post or the Federal Reserve, federal post or whatever, you know, institution which would already tell you that this is an American or German citizen. So then you have an international claim act aggregator service, start up whatever, you know. They just verify that, put it in their container kind of...
...like, you know, in a way of for skating it for the public. And as long as people trust enough this system or START I've an ideally it's decentralized system, then you can know, okay, he is a citizen of some country and that's enough for me. And ideally, you know, there's this kind of the hesitat to be this kind of excess control around how somebody can exact the exist and the actual data if he ever needs to. So this has to be other systems and this is not the fine and is seven to five standards. So this has to be other systems like, ideally, you know, likes your knowledge proofs or some automated system where you don't necessarily need to trust the company. Again, the benefit of all of the structure is that I will have on the end. All my data is burst on many different platforms. So if one of those leaks because there were centralized, it's one piece of my data maybe open and not everything else together combined. You know, this is kind of how facebook creates it. And ideally in the future, if it's all like done cryptography, you know, then nothing can league in the first place. So that would so it, but it's the pathways towards that. This is. This is something that like it bleeds into something that I'm also curious about, because you've had some experience creating what would be known as probably best standards in the in the etherym ecosystem of the ARC twenty and the year c seven hundred and twenty five. You've gotten a good taste on what it's like to think about standards across an entire ecosystem and then how that enables people to build things outside of the actual like container. So, for instance, for once you establish it a standard for a token on their theorem platform, you then enable not only the creation of tokens but all of the things that interact with tokens that don't have to worry about including, you know, every single thing, every single person that creates a token. They just follow the standard and enable everybody to interact with them. And so that becomes absolutely a difficult thing in a decentralized consensus mechanism. So it I guess maybe it depends on who actually uses the standard and how much money flows into it. Can you talk a little bit about your experience with like the adoption of a standard and as such a space like this, because it's incredibly necessary, especially if we start branching out into multiple block chains that interact, because those will need a standard of communication. I mean the good thing is, you know, additional to that, if there are evm based block chains, the standard working on all of them. So an identity on the main net will look similar or the same as an identity on the looks on network or on the PA network or on whatever other industry network exists in the future. So you can even cross reference them nicely and actually you know your your let's say your identity APP simply needs to point no, not only two different smart conducts. How we do it now in a there, but it's simply as the point to a different network and a different smart conduct and basically have the same access in the same APP technically possible. Right in terms of standards creation. It's a very interesting flow. It's a very interesting new way of how things come to be and how things gets adopted. I mean probably is the very natural way of how things anyway get adopted. But I mean if you look at the old standards situation, you know it's an institution you trust. Currently, for example, let's take the ISOSTANDARD or the dean norm or something like this. It's always like an institution. They created some reputation over time or they were installed by a government which gives them a bunch of credentials and then they go about, you know, sit there for five years and talk about something and then proposes as like. You know, that's now the thing. At the same time, in these systems it's more like a bunch of people come together, come up with an idea, they discuss the idea and if everybody feels comfortable enough that they won't change any more or not too much, they will start using it, and especially when it makes sense. So the main factor of why it gets adopted because it makes sense. That's really the main thing. And with years, it twenty I mean the thing is, you know, we all needed some kind of token standard and it and we talent came up with the initial draft writing standard. He created this Wiki page called Smart Contract Standard, Smart Contract Abi or something like this, and they wrote a few down, including the initial draft of the years twenty, and I just thought, okay, you know, like this is a bit too random here. We have to make this bit more like, put this more in a form. And at the same time the EP prod repository was created from marking BC to say, okay, here, let's...
