'One Network, Many Chains' – The Case for Blockchain Interoperability - Coindesk

'One Network, Many Chains' – The Case for Blockchain Interoperability - Coindesk
Cambodia Readies a Blockchain-Based Digital Currency - Coindesk
17 Blockchain Music Companies You Should Know - Built In
As the WEF Warms Up to Crypto, Its Head of Blockchain Talks Empowerment - Cointelegraph

Posted: 30 Jan 2020 09:18 AM PST

The man who wrote Mastering Bitcoin, Andreas Antonopoulos, is anything but a bitcoin maximalist.

At the Blockstack Summit in San Francisco in October, he spoke about a subject that's already proving to be one of the most-watched topics going into 2020: inter-blockchain communication (IBC).

"I find it astounding after all this time that people still try to follow this idea of 'winner takes all.' One coin to rule them all. One chain above all else. We're coming for ya. The flippening," Antonopoulos said.

The "flippening" is the conviction that ethereum's $19 billion market cap will one day best bitcoin's $170 billion (which is the basic idea behind any maximalism for any other cryptocurrency – ETH-heads just have a name for it). "The data just doesn't support that hypothesis," Antonopoulos said.

Still, it's not a position crypto OGs love to embrace, which explains why the very first thing Antonopoulos says in his talk is: "I bring you heresy."

In short, he argues there will be many distributed blockchains in the future and that many of them will be quite useful.

And he is not alone in that conviction.

A multichain future

"We're going to continue to see blockchains get built with very specialized ideas in mind," Bison Trails CEO Joe Lallouz told CoinDesk. Just look to bitcoin owning value and ethereum owning smart contracts, he said. "Mass adoption will be more likely in the future of interconnected blockchains," Lallouz added.

In short, look for developers to choose between distributed networks in the same way they choose between coding languages like Haskell and Python today.

"As a company, we're pretty bullish on this idea and bullish on protocols like Cosmos and Polkadot that are being built directly to service the interconnected blockchain nature of the future in our ecosystem," Lallouz wrote.

There have been other developments in the space, too, such as ETH-oriented Loom reaching the Tron and Binance chains and Summa providing interoperability solutions. So much investment has gone into this category of solutions that the IBC future is probably something like a consensus position across the industry.

In fact, if Antonopoulos had a contrarian take it was this: The optimal interoperability solution is already here, and it is bitcoin's most popular Layer 2 technology, the lightning network.

It could be years before it's clear which solution companies rally around, but broadly speaking, IBC is like every big trend in crypto: Not everyone sees it the same way.

"Personally, I believe that the rising tide lifts all boats and that many projects can benefit from the efforts of each other," Bruce Fenton, founder of the Bitcoin Association and the Satoshi Roundtable, told CoinDesk. Fenton is now focused on a new cryptocurrency, ravencoin.

Keld van Schreven, a co-founder of crypto investment firm KR1, argued IBC yields an effect that is greater than the sum of its parts.

"Without IBC we will just have a limited horizon of possibility," he said.

Van Schreven sees the shift to IBC as a sort of enlightenment moment for the technology, even taking it so far as to suggest that it might "reduce the tribalism" that plagues the crypto ecosystem.

But it's one thing to propose interoperability and another thing to actually get it built. It also introduces a new level of complexity.

One idea, many puzzles

"The ethereum world has benefited tremendously from the composability of smart contracts, where one protocol can make use of another protocol in order to build up and up towards something higher-level and more useful to the end-user," Doug Petkanics, of Livepeer, a decentralized video transcoding service, told CoinDesk. "But to date, composability has been halted at the boundaries of ethereum."

Composability is the idea that software can be put together like Lego blocks in ways that its creators might not have anticipated.

It's a nice idea, but it starts to get complicated in practice.

