Decentralization & Blockchain
Talks
Speaker: Gavin Wood
Key insights / quotes:
“Moving beyond the status quo”
For us to interact when we do not necessarily know each other before, we have to appeal to third parties. Third parties work as proxies for authorities, adopting a posture of protector.
In theory, they protect our identity and autorization. In the future, those third parties will be just as old artifacts of the past. We will not longer need them.
Zero marginal cost transaction system allows for society to exchange within itself. We will be able to exchange on a peer-to-peer basis instead of needing a centralized authority.
Trustless consensus computing as bitcoin, ethereum, blockchain technology.
Additional kind of freedom : the need to regulate authorities, remove possibilities to this particular freedom.
Speaker: Primavera de Filippi
Key insights / quotes:
Ability to create new independant
Electromechnical structure that replicates mechanism of a plant
A plant are not able to replicate themselves without pollination
The plantoid pollinisation is human
The extreme model of the open source model where artist can evolve independently from the original author
Blockchain base lifeforms (autonomous : leaderless management, governance defined by code, self sufficient, capable of reproducing)
Recently, DAO that raides 200M$
Decentralized infrastructure with traditional governance structure (board of investors, stakeholders)
The free market (for instance, the market can be manipulated)
It’s always possible to plug a trust protocol to permit people to collaborate with the benefits of a decentralized organization
Some quotes:
« the plantoid is what the android is to human but to the plant»
« the dencetralized and autonomous founding pattern [...] encourage the remix of the plantoid »
« the opensource spirit make it possible for the planetoid to be fork and evolve in different way accordion to the environment in which they live »
« autonomous self-sufficient and capable of reproduce itself » > DAO Some key points of the talk:
The DAO > Raise 140M$. The way the DAO works is similar to the planetoid but in a more generic way.
A DAO in the form of a plantoid for instance is: Autonomous / Self-sufficient / Capable of reproduction. However, the governance structure has not yet been found as a result we cannot enjoy the full benefit of decentralization. Then the question that arises is: Is the blockchain able to enhance the collaborative economy ? Indeed Individualistic vision of the transaction without the need to trust the other person > different from the sharing economy spirit. Code is law.
It would then be interesting to build a trust protocol > Backed: decentralized and distributed reputation and trust protocol.
Speaker: Vinay Gupta
Key insights / quotes:
« what if we would do thing more interesting than finance with the blockchain ?»
« the two main issues humanity is facing climate change and ressource scarcity »
« computers enable to go to global governments from global government »
Speaker: William Mougayar
Key insights / quotes:
Decentralization is already here, but it hasn't been evenly distributed. Based on his research, William Mougayar describes where we are in decentralization along three dimensions: Trust: Law, Governance, Industry Services (Financial, Government, Trade, Healthcare), Wealth: Economic Production, Flow of value, Transactions, and Information: Content, Privacy, Security. In this talk, Mougayar also defines the building blocks of decentralization: Peer-to-Peer Models, Trust-based Systems and Services, Autonomous Organizations, and Wealth Creation Methods in the New Crypto-Economy.
Keynote by William Mougayar + Q&A by Brennan Novak
Panels
Speakers:
Name of Speakers: Ahmad Sufian Bayram (Founder & CEO, Arabshare), Stéphane de Freitas (CEO, Indigo), Anne Riechert (Founder and managing director, ReDI School of Digital Integration), Ben Webster (Founder, Jamiya)
Moderator: Ezio Manzini (Professor, DESIS Network, University of the Arts, London, Politecnico di Milano)
Key insights / quotes:
There is the issue to connect people really diverse and this apply to migrants, collaborative activities could be a good way to apply this practice.
Even how what we are doing is building up this situation?
Public question :
When you talk about, migrants are twice likely to start a business, what is it? ASB : There is no question about background asked on these people but the age..this is one of the problem we are facing. They are really isolated on the camp. We need to bring these people together. AR: It is really hard to concentrate if you live with 600 people so they need space to work, to think.
What about the segregation issues? More inclusion narrative? SDF : An example : we went to greece and they find alternatives. People have the will to share with their skills.
Is there a role for microfinance? BW : in this context, I don’t know. AR: the problem is to have a visa and a job, an identity. In Germany, it is really hard for instance.
Do you work that the mass media change? Because when we look at the media, migration has a quite negative impact. SDF : there is new project, we don’t have to wait from the state we also have the power to change the vision and the media will follow.
AR: the thing is media are politicized, either for or against. ASB: from a syrian perspective, the majorities How are you working with the media to keep those goods stories? AR : the best media are the local ones. The ones I respected before did change the story and narrative I said to them. SDF : of course it is good to have foundings, good image but we have to be careful with them.
