MakerDAO FriDAI Brunch Series, 25 Feb 2021

Previous Meeting Next Meeting

⏯

youtube image

►

From YouTube: FriDAI Brunch n9: Blockchain for Humanity

Description

A discussion focused on how blockchain technology can be a fundamental asset for humanity and social causes. Due to its transparent nature, blockchain can create new means of giving, accepting and distributing donations.
We talked about the current and future applications and opportunities with two relevant speakers:

Simona Pop - Head of Community at Status
Mehran Hydary - Product Manager Blockchain at Unicef
Omar Majdoub - Event coordinator at Blockchain Society Ghana and co-founder of Afroblocks

A

Hello, everybody uh here we are for the ninth edition of uh friday. Brunch. These branches, as you know, are part of an event series focused on web-free blockchain topics dedicated to everyone. So all the newbies also experienced crypto enthusiasts everybody we today we are four people I mean we have three guests um plus me and.

B

C

A

In four different uh geographic areas, so we have uh mehran in new york, simon and uk and um gonzalo, who is now. I see him blocked gonzalo your your, I don't know, what's happening, but uh you should probably reload your camera.

A

Okay. Now I see you um he is in africa in ghana and today we will talk about the blo, how blockchain can impact positively on society and humanity. So I uh invited these speakers because they uh somehow are all involved in um in the in this kind of of activities uh related to society, charity or uh positive impact on the on the society.

A

um We are waiting now for gandara to reconnect, but in the meantime I would like to start introducing um to start introducing uh the other guests. So uh if you want to merano to say some words about you uh and your background.

C

Sure uh sounds good. Thank you. Everyone uh for joining today's panel, my name is miran haideri and I'm currently a product manager at unicef's blockchain team, I'm as a product manager at unicef's blockchain team, I'm working with various un agencies, unicef itself and also governments around the world to figure out what exactly they want to do with cryptocurrencies and blockchain.

C

uh Prior to that, I did work at deloitte's blockchain team and before that I graduated from electrical engineering at the university of toronto excited to be on the panel today.

A

Thank you mehran. Thank you for the introduction. um Then we we can go with you simona sure.

D

um So hi everyone, I'm simona. I currently head up community and community strategy for status, that is a communications platform, a crypto wallet and a web3 browser. um Prior to this, um I co-founded the bounties network um and that's where a lot of the work that we did was around social and environmental impact.

D

It's how um I know maran and the unicef innovation team, and we can chat about that uh in a bit and then just generally, it's an area that interests me um in, particularly when it comes to web 3 and what crypto can achieve in terms of leveling out the playing field when it comes to resources to end to opportunity, not just in the traditional kind of points of economic and social prosperity, but um everywhere so excited to to be here.

A

Thank you, simona and then uh omar er. Can you or gonzalo okay.

B

A

Me we have these two names here so today we will call him gonzalo because we have we. We have to be friendly since it's a branch, but his name is omar actually so gonzalo. Please go ahead in introducing yourself.

B

A

Hello, everyone.

B

um Thanks thanks for thanks for having me on um so my name is uma or gunzero, um I'm a software developer and I uh developer very interested in nd5. So um I also co-founded afroblocks. That's a that's a community community events group in ghana, so um we we inform, educate people about about cryptocurrencies and we have church groups and uh and so on and we are trying to go more into um social media.

B

Now we used to be a physical, physical meetup, but because of the pandemic, we decided to to refocus on online online and social media.

A

Cool, thank you, hello, sabia, welcome. I see him in the chat, so um another quick, super, quick. uh Two words uh question to. uh I I to break the ice with you guys, so we start with miran, and the question is uh what is the first thing you think when you wake up in the morning could be also not crypto, but please be polite.

C

Yeah yeah, of course I mean it's, it's very difficult to not jump into twitter or my emails right away. So I have. I have a ritual that I need to complete before I actually do.

C

You know, jump into work, and so for me the first few things that I think about is you know getting my coffee straight, um taking a shower um catching up on messages that are not blockchain or crypto related, because you know I found that once you dive in your entire day just it starts, and you don't even know when it ends, and so I make sure that.

B

I take care of.

C

Myself before diving into work in the crypto space.

A

D

That's a good one. You definitely have to uh to make sure you don't dive straight into the crypto rabbit hole because, like you say it's just like eternity after that, um I definitely used to do that. So um I would essentially get my phone to stop my alarm and then there would be all of these notifications.

