[Music]
hi everyone thanks for coming to me see
my talk so I guess we got straight into
it we've only got seven
minutes yeah so who am I so my name is
James I am the engineering director for
eBay small but hopefully impactful web 3
team uh I came from an acquisition about
two years ago of an nft platform called
known origin now really myself and my
team are really interested in looking at
the web three landscape looking at the
eBay machine as it stands now and seeing
how this technology can potentially
impact them and find value for buyers
and sellers and today I'm going to talk
about a topic called digital product
passports and why I intrinsically
believe web3 is the right place for them
um and I'm going to touch on four topics
today uh a topic called connected
products digital product passports we'll
talk about web 3 and we'll talk about
Commerce but first I want to set the
scene and provide a little bit of vision
of what Commerce could look like so you
got to bear with me with this right so
you walk into an office you see your
colleagues stood around a board maybe
you're discussing the latest mem coin
you've got your Vision Pro 5000s on some
AR enabled glasses not only that it's
looked in your address book and it's
noticed the pfps of your colleagues and
displayed them on screen you know shout
out to any x copy or squiggle holders in
the in the room not only that it's
noticed that your friend Dan at the
board has got a killer watch and the
latest greatest in sneakers these
products are connected you've got to
find out more you double tap your
fingers some Machine Vision or AI Vision
scans these items uniquely identifies
them and starts working out exactly
which unique product they are not the
product skew the actual unique product
after that the digital product passport
pops up a digital layer linking the
physical product directly in your face
now this is a vision piece only right
but you can see the potential you know
and and you might notice as well this is
very much similar to how maybe nft
platforms uh looked trading nfts a few
years ago from this digital link you can
see ownership you might see if it's got
a warranty you might see trading uh
activity on the secondary Market
traceability servicing in uh insights
this is the vision that I want to talk
about today and this is my vision and
potentially the Future Vision of how
Commerce might look in several years
time but wait before we go on I think
it's worth touching about some of the
problems and challenges in Commerce at
the moment and you know the first three
topics you know the supply chain the
supply chain is very difficult to
Wrangle for physical Goods aggregating
lots of disperate information maybe the
digital passport is the perfect layer
for this you know circularity I bought a
good on the primary Market how do I sell
it there's many websites many
marketplaces all have different pros and
cons maybe the product passport is is
the place where circularity will start
maybe it will also tell you how to
recycle this good at the end of its life
maybe this product passport is the place
where you'll get additional utility
after your first transactional
engagement with that brand or with that
shop and finally the last three um
there's some emerging regulatory uh um
insights coming from the EU so from 2026
2027 the EU will mandate digital product
passports in things like batteries
fashion white goods colle Ables now the
goal is to make things more circular and
give consumers more Choice maybe a
tokenized digital product passport is
the place where that will happen um the
last two digital physical experiences a
lot of the nft space sort of tried to
tackle this over the last few few years
with some mixed success maybe starting
with a physical and adding on the
digital is the right approach and then
interoperability for your items for the
things you own physically how do you
interupt with the wider world again
maybe this digital layer
so this is the vision I presented
slightly wacky really lowf you know this
is not what we're building this is a
vision piece
um but really what does it enable it
enables a digital lirer on physical
which is interactive product experiences
realtime information about your good you
know empowering customers um and then
interoperability where you you know you
can take your physical good and use it
anywhere and this is again what these
could enabl and then really quickly I've
only got a minute left last but not
least what is this so first of all uh a
physical item and a product connector
really a connector comes in many forms
QR codes RFD NFC chips you know Machine
Vision we spoke about and then youve got
this digital layer and this is what I
talk about uh for digital passports and
this could be you can own this thing
right that's what crypto enables
ownership of digital items um quickly a
few industry examples 30 seconds left
there is already people playing in this
game in the fashion space in the luxury
space you know maybe onchain is the next
online and this Chang consumer Behavior
would be a big driver for web to
adoption Beyond training stons and mean
coins um and finally wad eBay care it's
massive we've got to be ahead of these
Trends and Y web 3 it's credibly neutral
it's a base layer for enemies can play
together lots of composable great
standards to build on and
interoperability and ownership and
that's it thank you very much okay thank
you not as very very interesting in a
very real world um uh do we have any
questions question s in the
audience let's see anyone okay
cool
oh hello James hello um quick question
uh when do you imagine a plat a global
platform like eBay uh showing it regular
users as I don't know an icon and some
verified as something that that says
this come with a DPP and of course you
can check it visually but when you
acquire this pair of sneakers this Gat
whatever uh well you will also acquire
this this digital passport yeah is there
some form of a estimate timeline or yeah
so I guess you know we may already be
playing in this place uh this place in
Pilots but you may not notice and you
know we also go down the Mantra of you
know eBay users don't really care
exactly you know what we're doing as
long as they get lots of great value
from it so maybe we're already doing
this and they don't know and maybe next
year it'll sort of be pushed up the
rankings and things will become clearer
so but there's also lots of luxury
Brands already playing in this place is
a
reality just right over there oh nice
hey James um based on uh eBay's uh sales
numbers and and that what throughput do
you think that you need from the
underlying technology to to serve your
users well that's a good question well I
guess you know to get to eBay scale you
know the the endgame you know it's hard
to really talk about it's a reality it's
hard to really say stuff in public but
you know eBay's a big huge user base
billions of products hundreds of
millions of users you know in the last
two years with the rise of l2s There's
an actual credible path for actually how
to achieve the throughput and the scale
that eBay and that's what we'll be
keeping an eye on you know as that space
emerges one more question and the last
one right over there the uh gentleman
the
cap it's going to be from over there yes
beautiful um I forgot to admit I'm a bit
confused as to what would be the
advantage for for the end user this
feels like a lot of overwhelming
information that might not be tangibly
beneficial and it also frankly seems
like a bit of a privacy nightmare I can
see how aggregating all of this kind of
information in a
not centralized but central point of
identity could could be problematic so
are there
any do do you also Envision the level of
of privacy associated with that yeah so
privacy first very true you know we we
think about this a lot and you know
there there's is it right that you know
this wallet owns 10 Rolexes probably not
you know but we look at Technologies
like uh you like providing proofs
selective disclosure you know zero
knowledge stuff you know that's really
where I think this will go and it'll
ultimately be at the behest of the
holder of how much information that they
should disclose I do agree that privacy
is a big issue in this physical space
much more than in digital is the reality
um I can't remember your first question
sorry okay so that's it for our question
session today and can please reach out
to James if you have any further
question any discussion you want to
continue thank you again thank you