Aliaksandr Hudzilin is part of the team behind Near Protocol, which is using sharding to build a highly scalable blockchain. He told CoinDesk that one of his developers participated in a conversation about IBC at Devcon 2019 in Osaka, Japan, including the Ethereum Foundation, Cosmos and Polkadot.

Hudzilin's interpretation of the conversation was that "none of them had sat down and talked about it," he said. "It's kind of the beginning of the dialogue."

From the vantage point of the Devcon developers, blockchains sharing tokens and data starts to look much easier discussed than executed.

And then there's the question of why teams should even bother plugging in.

"You have an adoption challenge to convince people to refactor in order to support interoperability standards," Stephane Gosselin of the engineering team at Numerai told CoinDesk. "From my experience, the latter is an uphill battle."

Gosselin said the business case just isn't there yet to justify teams doing the work.

Electric Capital's Avichal Garg sounded a similar note: The wait for IBC will be long, he said.

"Interoperability only matters if there is real activity happening on multiple chains and right now there are really only two that have significant activity (BTC and ETH), and several that have the beginnings of activity," Garg wrote.

Why bother?

And, of course, there are those who don't see much point in interoperability to begin with.

Spencer Bogart, a general partner at Blockchain Capital, diverges from Antonopoulos on one point, believing only a very few chains will matter in the end.

In fact, it could be just ethereum and bitcoin, Bogart said. "I think the area of intrablockchain communication will be a far more important and salient topic going forward than interblockchain communication – that is, solving for compatibility and functionality 'up the stack' of winning protocols."

Ben Waters, of the multi-asset Nervos Network, thinks it might be simpler than all that. It could be that every blockchain that survives only needs to talk to one other blockchain, and that's bitcoin.

"Interoperability of PBNs [public blockchain networks] that serve very similar functions and tend to have the same apps, programming models and economic models is largely pointless," Waters wrote in an email. "Additionally, if PBN tokens are largely interchangeable, everyone will want to hold the hardest, most secure token."

But some bitcoin maximalists take it further than that.

"Blockchains are waste," Udi Wertheimer, a well-known skeptic of Satoshi's descendant technologies, told CoinDesk. "Interoperability between blockchains makes as much sense as interoperability between polluting gases."

But, in a way, the idea that one machine will dominate squares with the view Antonopoulos espoused in October.

"I'm really fascinated by the strong possibility that while we will have many chains, in the end, they will all come together under one network," Antonopoulos said. "One network, many chains."

Disclosure Read More

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

Cambodia Readies a Blockchain-Based Digital Currency - Coindesk

Posted: 30 Jan 2020 09:03 AM PST

The National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) is readying a central bank digital currency (CBDC) to be launched at some point during the current fiscal quarter.

Chea Serey, NBC's director-general, told the Phnom Penh Post this week the central bank was developing "the national payment gateway for Cambodia" as a blockchain-based, peer-to-peer platform with its own specially designed cryptocurrency. She did not give a definite date on when the CBDC would be launched.

Known as "Project Bakong" and first trialed by NBC in July 2019, the CBDC will work on a closed system supported by its banking members, one of them, Phnom Penh Commercial Bank (PPCBank) President Shin Chang Moo, told The Post.

Compared to conventional payment and transfer methods including credit and debit cards, Bakong is cheaper and more convenient, Chang Moo said. His bank is rolling out the system at all branches.

"We are in the final stages of the deployment," he told The Post. "It has taken a little longer than expected because we were ensuring that the system is as useful and convenient for the users as possible. We will offer the service as soon as it launches," he said.

There is "zero possibility of speculation" using the CBDC, Chang moo added.

Users will be able to set up a Bakong wallet that will be automatically linked to their bank accounts, allowing easy fiat currency exchange into the new CBDC in real time. NBC says it will store all transaction data from the platform, suggesting payments may be fully traceable.

Users will be able to use the "quasi-form" CBDC for everyday payments from their mobile devices. The initiative is expected to support the government's push to introduce QR-based transactions throughout the country.