3-5 key insights (specify which speaker said it):
AR : what I have experienced is the amount of talents, resilience in the new comers. We need to have more conversations with refugees.
SDF: Few month ago we had first contact, it is really interesting to build a point a view. 82% of people arriving on borders are really aware of technology. We tried to include them into a project. There is a difference between what you imagine and the reality and how diverse it can be.
ASB: those people coming are professors, ingeniors. Why do we not collaborate with them? They have no choice but to succeed they take their chance. They are seeking for winning. There is a real potential.
BW : We need to change the narrative. If we invest on migrants we have a return twice more. There is social values as well to bring refugees to community.
EM : there is a common point of view, we should not imagine something special for the migrants but to open collaborativeness to reframe the issue about migrants. We could do something together. We have enough space for discussion, comments…
EM: endings words Migrants are composing the society in which we live. For some reasons the idea about sharing has been widely communicated. The ouishare fest is to connect diversity.
Speakers:
Arno Laeven Head of Blockchain Lab, Philips Vincent Fily Business Developement Manager Finance, Microsoft Philippe Dewost Deputy Director, Caisse des dépôts Claire Balva Co-founder, Blockchain France
Moderator : Benjamin Tincq, OuiShare
Key insights / quotes:
The Internet has enabled decentralized exchange of information, but until know, any exchange of value had to rely on a trusted third party, even in the digital economy. With Blockchain Tech, even transactions can be managed in a completely distributed fashion, removing the need for any intermediary at all: it is "the Ultimate Uberization". Does this mean corporations will eventually disappear, or morph into blockchain-based DAOs - "Decentralized Autonomous Organizations" ? Or in the contrary, will the transparency and efficiency of blockchain technology open a whole range of possibilities for businesses to reinvent their industry, hopefully for the better?
Speakers:
Speakers: Christopher David (Arcade City), Henning Diedrich (IBM), Greg McMullen (ascribe GmbH), Shermin Voshmgir (Blockchain Hub)
Moderator: Brennan Novak (Transparency Toolkit/Qubes OS)
Key insights / quotes:
The internet and world wide web started as decentralized technologies. Nevertheless very quickly the centralized models and structures from the industrial age hijacked this originally democratic vision of decentralization. In fact we saw a catalyst effect injecting steroids into multi national organizations and turning them into global mega platforms. With the advent of the blockchain it seems we get another chance to restructure our economical and societal models. Questions that arise are: Who will be affected by the Blockchain the most? Looking at startups, organizations and governments: What opportunities will be created or closed off? And how can we as individuals become more empowered? How can wealth be more distributed? What question comes to your mind... ?
Speakers:
Marcus Meurer (Founder, DNX), Felicia Hargarten (Founder DNX), Bruno Haid (CEO, Roam), Eric Van den Broek (CEO, Copass)
Moderators : Asmaa Guedira (Connector, OuiShare - Womanity) & Christoph Fahle (CEO, Betahaus)
Key insights / quotes:
HOW DO YOU SEE DIGITAL NOMADISM? -Felicia : Digital Nomadism is : Live and work location independent. To live a life of freedom. Be able to start new ideas whenever we want. It is not like a backpacker, but actually leaving in different countries. -Eric : coworking spaces that makes you have a community and not be alone. Coworking are perfect gateways to cities. I usually stay for short periods of times, expect when I travel far. The term is not very good, because you can leave a normal life and be a digital nomad. -Marcus : Traveling gives you the bigger picture of what is happening in the world. The lifestyle is being more professional. -Bruno : I never did backpacking when I was younger, until my professional made me travel a lot. The experince in US made existing cowroking spaces into coliving spaces. People in our spaces are really working in a broad spectrum.
IS THERE A BUBLE? -Felicia : if you stay longer in a place you behave as you would behave at home, only having other nomad friends and not connecting with the local people. It is a shame. You should be aware of it and prevent it. Some coworking spaces promote activities to integrate people. -Marcus: it is important to give something back. -Eric : Nomadism as a "lifestyleifestyle porn" , something that a lot of people want to do and do not dare to. It attracts a lot of attention because it is a nice story. What is not overhyped is the idea that everyone can do it. -Marcus : when I first heard about it, I thought it was something for lonely rich people, but it is actually becoming mainstream and for everybody.
IS IT MORE EXPENSIVE? WHAT ABOUT KIDS? -Felicia : it is not more expensive to have this lifestyle. You reduce your costs in your "home country". and regarding families, there are other ways to raise and educate your child. Home-schooling or unschooling for instance. The mainpont is that you have more freedom -Eric : Being mobile can be a good opportunity when having kids. Summer Camps during school vacations can be a good model, even if the business still need to be developed. -Marcus : Some people have a missunderstanding of the idea of a digital nomad, saying that it need to be foverever. Actually, it is pretty easy to get back to a "normal life" and to rent a flat in Germany again. You are not obligatory to chose to live this lifestyle forever. It is about having for sometime the freedom you want, for wathever you want to do with it.