...track our like improvement proposals in the proper form. So I just move this overcreated issue number twenty, put it in a nice form, made a few changes so that it's more transfer function, for example. It's more common, has the same kind of like parameter input like other functions we have already on the RBC and so on. So aligned these things more and then people start discussing and it wasn't neat anyway. People wanted to make tokens and there was no real way of doing it, so they did. They saw, okay, this actually gains traction, so it's a good point. Let's also start using that kind of standard and for some of the first ones who were a bit early, like digigs, you know, the gold token. They kind of like made made their their they talking shortly before the years twenty show to more adoption, and so they made it differently and then they later had to change it because they were completely incompatible with all the rest. But at the same time, so how do you feel about your work being used the way that it is right now? It's on the one hand, got to be quite flattering to amplemed it or created a standard which is being implemented so broadly across the entire ecosystem, but on the other hand, is kind of I'm sure you're looking at some of these particular theory. My CEOS. I don't even know if you could call them. I CEOS are not technically coins. Initial itos would probably be a more appropriate term for it. Initial token offerings that they just it. There's some of them don't seem like they're on the up and up and legit, and that's to be that's me being gracious. A lot of them are. So how do you feel like, when you look in the mirror every day, what you kind of think about? What are you read the newspaper? Also they just stole six hundred sixty six million dollar, six hundred sixty million dollars in worth a coin in Vietnam, although I don't know if that was on a theory or not. With you know, what do you think about how these tokens are being used? Is a good question. Actually, this is my my main thing. When projects come to me and tell me about that their token model they have now, I'm always telling them, you know, like maybe you're Tok makes no sense because you have to really think, do you need a token? And right now that do I see as because I can do. I see as. And then in token models which are like just made up, and at the same time we see now a lot of these like payment token, you know, like where you repay a service in the way, and then they just hope that this goes really big to justify any kind of higher market cap. I mean me, first of the standard wasn't created by me, I initiated it. It was created by all the people together discussing. But yeah, I'm I wouldn't have expected that it goes that crazy and I wouldn't have expected that suddenly people put so much money behind these tokens. My idea was more like, okay, now we have to send it and people will like play around and make some fun tokens and, you know, it's like some fun experimentation around that. I wouldn't have expected that six something billion dollar gets collected into tokens, into random and tokens. At the same time it's an experimentation. Again. You people figure out now, okay, now that they can create tokens so easy and and you know, play around with like, you know, before you had to create your own plock chain. Now you could simply deploy smart and you had to token. So less technical people and projects came in and, you know, use that to their advantage and said, Oh wow, we can now make a nice you are for whatever. But at the same time they now start all to think about what when I created a token, what incentive system I can create so that this gains any value? And I would say probably in six to seventy percent they may not create any value. So they might had not have the right incentives build into the system and in fact quit actually a barrier for entry for that systems because they may have an APP, you know, which work perfectly without a token. Now that just at one to make an ICO only to figure out probably in one or two years time that they actually never really went that big as people may be initially expected. Yeah, and a lot of people are kind of already getting frustrated. The markets kind of depth, obviously, but we're not. We're not. I don't I think that's a good thing. I developed. I'd like to so I thought maybe like differentiate here. It's I think it's an important distinction to make that what what you've done and the creation of the the standards was create a tool that enable people to do something. And whenever you make a tool that enables utility, you're going to have a various amount of motives behind the use of that tool. And mean when you built the Hammer, you enable craftsmen to build houses in a much easier way, but there's also people that are just hammering holes in the wall. Does it make...
...the hammer back and and it's exactly if you have to make these things so that we can build better and better and better systems. But every time you push the scope, every time you make something new that can be utilized, it's going to get used in good and bad ways. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't build the thing and at the same time it's a learning you know, and people now have to figure out what makes sense. And if we figure out that the payment token for a custom at just don't doesn't make sense, then that's a good learning and then they will figure out maybe what systems do make sense. You know, and I mean what, for example, my opinion, makes sense, and that's exactly what we do with look. So where we also have a token, obviously because it's a blockchain, and where an ICEO, my opinion, makes sense, is is, you know, these native tokens. You know, they are required in the network in order to make the network function at all. Take either out of etherium and the thing will fall apart, take bitcoin out of Bitcoin and the thing wouldn't work. And so here you have a necessity of the token to make the whole ecosystem go go around, you know, like like turns at all. You know, it's this nice it. Basically, this token is is the mechanic to glue together these different incentives. Like user just want to use the blockchain for whatever, and mine, I just want to get money. And you this is a very controversial or like very autogonal incentives. But this token makes it so that it really connects well together and makes a running machine. And so if you have a blockchain token and the network gains value, you know the growth is just there and it's a realistic growth and making a nice from an investors perspective, you know it's a good investment because as long as the network is small and I can be part in the beginning and this actually gains value because us, it's creating value for every participant, you know there is a growth and we seen these these growth with all the public networks and even with the bullshit coins. But when you come off, sorry, but when you take these other token models we have now with RC twenty, and there are good ones. But if you take these kind of payment tokens or you know, like a custom token, into a nonsent decentralized system, then many times he's talken don't make sense, you know, and they don't. They don't build or enable any functionality or like a line and sendives in a nice way. The only incentive they they sometimes have as okay, I want to make a project and I want to get money first, so let's enforce this token usage here. And suddenly they think they did a good thing. But they don't because on the end they basically just, you know, isolated this ecosystem which, and this is the big difference here, will in many ways depend on the central actor. So in my opinion it's you have to look at it talking like this. If it able enables a decenter system which ideally can outlive its creator, and the token is the navel of that system, then it's a good one. If it's simply depending on one institution or service agency or whatever, then you know, the service agent is gone, the thing is worthless, you know, and this is many of these APP Tokens we see today. So, but but if it can outlive its created, if the token actually enables the thing to persist beyond the initial founders and once it's actually a running automated system, then this can grow in value as long as against traction the future. It's an interesting perspective. I haven't thought of it that way explicitly. I think. Maybe I've considered that as available thing but never really used it as a metric for evaluating given token. We see also years to twenty tokens which do make sense in my opinion. You know, if you, for example, think of any kind of protocol building smartphones on top of the blockchain. Then think of does this token enable to functionality which either cannot do, and the simplest way of that is, for example, minting. If you have a protocol for whatever reason it creates certain tokens, it can create tokens through certain actions, then this is a good than this is maybe a required token, because you cannot do this with either. You cannot just create additional either. But if it's simply a payment system, you know and I can replace it with either. It will be replaced with ether at some point, because there's no point and having a second token for that. That's kind of my take on it. So I think you mentioned a couple of solutions earlier, a token with regard to this, poke it out being one of them. I did, I don't think. I don't know if you mentioned plasma, but you know, these tokens that you're creating on these private networks, we want to be able to translate their value to other value networks, meaning that if there's a thousand, a hundred,...