Bakong was designed by the Japanese blockchain company Soramitsu. CEO Makoto Takemiya told CoinDesk that the CBDC "is simply a tokenized version of the USD and Riel fiat money in NBC's reserves."

"[T]he system can support any type and number of currencies, including cryptocurrency," he added. Soramitsu is currently working on implementing similar systems for other countries around the world.

Although Cambodian authorities have cracked down on cryptocurrency trading, NBC had been testing blockchain technology for an interbank payment solution since at least 2017. In October, the bank signed an agreement with a Malaysian bank to begin experimenting with digital wallets for cross-border transactions.

Designed initially for domestic payments in Cambodia, NBC plans to integrate a cross-border payments facility into the Bakong platform, Serey said.

Bakong already has the support of 11 national banks, with others expected to join soon, according to Serey. "Bakong will play a central role in bringing all players in the payment space in Cambodia under the same platform, making it easy for end-users to pay each other regardless of the institutions they bank with," she said.

Although this could hit the banking business in the short term, Cambodia's financial system is "relatively immature," Chang Moo told The Post. Bakong will "create financially inclusive ecosystems that all the stakeholders in the industry can benefit from."

UPDATE (Jan. 30, 19:10 UTC): This article has been updated with additional information about the nature of the CBDC.

Disclosure Read More

17 Blockchain Music Companies You Should Know - Built In

Posted: 16 Mar 2019 12:00 AM PDT

Did Napster kill the music industry? Depends on who you ask. Some will say yes, while others will argue the revolution of peer-to-peer music sharing platforms was an inevitable byproduct of technology (a.k.a., the times they are a changin'). One thing's for sure — Napster fundamentally changed the music business, and as former MTV News anchor Kurt Loder noted it "created moral and monetization problems of which we've not yet seen the end."

Yet Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, Tidal — all direct descendants of the Napster revolution — are here to stay. The top ten music streaming platforms alone have more than 250 million monthly customers. It's the way consumers prefer to discover and listen to music in the 21st century, and while some record labels have cut deals with the streaming services, many artists continue to seek a fair shake in a world where one million streams on Spotify earns them about $7,000. After splitting proceeds with crew members, producers and the record company, the artist typically earns about $2,100. Pandora's payment system has an even lower average payout of $1,650 per million streams.

Blockchain in Music

Blockchain is solving some of the major problems currently plaguing the music industry. With blockchain, musicians are able to receive equitable royalty payments, venues are able to curb counterfeit tickets and record companies can easily trace music streams and instantly pay all artists who contributed to songs or albums.

One technology has the promising potential to ease the industry's woes: blockchain. Artists like Lupe Fiasco, Gramatik and Pitbull have advocated for decentralized technologies in music, and proponents champion blockchain's distributed ledger technology as a way to efficiently release music, streamline royalty payments, eliminate expensive middlemen and establish a point of origin for music creators. Which is to say blockchain can re-establish the way music is produced, bought, sold, listened to and managed in a fair and transparent way.

With that in mind, we've rounded up 17 examples of how blockchain technology is re-molding and reinvigorating the music industry.

MediaChain

Location: New York, NY

What they do: MediaChain is a peer-to-peer, blockchain database for sharing information across different applications and organizations.

Music application: In addition to organizing open-source information by issuing unique identifiers for each piece of information, MediaChain also works with artists to ensure they are paid fairly. The company issues smart contracts with musicians that directly state their royalty stipulations without the hassle of confusing third parties or contingencies.

Real-life use case: Music giant Spotify acquired MediaChain in 2017 to help solve royalty payment and rights holders issues within the music industry.

Ujo

Location: New York, NY

What they do: Ujo's decentralized platform creates a database of music ownership rights and automates royalty payments.

Music application: Ujo features a blockchain-based platform, where artists can upload original works, self-publish, control licensing options and manage distributions. The Ethereum platform eliminates the confusion of music ownership and pays artists using smart contracts and cryptocurrencies.

