so the panel topic is the pathway to
etherium adoption and it's going to be
kind of just a little round table
discussion about how these gentlemen
think we will achieve the ultimate
adoption of everything we've seen really
over the last week so seems to be going
pretty well so far I think that today
how do we achieve adoption theorem well
I mean it's gonna come in phases right
the you know the first thing that
happens is you get small numbers very
smart people then you get big
institutions then everybody's using it
even if they don't know it like you know
how did SQL adoption you just wound up
using it to run society and we're all
SQL users whether we notice her or not
ubiquitous invisible of the present you
believe it should be partly corporate
driven totally ground bottom-up anything
but month achieve scale will wind up as
being largely indistinguishable from
corporation now if you think about linux
foundation to all intents and purposes
it's a corporate institution even the
linux is very decentralized effort the
interfaces to society like the api's are
all corpora so until we've gotten so
much decentralization that the basic API
is that drive society also decentralized
I think you're going to wind up with
even decentralized networks having
corporate looking api's that they kind
of terminus points what all you guys
think about the branding of etherium the
initial branding which I think was more
developer focused does it need to change
does it need to adapt to being more end
user focused do we need to brand
etherium at all or should it just fade
become the
internet like infrastructure this is the
Internet around they have in about
nineteen ninety-five but a theorem does
have a brand is a necessary do we need
to be selling etherium what is missing
anything is missing from the branding
that you're thinking about but it's been
a topic of discussion recently there are
people who feel like we really need to
put it out into public consciousness
perhaps a world computer maybe a little
globe icon was too little etherium eyes
and and some keyboards hanging off it a
little little beard of keyboards and
mouses myself at Christmas it gets a
little kind of Santa ha and yeah
trusting computer no I mean there's good
case for making that the eclectic at
explainer brown right but every time you
see something that explains your theorem
the world computer comes on it does a
little bit in the talking something like
that but in the long run I mean think
like is HTML a brand it used to be a
brown to the 1990s 00 HTML / right but
in the brand is going to come from the
community the more users there are the
more developers there are then the
bigger the community is and that's how
the brand is going to splash on the
market so my focus is to find out do we
know how many developers are there that
are knowledgeable on athyrium
technologies one way or the other are we
talking a few thousand now you would not
be more than five hundred thousand two
thousand but that's not that's a small
number how many should there be I mean
that is I think of focus if we have more
developers both in corporate
environments in startups in all kinds of
different
of organizations I think that's what's
going to drive adoption well I mean at
that level I think once you see
large-scale adoption by things like
banks which i think is happening frankly
faster than any of you Julie oriented to
i think the the sudden realization from
developers that if you want to make an
awful lot of money working for bounce
you need to get good at bok choy you're
an onus on the who is going to drive
getting more developers out there so
early on we had an exercise that you led
in Toronto where we were trying to
figure out branding for a theorem and I
think one of our conclusions was that we
should target messages to developers not
really the end users but let those
developers build their business models
and find their niches and their
customers and let them market to the end
user so not really mark not really
ethereal but you know netflix on a
theorem or prediction markets on
etherium something like that that's
certainly one approach we could try to
emphasize that it is built on the
theorem sort of an theorem inside type
branding campaign I don't know I don't
know if I guess at this early stage
because it's really very early in this
niche we kind of have to do everything
so we probably should be branding a
theorem itself and helping developers
brand their projects as well so when we
round I think it's important to
understand whether we're branding
against what we're branding against so
branding allows us to differentiate
ourselves so are we branding against
like other things in this space
re-branding ourselves as you know
against sort of the internet which I
guess vinay you once said coke doesn't
doesn't actually compete against Pepsi
it competes against water and our water
is just the top down command and control
the world probably and our Pepsi is
Bitcoin I would guess so therefore at a
Bitcoin conference that we tailor the
message and for the rest of the time I
think your inclination has always been
to not even think about Bitcoin
irrelevant I think that's becoming
torrent or what do you think is the
analogy is it is it like a Linux is it
like a Java is it like another bitcoin
is it what's there now analogy that
athyrium can grow up to I think I think
it's the HTTPS padlock so this notion
that you've got the HTTPS power block
which is this kind of ubiquitous symbol
