January 14, 2023
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This panel discussion was originally recorded from Women in Data Global presents Unlocking Value From Blockchain on Wednesday, November 9, 2022 at ServiceNow, Santa Clara, CA.
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Join us for a panel discussion on the business value that is being unlocked through enterprise use cases for blockchain and distributed ledgers. You will hear from different participants on implementing this technology on the most relevant applications and challenges. Time will be left for questions and networking during and after the event.
Key Takeaways Include
Presenters
ServiceNow - Shuchi Rana - Global Head of Whitespace Intelligence
Good morning, everyone. Will give folks maybe a couple more minutes to join. In the meantime, feel free to say hello in the chat and tell us where you're joining from. All right, okay. I think um, ooh, chat disabled. Um, let's see. Let me see if I can enable it. Yeah, thank you. All right, good morning, everyone. Thank you again for joining us, and morning, evening, afternoon, whatever time zone you're dialing in from. Thank you for being here. My name is Shuchi and I head up um, Whitespace intelligence for ServiceNow. And what that entails is opportunities for the next phase, whether it's co-innovation with our customers or our partners. And blockchain and web3 are definitely top of mind topics for many of us to dive deeper. I am joined by some builders and leaders in the space. Without further ado, I'll have each one of you maybe spend a minute, tell us about your background and what got you started in the space. So Sadie, maybe I'll have you kick us off.
Women in Data – Sadie St. Lawrence – Founder & CEO
Yeah, I'm happy to start. Welcome, everyone. My name is Sadie St. Lawrence and I'm happy to be here for this discussion today. So just a little bit about myself, um, my main background is in the field of data science and AI. I got to lead data science teams in healthcare, and then transitioned into AI strategy, and did lots of exciting work there. I'm working on some covid projects and also working with some high-tech companies. And then about two years ago, I transitioned from AI strategy to leading the organization I founded, Women in Data, full-time. What really got me into the blockchain space was actually getting my Instagram account hacked about a year and a half ago. And so when my account got hacked, other people started to take my photos and impersonate me. And it really made me start to think about, like, this is my information and my data, and people are able to take this and then Instagram had no way of proving that I was the real owner of it and able to verify that. And so that led me down a rabbit hole to think about my data differently, and what does ownership look like, and what does ownership on the web look like. And you know, if you're in this space, you know how deep the rabbit hole can go. And you start going to meetups and talking to people, and the next thing you know, you're on a project, and next thing you know, you're building some of your old projects. So I'm curious to hear everybody's story of you know how they got into the space. But more importantly, if you're looking to get into it, attending conversations like this and networking with people is a great way to get started. So happy to be here, and looking forward to this conversation.
ServiceNow - Shuchi Rana - Global Head of Whitespace Intelligence
Wonderful, thanks Sadie. Um, Nicola, you wanna, yeah, yes.
ServiceNow – Nicola Attico – Blockchain/DLT Solution Engineer
So yeah, hi, everyone. My name is Nicola Attico. I also work in the region and innovation team at ServiceNow, and I work specifically with blockchain and DLT technologies. Um, I've been in the space since a quite long time. I started more than nine years ago. I'm based out of Milan in Italy, and I spend much of my time in the precise organization at ServiceNow, working with customers on POCs and use cases, and all of that. Um, but I started being involved in the blockchain space in 2017. Someone may remember. Um, and actually, the way it happened, I went on vacation in Greece with my wife, and I had a book with me, it was about IoT, and it kept mentioning this stuff called blockchain, and I realized I didn't actually know what it was. So I started Googling it, and I found Bitcoin and all these kind of things, and uh, I became very, very curious, and I saw the price of Bitcoin that was starting to do something like that, and I thought, well, that's interesting. Um, and yeah, over the months and years, I became quite obsessed with this topic, to be honest, and I started advocating internally in ServiceNow and describing the first use cases. And the way, and the moment where things really started to get very interesting is when we established a partnership with Hedera, ask her in ServiceNow, and I'm currently spending a big part of my time working with the Hedera network and ServiceNow. And I can tell you more later.
ServiceNow - Shuchi Rana - Global Head of Whitespace Intelligence
Wonderful, thanks, Nicola. And to our audience, uh, feel free again to say hello in the chat, tell us where you're joining from, and also if there's any questions that you might have that um, we will be happy to take them um, along the way. So, May, you want to go next?