Real-life use case: Imogen Heap, grammy-winning artist RAC and Girrafage have all partnered with Ujo to release music, manage payments and establish chain-of-ownership.

Choon

Location: Devizes, England

What they do: Choon is a music streaming and digital payment platform that uses blockchain to fairly pay artists in a timely manner.

Music application: Choon's Ethereum-based platform enables artists to set up smart contracts with each song contributor, ensuring a set portion of total revenue (80%). Instead of waiting a year to pay artists, as is typical, Choon can reward them almost instantly based on how many streams the DLT recorded for any given day. The blockchain also facilitates crowdfunding for up-and-coming artists and rewards listeners for creating personalized playlists.

Real-life use case: Artists like Tala, Darude and Guy J use Choon to stream their music and receive a larger share of streaming revenues.

Open Music Initiative

Location: Boston, Massachusetts

What they do: Comprised of 200 members, the Open Music Initiative (OMI) is a nonprofit calling for open source protocol in the music industry.

Music application: The Open Music Initiative is exploring the use of blockchain to help identify the rightful music rights holders and originators so they can receive fair royalty payments. The Initiative believes that blockchain can bring transparency and deeper data insights, which can help artists get fairly paid. They count Soundcloud, Red Bull Media and Netflix as just a few of their members.

Real-life use case: Sony, YouTube, and Spotify have also joined OMI to modernize and streamline royalty payment mechanisms.

Musicoin

Location: Hong Kong, China

What they do: Musicoin is a music streaming platform that supports the creation, consumption and distribution of music in a shared economy.

Music application: The company's blockchain platform allows for the transparent and secure peer-to-peer transfer of music. Their coin, MUSIC, is a global currency that supports all trade surrounding music and music-related purchases. Musicoin eliminates the need for third-parties, which means that 100% of all streaming revenue goes to the artist.

Real-life use case: Volareo smart speakers has integrated Musicoin into its speaker technology, so artists can be compensated instantly.

Mycelia

Location: London, England

What they do: Mycelia is a collective of artists, musicians and music lovers looking to empower creatives in the music industry.

Music Application: The music ecosystem is looking into blockchain for several applications. Mycelia primarily wants to run an entire database on blockchain to ensure that artists are paid fairly and acknowledged quickly. The company's Creative Passport contains full information about a song, including ID's, acknowledgements, business partners and payment mechanisms, so all contributors are treated fairly.

Real-life use case: Musician Imogen Heap released her song Tiny Human on the Ethereum platform, and she used Mycelia's smart contract payment system to pay all contributors.

Viberate

Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia

What they do: Viberate is currently the world's largest live music database, featuring more than 460,000 artists, 5,000 music festivals and 500,000 global music events.

Music application: Want to know which artist, event or venue is trending? Check out Viberate's curated profiles that highlight an artist's upcoming shows, social media engagement and music videos. Viberate uses blockchain to manage millions of crowdsourced data points, with real-time rankings and profiles. It rewards community participants with VIB tokens, which the company views as a go-to digital currency in the music industry.

Real-life use case: The Chainsmokers and Showtek are just a couple of the artists that have already claimed their Viberate profiles in order to better engage with fans.

Blokur

Location: Oxford, United Kingdom

What they do: Blokur is a source for global publishing data for management and monetization of music.

Music application: Blokur uses both AI and blockchain to combine different sources of rights data in one database. The blockchain then allows music publishers to catalogue their work for the community to see and unanimously approve. The company's AI resolves any source disputes by scanning pertinent origination information to make sure the correct artists receive payments.

Real-life use case: More than 50,000 songwriters and 7,000 publishers have submitted their creations on Blokur's platform to ensure that they receive credit for original works.

Smackathon

Location: Miami, Florida

What they do: Smackathon is a competition for business ideas that focuses on using decentralized blockchain in music.