D

That would just be like. Oh my god, I need to look into this immediately and um yeah, um but now um I've kind of started doing this thing where um I shared yesterday um on twitter. Actually, I started um having this practice of browsing crypto art on super rare with my coffee, and I find it such a nice kind of tranquil experience of just seeing you know new art, potentially new artists or new art, from artists that I follow and it's actually a really really nice way to ease in.

B

D

Kind of crypto but kind of yeah, not necessarily as high speed as um typical crypto things are, and then um I was having uh you know a conversation in the comments and um somebody said well. Actually that would be super stressful to me, because I would want to buy everything and I can't literally buy everything so it's it can be a little bit of a of an interesting experience, depending on where you are in terms of crypto.

A

Art, so that's amazing, also now crypto art is super formal and I think uh it's great to see how it is evolving uh and gonzalo.

B

Okay, so um it's like this, is I don't really wake up in the morning? um I work um I work. I work at night, so um the first. The first thing I think of I want to wake up, is my son and then uh my coffee and then about to go back to crypto and work. You know.

A

Good, I am also a dog, and the first thing I need to do is uh bring her to pee. So that's that's when you, you have to think to someone else of.

C

A

Okay, nice guys so and now we can jump in the main discussion. The first question: I think it's relevant for everyone and then I will uh um probably ask you a question each um and more specific for your profile. But if this first lesson for me is important, I mean for the audience to understand uh your like your attitude. You know. So uh what was your very first approach to the blockchain in general and when you did realize that the blockchain could somehow um solve some problems that we face in the society uh and how?

A

uh How did you engage in indeed, so we can start uh again with with miran and then uh follow the order.

C

uh Sounds good, so uh my first experience with blockchain was specifically with bitcoin, and I think I was a bit lucky because at my previous job we actually had a bitcoin atm in our lobby downstairs. So I'd come into the office when I'd leave the office. I would always see this bitcoin atm, but it actually took me a few months to approach. You know this, this weird device weird at the time, so this was back. I guess in 2016.

C

I was like one year out of school and you know you hear about bitcoin in the media, but you don't take it too seriously because I'm like oh, I need to find a real job.

C

I need to do this and I guess I was just naive in that sense, um but when I did start at deloitte, um I had a friend that started with me and she started on the blockchain team and I was doing like normal business work at a consulting firm and so um at some point I think we were leaving the office together. My friend her name is moada basir. She currently works at polymath, so you know also neck deep in blockchain. Right now she was like hey marin.

C

Did you know if you put a 20 bill in this atm, um you can get bitcoin and I was like okay, like you need to unpack that for me, and so um you know she knew. I was a fairly technical person because I studied engineering, and so she dove into you, know private keys, having control of your money, and you know it still didn't click to me. I was like you know we we can go to our banks.

C

We can open a savings, account like what's the point and then she started giving me a more global context. She's, like you know, in north america, we don't have issues holding our money, opening a savings account if you move from toronto to a different place.

C

You'll still have access to your money, and it's all fine here, but if you now expand that scope to you know different parts of the world, that's not always the case. People are getting displaced, people are having their governments turn on them um and all of a sudden, the money that they actually own is no longer theirs. uh And then you know with with the explanation that she gave me around private keys and and owning your crypto wallet and owning your bitcoin.

C

I my curiosity was was properly sparked and and since then I actually didn't look back. I actually very quickly moved to deloitte's blockchain team to start my career in that space, and you know it's it's been blockchain ever since. So I think I I learned about bitcoin end of 2016 and then I moved into the blockchain team a month after and it's been a great journey since then, so that was my first encounter.

A

Thank you very, very nice, simona.

D

That's definitely a good one with the uh atm in the hallway. It's just like the omens were there for you.

C

D

Love it. um I did not have a bitcoin atm in my um story, but I think one of the main things that struck me very early on was this ability to transact um without having to go through the usual banking rails, and I think from there obviously looking at the fact that those banking rails very much like miran mentioned, are not there for everywhere.

D

We just assume there's you know this is the status quo everywhere, but actually you have not just the unbanked that you hear about and we constantly kind of um have that thrown around here and there and everywhere.

