Name: A Chip Off The Block
Uploaded: 2019-12-23
Duration: 18 min 56 s
Description: Can blockchain companies emerge from a category’s crisis of confidence? Joseph Lubin, ConsenSys CEO, and Dominic Williams, Dfinity founder, discuss.

A Chip Off The Block

Tech

Can blockchain companies emerge from a category’s crisis of confidence? Joseph Lubin, ConsenSys CEO, and Dominic Williams, Dfinity founder, discuss.

Hey, thanks for being here, guys. Thanks. Yeah, let's do an audience poll. Who here owns Cryptocurrency? Okay, Who here is thinking about buying Cryptocurrency? Okay, everybody owns it. That's that's a pretty even split Nobody else who doesn't was thinking about it, but, uh, all right, so just by way of introduction, dumb divinity, you are calling yourselves the Internet computer, obviously the centralized cloud platform that relies on Blockchain uh, where you have servers across different data center. So it sort of a centralized data center. And that is part of the foundation of what you're trying to do in terms of potentially disrupting some of these big tech giants. Sales sports are linked, and you're talking about decentralized versions of these big social social media companies. Are Amazon companies like that? Joe You, co founder of Ethereum. You also run consensus, which is a Blockchain development company. Um, but telling you know, thinking about a hearing which right now is the second leading crypto currency was a goal. You know, when you started appearing because you hear a lot of people talk with blushing about disrupting bank versus disrupting big tech. How What was that part of it. When? When you started a fury. Um, you know, thinking about potentially the new a different type of Facebook. A different kind of Google. Or how did that play into your vision? Sure. Um so big coin essentially invented a couple of things that invented this next generation decentralized database and something called crypto economics and a token that, via mechanism design and crypto economics would incentivize people thio essentially create our money was of the people by the people for the people and in that way essentially build a maximally decentralized trust system on so 2012. Many people came along and said we should be using this kind of data base infrastructure for everything on so of that the serum was born and we built essentially what, uh, what we then called a world computer on. And many since then, including us at our company, consensus had built tools and infrastructure on DDE have been building in different verticals to essentially do some of the things that the dumb is intending to do. Where we do you go after thes. Um, major service is on the internet, but it's also much more that because we're bringing a new trust Foundation. We're building a global settlement layer and were able to build a new kind of financial plumbing where we can issue of issued essentially billions of dollars worth of digital assets on that part. Yep, dumb. So the idea of an Internet computer, I mean, we already have the Internet. We already have. Amazon Web service is we already have a theory. Um, why do we need defense? Internet computer? Um, so the, uh, the Internet computer is reinventing. The Internet is a computer that can host and run secure salt flat with a range of super pass on Di's dress problems. Major problems with a stalking attack today. So it's intended is that complete replacement to sort of $3.6 trillion legacy, um, and addresses major issues such as the difficulty of crazy secure structure? Um, it also dressed addresses, uh, the difficulties we have with the monopolization of the Internet today and provides a platform to create a new breed of open Internet that will provide a better platform for innovation on pluralism investment song going forward. So the city, I mean decentralization going to create a decentralized version of some of these huge tech companies. Is there any evidence that a decentralized organization you might not even call it a company could rise to that level where it could actually challenge that dominant? In the middle of example that I can think of is Wikipedia, and it's not even there, you know, it's not even competing on the same level. So the most powerful force in Tak, his network effects and the increasing monopolization of the Internet is driven by no sex. So one approach to deal with that increasing monopolization of the Internet is to bring it into trust. Uh, regulation that's on and try and break up. Big tech on the Internet Computer provides an alternative means to address the increasing monopolization of the Internet by providing a platform for the creation of open Internet open Internet service. You can think of being something roughly analogous to open source project, where the service itself has its independent existence independent existence and is managed by an essential government system. Most of all, these things provide a means to address on the platform risk. So early example harbinger of what was to come was provided by singer singer, built on Facebook and I feel they're very successful company. Facebook changed the rules. A few months later, they lost 85% of their value. Stroll forward to today. 