Music application: Created by Mr. Worldwide himself, Pitbull, the annual competition has seen blockchain-based ideas like decentralized streaming services, platforms that pay a listener for every second they listen to a song and fan engagement tools. The idea of the competition is to embrace a wider music fan base and ensure that artists are being treated fairly.

Real-life use case: The winner of the 2018 Smackathon was the crowdfunding platform HyperValence, which uses Proof-of-Fandom (PoF) that enables fans to support up-and-coming artists by purchasing digital collectibles.

eMusic

Location: New York, NY

What they do: eMusic is a blockchain-based music distribution and royalty management platform that rewards both artists and fans.

Music application: EMusic's decentralized music platform features instant royalty payouts, a rights management and tracking database, fan-to-artist crowdfunding and back-catalog monetization for copyright holders. EMusic also rewards fans by offering exclusive artist content, promotional incentives and cheaper prices relative to other streaming sites.

Real-life use case: Music lovers can listen to everyone from Aretha Franklin to Beck using eMusic's membership tokens, which ensure that artists are fairly paid.

VOISE

Location: Ottawa, Canada

What they do: VOISE is a blockchain powered app with its own personalized token based on Ethereum.

Music application: The VOISE token enables indie artists to monetize their work in a peer-to-peer marketplace. Artists upload their content, the platform recommends music based on a user's preferences and users pay the artists (who receive almost 100% of the revenue) for their music. VOISE artists are also able to set their own prices, offer free sample tracks and even seek support from the music community.

Real-life use case: Currently in Alpha stage, VOISE is looking for ways to improve its streaming app.

MusicLife

Location: Singapore

What they do: MusicLife is a blockchain-based music nonprofit that focuses on limiting piracy and establishing a new payment method for artists.

Music application: Each song an artist uploads on the MusicLife ecosystem generates a MusicToken (MSCT). After 50,000 streams, an artist gains full music rights and can make his or her songs publicly tradable. The MSCT token initially gives musicians 100% share of a song's income each day after accounting for listens and users that purchased the music. Like a stock market, prices of songs are based on number of listeners, depth of listening and user activity.

Real-life use case: MusicLife recently developed a media app called Echo that has more than 30 million users. Echo users can earn tokens to make purchases in the MusicLife ecosystem by interacting with the app.

BitSong

Location: Malta

What they do: BitSong is the first decentralized music streaming platform dedicated to artists, listeners and advertisers.

Music application: Bitsong's music streaming platform is trying to solve a major problem in the industry; payments. The blockchain-based system lets artists upload songs and attach advertisements to them. For each advertisement listened, the artist and the listener will get up to 90% of the profits that were invested by the advertiser. The $BTSG token also enables listeners to donate to indie artists and to purchase music.

Real-life use case: With more than 177,000 users, BitSong's streaming platform has partnered with artists like Alex Guesta and Ahmet Kilic to demonstrate the the decentralized payment model of the app.

Digimarc

Location: Beaverton, Oregon

What they do: Digimarc develops solutions for licensing intellectual property for audio, visual and image content.

Music application: Digimarc is integrating blockchain into its technology to help license music. Digimarc Barcode is a music fingerprinting technology that links to metadata in order to track music sources, measure usage and estimate payments. The digital watermarking technology works with most music files and gives a more holistic insight for music rights holders.

Real-life use case: Digimarc's Barcode was used by "The Angry Birds Movie" production company Rovio to track interactions with music in the Angry Birds app.

Blockpool

Location: London, England

What they do: Blockpool is a blockchain firm that creates custom code, offers consulting services and helps integrate ledger technology into a business's current systems.

Music application: In addition to its work in other industries, Blockpool creates digital tokens, formulates smart music contracts and tracks licensing and intellectual property rights for the music industry. The company helps musicians implement blockchain throughout the whole production, distribution and management process.