HashPack – May Chan – Co-founder & CEO
Yeah, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. My name is May Chan. I'm the CEO and co-founder of HashPack wallet. We're the leading wallet on Hedera Hashgraph. We work closely with Nicola and what he's building as well. And our vision is to enable users and companies to access web3 in as frictionless and simple way as we can, um, to the way that I got started in blockchain was last year in 2021 during the Bull Run of cryptocurrencies. My friend was like, "You gotta buy this mean coin because it's going to go up." And I kind of just didn't know what he was talking about. Um, so I learned a bit, I bought a few coins, and promptly lost my money because I have no idea what I'm doing in the speculation space. Um, but I stayed in because I got drawn in by the technology. Um, and so I started reading up on it, and eventually I bumped into Hedera Hashgraph as a ledger on in web3. And I started tinkering around with the SDK. I joined a community of people on Discord, which is a chat server sort of thing. Then we were just sort of casually being fans of Hedera, looking into what were the trends. Um, and then one day, I was like, "Hey, does anyone want to try building something?" Just, just for fun, and like a bunch of anonymous people, we just like, from all over the world, raise your hands and tried sorting something out. Four of us stayed on and founded HashPack wallet and built it from the ground up in our spare time, and now we're the top wallet on the network and we're doing a lot of cool things, so it's really fun to be here, and I'd love to share more about my experience and what I see in the space, because there's a lot of really interesting things happening, and we're seeing a lot of unique new ways that companies interface with their users and work with blockchain that goes beyond the current space that is popular in popular media, such as NFTs and cryptocurrencies. There's a lot of cool things happening.
ServiceNow - Shuchi Rana - Global Head of Whitespace Intelligence
Wonderful, thanks May. Simi?
Swirlds Labs - Simi
Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining today and taking the time. My name's Simi, and I work for Swirlds Labs on the product team. And we build the node software and some of the other products that enable the Hedera network to run. And the way that I got introduced into this field was back actually in 2017 when, um, maybe around the time when a lot of the prices for the coins were going up. Um, people were still talking about Bitcoin and blockchain. I kind of ignored it for a few years because that kind of fed into what was shown in the media. But then, after I kind of realized these words are going away, it's everywhere, it's in the news, it's with my friends, we're talking about it at work. I kind of just couldn't really run away from it. I decided to join a local meetup and learn more about it. And when I went to go learn about Bitcoin and blockchain, uh, there was someone in the audience who kind of mentioned Hashgraph underneath their product and said something online along the lines of, "Oh, Hashgraph is going to change everything." And I was like, "Huh, well, I can't wait to learn about Bitcoin and blockchain, but someone else in the audience is talking about something else. Let me try to figure out what that something else means." So I started learning more about the Hashgraph technology and its potential use cases. And I also really admire the vision, and so I thought to myself, "It'd be really cool to maybe work in this industry and see if some of these visions can come to life over time." So that's how I got started in this field.
ServiceNow - Shuchi Rana - Global Head of Whitespace Intelligence
Wonderful, thanks, all for the intro. Incredible stories. Um, all right, for there's a question, yes, the session is being recorded. So, um, we should have the recording available right after. But for folks who are here to learn and perhaps don't have a whole lot of background or understanding of blockchain, let's take a step back and go back to the basics. What do each of you think are the building blocks of blockchain, and why do you think it's considered a trustworthy approach? May, do you want to start?
HashPack – May Chan – Co-founder & CEO
Sure. Um, blockchain is a pretty, pretty hip topic right now. There's a lot of, a lot of buzzwords flying around. Um, so I understand that it can be quite confusing if you're new to the space. Uh, in the most basic terms, um, blockchains are basically just a decentralized database. So if you think of a regular database used in a company, the company runs a server, and then you put information on that server, and then you can access that server, but only the company that owns it can access that information. A decentralized ledger or decentralized database is one where the data lives on multiple servers that are owned by multiple people, multiple entities. No one specific entity owns that data and then the data is therefore public and permissionless. Anyone can access it, anyone can write to that database, so it's decentralized that is kind of the basics of blockchain, and it leads to some very interesting things that you can do when you have a public ledger that can be trusted because everybody who writes to it has to do it in a specific way. So one of the most simple examples is of course Bitcoin itself, where you have an account that holds Bitcoin and you can give your Bitcoin away or you can receive Bitcoin. Because that database is decentralized, no one can create Bitcoin out of thin air. Nobody can change the field on their account to say they own a thousand more Bitcoin or something like that. It's all part of a consensus mechanism that makes sure that all the data is changed in a very specific way that can be trusted and verified. I think that's the basics of what blockchain is. Anyone can come in and add in a couple of points as well.
Swirlds Labs - Simi
A lot of what people talk about is trust, and you might wonder what enables trust. The fact that this is a public ledger, you can view all the data that's being passed through the network. Anyone has access to this; they're generally called block explorers or transaction explorers. If you visit these websites, you can see exactly the transactions that have passed through the network, or the state of any entities, like if you created an account. You can view the account, you can view its balance, and you can also view all the transactions that modified that account. You don't need any special permissions because this is basically like a public database. You're not governed by anyone granting you authority to view any of this data; you just have access to it as long as you have access to the Internet and are able to visit that website. The other aspect of trust is that a lot of these technologies for these different protocols are open source. If you want to know what is the software that runs between this network, you can usually go visit these different GitHub repositories to view that node software. You can do your own auditing, you can fork it, and you can run it on your own and do your own validation, so you can trust the node software that's running on these networks. Then you have transparency for the transactions that are occurring across the networks. There's nothing really hidden behind permissions or closed doors. A lot of this information is public and accessible to anybody in the world and that offers trust between the network that you're working with, but then also the parties that you're interacting with that are using the same network. Even though you might not trust the person you know you're working with on a project or application, or the user that's using the application, you can go to this database that exposes everything that happens on this network. So, therefore, if you can trust the software, then you can trust the parties that you're working with.