D

But you have people who are underbanked so stuff is there, but it's just not serving them really in any shape or form, and I think that ability to transact cross borders and cross kind of currencies and all of that that comes all of the heavy admin fee network um implications that come with the traditional uh banking transfer was just suddenly removed, and you could do all of these um transacting of value without the need for people to have a bank account or to be a part of the swift network or to be.

D

You know this that in the other role of these requirements- um and I think that's where it really clicked for me in terms of that access that I mentioned earlier, because you're suddenly, like oh okay, this actually opens up all of this potential and all of these possibilities that just have not been there for decades on end um and so yeah once that kind of sparked it was just okay. How can we get this going immediately?

D

A

Yeah, I I more or less had the same experience as you, uh especially talking about defy in particular, no because it these these things that you are seeing is even more true in in the decentralized finance uh the inclusion etc. uh But I want to.

D

Hear well chat about that in a second whether d5 is inclusive. Let's, let's get to that.

A

Okay, that that was my my experience. um Actually, my very first experience was cryptokitty.

A

If I have to be sincere but um okay ganza, I want to hear from you because I think you are, I mean you come from a very different uh uh geographic area, but also a different culture, especially as regard the financial and economic situation. So uh please tell us about your your experience.

B

Well, um okay, so um before I head about bitcoin, bitcoin and blockchain technology, um I had some bad experiences with international payments.

B

um It's like um I wanted to write um american sat exams, but um I had um I had to pay for them. So I went to the banks in ghana and I told them I need to make a payment for for these exams and uh they said they can't help me all right. So um I had to find a friend who had to have the u.s bank account to pay.

B

I have to pay my sat exams and then um I traveled I traveled to europe, so I was in spain and um and then later later I went to I went to I went to england, and then um I realized that when you, when you travel on a student visa, um your financial and banking activities are restricted.

B

um You can't really be receiving money. You can't really be sending money and um also you can't also receive money from from africa, because I'm in those days they'll tell you that you know you can't send money abroad for for education only for only for business.

B

All right, then, um when I was in honors england um I had. I heard about uh currencies like eagles and limited liberty reserve okay, which allowed you to have um international payments.

B

But then I read that I read the fbi. Everyone went and closed, close them down, okay, so um um it was a while and then um at the beginning of bitcoin, because um I'm a programmer- and I follow I full of programmers news, but I thought I thought it was a game currency or some some student currency, and I thought I thought he was a part and he was useless. Okay, then uh I noticed people are saying the price rising. The price has dropped the price rising again people people are wealthy.

B

Now, so I decided I decided to look into bitcoin and when I research into it, I said this is exactly what I'm looking for. You know a decentralized platform to just receive money without permission from anyone.

A

And okay and uh yeah, of course, uh this experience I mean was uh teaching how blockchain could actually help the society. Somehow.

A

I think that this is the main point in the end uh that you all of you guys mentioned uh the fact that uh this is something bordered borderless without the need of intermediaries, and I mean it's easy, transparent, mostly transparent and uh that's the thing in the end, but I want to um ask something to mehran who is actually working for a very big organization operating in the charity uh sector.

A

As you know, everybody knows unicef, um and I want to to ask uh where, in your opinion, in which area there are different areas of of charity, so there are uh humanitarian, health, uh welfare, uh uh earth and angental issues etc.

A

So in which area do you think blockchain could have as now and could have in in years uh the most impact? uh This is the question.

C

uh Yeah so um before before I jump into that, I wanted to add. uh I have over 100 cryptokitties. So so yes.

A

Like you know, I don't have mine anymore.

C

I know yes, I bought a ton. I even made some of my friends get into crypto. I was like hey for my birthday, uh buy some ether and send me a cryptokitty, and you know I'm sure they'll. Thank me in a few years with whatever leftover ether they have in their wallets um but yeah.

C

I just wanted to throw that out there um so now how I see blockchain and crypto, impacting in the short term and in the long term, um so at unicef you know we focus on child children, emergencies around the world, and so we look at a variety of different things.

C

We look at how blockchain and crypto can impact education, uh financial inclusion and all these different areas, and so I think, with the state of the technology now I think, there's a lot of potential to actually enable financial inclusion for a lot of the areas that we work in, and so you know it doesn't mean that we want children to start interacting with you know financial derivatives or have these complex trading accounts. I think to have the children and their parents have access to normal savings accounts that are tied to their identity.

