[Music]
thank you
hey everybody my name is Camila Ramos
this talk is super important and amazing
to me because when I'm Colombian I was
born in Bogota my family is Colombian we
can go through a whole journey of what
this means to me to be back in my home
country talking to you guys but the one
request I have is can someone take cute
pictures of me so I can send it to my
mom and tell her that I spoke in
Colombia
thank you okay cool so today we're gonna
speedrun this because there's so much to
talk about and I only have 11 minutes so
we're gonna talk about machismo
inflation remittance scaling ethereum
for widespread adoption in Latin America
what does it mean from a technical level
what does it mean on a cultural level
and how do we get there so let's start
with where we are today
um I had to pull this out from back when
I worked in product at Sony we had this
grid that helped us understand a product
that we were building you can build a
product that solves a big problem for a
lot of people a big problem for a small
amount of people a small problem Etc and
where we are right now is we're in this
quadrant where we're solving a small
problem for a very small group of people
right the amount of people that are
using crypto today and that are actually
getting something useful out of it is
actually quite small and and this is
what we end up with when we are in this
situation right it's why we've kind of
devolved to crypto dick buds in a
thousand percent apy it's because like
we're trying really hard to find a use
case for it and we just can't seem to
find something that we can solve and
this doesn't go without saying like
obviously I deeply respect everyone
working in the space I know we're all
worth working towards getting to this
point but this is just the reality of
where we are now how do we get to this
quadrant where we're solving a big
problem for a lot of people my answer is
super simple and I actually wrote a blog
post about this that I'll link at the
end where you can see all of the sources
cited but solve real problems and that
sounds very like straightforward and duh
but how do we actually get there like
how do we find communities that have
problems that we can solve and we can
take crypto for what it is at the very
base level which is new infrastructure
for a payment system and enable
Innovative use case that will actually
drive adoption and the place that I'm
going with this is we have to go where
there's necessity in the global West in
Europe and North America we don't have
much of a necessity we're relatively
doing pretty well right we all have
access to Banks we all can get you know
access to all the different financial
services that we want and even for those
who might not necessarily have access we
have a wide breadth of different Neo
bank and non-bank applications that let
people still access these Financial
Services now besides going to where
there's a problem we also need to
address on the technical level what
needs to be solved which is scalability
and more secure applications in the last
what six months year there's been like
billions of dollars worth of hacks and
the truth is that when you're dealing
with
a community like Latin America which I'm
going to make the case for for why we
should turn our attention and capital to
Latin America specifically you're
dealing with a community that's a lot
more price sensitive than the West right
they have an average monthly income of
500 a month you can't afford to lose
even a hundred dollars in a hack you
can't even afford at this point to spend
ten dollars on a gas transaction it's
just not realistic that's like two
lunches right
so I'm gonna make the case for Latin
America real quick so consumers in Latin
America actually I think are the best
place to start because they already
exhibit behaviors that make them really
ripe for adoption of crypto and those
are mobile first digital payments if you
guys live in Latin America if you live
in Colombia you know that a lot of
financial services are mobile first
everyone pays from their phone adoption
of Neo Bank we'll talk about more what
this means but basically a lot of people
are already operating outside of the
traditional Banking and finance system
they're using Neo Bank applications AKA
financial services that are not
necessarily from a proper bank there's
heavy Reliance on remittance payments
which is basically cross-border payments
if you guys are from Latin America and
you live in the United States or Europe
you know it's not uncommon for you to
send money back home and it's done via
remittance
um growing political and socioeconomic
instability and social pressure so we're
going to talk about all of these in the
next seven minutes so I'm not going to
read all these but just so you guys can
kind of maybe take a picture take a
mental screenshot this is what the
numbers looks like for adoption of
online Neo bank and non-bank so
basically a vast majority of people in
this survey that was created by rapid
which is all linked at the end sources
cited a lot of people are already
operating outside of the bounce 90 plus
percent of Mexicans Brazilians 87 of
Colombians 84 of argentinians regularly
use applications such as PayPal model
and mercado
heavy Reliance on remittance so again
this is back to the cross-border thing
and according to data from the World
Bank remittance flows to Latin America
and the Caribbean reached 131 billion
dollars this is something that crypto is
such a good use case for right like
there's lower fees there's higher
security it's faster operational speed
so this is just a perfect example where
it's like how do we build a system for
people who are already transacting and
already exhibiting this Behavior but can
use what is offered by crypto to kind of
unseat the kings that have of like
remittance for example where you're
standing in a long line you're paying 10
for a transaction you're paying five
percent it takes like seven business
days for the money to get there and then
a really interesting thing that I found
in this world Bank data is that remains
flows actually account for more than a
quarter of GDP in Honduras and El
Salvador so a quarter of the whole
country's GDP comes from cross-border
payments
okay and then let's talk about social
pressures and the first one in this term
which is machismo now I didn't have time
to go into a full analysis about this
because this presentation is so short
but if you look at these countries and
you take a look at Colombia all the
Latin American countries up here you see
oh man the key got cut out but green
means women and and blue means men so if
you compare it to European countries
women are actually holding and
transacting in crypto at a much higher
rate than women in Europe and in some
cases they're really close to the rate
of men in Europe so what does this mean
what does this tell me
crypto in Latin America you know if you
guys are Latin American there's this
culture of machismo which is like super
rampant and for maybe Americans who