ServiceNow - Shuchi Rana - Global Head of Whitespace Intelligence
A quick comment: if folks can add their questions in the Q&A section versus the chat, it helps me. I'll make sure they get addressed. There's a lot of questions coming in, so if we don't get through everything, we'll make sure we get them answered and follow up with an email. All right, who wants to go next?
Women in Data – Sadie St. Lawrence – Founder & CEO
All right, I was just going to add on with what May and Simi shared. I'm a big fan of really simple definitions, so I've always gravitated to the definition that blockchain is just a shared database that anyone can edit with a distributed compliance system. There are a few keywords we touched on this already, and Simi followed up with it, but when you boil it down to what it truly is, it's easy to get caught up in the hype of currencies and NFTs, but if you boil it down to the true technology, it's a database, and then the other keywords are that it's distributed and it has a compliance system. I know there were some questions in there about security and how you can have this open, and that's where really this community comes in, is from that compliance system to define what are those rules and structure. So when we think about Web 2 today and think about databases that are used, we have companies that own those databases, and as users, we don't get to participate in it. Going back to my original example, I didn't get to participate in the data that was used on me by Instagram. I put it out there, but then they, in a sense, owned it, and when it was taken from me, I never had a voice in being able to share how I wanted that compliance to work. So, I think what's exciting about this space is, you know, it's similar in a way to a lot of technologies we use today. We use databases all the time, and it's kind of the bread and butter of what runs our digital world, but now we have the opportunity to participate in the economy because of its distributed compliance system. Nicola, I'll hand it over to you.
ServiceNow – Nicola Attico – Blockchain/DLT Solution Engineer
No, I thank you, and you already explained pretty well this natural decentralized database. I would like to touch on the fact that there are multiple networks out there. You may hear of Ethereum, Bitcoin, a number of other technologies. The list can be long, so the space is still a bit fragmented in terms of networks. There are many networks out there, but I want to touch on the work we are doing with ServiceNow and Hedera a little bit, because we think Hedera is a kind of special network for ServiceNow. Unlike networks like Ethereum, which is permissionless and permissionless means all the blockchain are run by possibly anonymous participants, the Hedera network is a permissioned network in the sense that it's run by well-defined organizations. So, you can go on the Council pages and see all the organizations running the Hedera network. ServiceNow is one of them, which means that we are part of the governance of the network, and we run an order as well of the DLT. The different nodes reach consensus on the transaction, and this is what really secures the network. For example, if someone is sending a transaction to Hedera, let's say I'm transferring the property right of something from me to Sadie, it's not recorded by the individual node, but it's validated by all the nodes of the network. This is what really makes blockchains and DLTs a transactional system which is very secure.
ServiceNow - Shuchi Rana - Global Head of Whitespace Intelligence
Wonderful, thanks, Nicola, and thanks all. This might be a good follow-up question from Kimberly: "Hey, Kimberly, can you talk about the four types of blockchains: public, private, hybrid, and consortium?" Does anyone want to take that?
ServiceNow – Nicola Attico – Blockchain/DLT Solution Engineer
Just kind of like, I can take it if you want. I often use a slightly different classification, but it fits pretty well with this one for me. One dimension is permissionless and permissioned, and the one that we were describing right now is permissioned. The other dimension is public, private, and consortium. Permissionless and permissioned refers to who is running the nodes of the DLT. I will use blockchain and DLT, or distributed ledger, in a very similar way. Hedera, for example, is a DLT because there is no really chain of blocks, but that's a technicality, I think, at this stage. So, permissioned and permissionless is one dimension, who's running the nodes of the ledger. The other one is who can consume the services of the ledger. For example, if you take Ethereum, which is of course very famous, it's a permissionless public network. It means the nodes can be run by anyone potentially, and anyone can access the services of the ledger. On the other side, you have a permissioned public network. It means the nodes are run by a number of organizations, but everyone can use the services. It's the same, I mean, it's a public blockchain, it's available, it's out there, it's like the internet. The difference is with running the node. On the other side, you have the private network, which is typically permissioned, and it means it's a consortium of companies. They take software, like, for example, Hyperledger Fabric, and they install the software on their nodes, on their computers. They connect their computers and they use it for their own transactions. They may open it up to some of their third-party vendors, but it's not a public service. I think this kind of network, although it gives a sense of security, it doesn't really give the incremental value the public next networks provide. We probably need both, but the real value add is coming from public networks in my opinion. Sorry, maybe it was a little bit of a technical answer. I hope it answered the question.