it means security the notion you see the
ethereal diamond and you know that the
system will be secure and will be well
behaved and seems pretty reasonable to
me that you know you look on a browser
if it doesn't have the diamond it's not
a dark it's not securing you know your
money's at rescue normally know why so I
think that would be a possible long-term
get a model of public consciousness you
know the the you know the sigil equals
secure icon in a particular place we're
kind of undermining the very thing that
were actually providing which is an
actually secure platform so maybe that
having you know the mist browser
identify assets that come off untrusted
interested origins is kind of delivers
the same thing but but but allows the
user the default should be decentralized
and a secure use of your secrets we can
can probably get there in time when if
Darien becomes ubiquitous and everybody
just expects this trust minimize
computing platform I think that makes
sense but for now I think we need to
deliver the message for now oh it's a
world of human beings and human beings
need branding in order to unless they're
going to inspect the byte codes
themselves which not too many of us will
do we need trusted authorities
unfortunately to teach us what's right
to teach us what's secure and even even
when a theorem does become ubiquitous i
would estimate that there that branding
will still be really important that
they'll be this is one service that
provides financial instruments and
another service that provides financial
instruments and they'll need to
differentiate themselves somehow and
apparently that's how we do it with
branding chief saml keyword how can I a
theorem achieve Network effects so that
it can be deployed more aggressively and
quicker there's a theory that when there
when that when the network effects
something starts to kick in then growth
happens much more efficiently
so what are your thoughts on network
effects and etherium infrastructure and
applications so with people using so the
obviously athyrium itself is difficult
to achieve network and effects without
yeah there's no intrinsic networking
until people have ways of interoperating
and so that infrastructure is we will
provide the ways of interoperating so
things like registries identity all the
things that we chatted about in the
standardization panel this needs to be
built and built and built and then built
upon again and it's that that will allow
will bring the rich commons of you know
user interaction that will ultimately
deliver thee you know these these
effects yeah i agree infrastructure and
applications and to get there we need
money money and more money so bitcoin
has received the Bitcoin space has
received the benefit of about a billion
dollars over the last year of vc
investment and from what I've seen I
would love to hear your comments but
from what I've seen a lot of VCS are
really paying attention certainly a lot
of banks and accounting firms and other
sorts of business issues are paying a
lot of attention to what they can do on
a theorem that they can't do on any
other system and I would I couldn't
imagine very easily seeing a billion or
two billion or n billion dollars coming
into the ecosystem over the next year or
a few years and that will build
applications but scalability is the
major issue that that this system faces
and without taking some of that VC money
and driving it down into the
infrastructure into the plumbing that
basically looks like every company
that's getting funded should probably
consider devoting ten twenty percent
you helping out at the foundation level
building the protocol building a
scalable system I think that's an easy
sell to VCS do you want our product or
service to be accessible to a fairly
limited swath of the planet or do you
want it to be accessible to 7 billion
people ultimately or 12 billion people
ultimately when we get there yeah so you
mentioned the banks and and this is a
very important point which we kind of
are taking for granted but we're
discussing last night and if you think
about it the banks have not touched the
coin but they are embracing etherium and
there are numerous banks that are either
trying it or doing proof of concepts and
and that's a big achievement that is
kind of a bit I think understated
because half of them don't want anybody
to know that they are doing it but some
of the other half are saying that they
are doing stuff on a theorem and I think
that that's a big achievement and
hopefully it's going to have a side
effect of more growth and more and more
adoption as well so it's up to us to
start to tell those stories I think the
market wants to hear stories wants to
hear different use cases and best
practices I mean I think of this a lot
of this is because the theorem is seen
as being kind of politically safer than
Bitcoin you know the etherion community
has a pretty kind of straight down the
line technology computer science
decentralization as an effect but
without really naming our enemies and I
think that that's been very helpful
because the banks have been desperate to
do something with Bitcoin but didn't
want to get a whole bunch of political
rhetoric alongside of it and the sort of
economics narrative about
decentralization is efficient with the
current technology base therefore it's
inevitable and doesn't force the
confrontation it just accepts that the
most efficient form will be a
decentralized firms there'll be a
migration over into the
forms and I think that that's really the