CHALLENGES -Eric : Friends and family. -Marcus : stablish a routine : wake-up at sunrise, medidate, etc. at some point you need to be more structured on the journey. -Felicia : some organisatorial things. insurance, company, some legal obstacles. -Bruno : storage boxes rented around the world.
Speakers:
Myriam Bouré(Co-founder, Open Food France), Marc-David Choukroun(CEO, La Ruche Qui Dit Oui),Maxime de Rostolan (Directeur, Fermes d'Avenir), Nancy Zamierowski (Collaboration Architect, Founder, Yellow Seed)
Moderator : Anne-Sophie Novel (Journalist, Place to B)
Our food system today is controlled by a handful of companies, that influence a lot regulations through lobbying in order to protect their financial interests. The power has shifted over the past decades from the producers to the food corporations, who control the whole food chain, from seeds to retail, leaving the farmers under pressure, and resulting in countless negative externalities: greenhouse gases, nutrients decrease, soil and water pollution, health consequences, dead marine zones, antibiotics resistance, farmers suicides. Patents on life filed by those corporations are not only a threat for global food sovereignty, but also, an important cause of destruction of the biodiversity of our planet. How can decentralized, open source and collaborative initiatives in farming practices, equipments and distribution transform our food system for the better? That's the question we are going to debate in this session.
Workshops
Speaker:
Shermin Voshmgir (Founder, BlockchainHub)
Key insights/quotes
Start with Who have heard about the blockchain ? Who can explain ? Who knows use case ? Who’s engineer ? WHo’s civic tech ? Social engineer ?
Small introduction of who is Shermin and what is Blockchain hub.
[Note - Blockchain hub: aims a democratize and making the blockchain readable. Started in Berlin. At first it was towards non technologist people and she sees that event technologists needed to understand what blockchain is.]
The histories are bound together: History of computing. History of internet. History of the blockchain.
What is the blockchain about ?
What is the DAO about ?
Example of use-cases
The details The aim: brief overview of what the blockchain is not in technical details.
To understand the history of blockchain it is necessary to understand the history of computer and the internet. What were the steps basically: Big computer > Smaller computer (Personal computer) -> In more and more home. However those computers were stand alone and not connected. Data was saved locally until the early 90s with the TCP Ip protocol (ARPA Net) > Spreading > SMTP for email > Http for information > Here comes the internet. The idea was to connect the computer: It was a revolution. But data was still store locally and « centralized ». Even in the cloud it’s still centrally stored.
Internet > connect computer where the information is centrally stored > transaction verification are also done locally. When you store data locally the problem is that it can be destroyed -> Security / Cybersecurity issues. Maintaining centrally integrity of the data cost a lot of money and it is unique point of failure.
The blockchain is the idea to create this decentralize points of verification killing the unique point of failure.
The aim then is getting rid of the need middle man. That’s why it’s a question of trust since those middle men are granted for trust > Faster peer-to-peer transactions.
[Note - Personal Q. What about the time for validation of the transaction on the blockchain compeer to bank transaction that take less than millisecond to be done ? (Not asked)]
Blockchain = Information democracy.
Transaction verification is done decentrally.
Computer > Internet > Central storage > Peer-to-peer protocol -> Thus enabling peer-to-peer exchange. Blockchain is a value exchange protocol. Internet is the information exchange protocol. It enables to build smart contract on top of the blockchain without the middle man.
The Internet enabled plateformes to be build, thus reshapping a form of centralization by a third party (the middle man).
The blockchain makes it possible to have money without banks (Bitcoin), Government without politicians, Companies without managers.
[Note - Personal Q. Is it about getting rid of the middle man or making the system hybrid to help to spread the power ? How not to go to the other extreme side of the idea: from totally centralized to totally decentralized ? (Not asked)]
WHat is a DAO ? Decentralized Autonomous Organisation: next step after the smart contract. The rules of the games are define and embedded in smart contract that build the DAO and that pre-exist to the effective action ruled by the contract. The managers have to decide the rules before and not in the course of.
ID on the bit nation blockchain.
The blockchain is 3 technologies: peer-to-peer networks cryptography (hash) > data privacy and data encryption game theory
[Note - Personal Q. About data privacy and encryption > on the blockchain but what about before ? (Not asked)]
On the blockchain you don’t have files anymore. Its a public ledger that is shared by numerous computers. They all have the same copy of the ledger of the transaction > who pays what to whom > verified by the network.
Ex. Bank > Computer central verify and confirm the transaction. Blockchain > every nod every and confirm the transaction. Every time of lock of the transaction is verified it’s encrypted and put on top the chain.