ServiceNow - Shuchi Rana - Global Head of Whitespace Intelligence
Yes, anyone else wants to chime in, or we can move on. All right, for each of you, what are some of the latest trends that you're seeing in this space? Perhaps talk about some use cases, what are you hearing from the community, whether it's enterprise or... what's top of mind for you and your communities? Who wants to go first, Sadie, do you want to go first or May? Okay, Sadie, go first.
Women in Data – Sadie St. Lawrence – Founder & CEO
I can go so I think one of the things is there's a lot of negativity right now. So, I look at it as like you're in this space, and you're working on a project and developing work. You've bought or sold something, and then you're kind of in the general public, or the three tiers that I break people down into if I'm segmenting. And so, from the general public space, you know there's a lot of news with FTX and what is happening there. So, I think right now there's a lot of caution overall from the general public of like, "Everyone got up on the hype curve in the bull market last year, and then you know things kind of came crashing down for some people." However, if you go more to the core of the technology, and go to the people who are working on exciting projects in this space, there's a ton of really great not only use cases happening, but opportunities where it's delivering real value. And so, one of the things that I'm most excited about is what it can do in some of the healthcare space. And so, when we think about sharing records and being able to share information in a safe, secure, verifiable way, there's a lot of innovation that's happening now when we combine sharing data and being able to use that with AI. And so, one of the areas that AI has not touched extremely is the healthcare space. And to be able to opt in to sharing my data, if I have a really rare disease, and I want to connect with other people who have those rare diseases, and now I can run AI models on that to determine what are some of the corresponding factors that add to that disease, so there's some fun stuff in there. There's a lot of stuff happening in terms of content sharing. One of the couple of companies that I'm watching right now are Mere XYZ and Lens Cruise. And so, both of these are creating new social network graphs and ways for you to publish your work, whether that be in a written or spoken format, that allows you then to earn money from people who are consuming this information. And so, I think we're going to see a lot more in terms of like microtransactions for content and starting to really put the ownership in the hands of the user.
HashPack – May Chan – Co-founder & CEO
Great, me, yeah, just to add on to a live example of DLT's use in healthcare, during when COVID was taking off, there was a company called Everywhere that was built on the Hedera network that monitored vaccine vaccines for COVID as they were being distributed. And one of the properties of COVID vaccines that was important was that they had to be kept at a specific temperature. So, then you had to make sure that the fridges that the vaccines were kept in were not going above or below specific temperature. So, what they did was they took sensors in those fridges, and they had them report to the Hedera network. Basically, every period of time, they would send their reports to the network, and it would be recorded immutably on the network, meaning that there was no way to change what the temperature was that was sent or when it was sent, because the timestamp was also included in that record, and so you have, therefore, a verifiable proof that at this time, this fridge was at this temperature. And that's something that you can use a blockchain for trust across multiple entities because now this fridge manufacturer or these the people who are distributing the COVID vaccines can't enter into their spreadsheet that the fridges were okay. The fridges are actually using their sensors to push to a public database that can't be altered to say, yes, this is actually what happened. So, that's a very good use case that someone was using. Another good one in that same vein is supply chain level use cases where you can tack on your little QR code or your RFID tag, and follow ingredients and follow pieces throughout the supply chain. This provides transparency for all of the people who are working in that supply chain, from manufacturing to distribution to when it goes on the shelf. There is a company, one of the governing council members of Hedera, that is building out this very use case and hopefully they come out with something and blow our minds. It's a very interesting space. In my world, which is a retail wallet, we're seeing a lot of adoption from big brands who are looking to engage their users. Brands like Nike, Gucci, and Starbucks are launching their loyalty cards and issuing NFTs, which are digital collectibles. We're seeing these used as ways to engage with their users in a more meaningful way than just having your users locked onto your platform and they can only do the things that you tell them they can do on their platform. Gaming is also a very big one because there are already digital collectibles in games, but they're all locked to your platform. There are a lot of interesting ideas around how you can unlock that and give your users more autonomy and more say in what they own and how they use what they own. So, it's very interesting. There is also one very interesting question about decentralization and Nicola's comment on how the network is currently permissioned and run by 23 governing council members. All of those council members run a node and therefore the network is currently permissioned. That means that the Hedera Hashgraph algorithm and the platform itself are run by trusted, permissioned nodes that you know who they are, so you can trust that they're not trying to trick people or something like that. But the question was, is it really decentralized if the governance is managed by a group of large corporations? The answer is it's actually very decentralized because all of these council members are from different countries, different fields, and different parts of the economy, there's some banks, there's some universities. It's very decentralized, and as the network moves forward, there's also a path towards even more decentralization where the nodes will become anonymous or pseudo-anonymous. As it were, anyone can run a node, and so if you can run your own node and you know what code is being run on that node, you can make sure that the stuff that is going in and out of the network is trustworthy. I just wanted to tap on that topic.