adoption curve that you know we forget
the decentralization is something which
is our global mega trend because of
things like cheaper super solar panels
aging grade there are lots of things
that are pushing us towards this kind of
d centroids were couldn't just
availability and networking so we're
another part of this global mega trend
which means that for example the banks
are looking this up you know part of a
whole system of operations so it's not
that we're selling a single technology
it's if you're looking to adapt to this
inevitable decentralization of society
because of a multi dimensional shift in
the technology base then this is a
positive thing that you can do to
survive those transitions there's a
there's a slow but very inevitable curve
here the things are going down and
there's no way back up that curve that's
just what the technology looks like that
this definitely has the feel of
inevitability so so if we have two
thousand developers more or less now on
athyrium let's say next year or whenever
the next Def Con is how many do you
think we should there be developers on
net doing a theorem 5,000 10,000 so I
can imagine next Def Con whether it's
six months from now or 12 months from
now I would imagine that for every
developer here there's a be ten in six
months and I don't even want to
speculate what it's going to be in in 12
months I think we joked about hiring out
Wembley for this event this year but who
knows give it maybe we'll have a town in
Kazakhstan or something I mean it's not
just developer bound right it's also
tool bound so I think there are a lot of
kind of big web shops you know the kind
of 20-30 person Internet companies that
could very easily wind up with one or
two athyrium guys on staff and
someone's hair tools and support
services that would then be in a
position to develop and deployed apps
without necessarily having massive
internal expertise so I think you could
see the number of institutions are
functionally able to commission or
deliver an app could be a hundred times
what it is now in a year even if most of
the understanding is relatively shallow
because most of the DAPs will be called
as similar as websites are to each other
yeah i think the developer numbers are
kind of an interesting one there's a lot
of gray area that the way that we've
we've made the api's are such that
there's a relatively easy on ramp from
traditional web stuff into sort of
full-on consensus coding so at the one
end you know it's much of it is about
sort of classic HTML CSS javascript
stuff at the other end is maybe you know
some pretty hardcore game theory in
solidity and in between there's an
entire spectrum of f of ability so what
you're saying that summed apps are kind
of invisible they're doing their job in
the background and well I guess that the
point is that the the actual number of
developers are very difficult to
actually guess because quite a lot of
the there could be like already there
could be over 10,000 that know that
there is such a thing as like this web
three object that has you know allows
you to interact with some magic
invisible server I think that's
reasonable i think there might be 10,000
people who've taken a glance at this
technology haven't haven't spent more
than an hour or two but you know i do
that with lots of different technologies
give it a good solid 30 minutes but I
think at in two years from now four
years from now I think the notion of
developer might even change this kind of
infrastructure is going to enable us to
build two puzzle pieces or building
blocks out of
smart contracts or smart clauses that
you can compose into smart contracts and
so I think lawyers business dev people
could end up being quite technical so in
one of the things i think it's worth
discussing is you know really there's
going to be blood on the tiles but one
of the things i've been talking about is
that etherium is potentially the first
really effective tool kit for white
collar automation that you can see lots
and lots and lots of people whose job it
is to do the perform transactions in
relatively high trust networks like
interbank trading type stuff that you
could see entire departments basically
be replaced by you know half a dozen
tabs and the notion that one of the huge
drivers for a theory of development is
going to be you know essentially firing
paper pushers and replacing them with
technology it's a hell of a thing to
think of yourself as being the bleeding
edge technological unemployment but I do
think that that could be a huge part of
what drives adoption in the initial few
stages is large organizations are under
financial pressure because the markets
are so kind of rough and you know taking
ten fifteen twenty percent of their head
counts you know simply because they
could go through and they can just take
problems that are currently mad rollick
and turn them into consensus problems
just feel kind of like where IBM in the
fifties to be
Jeff how about the role of a mist and
the which is the special browser do you
think it has also a role in increasing
adoption at the end user level me could
it be like I have this vision we're
assuming miss gets adopted everywhere it
could be like the next kind of sass
equivalent in the sense that in big
companies when if something is not
available now employs we can go on the
web and sign up to anything that's not
available and they'll go and they'll
bypass IT and be happy with it so could
miss provide that kind of promise where