C

In some sense, um I think that's gonna be one of the big use cases that we'll see roll out. um You know if we're lucky, we may even see community lending, for example, with crypto, be a big use case that that occurs as well. uh We worked with a university in the u.s that built us a very small prototype. They actually took a compounds, lending protocol and they're like if we can set this up at a school. Have parents invest together, and you know compound will then take that crypto.

C

Invest it or or lend it out in the defy ecosystem and whatever interest that it generates for the school can be put back into the school to pay teachers. Maybe pay for internet connectivity, um that's kind of like what a small use case that we're exploring um so that's kind of where we see things happening now and a lot of interest. I think in the blockchain community is how can these d5 protocols impact um things now.

A

C

um In in the yeah go ahead.

A

No, I I was mentioning that this is actually a a super cool use case, the one of the landing platform, and it can be actually done with several of them, because there is also a for example, yeah.

A

um But uh please go ahead with the long-term uh vision.

C

Yeah, I I think uh one of the biggest problems that a lot of people are trying to tackle in the cryptocurrency in blockchain space is what constitutes as an identity.

C

uh So you know we have this decentralized platform now that allows people to exchange value exchange data, but at the end of the day, we're still asking who, in this network or what in this network, will validate a person right. So do we need to get doctors involved to say you know here: are the birth certificates for a certain person? Do we need to get governments involved? Does this wallet need to have a certain number of transactions?

C

I think we're still in the early stages to say that blockchain identities are tied to a blockchain wallet, or this government dictates that this wallet is this person, but I think you know, as more and more people come into the space as user experiences improve as more and more people interact with blockchain, I think in in 10 years time there will be a solid case for having identities um somehow be represented on on crypto or blockchain networks.

A

Yeah, I think especially for this kind of big uh big uh organization as a unicef, um I think regulations are a bit. I mean I mean a bit important there uh regulatory framework, but now, as you as you mentioned, uh as defiant and crypto uh are growing, uh institutions and regulators are paying more and more attention and they will be um and also to create, I think, uh to create faith and trust in the fi in the users. You know you need.

A

You need the some regulatory framework, especially when you are dealing with these kind of things like charity, causes, etc.

C

And what's interesting now is uh unicef is uniquely positioned to work with a lot of different governments and un agencies, and a lot of them are willing to set up sandbox environments to actually pursue various experiments, whether it's with crypto and d5, whether it is representing identity on blockchain, and so we have a lot of prototypes that we're running at unicef or helping other government agencies or other un offices, run to experiment and see how blockchain can be applied in this context. So they're definitely interested.

C

They want to use that research to build out policies and regulatory frameworks, and that's why I think in 10 years, we'll get closer to the sovereign identity that I think everyone's pursuing.

A

Yeah, I think I think it's great personally, that unicef is dealing with this, because it can be private for a lot of other uh uh organizations uh that now are far away from the using blockchain technology, for example, because you guys are like og of the big organization uh in these kind of things. You know- and uh maybe you can be, uh of example, uh to the others uh thanks.

A

I really much appreciate your uh your uh answer, and, and now I want to ask something to simona, so um it it has been a while that you are in the space that you have been in the space now, because I remember you from the very first travel I made uh during my uh blockchain, I mean timona is everywhere and they better she's has always been, has always been there.

A

uh But um I wanted to know uh during this long journey you had, uh which was the best in in all always in terms of uh social impact etc, which was the best project you worked on and also, if you were not involved in in in project in in a project which project you think are the best. So far uh in india's uh english. In this scenario,.

D

So I think, my and again just because you mentioned that that I've been around for um for a good few years. It's now the fourth year, um which is like a thousand in normal life years, um but I think for me it's always been very, very important to essentially have the um to have that real life impact right. So what are the effects that crypto can have in real life and very early on from very early on?

D

I wanted to create these examples of what crypto could do or what it could be used for or what it could um essentially help in terms of affecting change, and one of the my I mean my absolute favorite, one is still bounties for the oceans where we set up this bounty that paid out a small amount of dye because we did it with maker dao.

D

um You were the first partner and we had like this bounty pot in die and we were paying people for cleanups and we just launched it and wanted to see what people would do um and to our big surprise, we had loads of people contributing to this bounty and started cleaning up all sorts of places all around the world, so europe, the us um argentina.

D

um I think we had somebody in tasmania literally everywhere, and what was really interesting was that none of these or most of these, the people who are doing it had no technical background, didn't necessarily have a an insight into cryptography or believe in decentralization or any of the other stuff. It was just hey, I'm gonna do this, and potentially um I can.