ServiceNow - Shuchi Rana - Global Head of Whitespace Intelligence
Great, thanks, May, Nicola. ServiceNow specific, if you want to touch upon any of the use cases, yeah.
ServiceNow – Nicola Attico – Blockchain/DLT Solution Engineer
I mean it's what I've been working on during this year, and we found that the implications of blockchain and DLT for the ServiceNow platform are truly across all the different domains because it really touched on this trust topic and this identity topic. But there are some use cases which are under a lot of attention at the moment. One of them is related to sustainability and ESG and is related to ESG tokenization. There are multiple organizations today which are managing, for example, carbon offset, renewable energy credits, these kinds of certificates which are related to energy and emissions. These digital assets are being transferred on the ledger in a significant way, probably because it's something which the society, as the world, is tackling today and it just makes sense to use blockchain for digital assets. And they are digital assets. So in parallel to a more traditional approach of managing these items, like paper-based assets, there is a big interest in digitizing them. And it's not just about digitizing the asset, it's also attaching to these items the originating data. For example, if you are saying that you have reduced the CO2 amount in the atmosphere by 10 tons, you can just say that this is what happened today with traditional assets. But the other way you can do, you can attach digital evidence that this CO2 reduction happened, coming, for example, from sensors, and have an asset which is enriched by this kind of information. For ServiceNow, it's very interesting because you can allow companies to acquire this item on the ServiceNow platform and use them to offset their own emissions, something that you can do today. And you can also, more interestingly, digitize the mission themselves and create this form of ecological asset on the ServiceNow platform based on our ESG management application. And then you can offset the green token and the brown token, so to speak, together to demonstrate that you have reached net zero. So these are a lot of very current and actual concepts, and it's just one of the use cases in ESG. Then, I mean, we can speak more about the way you are using NFTs for consumer engagement, as May was saying. This is another big topic for ServiceNow because all these companies that are creating NFTs to represent loyalty of customers, to represent digital quizzes of products, and all these kinds of things. I mean, when companies are starting to provide these kinds of NFTs to customers, maybe you have to manage hundreds, thousands, millions of NFTs on a single platform, so you need a lot of workflows to manage them and to assign them in the right way and to report about that. I see someone mentioning Starbucks in the chat, and this is the I mean one of the art news in these days, but there are really tons of companies in the consumer space which are doing that today. The beauty of NFTs is that you can truly combine business models with them. I will stop speaking because I can talk about that for the entire time, but yes, there are a lot of use cases which are very relevant to ServiceNow.
HashPack – May Chan – Co-founder & CEO
Nicola actually touched on something very important with regards to web3 and building on it. It's a value-add, it's something that makes your product better. You're not just doing web3 for the sake of doing web3, and I think a lot of companies, a lot of people get confused about that and they think that they just have to get really into the weeds of web3 and try to push their product into it. No, there's actually very real value added if you're using web3 technologies to supplement your actual products and make them better. So that's important when you're deciding to build or thinking about building with web3, is does it really make a difference to your product and how can you leverage it so that it does provide value here.
ServiceNow – Nicola Attico – Blockchain/DLT Solution Engineer
And you know, some of the demos that we have built, we are truly using the wallet aspect to represent the ownership of the customer on these assets. It's very important for a platform like ServiceNow to be able to allow customers, allow employees, to own these digital assets. We have truly learned a lot by integrating HashPack into the ServiceNow ecosystem. It has been great, and I think it can be a very effective partnership.
Women in Data – Sadie St. Lawrence – Founder & CEO
Now, one thing I'll just add on to that and what May said is that it's not just doing it for blockchain and web3's sake, but it's also going to allow you to get closer to your customers and learn more about them. Right, so when you have these digital assets and rewards, you're getting data on who is interacting with them, how they're starting to use them, and it starts to create more data for you as a business in terms of interacting with your customers directly. So I think we're really just on the beginning point of putting this now in the hands of users and getting one step closer to our customers, which, as a business, is something we're always interested in understanding and doing. Knowing how our customers want to talk to us and interact with our brand, not just with let's use the Starbucks example. Not just with me as Starbucks, but you know, when I share with me that I'm drinking Starbucks and showing her that I just got this new collectible. So I think there's going to be a lot more direct-to-consumer and customer engagements with these types of solutions.
ServiceNow - Shuchi Rana - Global Head of Whitespace Intelligence
Great, thanks Sadie and Nicola. Simi, any comments there, or yeah, council and folks, companies that are part of the council, if you're seeing anything that you can perhaps share?