18 of the last 22 touch life guys mention platform risk as existential threat in There s one filing. The problem is, if you build on the A P I. If you build on top of big pack, you're building on sand. You know you just can't trust it. And, for example, recently, hundreds of startups years ago now had had the access to Lincoln revived on DDE. And open Internet service is will provide a way to create, for example, from WHATS app open link to an open cell. Taking things in, for example, in open mics in would become part of the fabric of the Internet itself and would be able to guarantee that it's a P I would never, ever be removed or vote so that entrepreneurs on investors wanting to build new Internet service is that needed to incorporate business profiles can securely build on top off opening today, and this will credit kind of mutual eyes network effect, which will drive the development of the open Internet forward very rapidly. Who's gonna build three ideas to essentially build on protocol based open platforms? If you're building on Facebook, you're building on a platform that somebody else controls, and they're probably at towards the end of their monetization cycle. They're probably gonna end up having to eat your lunch. And if you're building on T c P I P, which is a protocol, then you can be relatively certain that that's not gonna shift out from under you for competitive reasons. So Web 3.0, which will be the evolution of where we are right now with 2.0, it will be lots of decentralized open platforms. It'll be platforms like if they're in for trusted transactions. Automated agreements will be platforms like Definitive. It'll be platforms for decentralized storage, decentralized bandwidth, decentralized, heavy compute, decentralized identity and all of these things. We can have the governance discussion soon. All of these things are currently contemplating massively decentralized governance, and that, um, plays out in a lot of different dimensions. Is their business case, though. Did you incentivize the building of this? I mean, if you don't, if it's decentralized, you don't have a CEO. It's not a company is only nonprofits Who could do this? Um, no. Um, protocol based open platforms with this new invention of Satoshi called crypto economics, um enabled the issuance of a token on and effective mechanism designed so that lots of different actors can pursue their selfish interests, perform different roles on and achieve the goals of the system so you can achieve be centralized governance while still enabling people toe pursue their own interests. Can you make money doing it, though? Put it this way. If you're an entrepreneur and you wanted to build a new business that needed to incorporate business pratfalls, would you rather build on top of closed proprietary Ellington? You haven't even got that choice anymore because it's already closed. All the guys down, the only people that have access to lengthen a sales force. We chat Mike's office on. But let's say closed fracture links in still provided a p I. Who would you rather build up closed for fraud? Shirlington or open? Maintain the guaranteed Your foundation's solid would never revoke your your your access and break your service. Adlington did to hundreds of startups. Would you rather build on that? The reason the open Internet will succeed in triumph over the closed proprietary Internet in enormous numbers of engineers and researchers leaving places like Google, Facebook, Ibn Mike Soft and partly because the technology is very interesting, but also because they believe in sort of taken into their back to its roots make it more open, creative, innovative, running a better platform for entrepreneurs and investors. There's a huge movement which of course, is parting represented by success, things like and it's not going away part of a major transition to a different model. Yeah, I'm gonna come to questions in a minute, so get him ready. Raise your hands will bring you a microphone. But, you know, I wanted to talk a little bit about Syria mute because its second leading Cryptocurrency, which had this terrible crash crypt a winner. All of that charge about back this year, the Bitcoins up about 160% Syrian flagged a bit. It's about only about about 60%. Still good, But you know, it hasn't had the same bounce back that Bitcoin has, and I know you're still trying to scale. They're still questions about that. You are planning to launch a theory of 2.0, Um, starting early next year. He's also had a restructuring at consensus of it to some head count reduction. But e you know, in terms of scale is the technology that really can rise to the level where it could replace you know, these huge platforms Google Amazon from the oh. So it's fair to say that, uh, the room is the second largest crypto currency, if you only look at that to mention. But it's by far the largest Blockchain ecosystem. If you look at the number of developers and the number of projects that are building on the platform, we have scaled enormously even during crypto winter. So many of the people who were focused on the more speculative aspect related to Bitcoin, or related teeth or or related to the many tokens that were launched on the platform. Some of those projects were, well, many of them worked out quite badly, and a lot of the speculators have fled some speculators air coming back at this point as we've seen. But all through that the technologists, the entrepreneurs that have been drawn into the appearing ecosystem, have stayed. Once you see the value of decentralization and building systems in different ways. You can't unsee that you can't really go back. Thio building on web to architectures. And so throughout that period, our ecosystem has grown enormously. Throughout that period, enterprise usage of our ecosystem we work in many different verticals has gone a grown exponentially. So we've seen even on a transaction basis. Uh, the hit on a serum is that it can handle around 20 