D

I can earn this cryptocurrency and I think that earning of crypto then, for me, really launched this dynamic of rewarding people for their time and also again, enabling that access to a resource in a much more straightforward way in a much simpler way than what was available. What has been available so far and from there we obviously did the pilot in the philippines, where we onboarded this um uh group of fishermen from this local community uh in manila bay, onboarded them all onto wallets. This was 2018.

D

Gas was cheap um but managed to onboard them onto mobile wallets and have them complete that same bounty, or rather a bounty that we had um set up specifically for it.

D

But the mechanism was the same and earned crypto as a means of uh of rewarding them for their work, essentially, and for me that pilot or that um event, or that kind of um you know organizing, that was to prove that you could actually create these opportunities and have funds come in from anywhere in the world, because we had different people contributing to that part of that bounty organizations.

D

Individuals. I had somebody reach out to me on linkedin and say: hey I've just been paid for this uh technical interview. Can I donate all the money to the pot, and I'm like, of course here it is you just go click contribute and and that's it and then the fact that you could build this flow in such a simple amount of steps and link people across the globe by this very simple mechanism is incredibly powerful and what it could mean for charities for organizations working for disaster relief.

D

For all of this, it just has those those um reverberations are profound, so I think for me that was incredibly eye-opening not just to the potential by any means, but also to the hindrances that we, you know to the hurdles that we still have to remove, that we still need to work on like don't make everything for desktop mobile. Is people access digital services from mobile around the world? Much more so just these or think of connectivity.

D

A lot of people don't have unlimited data on their phones. If you're gonna make them spend x amount of time to download something or to do something using up their data, you can't really do that or make it worth that data expenditure.

A

D

A

I uh I like uh I.

D

B

A

Super fan of your project, and also, besides from all over the world, uh something uh very important. You said that um not just uh uh crypto fans or technically informed people um join the uh you can reach everyone. uh Since uh the the point, uh in my opinion, uh is that you need to make it simple not to understand the process should be as simple as possible to be able to uh to to have a strong impact, of course, um and.

D

I'll I'll, just punctuate that with another example again for the initial um bounty for cleanups, we actually had brandon, who was part of the bounties network community, who was homeless in phoenix arizona and he was doing cleanups and earning crypto and he had access to a crypto atm and he was cashing out. I mean and.

A

I don't think he is. He was a like a.

D

Development, no, not a developer, not a but, like you say it's the simplicity of it. That makes it work because you have this, you do this! Here's the reward exactly.

A

And that's a that's a connect me to the next question that I want to do uh to make to uh gonzaro, um which is um in your opinion.

A

How much uh is it important for the common people so technically in general, for example, uh my mom to understand the blockchain technology in order to take the best um in the whole society?

A

uh So, in your opinion, it's that much important, that people understand the technicalities behind it or um you think, as we as you said, that you should not try to hide but try to make it simple for the audience to understand uh how how how to do actually things and another question also connected to this- is: do you think it's most relevant to educate people so final users or institutions to make the most impact on the on the society with the blockchain.

B

Okay, so um I believe them to uh to introduce people. um You don't have to go into a the very deep end of blockchain, because I remember even even for me um I was a developer and when I was learning about bitcoin people were talking about mining and and hashing, and then I got confused so um the simple way that someone showed me was: uh he brought out his wallet and he asked me to download the wallet and he transferred some money to me and I transferred some some money back to him.

B

So um you have to educate people in a way that um it's most useful for them and then gradually uh they'll be able to learn more so gradually. Don't, though, they will learn that okay um is it centralized, and how do you keep a decentralized system running? What are they? What are the the incentives so um at first at first, you have the other mining and disease you're moving on to proof of proof of stake. So a lot of people stick mistake money and uh um to validate transactions. So um it's a gradual process.

B

um So now the the exciting thing we have right now is uh is a d5. So it's a it's good to introduce people people to to to defy and to show them that they can buy coins. They can uh they can earn money from liquidity pools or they can they can. They can lend out money to people and they can also borrow money. So these are simple concepts for for people to to understand now.

B

The only problem now is the high gases, but uh like 50 1500 hundred dollars, gas fees, but um I think there's a lot of solutions come coming up and your second question um so myself, I'm a grassroots guy, I'm not I'm not an institution guy. Okay, so um I focus I focus on grassroots. um I announced an event I see who is interested.