Swirlds Labs - Simi
Yeah, definitely. One general comment I wanted to make is that having a distributed ledger as part of your solution is not for every application. So it's not that every application should be migrating to using web3 technologies. It's really based on the requirements of your product and whether a web3 technology is suitable to fulfill your user stories or your requirements for your product. So just wanted to mention that it's not something that every application should have in the future, but it is an option if it is a value-add to your product. In terms of our governing council members, we do have a couple of them who are working on the supply chain use case that we talked about earlier. Avery Dennison was mentioned, they have a product called atma.io, if you want to Google and check it out. What they're doing is the track and trace of the product life cycle. And what happens is that for every event, these events can be things like creating that product, shipping that product, or a consumer buying that product. These events are recorded on the distributed ledger and this event is basically a message. If you think of a pub-sub queue, you're publishing a message, and then you can subscribe to that queue and receive all the messages that are going through that queue. And that message, you can associate maybe some metadata to the different events of that product, which then get reported to that distributed ledger, which is immutable. And so then, what you can do is look at the history of those different events and then basically recalculate the series of events that happened and then recreate the story of that product life cycle. And so that's the general concept of how distributed ledgers are being used in supply chain use cases or track and trace type of use cases. There's also the Coupon Bureau, which is focusing on tracking the life cycle of a coupon, from the time the coupon is created to the time that coupon is redeemed. And each of those different events are being recorded to a distributed ledger using the same concept of a message and putting in some metadata in there that represents these different events. If you were to look back at the life cycle of that coupon between the different events it went through, you'd be able to recreate that. So it's a form of auditability that you get, and there are some benefits to that, including fraud prevention. Because in the coupon business, you can have people make duplicate coupons. But if you have this sort of track and trace system in place, and this immutable ledger which is also transparent to all the different vendors that are part of that process, that can all look at a single shared view of that database and all the events that happen with that coupon, you can start to eliminate fraud. Because at that point, if you're tracking that coupon from the time it originated to the time it was redeemed or expired, you can't duplicate that same coupon and redeem it twice because you're tracking all of its events along the way.
HashPack – May Chan – Co-founder & CEO
In terms of adoption and challenges, we're starting to really see companies, real companies that are not originally from web3, move into web3 and start to use it. So I think we are at the part of the adoption curve where we're just out of the earliest part, where you just have people who are excited about the tech, and now we're seeing the bigger companies move in and really try to figure out how to use this and also finding success. Nike has made hundreds of millions of dollars off of their RFTK partnership with NFTs, Starbucks is now launching their NFT program, and I think it's going to be very successful because it is just an extension of their original, very successful loyalty program but now they're just adding in digital collectibles, which is very cool. My cousin collects Starbucks mugs wherever she goes traveling, and she has a cupboard full of those mugs. I think people love that, and that's Starbucks' way of engaging with their community. So, I see that companies are really starting to move into this space and find ways to bring value to their users, and it's very exciting. Definitely, there are challenges around how to actually handle these assets and how to make sure that you're not going against regulations and stuff like that. The wallet space is very interesting because right now we are a non-custodial wallet, which means that the users hold custody of their assets. There's no central authority, like a bank for example, holding your money where you go to them and then you take your money out. It's actually held by the user themselves, which is a very interesting user experience and security question, but it also for companies, it's very useful because if the user is holding their assets, then you don't have to manage that from an accountability perspective. If the user is holding real value in their accounts, such as cryptocurrency or stable coins, or even NFT assets that have value, if you're holding custody of your customers' accounts, that's something that you have to report in your taxes. We're seeing companies say, "Okay, we cannot, our legal team is saying we cannot hold custody of our users' assets, so therefore we have to move into this paradigm where the user controls their assets." So, I think that the wallet space is a very interesting one because it enables companies to be more free about how they use digital assets and how they interact with their customers. I think that's one of the bigger challenges, at least for me, but definitely one that I think can be solved because we're already seeing, for example, Apple Pay and other types of digital wallets for fiat currencies come into play on the user side, and people are getting used to tapping with their phone. So, I think there is a paradigm shift coming up that will really enable a lot of value for both users and companies. Yeah, challenges, but also excitement, I think.
ServiceNow - Shuchi Rana - Global Head of Whitespace Intelligence
Great, Sadie, do you want to add to that?