anybody can sign up and and conduct
trust based services without any any of
anybody's authorization yeah the facial
mist is gonna be a critical column in
the push for adoption of etherium and of
the wider api's that are needed to
really sort of maximize the value of
ethereum and it's I mean you know it's
not just missed there's also various
other projects out there that are trying
to bring these api is into you know
user-focused gateway beyond the death
grants or private projects yeah i mean i
think the concept behind it is self like
having the self ownership and self
authority to to get on a service that
has a strut that has a trust-based
component without asking anybody's
authorization without asking the IT
department for for something that's the
promise i think if you read if you read
a i think it was Eric Raymond's book
again what how little Linux become so so
incredibly popular it was called under
the radar and that was it right the
Linux was too easy to not use as a as a
sysadmin in a big corporation if you
used like if you if you had a niggling
problem with your I your IT
infrastructure then you could either
fill out however many forms pray ET home
preity old garden and an MPEG your
manager to to sign off an additional
operating system license and whatever I
don't know hardware that would require
or you would just find some all dead box
in the corner and install slack wire on
it and that's why linux in the
enterprise is a thing is because the IT
guys didn't have to ask permission maybe
we should give away etherium for free
switching gears a little bit and really
curious about your thoughts on IOT as a
use case as a driver for etherium
adoption I been surprised to hear lots
of different opinions on that I think
it's a no-brainer but many people still
think that that more traditional
architectures maybe they have vested
interests but more traditional
architectures would be better for IOT
what do you think some of the benefits
of etherium would be 4i o different IOT
use cases so I mean in a nutshell
they're idiots no-brainer I mean you
know when when you see you know you see
I don't know Kristoff a sort of you know
talking vision of lots and resources in
general being controlled in a
decentralized fashion and then you see
on the other end of the scale IBM saying
exactly the same thing then you got to
start thinking actually there's probably
something in it you know it's the only
way to scale you know if you talk to IBM
the first thing they say is well you
know we don't we don't want to run the
server infrastructure there's necessary
to drive this amount of stuff we don't
want to have the legal department draw
up contracts for all the various parties
to have to coordinate with each other
over things like you know data privacy
we just don't want to do that that's not
our core competency it's not work that
anyone enjoys there has to be a
technological solution and they found it
in four years i use induced job by IOT
in a computer security complex as the
totally insecure internet of totally
unsecure things
and the notion that kind of smart
contracts provide you a meaningful
alternative to you know tens of millions
or billions of tiny little hackable
boxes that could give hackers the
ability to turn off entire cities you
know it seems like there's just no way
of building a security model that isn't
smart contracts for IOT I mean I just
there seems to be no other path forward
and so a bit like canna Linux gets mass
adoption through Android devices I think
that might be the parallel to a theorem
in IOT IOT is a terrifying future in a
in a centralized context where for sure
should we open it up to some questions
so how much more time do we have what's
the time frame I think there's questions
there
hello um so I'm really excited about the
potential for erm to form sort of the
bedrock of a new socio-economic paradigm
um however I'm also a non developer I am
NOT a dude and I don't work for a bank
so I kind of can't help but get the
feeling that you're baking a fatal flaw
into your system at its inception by
focusing so much on such a narrow
demographic and so I'm wondering what
sort of outreach and engagement
activities you have to try to encourage
demand rather than focus solely on the
supply of this new system that's a very
good question
this ties back to your question about
brand so I think ya mean it is a potion
of Paul and I can I don't speak on
behalf of the theorem necessary but I
think yeah we can do mean a theorem can
do more perhaps or maybe the whole
ecosystem can do more in education
anybody who is on it athyrium has a
responsibility or has a I don't want to
say obligation to to be themselves in
evangelist and tell others about it I
think yeah a tough question but a good
question I can address it from a couple
of perspectives from the Foundation's
perspective focus on making a multi cig
wallet really elegant and easy to use
focus on making a beautiful very elegant
missed ether browser experience I think
and hope that that will make it easy for
non-technical people to appreciate some
of the early benefits of the ecosystem
at consensus were putting together games
we're also putting together an
accounting system we don't expect people
to who are very interested in checking
out a theorem we don't expect them to
fire up the accounting system in the in
the first day so we're trying to build
some decentralized applications poker
democracy Dow Wars prediction markets or
trying to put together a very