B

People ask me questions and I spend time with them, because I think that institutions are are risk-averse and they um they follow the following established order. You know nobody, it's like they have, they have a real railway truck and they want to move on there on the on the railway track. Okay, um it's very risky for them to go up there of the other track and then, if they see that other big institutions like right now, um we heard that uh microstrategy bought bitcoin. You know, bitcoin, I mean oracle.

B

Oracle apple may now buy bitcoin, so uh israeli convince the institutions to um to to to move them yeah but but mind. You was individuals like michael cella and uh and elon musk, who who decided on the move to the bitcoin fest it wasn't. It wasn't a a boardroom meeting and and and they decided that.

A

So it's it's so it's! Finally, in the end, you you you say.

B

So yeah, so I say that yeah I'm focused focus on the um the common people.

A

So hello, one person who.

B

A

Him right, it's true, it's true you're. I mean you're completely right, um but I what? uh What I think uh is that you um so to have the most to have the most from the blockchain as a society, you need to influence as well the and educate as well the institutions.

A

However, you do this by starting from, as you said, individuals.

A

So now we are in the phase where we need to educate uh the final users and the individuals uh I agree, uh and then it comes uh maybe in five years or something it comes naturally, and uh I want to ask regarding education uh to simona, um since I know that you, like me, uh spent several, I mean a lot of time in in also educational activities.

A

What, in your opinion, are the best tools to educate people, uh mainstream audience uh in terms of um initiatives like concrete stuff, like workshop social media? What are you in your opinion?

A

D

Us um just.

B

D

Wanted I wanted to mention um just coming back to the the institutions um versus users, real quick, I think we're not that different from a usual tech adoption curve. You have innovators at the beginning and you have people falling into place like elon, musk, he's an innovator so and he's he's the boss of his own company. So he decided to do that very simple. um I think, obviously, individuals, it's much easier to have responsibility for you and yourself versus a whole tankard of an enterprise that you're dragging with you.

D

It's never gonna happen right, mainly because of the size and the risk at first uh adversity and so on. There's so many implications that an individual's responsibility is is um far less, uh I guess notable to to move um and then, in terms of education um I think earn.

D

um Sorry, I think, learn by doing is the best way, none of the things that we tend to think and if- and this is very simple- it's like classroom, stuff one-on-one and we all remember a lot of of this stuff anyway, when somebody presents you with a text with when you have to go through something that is a very passive assimilation of material, much much less gets stuck in your brain or you are able to put that into practice right theory practice a big or several steps need to happen in between those two, but when you learn by doing when you practically go into the things that you are learning about or apply them to very specific actions or two very specific scenarios, you essentially learn as a flow of interacting with the thing that you are learning about, and so I think this is why one of the main reasons for downloading the wallet doing something with a wallet performing a certain action in terms of staking or in terms of lending or in terms of sending that wires.

D

It into your mind and then potentially you do it two or three times. Then it becomes something that has is well on its way to become potentially a habit or become something that you do quite naturally, without um you know any kind of uh hiccups or um second guessing yourself, because you've actually done it and nothing bad has happened or something bad has happened, but you have learned from it, so you don't do it again, um so uh learn by doing is 110 the way to go.

A

I agree I agree, um I agree, but I also think that you, um especially in this time where we can't do like anything like physically I mean um sometimes it's also nice- to have conte good contents, which are not social media in my opinion, uh but uh like resources that people or videos or something that people can't read. Example, this conversation that we we are having now and in general. This is a series worth to um talk about something concrete uh and and then lead people to learn. By doing so,.

D

A

But that's what I mean: don't.

D

Don't do videos about decentralization? ah No! No, of course, do a guide about doing something. That's what I mean.

A

Yeah, that's exactly also the purpose of, for example. This is the panel of today to show people that we are doing something you know and uh speaking of which.

A

I want to know um the the main challenges that you face uh in your job, in your everyday job could be uh related um to to final users or to partners that you.

B

A

Because I think that you uh as a as a unicef uh are very um I mean you, you need to build a trust uh you know, so uh how? How can you do it, which are the challenges and your weapons, your tools to educate in this sense, to build trust.