Women in Data – Sadie St. Lawrence – Founder & CEO
Yeah, so I think there's a couple of things. On the regulation side, we're starting to finally see some progress here, which is exciting. And I think, you know, a lot of us are looking for that guidance and regulation. I know this year, in September, the White House released a comprehensive framework for responsible development of digital assets. So, you know, it hasn't got into law yet, but I think following these types of reports and white papers that are coming out of government is really essential, especially if you're creating in the space to see what's happening. And then, you know, we're starting to see enterprises really dive in, in addition to some of the examples that have been given today, like JPMorgan Chase just created a patent. I think this came out like two weeks ago on its own wallet. So, you're starting to see some of the development that's happening, not just from web 3 first-based companies, but enterprise institutions that are now migrating over. I think for mass adoption for users, I like what's headed, which is not calling it NFTs or blockchain. It's just a solution so that the users never know the technology behind it. It's just a fun, exciting way for them to engage, and then if they want to get curious, they can look under the rug and discover, "Oh, this is an NFT or this is blockchain." And that's great. So, I think what we're going to start seeing more and more is less talk about the technology and the open market, and really seamless integrations for user experience. So, you know, if you're someone who works in tech, you may not have any problem interacting in a web 3 economy today, but for the majority of users, it's not easy to get into the space, and there's a lot of confusion. And so, I think making that seamless integration to applications that people are already used to working with is going to help a lot. And one of the things that I'm most excited about is what's happening even in some of the education spaces. So, this year, we saw MIT release diplomas. So, they're, you know, once you get your diploma, which I have stacked away in my garage and never see, but now I could have it in my digital wallet. Stanford's also doing the same. So, it's exciting to see really a lot of these enterprise institutions integrate this into everyday use and users' lives. And I think that trend is going to continue to foster in 2023.
ServiceNow - Shuchi Rana - Global Head of Whitespace Intelligence
Wonderful, Nicola?
ServiceNow – Nicola Attico – Blockchain/DLT Solution Engineer
Yeah, and this is a great use case area, Sadie, because we have a lot of interesting, for example, managing skills through ServiceNow and DLT Hedera. We also have a company called N2, which is building a network of collaborative organizations, like a DAO of freelancers, and today it's a DAO of ServiceNow consultants, but it could represent any kind of skill actually, and it's a very different way to intend work, not with a hierarchical organization, but in a more peer-to-peer way. I think it's very interesting. And coming back on the topic of what are the challenges in the enterprise space, I think a challenge still is the topic of interoperability, although what I intend is something very simple: the fact that there are a number of networks, and until you are on a different network today, there is little communication between companies which are using different networks. This is something that is starting, but it's like having different internets which are not routed to one another. And there is some, let's say, additional work to do to make that happen. I'm not saying that a big consolidation is required, but some level of standardization may help a lot in such a way that something that you build today on one network you can already use easily on another network. I think Hedera is doing a great work in that space by adopting the EVM virtual machine standard for smart contracts. This is becoming a de facto standard for managing smart contracts, and I think it's one of the foundational connections between different blockchains. Other concepts like state proofs are coming, which may allow easier communication between networks, but I think this is an area where we can see big improvements over the next few years.
ServiceNow - Shuchi Rana - Global Head of Whitespace Intelligence
Wonderful, Simi.
Swirlds Labs - Simi
Yeah, so what do you need for adoption, and what do I think one of the challenges are? So, I think we're forgetting adoption. You need an ecosystem. You need the web 3 developers building the web 3 applications. You need the retail users that are using the applications. You need funding in the marketplace to encourage these developers to build these kinds of applications. And then, for end users, you need it to make it really easy for them to consume and understand the technology. And I think Sadie kind of hit on this a little bit already, but if I go and talk to some of my friends about how to get involved, you're generally talking about an account, and then you're talking about keys, like you're talking about ecdsa keys or ed keys. You have to manage those keys. You have a recovery phrase. There are all these things that are brand new, that are brand new in the sense of like when you talk about users and using web 2 applications, they don't have to interface with any of this. They don't have to understand these keys. They don't have to understand what the recovery phrase is, how to recover them. And your accounts are generally holding your assets, your NFTs, your tokens, your way of interacting in the web 3 space. So, I think one of the challenges is to make it a lot easier for people to understand what they need to do to interact with web 3 applications, and also a way to have a recovery phrase to recover those keys. But if you don't have access to your recovery phrase, then you're just lost, like you're just out of luck with anything that you own in this space. So, there has to maybe be some other ways or options for you to recover your keys or solutions out there to make it easier to do that. It's analogous to kind of, like the "forgot your password" you have in web 2. You generally have a username and password that you log in and engage with some sort of application, and if you end up forgetting your password, well, you can just click "forget my password" and reset it and do all of that. That's not as easy to do in the web 3 space when you're interacting with applications, because your private key is only known to you. You're the only one that should know about it, so the applications can't know about it. But I think that overcoming that hump of making it easier for people to interact with their accounts and keys and manage them would be something that's a challenge for today that hopefully gets resolved over the years or tomorrow, or tomorrow, maybe not tomorrow specifically, but... very true.
ServiceNow - Shuchi Rana - Global Head of Whitespace Intelligence
Hey, wonderful. Well, we have five minutes left. Many questions. I just wanted to comment. We'll follow up with answers to each one of them. We'll make sure either it's through email or whatever mechanism we want to use. But I want to wrap us up with one, I would say, last question for people new to the space, how can we learn and be more involved and kind of benefit from it? So, what are some of, um, how are you engaging with communities, and are there any specific ways to learn?