...thousand, a million different blockchains, that value needs to translate in some way between blockchain. A blockchain be blockchain. See maybe multiplelock chains at once. We might need to be able to split up that value. And my question that I've been asking guests so far as kind of are you a one blockchain as the kind of value blockchain, kind of the backbone value blockchain? Guy Or an in? You mentioned an Internet of blockchains earlier where where there's many blockchains, they all just kind of pass value freely in this you know, Mesh network kind of way of doing things. Do you feel like that you're you're that your network would benefit more from a single source of value where you kind of can register your blockchain with that blockchain? Or do you really feel like, you know, having your own independence is really key to the success of Your Business, when I don't really see looks ass a business that's it more than network in the Chee. Okay, got it, but but I mean I would say so. I mean if it's a native token, you know, like you cannot have like an ether, you know, it's being the function of the native token in looks. So, because establishing this bridge would be kind of weird, I mean you could, can you know, you could kind of you could technically pack the looks token. It is the token of our network. Absolutely on. I don't know if, say L Y X, why is the correct English leader, Y x. You could pack it to either right and then, you know, you could lock it into then you could even technically probably pack it. I'm not exactly if that makes sense because it would then make this networks value also depend on another network's value. But where it makes sense, for example, let's say that I can use looks inside the theorem and the tide the theorem network, it would probably make sense because you can do the bridge where you can move your looks. It locks it in a smart color in the looks of blockchain and then it releases looks e on the main net. Then you have this perfect value translation, because this only one looks. Either it's in a theorem right now moving or it's on the nooks on network currently moving. And then what what then can be possible is that you can have smart connects and other applications, other systems also used. It looks soken for whatever functionality. So you actually, you know, kind of reach out the functionality of this token into other networks to do things there as well or have some kind of functionality, and that's actually a nice thing. So the same will probably happen with either going to other networks where you can then do something with either there and but the good thing is because it will be locked on the one blockchain and only then released on the other it. There's only one of that end t of that. Yeah, of that specific either, let's say, and this really links and ties the value perfectly together. So it's kind of like, mentally speaking, one thing and technically speaking it's two things, two different things. But I think we will see these kind of things and then then we will have to see, you know, what for. What I want to use an ether on a net network? I don't know. We will figure out. Probably there are a lot of use cases. But what I want to use a looks on the main net in the smart conduct system, I don't know. Maybe for it obviously for a decent exchange. Obviously that would be one, but maybe it enables some extra functionality or extra access in some kind of other smart conductor system, or it maybe is part of a, for example, gambling market or whatever on the main net or whatever. I don't know. You know, and I think these kind of chain links will get very important in the future. All right, I think that positions, I think that's a that's a great way to kind of wrap up this conversation. Do you have any specific ways in which you'd like to inform our listeners on how to get ahold of you or where they can go to learn more about luck, so and and other things you're involved in getting hold of me? I mean that's tricky. Has Too many people want to get ahold of me right now? No, yeah, I mean, like I'm reachable, obviously, on on on channels, like you know. I mean I'm pretty public, my emails are there and so on, but my email backlock is quite long. So concerning look, so looks to Thatt ioh is the website. There's also a few other domains pointing to that. We are planning to do a public ICO on that in the next few months and I guess people with hear about that sooner or later. And Yeah, just follow whatever looks. So underscore. I owe on twitter, for example. That's a good way of following that. And if you follow me at twitter, on twitter, it's like at Findura, like I'm too tweeting about whatever technical things I'm doing and...