entertaining skin for one of our
prediction market offerings so we are
indeed trying to create applications for
normal people and it's just going to
take some time it platforms only been
out for a short while and people are
still developing I think I'd say that
I'm by and large demand has always been
a major concern for us as architects of
the system but perhaps not in quite the
same way that
that everybody thinks of it we've always
considered the end users so to speak
from our point of view to be the
developers that are going to use this to
make the final sort of applications and
infrastructure so from our point of view
the the man that were trying to create
is having having developers want to come
to the platform find it easy to get to
grips with find easy to learn and find
it easy to develop on so from our point
of view it's always about making the API
is as transparent as possible making
things as making the tools in order to
make developers as comfortable as
possible to arm to understand what it is
that they're doing so I think there's
another way of seeing this which is
basically it is the parallel case
Bitcoin query you need lots of mass
adoption lots of understanding lots of
people using it or is it SQL where
everybody's using it already because the
infrastructure runs on it and it's just
an invisible substrate and my gas is the
etherium is going to wind up being
closer to the SQL end of the spectrum
and although if we will bind up being a
major brand inside a computer security
where you know athyrium saw inside
equals doesn't get hacked that it could
be the other way around but at this
point I think that the people that have
the ability to meaningfully deploy adapt
that will be then used by other people
are relatively small right it's
institutions for which people are
already customers which is why the banks
are so exciting they've already got huge
customer bases or its people that are
creating tools for other people to use
the big turning point is if we get a big
social web type app only theorem or a
big game right if you see you know world
of warcraft manages its magic swords on
etherium or you get a decentralized
reddit where people come actually make a
living as content finders editors
creators you know something like that
would suddenly change it imogen heap's
fair trade music stuff would be another
possibility if you saw systemic
transformation around fair trade music
something like that but I think that I
mean this is one of these things where a
lot of it is too early
tell like we're gonna wind up following
one of those trends as it begins to go
you know zoom but until it kind of
achieves that liftoff we're kind of
guessing and keeping our options open on
that and rather than have an actual
fixed strategy because we don't really
know what people will make of our work
you know that's very much something
where we have to follow the public
rather than lead them or maybe I have
thought wrong I mean yeah I mean in
fairness a theorem has only been out in
the wild for three and a half months
barely for more or less so it's it's
still very very new and and as yeah as
Jeff azurite kevin was saying before the
focus was the end you at the end user
was a developer and now as more and more
apps get out there then the end user
will also be the end user like the user
the non technical user great another
question out there yeah give a couple
questions and say perhaps Gavin's right
and maps in a long-term Bitcoin will be
in a relevance in comparison to a
theorem and but surely at this at this
point in bitcoins evolution and a
theorems evolution not only are there so
many lessons to learn from what's
happening in the Bitcoin ecosystem but
also there's a very valuable work it's
being carried out funded by those
billion dollars of VC money and so I
just wonder I I think bitcoins not
talking about a theorem but the theorem
is also made the conscious choice not to
talk about some of the work that's
happening Bitcoin I just like your
thoughts on that strategic decision
within this conference yeah I mean so in
terms of irrelevant let's be clear I
didn't mean that Bitcoin was irrelevant
in general but rather simply irrelevant
from the point of view of what is the
etherium platform art you know were not
direct competitors etherium is very much
a platform for doing distributed
applications bitcoin is very much you
know its own its own thing it's in terms
of a currency
sorry for getting into trouble there I
agree we are a decentralized application
platform are our token is a crypto fuel
first and foremost and if you want to
pay people with that crypto fuel it
works pretty well for that purpose also
next question hi with the abduction of a
government smart contact have you ever
thought about the social changes needed
to order our vision of work because for
example a lot of white collar works will
simply disappear I think heard you say
what did we take the theorem in the
future of work because the white collar
work would disappear was that the
question um well we know that
technological unemployment is going to
hit really hard one part of my family
are Scottish working class from areas
that were completely destroyed when
shipbuilding cease to be an industry and
you know I would quite like to see you
know that kind of stuff happened to
large areas where educated people are
stuck in completely unproductive rules
crucian transactional paperwork between
organizations you know I mean we've got
a real problem that we've got more human