C

uh Yeah for sure, so you know, I think that zara and simona touched on some very important points. uh What's interesting about our team is we're like a startup within this behemoth of an organization and it's and it's not just limited to unicef, because we're one of the larger un agencies. We actually do play a pretty big role in other un agencies and and countries, and governments also reach out to us and they're like hey, like we see that you're doing blockchain. How do we get involved now?

C

This imposes a very big challenge because there's a lot of interest from you know: blockchain startups and blockchain companies that are established in the ecosystem that are dying to do things with un agencies and governments. And then you have governments that really want to do a lot of this work. New agencies that are they get blockchain.

C

They get cryptocurrencies because over the last few years our team has done a lot of uh seminars and workshops to give them the fundamentals and practical experiences of like setting up wallets interacting with crypto using a test net, um because we have like that startup in the u.n kind of vibe.

C

Now we're getting to the point where institutions are ready to do things, but nobody wants to go first, and so um you know I'm meeting with uh people around the world. Ministers, governments they're like yeah. Let's do this thing, we'll give you the space: let's do the sandbox, but is someone else doing something similar similar already and we're like?

C

Yes and no they're, having the same conversations with us, but they're not really in that space, and so you know there's a lot of kind of um circling around. Like you know, we want to set up a crypto wallet, we want to accept crypto and, and so I'm chasing a lot of people in different time zones, different countries at different stages of exploration.

C

Now, on the flip side, um you know unicef, for example, recently set up a crypto fund that allows the organization to hold, accept and disperse crypto, and then you know that for a lot of these countries and governments in uni, un agencies is the thing that they needed to see to now start work on their side. They're like okay,.

D

C

Doing it so we can do it too, and so now, on the flip side, our small startup, like team, is now getting pulled in like 100 different directions with all of these organizations that want to set up a similar crypto fund structure in their organization as well and what's neat about it and what's also complex about it, which talks to a lot of the latency and slowness of working with large institutions.

C

Is it took us two years to set up because we had to engage our legal team, our finance team, our tech teams and now we're doing that times. You know 100 with all of the different groups that we work with, and so challenges are getting people um on board, but then, when they are on board it like it's exponential, so.

A

C

Those are my two big challenges right now.

A

I think I mean, I think we all. We all share these challenges, um but uh but you may be.

B

Happy even more.

A

Because you are dealing with these big institutions and yeah building trust is not easy, especially when I repeat myself when it comes to charity, etc and.

D

I just want to add quickly uh a little um kind of anecdote from. I can't remember, 2019 or something, and I think it was your lawyers moran, the unicef lawyers that were like what what are you doing with smart contracts? Why are you signing contracts without them? Yeah yeah.

C

Exactly it was just no no.

D

It's not that type of contract you just it's. Okay, it's.

A

C

But something as simple like that will impose like a one or two week: delay right and you're like yeah. We just need to launch the thing.

A

Yeah, we have to think about a blockchain in my opinion as internet. You know so now my mom goes on google and even my grandma went on google uh easily, but in the first years like what is this? Oh, my god. Oh no, oh wow, the same with credit cards. The same I mean it's a as simone. I said there is a, I mean any uh the curve of innovation and we need to follow, and now it's a hard time for us, because we are already there.

A

But people are not. You know, I mean a lot of people are not uh and um final question for gonzalo. uh We noticed a boom, so this year was.

A

Let me tell this word a for everyone, because, because of pandemic, so 2020 is too delayed, but for the blockchain was a huge, you know a bomb, a super good year. So do you think that there is a connection between the two things? Do.

B

A

Think that, for example, uh developers were super bored at home, so they started to you know producing a lot. I don't know what happened why we are now in this situation.

B

Okay, so um um so, first of all, I'm very amused that a lot of a lot of people have joined uh my lifestyle because I'm I'm afraid of freelance and remote remote developer, always working working from home or from from hubs so um yeah, and I can experience what uh what people people are. People are feeling now, so um the lockdown prevented them from moving moving around.

B

That is their tone. So what? What are the options? So um your economic social activities are restricted. So what can you do so you get to get on the internet and you search.

B

How can I make money, and then um you hear of someone who who put one thousand dollars um in defy and uh came out with like ten thousand dollars, you say wow, but let me check that out. You know that's very interesting, so you start to research, about our blockchain text and um about d5, and uh you learn.

