In this post we will tell you the main points that were highlighted during the Deconomy — the global conference for distributed economy. Better late than never!
(See the first part of the story here)
Day 1
Mainly this conference was about the community. We want to pinpoint the presentation by financial cryptographer Ian Grigg: “The Future of Identity; A Paradigm Shift to Small Group”. That’s very disruptive trend for the traditional consumption of convenience goods, social services, financial tools and even for media content. So it should come as no shock that the very first presentation in Vista Hall made by cryptographer David Chaum was named “Distributed Computation”.
One can say, that the Cambridge Analytica’s case clearly demonstrated the power of mass. As for me — I totally agree with this statement and I’m glad to welcome such cases because they are the illustration of the necessity for decentralized infrastructure for social media. Because from the social perspective we all regularly communicate the small group of people, but technically speaking all the personal data currently is super centralized. So that’s the time to bring into compliance how we act and the scope of technologies that are under the hood of the tools we are using for our daily interactions. That’s probably why I advocate the idea that blocking of the Telegram — the first ICO-related mass-adopted product — in Russia is an important incident that needs public coverage and notice of appeal. Once in Nairobi (Kenya) Zeynep Tufekci, famous American scientist and writer, said, that social networks were open, but they are definitely not a flat space. The social structures there are hierarchical. But the CA-case is about how to hack the organic hierarchy. Things sometimes spread very wide, not because someone had lots of friends or followers, and not because of the content relevant to the audience, but just because there is the Force that is interested in promoting this content. That’s why the shift to open protocols with no particular corporate owner is a vital thing, mentioned at the first day of the Deconomy.
Another important topic of the day was very common to the Crypto Assets Conference in Frankfurt (February, 2018). The panel discussion in Grand Hall was about the view of traditional finance. That means that the technology of blockchain should be implemented into the traditional finance institutions. Like Dirk Bullmann, Directorate General Market Infrastructure and Payments at European Central Bank said in Germany: market infrastructure services need to keep pace with technological advance and changing user needs. This plot continued next day by Antony Lewis in his presentation “Central Bank Digital Currencies: Painting the Landscape”.
From the technical perspective the problem of the day was Scalability — after the speed challenge and Security that’s the most important goal to reach for Blockchain in General and for ENQ in particular.
Day 2
Frankly speaking the second day, April 4th, was under the Ethereum’s sign. During the Keynote session Ayako Miyaguchi, Executive Director at Ethereum made the presentation titled “What is the Ethereum Foundation?“ Then Jon Choi from ETH’s Research Group told about the governance of the Economics protocol.
As part of Blockchain 2.0, “Ethereum appeared in August 2014 with its grand mission to be a world computer, enabling developers to build cryptographically secure and decentralized softwares”. But unfortunately the speed challenge mentioned above interferes the community to reach this ambitious target. It seems like only the Blockchain of Tomorrow will be able to do it as soon as the PoA algorithm is launched and the door for mere mortals to the world of mining is opened via mobile devices.
When one is speaking about regulations he/she usually means the crypto space. But the open-sourced blockchain-based software should be the nightmare for providers of IT infrastructure because, for example, it will be possible soon do deploy a public cloud for non-critical apps on blockchain. Now it’s much clearer why some majors are fighting against ICO initiatives. Some, but not all of them. We were glad to see IBM’s Stanley Yong, Global Lead for CBDC, participating in two panels during the second day of the Deconomy.
So the crypto is hot, but the blockchain as the technology is crucial.
Links to our Periscope Broadcasts:
2. https://www.pscp.tv/ENQ_enecuum/1MYxNpLkjLQGw
3. https://www.pscp.tv/ENQ_enecuum/1BdxYRPQykvKX
4. https://www.pscp.tv/ENQ_enecuum/1OwxWEPLjZQGQ
5. https://www.pscp.tv/ENQ_enecuum/1BdxYRPnzRvKX
Our next stop is in Germany. Please follow us to know more about the blockchain-related discussion at the Startup Camp in Berlin. The brief overview of the first day is already published here. But the Blockchain session was during the second day of the event. The full list of the checkpoints for our road show is here. Welcome to join us!
