good I hate following exciting ideas
likes lock-it and Cujo and all these
guys makes me feel a little bit out of
place but for those that I haven't met
this week since I've been here my name
is Matthew Stoke I'm from Rubik and if
you haven't heard of Rubik before
rubik's is a team based out of Toronto
at Deloitte we've been working in this
space for the more than a year now about
13 months or so and our goal is
essentially to position Deloitte as
being kind of the most forward-thinking
professional services organization
specifically on this context on this
space and blockchain technology in the
world we have this concept that Deloitte
which you know we often brush off as
just being like a corporate slogan as
one they call it and and I mean it it
made me think about this type of
environment in this open-source
community and its really it's compelling
to watch you guys and to watch this
community the amount of transparency and
openness and collaboration that happens
here people essentially building ideas
and just giving them away to other
people to participate in we find out
very compelling our team has made a
particular focus of building
collaborations with the types of
organizations that are active here and
we've had kind of a number of
conversations over the last several
months with many of you our goal is to
continue building those collaborations
see how we can work together and we're
doing that in a couple of ways we're
also kind of building this internal
concept at Deloitte that I like to call
kind of our internal open source
community which is quite rare for us to
build collaborations in different parts
of the world so we have Deloitte people
in Canada in the US UK Luxembourg Italy
South Africa China now all working
together because we have come to
realization that there's something
really important happening in this space
so this past year has led us to learning
a lot and I think it's been pretty
reflective and we've heard this boats
from the community as well as from our
clients we're pretty proud to say and I
think we can boldly say that we're
pretty significantly ahead of our
competitors
when it comes to paying attention and
being active specifically on the topic
of blockchain I mean we started off
looking a Bitcoin we're now very focused
on aetherium and we've learned a lot
before we had any client interest we
were diving in and making an effort to
understand we had a team that was very
intimately learning the differences
between Bitcoin and aetherium and some
of these other alternative technologies
that have popped up under this umbrella
of blockchain technology figuring out
what it meant for us what meant for our
clients what was the difference between
a private implementation of like a
federated blockchain versus a public
version like the etherium Frontier
Network and that's kind of led to an
interesting role I mean we we are a
professional services organization so
we're it's our responsibility to react
based on what our clients are interested
in and in some cases that's a multitude
of technologies that all have taken on
this categorization of blockchain
companies which of course I think is an
oversimplification of what we're talking
about because there's so many obvious
variations and differences between these
offerings so we've made an effort to be
relevant to be able to explain these
concepts to our clients to even be able
to do testing and integrations of
different types of these technologies
but beyond our role as consultants we've
also started to shift our attention and
say how can we build solutions for
ourselves and for our clients that are
meaningful and in that process we've had
to really decide where is it that we
want to spend our focus and our effort
and although there's a ton of diverse
client interests across the board what
we've been continuously hearing from
clients is that smart contracts that
sound appealing and in all honesty
there's still a big big misunderstanding
and enterprises - like what a smart
contract is but this buzzword has been
out there probably more so than
aetherium as a title but smart contracts
are very talked about in enterprise and
private implementations as a testing
environment is very talked about an
enterprise so that's where we started
we've taken on a role of pushing this
forward being a an organization that's
very much public about the fact that we
believe in this technology and we want
to see enterprise adoption of it we've
done everything from writing papers to
holding seminars to doing education of
clients and most recently we've actually
started building decentralized
applications and test environments with
our clients so we ourselves are
recognizing that this is a capability
that is important
we're starting to train people to do
that and hire people to do that now
rubik's is it's kind of all of that
encapsulated and are in the process of
our experimentation and learning we
particularly came to appreciate the
value proposition of aetherium and the
capabilities that aetherium had that
none of these other platforms seem to
have so by coincidence I mean it's about
our team happens to be from Toronto
birthplace of aetherium which we're very
proud of home of Vitalik and the
recently almost successful Toronto Blue
Jays
I noticed Nick Dodson still wearing its
Blue Jays I don't know if he's in the
room but more specifically our
development team in Toronto and now with
growing members kind of around the world
we've been working spending countless
hours working on the C++ implementation
of etherium we've been reporting bugs
into the open-source community and we've
been testing how to create kind of a
comfortable private testing environment
for clients to build prototypes on this
on that client we've deployed our POC to
write smart contract prototypes for use
cases for everything from loyalty points
with clients to digital identity we're
doing one right now in healthcare we've
tested one in document management and
corporate governance so we're really
kind of focused across the board and
that's why we want to be present in this
community and connect with companies
that are doing these things because
we're not here to reinvent what you know
the bright minds in this room are
already doing so that's kind of our
objective we're always trying to like
continuously learn get closer to this
community and it's been very reflective
on how we operate because we're a very
traditional large organization and you
know being close to an open-source kind
of collaborative community like this has
started to impact how we're operating
and it's noticeable in the way that
we're working kind of cross-border with
colleagues across the world
you know this concept of a distributed
team is extremely common here it's
extremely uncommon for us but now we're