C

B

Lot you know so you watch, you watch the youtube. um You follow twitter and uh because, because you I mean I have more time on your hands because you can't go to um you, don't spend two hours going to work, you don't go and visit friends in the in about the you know, so um you have more time. You have more time to research. So yes, I definitely feel that the pandemic has, as a has contributed to um the great interest in blockchain since last year.

A

Yeah, so I do you think what do you guys have to add something to this? Do you think there is a any link between the like the pandemic and the boom of the industry.

C

I mean I'm working at home and- and I think that means I put in more hours into the office, so I do spend more time personally researching different d5 protocols. I don't know where my day ends and when it starts so I think just the nature of that implies that I'm doing more work, but through that you know, people are putting in more work, they're, they're, looking and focusing on where the gaps are, because this is a strong community and you know they're, seeing more and more people are getting into the space.

C

So maybe, let's make learning resources easier to access. You know maker. I've seen you guys have a ton of good videos that teach people how to use your products, how to set up wallets. How to you know.

A

C

Vault, for example, um these things are getting better and better and I think it's a result of people having say more time because of the pandemic.

A

Yeah, I exactly I agree, I mean uh it is, uh I think uh people have more time to educate themselves and the uh researching a bit uh and the making experiments as well and.

D

B

A

Experiments and losing like um risking to lose some money because since we are not spending a lot of money to travel, to dress up to go out for dinner, you say: okay, you I have these 300 blocks left from my not made dinners outside.

A

Let's invest, I will try and then I think would be also the uh the reason. But but we don't know.

D

uh I think, in terms just quickly, I think, in terms of the accessibility to events, we have seen a lot more hackathons this year because they have been virtual and all of them across the board have had much much higher um attendance right because there isn't that um barrier of having to travel to a physical location.

D

So if denver case in point um had far far uh more developers signing up far far more uh viewers seeing the content and things like that, so this kind of dynamic of not having irl events is, is a double-edged sword, because it does mean that you can do less from an engagement perspective. But it does mean that you can have more people tuning in because they can just do it from their living room. um So I think that's also benefited um and in terms of what I've seen projects coming out of the hackathons.

D

Because again I have the pleasure of judging a lot of them or or seeing a lot of um the submissions. It's like moran said it is the taking what is there and then pushing it to the next level right, taking some of the landing stuff um lending stuff and putting it towards interesting use cases that solve a specific problem. So I think we're seeing a lot more of that trend as well, um where we don't just focus on making something fun for a weekend, but rather a solution that genuinely solves the problem.

A

Yeah, that was uh that that was, I actually what I actually mentioned in the first place, so developers are more focused because they are home and and they work I mean and, as we know from these appletons, a lot of very good solutions come out and, uh okay, uh I think we guys are close to the end of this panel. It was amazing to hear uh from you- uh and I want to to ask if you have anything to share.

A

I know miranda is in some.

A

Do you want to share the slide and then I copy paste the links.

C

I I mean, I think, if you share the links, it works, fine.

A

Share the links where you can read more about uh um about meranth's project and if you guys, simona and uh and ganzar wants also to put some linky in the chat. So people can can learn more about what you. What you share today and what you.

C

A

C

The three things I'm sharing are unicef's github uh all the work that we do is open source. So, if you're ever interested in contributing or learning what kind of things we're working on it's there, uh our email is there as well. So um you know our github not only has our blockchain projects, but it also has a lot of other things too.

C

So if you want to get more pointed to like you know, which which ones are the blockchain projects- uh email us- and I can- I can share that with you and then the last thing is our twitter page uh we're fairly active on twitter um you'll, see recently we actually got um some funding from elon musk's foundation to continue a lot of the work that we're doing so you can keep track of a lot of these cool updates uh from there, and I- and I see that maria has shared, that with you all yeah.

C

A

Yeah, that's uh it do you guys gandala and simona wants also to link something yeah status.

A

Amazing, so simona is uh more or less influenced on twitter, so guys please follow her.

C

Throw mine in there too! Thank you for the inspiration.

D

Well, thank you so much for having us.

A

Yeah guys, thank you. It was a really a great time. It's just one hour, but every time I do it. I'm super happy uh of the of the conversation and, and I invite you to share the same link- will will be the basically the recording.

B

A

The of the talk, if you want to share with your audience- and I will also post it on in our youtube channel, so thank you a lot again everyone. It was great to see your faces and hope to see you in a real life soon.

C

B

Thank you again, thank you very much for having us.

C

B

C