transactions per second. But that's that layer one at the base trust layer layer to where we have many different technologies that anchor in tow, layer one for enhanced trust. We're seeing tens and hundreds of thousands of decentralized transactions coming online on exchanges and gains, etcetera. So scale ability is already here. And it's going to be here in spades when we release him to which gets started in its release early next year. Yeah, thanks. Any questions in the audience? We have any Your hands in the back, please. Yes. Hi, Jeff Roberts. Fortune. I'd like to hear a little bit more about governance, which you sort of alluded to but didn't explain purity, centralized governance. How can you build something that will take on Google and Facebook because people say a Syrian government has been dysfunctional in years to create basic scaling. And what exactly are you gonna do to put in the government structure people can understand and possibly participate in? Yes, of the theory of decentralization is a very powerful one. But it does require good governance like everything else on the planet. As I think we would all agree governance is difficult. Governance of decentralized platforms is the new thing that we're trying to figure out. I feel like the Ethereum Foundation. Governance has been excellent. I believe that, uh, we launched unprecedented platform in about a year and 1/2 and have continued to improve it and have pioneered on architecture that will scale it enormously on dhe essentially end up being a a base trust layer for the planet. Um, governance on the appearing project is different from definite e different from polka dots in that we are focusing on having lots of different actors in different roles who are all incentivized to make the platform better. Have voice on DDE. I like the idea of more automated governance. There will be governance by token votes and we already do some of that. But there are projects in Duncan. Take it from here. Their projects that air contemplating building layers and layers of governance of these platforms. And I think it's gonna take years to figure all that out there and we'll do the same thing slowly, imprudently. But even without bad, I believe that many different actors all committed to improving the platform, will be able to challenge the big entities who have, Ah, perhaps a smaller number of highly incentivized actors. And as we get the layers of governance right over time, um, it'll be a foundation for many kinds of systems on the planet thinking about governance. Yeah. So, um, the Internet, of course, has not profit governance organizations like Diana, which you know, give you your race and number and I p addresses and saw in Europe. I speak, um the computer has automated hybrid make government systems that both to ensure the Internet computer network, which is comprised from independent data centers, remains open. It's also a key part of the means we used to address platform risk, which is so important with respect to the second part of the question. How can we compete with John organizations like Google and Facebook. The definitive foundations strategy and is to apply enormous resources to RD on. Although it's a non profit organization, it operates, really uses the Silicon Valley playbook. We've got research Centre County in Zurich, Palo Alto in San Francisco. There more going life soon on DDE, you know, with powering the world's very best research is an engine heads using the best engineering research practices we can to deliver in tonight computer technologies. In that sense, um, although it's a not for profit, we work in exactly the same way. And indeed, you know, we've been successfully hiring some of the very brightest and best from from places like the thing. I mean, you know, with Facebook, you know somebody. If they wanted to, they could ban me from their platforms. Google, You know, somebody commits an ad that's fraudulent or fishing Sandvik and banned from the platform. What do you do about bad actors? I mean, what is your power or what the networks power? So that's a difference between the computer, and I could hear him So the Internet computer does have. The network has an onboard open government system and it is capable or neutralizing bad actors. There's debate about whether that's good or a bad thing. Perhaps the libertarian think bad actors should be tolerated on. Do you know I wouldn't want to. I don't really have a firm position on that, but we do have the technological means to. So from the start, the appearing project assumed that the vast majority of APS transactions on the network would be valuable because they would be between significantly identified or fully identified actors. We've built infrastructure that enables us issue digital asset in many different countries with full identity checks, MLK, y c et cetera. And so we're bringing identity and reputation to these applications. But, um, it's, ah, it's a deep philosophical issue. Yes, there. Now should we have a base trust layer? That is permission, Lis, Or should we have one that is essentially sensible by government actors? It's powerful technology and our society are different. Jurisdictions of our society are gonna have to have those discussions, but the technology and with their belief system, your personal beliefs, yes or no bad actors should be tolerated. Yes or no. Um, that's a difficult question. I generally know but who defines the bad actor? Yeah. No, it's a question. We'll have thio longer discussion. That's all the time we have. But, uh, thank you both. So much for being here.