capacity and more intelligence and we
have jobs for that's a limitation of the
institutions of limitation of the
questions you know if we could figure
out how to organize society around
something like I don't know building on
morrow space and then maybe taking a
crack at interstellar travel I think
we'd find a place for every intelligent
person on earth to work to the limit of
their capability so if we have to go
through technological unemployment
followed by a revolutionary
renegotiation of the goals of the human
race I think that would be a good thing
if we just get the detector logical
unemployment without the renegotiation
about the long-term goals this would not
be so good okay I think we got time for
one more question
hi I think some of the demand for a
serum based applications can come from
identity management i dint digital
identity space and that was wondering
what do you think how a serum can help
to make identity schemes more efficient
effective and maybe you can touch on the
the terms of privacy and that was
happening was transparencies bryson the
networking sure so we are talking with
lots of groups and working on building
an identity persona system integrated
with a reputation system so essentially
our strategy is to do our best to map
what we see in terms of our
interpersonal interactions into that
space so we believe that we represent
ourselves from different personas and
that we interact from different personas
whether we're buying or selling or
lending borrowing repaying or working
together on a project or playing games
together and so they're in our you port
wallet there is an anchor a
cryptographic key pair that serves as an
anchor for multiple personas that you
can create for yourself you can have one
or many you probably want to have one
canonical persona to which you attach
identifiers like email address
attributes like a state-issued
identification certificate and if you
can set up other personas that can be
unlinked in unlink able to your
canonical persona so if you want to not
have your gamer persona associated with
your canonical and work persona then you
can do that
and in order to make these things sort
of fuzzy and and richly representative
of who we are and and more trustful
because people can look at them and say
oh that person has so many different
kinds of interactions they couldn't
possibly be spoofed persona serves as a
container for reputational attributes
and reputational attestations so
attributes are things that you know
about yourself control things like
financial records health records again
that the state issued ID and those are
cryptographically encoded and granularly
accessible if you make them accessible
to whoever you need to see those so if
you want to send your certain medical
records to your eye doctor you you don't
need to send your your full medical
history you can select what's necessary
attestations are things that people a
test about you but your conduct in
different transactions so those
transactions can be on blockchain
transactions in the different kinds of
situations that I described or even
physical transaction so there's also the
notion of just like having a cell phone
broadcasting your presence Vinay has his
broadcasting his presence and its opt-in
we turn these things on because it's
valuable to us to have each other a test
to the fact that we were here in this
time and space and so you can create a
very rich personal profile that's
granularly private yeah I think that's a
that's a good start and I can certainly
be done on the technology as it stands I
think that we're going to need some
further sort of developments especially
in terms of zero knowledge proofs to
guarantee that for example if I have
multiple personas it may be that I
actually want one persona to sort of
vouch for the other one and say actually
there is some this isn't maybe a master
persona but it's like a slave persona
down
indeed to increase my privacy in
particular ways but I still want to
without actually transparently linking
them allow one to to state that yeah
this is a real person there is some
government issued ID but I want to tell
you anything else about it and for that
we're going to need a little bit more
attack in where all this kinda reaches a
terminal point is DNA DNA sequencing IRS
scanning and all the rest of that are
falling in price extremely rapidly it
seems like most future generations of
computing devices well at least
fingerprint identification possibly
facial eyeballs and so at some point
there's going to be a settlement or an
interconnection of biometrics and block
chains and the necessary crypt
cryptography to separate those two to
the point where you've got some hope of
privacy in the future and control of
your identity it's kind of this ongoing
technical negotiation so the zero
knowledge proofs come in from one side
and we have to develop the technology
side as fast as the biometrics are
adopted because otherwise it's almost
inevitably wind up with carob biometric
panopticon where somebody's bank gets
hacked and they released you know half a
million DNA records like there are
unthinkable privacy implications as that
kind of stuff those onwards so again
it's a bit like I OT there's really no
other way of doing this you know we have
to accept that we're going to have to
build these systems but we have to do it
with the expectation that they're robust
10 20 30 years out when DNA sequencing
is fifteen cents well thank you guys um
come around with us