...other things I'm finding interesting. And maybe a one other aspect is I would like to touch on. If we have the time, please do it's the currently the current regulatory state. So I'm in Germany now. We want to do an ICO and ideally we want to do in Germany and we want to do it lawfully right, because this is you know, in the past I would have just the blow the smart coonent. That was right, really nice and easy, but the day with all the regatory eyes, you know, you want to do it correct. So you have to talk to them, and I do have like access to these regulatory because they kind of, like all want to understand blockchain and they're not too many people who understand it more deeply and it's interesting to see now how they think. I was just at the Baffin tech which is a big conference of the Baffin buff and is the kind of like the bank supervisor in Germany, supervisors banks and you know, and all the people who do I see as need to kind of feel obligated to register with them. So similar, comparable to the SEC in the US and also the Financial Minister Agency in Germans, and they're all very interested. The situation right now is that there are rather new to the game. So lawyers just started looking into blockchain and they're legal implications. Just two years ago, really, when they start with the Dow, we this was the point where they started all think what law is code, code, just lot, that's our topic, and then they start to wake up. You know, before they were not really paying attention that much. Now it's kind of like a rush of these kind of lawyers and regulators to look at it and at the same time regulators get swamped with ICEO requests and they kind of feel obligated to have now own opinions. Obviously, as they don't fully understand it yet indeed technical detail, they kind of, you keep the distance and don't want to make too a concrete statements. That's why they come up with these kind of generic warnings or they come up with this generic statements saying, yeah, we have to, you know, decidisfy case by case basis. But what I can say is that they're very open, you know, and they don't they don't want to clamp down on it. Actually want to foster the economy and they really want to see this kind of thing being beneficial to economy and society. They just don't know exactly how to frame it or how to put it into current existing law, because they also don't know what the exact dangerous and so on, what can happen. So it's still a kind of an education process necessary with them, and what I like suggested them and what I think should happen, is if the regulatory would make some concrete statements about certain aspects. For example, if we talk about cryptocurrency, you know, a blockchain native token, which is a required thing. You know, you can't take it away, otherwise the system doesn't function. They should make clear statements of what this is, you know, and how you if you want to make an ICO, can you make an eye with it, and how you make an eyer with it? And this is exactly what needs to figure out now together with them, because right now there's one before this Weirdo. Tokens, know, for the good, work for the good or the worst. You know that they're now, you know, trying to okay, is this you utility token or not? Anot a lot, but this is not exactly what I should look too much on it, because this is just deviating. They should look at what are the proven tokens? How do we frame them, make statements and clear definitions about them, and then move into the next section, which is already proven. All of these new token models are completely unproven. We don't know if they are either sustainable nor if they are like a good investment in terms of like the kind of, you know, expectations and investors have towards them. Are they really long lasting? Are The depending? So my my point would be differentiate between decent licen center a system, because this gives you good indication that thing can be long lasting or not because the business God out of business. If it's a good dissenter, says the center as system, that doesn't mean it's the death for it. At the same time, like, what are the current already existing tokens? We know. We know bit comesins two thousand and nine. You know it's a pretty clear way. You know you have a coin. It's necessary for the transaction fees. It's a set spend protection and instancentive to secure a network. There's something we saw at now a thousand five hundred times in different blockchains. So we know that is exactly working always the same way and that's what it is. And clear statements about that and I hope I can help them, you know, reach it understanding. This is what we need, you know, because right now it's just a randomness and the SEC saying everything is is huge to token doesn't help. You know, this is just more like a nature see, trying to put land prep on onto a topic to be more important, but that's not really helpful either, because it's not a security. You know what, Bitcoin is not a security. Just like that. I think,...
I think this is something that we can, we could dive into for quite a long time and I and if you'd be open to it, I wouldn't mind having you back on the main flagship show to maybe dive a little deffer into the details of these, of this of this differentiation, because we've gotten to a point that one classification of all tokens is it good enough, because the utility of each each type is very different, and so we need regulation surrounding what it's actually doing and not a single regulation that that blankets all of them, and I think that'd be a good, good conversation piece for the Bitcoin podcast. So with that, absolutely I would like just like to stay. One last thing is that the problem also with these kind of tokens is that it token can be so many things, you know, which covers like five different things on the legal side and they try to fit it into this boxes, you know, which were made up because you know share, you know what's done. I wrote an article about that. Actually, if you know, there was a person and it was the institution holding that, you know it took. Is Not like that. It can be a share at the same time, can be a you know, a functionality, can be access, can be voting, can be all things together in one and that's so very different the staff to deal with right now. Yeah, definitely, definitely, I think, and I think we be know, they'll be really good talking to discuss in detail on the flagship. I think that'd be super be on there. By the way, I really want to take this opportunity to thank you. Not many people know this, but you know, I really want to jump in the crypto space early two thousand and seventeen I had I didn't. I pretty much exhausted my contacts, like I didn't really have very many, to be honest with you, and stopping definitely a he hooked it up and got me a really awesome position which definitely launched my career and I hope to take that career further. In a lot of that I owe to you and I really appreciate it. I hope you continuing fostering new people to get into the space and to, you know, expand everything as we go for it. Thanks. Thanks, yeah, I I'm happy to help. So all right, well, but that thanks to coming on the show and we hope to hear from the soon. Good luck, luck, sword. Yeah, thank you.
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