starting to like live that a little bit
more and then we have calls on a weekly
basis with developers in other parts of
the world that work at Deloitte that are
starting to learn this technology and
work with us to build solutions and
that's like an incredible change of
culture and DNA for an organization like
Deloitte quite recently I mean we've
been trying to position Rubik as being
like
Hubb for that coordination and that
development and effort and training of
people to really start paying attention
to this so that we can start developing
capabilities internally so that we can
start contributing back because I think
I mean the one biggest impediment here
is not the value of the technology by
any means we all know that it's valuable
and it holds enormous promise but the
biggest impediment is how do you scale
it how do you have enough people to go
and deliver it to the clients that want
to try it and that's where we think we
can play a big role Deloitte is
obviously an enormous global
organisation and scale as one of our big
strengths so if we can provide that to
this technology
you know that's incredible in this
process we've looked at a lot of
implementations because we've gotten
this car this question often are you
just talking about this or are you
actually doing anything and I think it's
pretty reflective when an organisation
is not only talking about this to their
clients but doing something for
themselves
and we've been looking at kind of two
major areas where this technology we
think is going to be extremely impactful
to our business and we're testing two of
these concepts right now one of them is
the concept of cross border billing
we're building a prototype solution
right now we to give you some context I
mean Deloitte as offices in 150
countries around the world and we all
interact and transact with each other
extremely regularly you know that's you
couldn't invent a more perfect test case
environment to try and build a smart
contract implementation I mean right
after me presenting today another
presentation that I don't like to
proceed because they're gonna be
probably a lot more impressive than me
as balanced and you know that's the type
of technology we see as being extremely
impactful for that type of environment I
mean apart from that most of you know
Deloitte is the largest audit firm in
the world
so our we've made a business for for
over a century in auditing companies and
their financial transactions and the
reports that they release to the public
I mean you can imagine what it means to
us to think about an etherion future you
know what what is the role of the
auditor in a future where smart
contracts you know operate financial
transactions on a large scale who has -
do you need a human to check those
things or is it inherently built into
the technology that things are accurate
and verified and confirmed such that we
have to question the role that we play
in the market and what's the value
proposition we're now bringing as
auditors so we're starting to play
around
we've started to think about solutions
that we can implement to allow auditors
to maybe more effectively read in and
see the data on the blockchain and just
presented in such a way that's
understandable to them rather than being
the people that are actually going out
and doing this manual testing you know a
traditional auditor would be pulling it
an invoice and going to find the into
the transaction on a general ledger and
having to like physically compare those
two things that becomes completely
irrelevant as you know when when this
becomes kind of the standard so those
are the two big projects we're working
on internally the the second piece I
think another interesting part of it is
that aside from our large auditing
practice we're also extremely
established as a tax compliance and
reporting organization we help
organizations on a large scale report
their taxes to their local governments
and I mean depending on the audience
this is kind of a mixed message but we
also we often talk about regulations and
how regulators are going to react to the
implementation of these types of
technologies we see this as being an
incredibly powerful tool to enable
governments to more effectively and more
cost-effectively
you know apply government compliance and
Taxation that it could be built directly
into a smart contract as to what level
of tax needs to be you know added to a
transaction such that there's now a
third party the government taking their
cut of corporate taxation for example so
all of these tools I think are going to
allow us to change the the rhetoric and
change the dialogue not seeing this is
like a threatening technology to
governments but really an enabling
technology that allows them to really
capture transactions on a scale that
they've never really imagined before so
broadly speaking on aetherium
I don't think I need to convince this
audience by any means about the
importance of what you're doing here but
I do want to bring a perspective from
from Enterprise we're often in front of
clients on a regular basis doing these
types of discussions and seminars and I
want you to know that your movement is
impacting the world and that impact is
really starting to accelerate and I
think you know DEFCON 2 if that's what
they're gonna call it next year I I
would be surprised if it's in a room
this size because I would be surprised
if this holds the amount of interest
that will be there next year the
acceleration in this space is going to
be enormous
and it's reflective by the fact that
organizations like ours are here
I mean we're proud to be kinda one of
the Trailblazers from our industry
coming into this space but I very much
hope that by next year all of our
competitors will be here with us and all
of our peers and other industries will
be here with us because this is going to
be impactful so we're looking we're
looking at that very carefully and I and
I mean beyond Deloitte like one thing I
try to clarify for people is the the
people that you may have met here from
Deloitte there's a few of us in the room
this is not a project that got you know
handed to us this is not something where
we got tapped on the shoulder and said
you got to become the blockchain guy at
Deloitte every one of us here and I
speak kind of on behalf of my colleagues
we all came into this space with a very
deep personal interest and passion for
the technology and apart from the
obvious like competitive and the
competitive reasons of Deloitte wanting
to be involved in this space I think I
speak for all of my colleagues when I
say we're genuinely interested in seeing
this technology evolve and seeing how we
can contribute to that evolution and in
just leveraging the fact that Deloitte
has an enormous brand power and scale
that could potentially help this week