HashPack – May Chan – Co-founder & CEO
Sure, that's actually something that I'm very, uh, my company and my team is very interested in facilitating. We do a lot of work with getting people hooked up with the community here and both on the retail side, the user side, and the development side. So, um, I would say that if you're new to blockchain, you're new to DLT or Hedera, and you want to get in, I'd say just get in. Find some communities that are in the space and start developing with people, uh, start making friends and asking questions. And I think the Hedera space is actually very good for this. We're very welcoming, very open, and provide a lot of resources to people who are just starting out. Um, so, yeah, I think being part of the community and joining one is probably the best way to just get your feet wet. On our side, if you're looking specifically for Hedera, we have a community page on the HashPack website. It's hashpack.app/community, and you can see all the cool things that are being built on Hedera. I think Hedera also just launched their own version of it, which is an ecosystem page. So, if you go to their main web pages, they have a huge list of companies, enterprises, etc. that are building on Hedera. But I would say that the best way is to get involved. Twitter is a huge social media outlet for web 3, so if you have a Twitter account, then start following some of the bigger influencers in Hedera specifically. I would say HBAR Foundation is a good one, and Hedera themselves, and then you can go from there. But, uh, basically, it's actually a very easy space to hop into, so all you need to do is just step in.
ServiceNow – Nicola Attico – Blockchain/DLT Solution Engineer
On the ServiceNow side. Um, I think I mean we are doing a lot of work with Hedera right now. So, if your company is looking for implementing a Hedera use case, please reach out. We have an indirect connector that we develop in the vision and innovation team, and we can help you bring the use case to life in a local way. ServiceNow does so, drag and drop smart contracts, tokens, and all this kind of stuff and execute it. Um, if you go to my LinkedIn account, I was curating these chart video sessions called "Learn Blockchain with ServiceNow." Under there, I will continue to do them but with the connector, you can create accounts, create tokens, interact with smart contracts, and do a bunch of other stuff. If you're looking for a good book, I wrote one a couple of years ago called 'Blockchain Ecosystem,' translated in English. You can try to read it. There is a lot of material everywhere really. If you want to get involved, just start googling, and it will come to you.
ServiceNow - Shuchi Rana - Global Head of Whitespace Intelligence
Awesome. Sadie, I know you have a big community.
Women in Data – Sadie St. Lawrence – Founder & CEO
Yeah, the best way to learn anything is to get your hands dirty. But how are you going to stay motivated when you're hitting your head against the wall and trying to figure things out? I would highly recommend finding a problem that you're really interested in solving. So, I love what has been happening in the chat here today because people have been saying, 'Oh, I'm working on this too,' and other people are saying, 'Let's connect and plus one this and plus one that.' So, finding a problem you're really interested in solving is helpful to stay motivated. Then, finding a community of people that you can ask questions to and most importantly, share what you're learning and get feedback is definitely recommended. Join all the communities mentioned already. You can also join Women in Data and we have different working groups going on for building NFTs. In addition, if you're really interested in developing certification on the blockchain, hit me up on LinkedIn or Twitter. That's something I'm actively working on right now. It's a passion project for you, but most of all, just join a community, find a problem you're interested in, and get your hands dirty. Be okay with making mistakes and testing things out. That's the key.
Swirlds Labs - Simi
Yeah, I would say, if you're a developer, most of these protocols have a dogstockcompanyname.com and a 'getting started' section. If you want to get a feel for what the technology is about and go through the experience of submitting a transaction and going through the different components of it, I think that's a really great way to get started. Research the different protocols and understand which one you're interested in. For example, Hedera has docs.hedera.com if you're interested in Hedera and learning about how our services work. If you're not a developer, but you're curious to see how you want to engage in this, I would maybe Google search different applications in the web space and try to get involved that way. You can get a feel for what the experience is like. I think, similar to what Sadie said, the best way to get engaged is to go through the experience yourself and formulate your own opinion on what this means to you and so whether you're are wanting to try to go and build something yourself or maybe use an application and experience it as an end user I think those are great ways to get involved for developer communities a lot of these Protocols have Discord channels that you can join and you can talk to other developers in the space other people building projects and applications and if you have a business idea then you can also look at foundations for these different protocols so Hedera has the HBAR foundation you can submit your Grant proposal request and receive funding that way for a project idea that you might have
ServiceNow - Shuchi Rana - Global Head of Whitespace Intelligence
Wonderful I know as much as I'd love to continue the conversation we're at the top of the hour so um thank you again thank you for choosing to spend your time with us um I think we all got to learn a lot today so thanks dear speakers thanks to a very engaged audience really good questions and like I mentioned we will try I promise we'll get all of them answered perhaps in a follow-up email and let's stay in touch connect with all of us on any of the social media channels um email us and look forward to learning and building together so thank you.
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