When each block is verify to give reward to the people that verified it. Very 10minute a block is created. To verify you need to go back in time.
Existing use cases. Fintech Bitcoin other crypto coins egovernment online notaries: registers of the ownership accounting: compliance on the fly no after the fact IOT: user access control for machine to machine smart contracts. Ex. Stock.it Provenance Insurance Bitnation
Keep in mind that all of this is early stage and experimental.
3-5 key learnings:
The blockchain is the idea to create this decentralize points of verification killing the unique point of failure.
The aim then is getting rid of the need middle man.
The blockchain is a value exchange protocol. The internet is the information exchange protocol.
The blockchain is 3 technologies: peer-to-peer networks cryptography (hash) > data privacy and data encryption game theory
The blockchain makes it possible to have money without banks (Bitcoin), Government without politicians, Companies without managers.
Interesting contributions? (describe any particular contributions made by attendees):
Q. Who are beyond the investment ? You don’t know who owns what and who control the blockchain ? The question is about transparency. It’s the question of who invest and who owns the system.
A. It is complicated to take the lead on the blockchain since you need to break locally the majority of hte computing power or detain the majority of the total amount of currency produced to have more power than anyone else.
Q. What are the downfalls of he technologies ?
A. The technology is not the solution of all the problems .
Q. Bitcoin is a token of exchange. But while talking about citizenship and university diploma there is no value exchange ? How do explain that and see the development in those fields ?
A. Blockchain does not necessarily need a value of exchange. It needs fuel for the system to run the transaction. Moreover, the financial/economic value is not necessarily embeded into the object of the transaction.
Any take-aways / next steps?: Keep in mind that all of this is early stage and experimental. Q. What are the downfalls of he technologies ? A. The technology is not the solution of all the problems . Governance and ethical questioning needs to be deepened.
Speaker:
Julien Béranger (Co-founder, Abie Fund)
Key insights/quotes
Deploying a smart contracts on Ethereum blockchain might sound exciting but we first need to be sure it's relevant to meet our respective objectives. Attendees will be invited to describe the scenario of their own app. After summing up the main good practices, we'll code, deploy and test one smart contract together.
Facilitator:
Javier Creus (Founder, Ideas for Change)
Key insights/quotes
We are living in times of big changes. On the one hand our actual systems show their inability to deal with most basic human needs, on the other citizens powered by technology are opening new ways to create and distribute value in a more democratic and efficient way.
The goal of this workshop is to explore the emergence of a new "Social Operating System" and share information about existing initiatives and tools, discuss metrics and create some kind of working group on the subject.
Facilitators:
Charalampos Doukas (Senior Researcher, CREATE-NET), Joachim Lohkamp (CEO, Jolocom / Ouishare), Markus Sabadello (CEO, Danube Tech)
Key insights/quotes
The Internet of Things is here. Objects, sensors and devices in the physical world connected to the internet gathering and sharing data are everywhere around us: home appliances, traffic and transport sensors and healthcare devices among many others. They have arrived and they are here to stay. What are the benefits, where does all the data come from and where does it go? AGILE is a project funded under the European Union H2020 framework, and explores how individuals and organizations can share there data in a different - in a decentralized way.
Within the project SMEs and Startups active in the IoT domain will have the opportunity to build products and services on top of AGILE hardware and software. Through two open calls that will take place during the Project lifetime, participants will be able to receive funding (up to 50k each) for building hardware and software on top of AGILE components. The consortium would love to see many projects from the Ouishare community apply.
Introduction of AGILE by Charalampos Doukas Presentation of a decentralized network by Markus Sabadello and Joachim Lohkamp Discussion: what use cases are most burning & promising for the sharing & collaborative economy?
Facilitators:
Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof (Founder, BITNATION), Markus Sabadello (CEO, Danube Tech)
Key insights/quotes
Can we use new technologies like blockchain to finally design digital identity in a way that is beneficial to everyone, and that better reflects our identity in the real world?
Even though we may feel like we have an "online identity", the current technical architectures and protocols of the Internet in fact place our identity in the hands of others. Years of work on so-called "user-centric" or "self-sovereign" digital identity have not been able to change this. Today however, we have a large arsenal of new and promising technologies such as blockchain, linked data, peer-to-peer networks, and new cryptographic tools, which may be able to address some of the historic deficiencies. This being a concern of the western world, the UN estimates that at least 1.8 billion people worldwide are without a legal identity at all. The proclaimed goal therefore is to provide legal identity to all, including birth registration, by 2030. Another example is the Estonian e-residency program which is interested to see how an online identity recognised by an EU government, and therefore under EU law, could, for example, be used by banks to identify new customers, or could be used in the Blockchain to establish legal identities. What is your understanding of identity?
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