don't know what it means it's basically
patriarchy but with like a Latin America
Flair to it where it's like you're not
allowed to work you need to ask me for
money you need to stay home
um you know you need to like be subject
to what I want and that takes form in a
lot of different ways which we won't get
into but I encourage you guys to look at
research but what is the signal to me it
signals that crypto is offering a new
way for women to transact and and
operate within Financial Freedom while
still operating within the bounds of
what's socially acceptable so what does
that mean so what that means is you can
say oh well why don't they just go open
a bank account they're going to get
mailed to their house oh why don't they
just go like sign up for PayPal they're
gonna get mailed to their house like
these are all things that they could run
a risk if they try to you know break out
of whatever kind of like limits are set
on them okay now let's talk about how do
we actually innovate and what are some
examples of companies who have focused
on solving hyper local problems and have
seen crazy growth come of it and how we
can model this in crypto so Mercado
Libre
is like an online marketplace where
people can buy anything beds clothes
tools anything and they started this
platform over a decade ago in Colombia
and they created this uh Financial
platform called medical so that people
could transact on it and it started out
as just for this just for this payment
platform and now it's grown to be a
whole financial service provider and
they offer Gateway Services mobile
payments and credit cards so what does
this mean right like this means when you
go to a place that has region specific
problems and you solve hyper local you
can actually drive use and Innovation
and grow into like this this is a great
example until like an entire financial
service and then we'll talk about one
more pixpain Brazil is Brazil's dominant
digital payments up with over 60 million
users and they transact over a million
dollars no that's a billion dollars in
monthly transactions big space started
not too long ago it's the number one
payment system in Brazil right now
another example of like when you solve
hyper local when you go to where the
problems are when you solve solutions
for people who actually are facing real
problems you can actually see
exponential growth rather than kind of
focusing on this like place where we are
in that weird quadrant that I posted
earlier
now scalability now let's get into the
what technically needs to change so that
we can actually get there so this is an
introduction to fuel Labs I'm the head
of developer relations there and why I'm
really excited about Fuel and one of the
main reasons why I joined fuels for my
specific Mission and Ethos of scaling
ethereum and Latin America so what needs
to change
scalability right right now we just
can't handle the throughput if we wanted
to do something like Mercado Pago or
pixby it's just ethereum cannot handle
it at this point so we need to scale
that how do we address that so fuel Labs
is building fuel it's like a layer two
but better on ethereum and we have
parallel transaction execution because
of our a different execution model so we
have our own VM called the fuel VM that
allows us to do a lot of cool things
like uh paralyzed transactions which
just automatically gives you more
throughput because instead of having to
do one transaction at a time you can do
many transactions at a time and right
away you're already getting hired
through but right off the bat without
sacrificing skill without sacrificing
decentralization so a lot of chains like
Solana and stuff they can do really high
throughput but they're sacrificing
decentralization what does that mean
exactly you can't run a full node at
home you on consumer Hardware can go
spin up a full note and validate the
chain yourself that is the core ethos of
blockchain if you can't run a full note
and have control over your money then we
might as well just like all go back to
using PayPal or the bank okay more
secure applications so again when we're
talking about a price sensitive
population with an average income we
can't risk hacks we can't risk this type
of level of security if we actually want
these people to use it now another cool
thing about fuel is we have our own
programming language called sway which
is a rust-based DSL which means it's a
programming language created
specifically for blockchain development
now what does that mean that you can
create a compiler that is very tailored
to very specific needs and one of them
is have you who's heard of a re-entrant
debug re-entracy hacks right it's like
we're in a very simple case it's kind of
where there's like a line to release
some funds and then after you like flip
a Boolean to say true money has been
released so that you don't do it again
some programmers in some instances there
has been a bug here where someone can go
into your contract and basically drain
it and get the money over and over and
over before reaching that line in the
execution of the code where it flips
some flag to to stop doing it so now
fuel sway our compiler has built into
the compiler to say hey on line 47 you
have a re-entracy vulnerability and it
will not allow you to build and deploy
the contract until you address it
another thing the sway compiler forces
developers to handle all possible cases
using enum variants basically what that
means is if you've ever written a
program to say you know let's just say
if the number is above zero do something
if it's you know below zero do something
this way compiler will tell you hey
you've only written code to handle the
true case or you've only written code to
handle this case you forgot to write
code for this case and again it won't
let you build the contract it won't let
you deploy the contract until you
address that so the powerful thing about
this is like you can never have kind of
an accidental like oops forgot to handle
that edge case okay we're almost done
finally namespace storage so if you've
ever written contracts and solidity you
know you might have accidentally touched
storage without knowing it and that
could have some unintended consequences
so developers in Sway have to Define
what the storage access is for each
function and this is what it looks like
you do these annotations that say Hey
this function can read storage and write
storage or maybe it can only read or
maybe it can only write and what that
does is that it's first of all it's very
clear to developers who are writing the
program it's very clear to developers
who are using a library but at the end
of the day it's very clear to users who
actually don't have to know what's going
on it's abstracted out obviously but
they'll never accidentally access
storage and never accidentally cause
unintended consequences in your program
and here is a link to the blog post that
I wrote where you can see all of the
sources cited read everything in long
form and yeah I'll leave that up for a
second
thank you