has kind of led me to a lot of
realizations that I'm very glad I was
here for not that it needed to be said
but there's an in this this room
contains probably the greatest
collection of minds working on a single
topic anywhere in the world right now
as far as I can tell the brainpower in
here is unbelievable and it's rare to
see a group like this that is so
organically grown from people from all
over the world from different
backgrounds and different fields that
have all kind of come together with a
genuine passion for transforming how
things happen for the betterment of the
future not for any personal interest you
don't hear anybody here talking about
how they're gonna create you know the
next uber the next day of India they're
talking about how they're gonna create
this technology that anybody can
leverage that anybody can kind of
benefit off of so I think it's really
powerful we've heard from unbelievably
brilliant teams I mean I mentioned slaw
kit I'm looking forward to balance
talking looking at companies like gnosis
and auger and you know the the multitude
of companies we've seen over the course
of this week it's very obvious that
there's something important happening
here I mean I didn't see Roman today but
I'd be remiss to not mention hockey
third camp for those of you missed his
messaging earlier this week and all of
these things are going
propel the etherion vision and we're
just hoping that as an organization we
can play a small part in that big
picture today our team has been very
focused on this face but in all honesty
we've been overwhelmed by client
interest you wouldn't imagine how many
companies out there want to know more
about this and how few people there are
out there to tell them about it and you
guys are the community there's not
enough of you to feed to meet that that
need and it's real and it's happening so
we're hoping that we can scale up and
drive the experimentation and adoption
that we think is necessary amongst
enterprise and seeing Microsoft
president this event is extremely
encouraging to see that there's other
kind of large organizations being
participial participating in this now
all of that to say I think I have a
different message that I want to leave
you with you you all come into this
space so the majority of you come into
this space from a technical background
but I think there's a different role
that we as a group can play we need to
start growing an understanding for
outsiders and observers so that when
they look in here they know what's going
on and they understand how it's going to
impact their future there was a good
blog post written by a meant colleague
of mine Isaiah Syed on the con on the
topic of blockchain technology broadly
but I mean specifically on aetherium
when you're looking at a fast evolving
technology like this that really has a
fundamental ability and potential to
change people's lives what happens is
there's a new vocabulary in a new
language that evolves with it all these
these terms that are being coined kind
of as you go things that make a lot of
sense to this room and things that are
meaningless to people who aren't part of
this space and new language evolves in
radically different ways with new
technologies and it is often what leads
to the types of confusion and fear and
apprehension that people see or that we
notice when a new technology is brought
onto the market I mean a good example is
when the automobile was first released
to the public
you know the automobile was this brand
new life changing concept and then
people heard the term combustion engine
and then people were afraid that they
were about to step onto a bomb that was
just about to explode because the word
combustion engine was meaningless to
them it was a scary term and I think
it's pretty analogous to what's going on
here and we've seen what's happened to
Bitcoin over the last six years in terms
of the media spins and the media the
Media perception of what bitcoin is and
we've seen what that's done to the
public perception of that space and
luckily with aetherium I think we're at
kind of the beginning of this explosion
and I think it's kind of up to this
community to start taking control of
that taking control of that messaging
before that messaging gets framed by
someone else because that messaging can
be framed positively but it can just as
equally be framed negatively and that
will have a big part to play and how
well adopted and how well received
potential in this technology is I don't
know if anybody noticed the article that
was released yesterday about the
Microsoft Azure announcement on Tuesday
I thought it was kind of funny I was
reading through it and the way the
articles written is that Microsoft is
working with a company based out of
Brooklyn
who you might know and that this company
is working on the underlying technology
of Bitcoin I mean I don't know if Joe
and the team at consensus are aware that
they're working on Bitcoin but now the
media and the public see it that way
language is important and perception is
important and it's kind of up to us to
frame how that language is being used
when this when describing what's
happening here so keep that in mind as
you go out and you talk to people a good
example that we like to point to is is
the term trustless in in this context
and in this room the word trustless is
an extremely valuable component of this
technology it's seen as a feature of
this technology and it's obviously an
extremely important obviously creating
interactions and transactions where you
don't need to trust the other side of
the transaction but you go to an
ignorant bystander say the CEO of a bank
that you're trying to sell your solution
to and you tell him that your technology
is trust list and he'll tell you that he
doesn't see the value in creating
something that has no trust in it you
know it'll be perceived differently and
there's a lot of kind of language and
lexicon around this space that can be
perceived that way so just keep that in
mind as you go out there I don't want to
take more of your time than that but in
the spirit of collaboration I mean our
purpose and being here is really to
connect with you to find out about the
projects you're working on and find out
how we can help find out if there's a
way for us to put you in front of a
client if there's a way for us to
contribute to what you're doing or if
you just want to share ideas and see if
Deloitte can somehow fit into that
that's why we're here so there's several
of my colleagues in the room here
you'll notice walking around after if
you get a chance to connect with one of
us please do and we're really here
hoping to be in a blurs of this and
contributors to this so just let us know
how we can help and we'll try to do that
okay thank you very much