Real-life use case: Record label, One Little Indian, partnered with Blockpool to release European musician Bjork's Utopia album. Blockpool implemented blockchain to provide digital currency incentives and to manage and distribute royalties.

Audius

Location: San Francisco, California

What they do: Audius is a fully decentralized streaming platform with a community of artists, listeners and developers who collaborate and share music.

Music application: Audius is basically a blockchain alternative to Spotify or SoundCloud. After artists upload their content onto the company's platform, it will then generate timestamped records to ensure that all work is correctly recorded. Audius eliminates the need for third-party platforms by connecting artists directly with consumers. Additionally, Audius uses blockchain to ensure that artists get paid fairly and immediately via smart contracts.

Real-life use case: Currently in late development stage, Audius just received $5.5 million in funding to further their streaming service. The company is advised by wide range of big names in the music and tech industry, including 3Lau and executives from Robinhood, Pandora and Twitch.

Inmusik

Location: Irvine, California

What they do: Inmusik is a music-focused social networking site using blockchain to help emerging artists share their music and interact with fans.

Music application: On the Inmusik platform, users crowdsource artist rankings to show who or what song is popular at the moment. The platform focuses on paying artists, and fans, fairly. Inmusik's cryptocurrency ($OUND Token) helps users boost artists to the top of the charts. Fans earn tokens for finding new songs, voting for best artists and supporting the community. The system is designed to reward those who interact with other community members, as well as those who contribute to the success of an artist, with crypto. In contrast to current streaming systems, artists can earn more than $20,000 per million streams on the site.

Real-life use case: Launching in 2019, Inmusik's platform already has 18,000 registered artists who are ready to stream their music and produce engaging content for fans.

Images via social media and Shutterstock.

As the WEF Warms Up to Crypto, Its Head of Blockchain Talks Empowerment - Cointelegraph

Posted: 30 Jan 2020 05:12 AM PST

The 50th World Economic Forum is over, and Cointelegraph was happy to cover the most important highlights from the event and reflect on the role of crypto in Davos discussions.

The person who knows more than anyone about the potential that our favorite technology could have on the WEF community is its head of blockchain and decentralized ledgers. Sheila Warren joined the WEF team in 2018, several months before the 48th event was held. Since then, she has been working on promoting blockchain within the world's most influential economic community.

I talked with Sheila last year, 11 weeks after she had her third baby. We had the interview over the phone because she was feeding her child while talking to me. I was fascinated from the beginning by her unbounded energy in everything she does. Observing such women makes me believe that the combination of professional and private lives is more than possible. It is enough to have a passion and know the basics of time-management.

Path in tech

After graduating from Harvard Law School, Sheila went to work on Wall Street. There, she worked with traditional banks and hedge funds before getting involved in tech philanthropy.

"So, my clients at that time were people who were really trying to disrupt and apply tech models to philanthropy — i.e., how can we give away money more efficiently and how can we create accountability metrics? And I will say that particularly at that time, West Coast philanthropy was very different from East Coast philanthropy. And it wasn't that much of a leap for me to realize that there was actually a need for tech innovation in the philanthropic space — which is hardly a novel thing to realize."

With this realization, Sheila built a product called NGOsource designed to streamline due diligence in the philanthropic international grant-making space "because there's a lot of money that was frankly wasted in administrative costs."

The team incubated it within the company TechSoup, where Sheila became the company's first counsel. According to Sheila, the company has given away around $11 billion dollars in tech products, and it serves as an educator in the civil society sector around the world on the "ill and good" use of technology.

Discovery of crypto

It was in 2015 that Sheila read the Bitcoin white paper and got really into the technology. Before that, she and her husband even owned some Bitcoin, though she "didn't make the connection between Bitcoin and blockchain for actually quite a few years — like many people who weren't deeply in the space."

"And I kind of had this big 'aha!' moment. And then, like so many people, I went down the rabbit hole of all the social development cases. I was thinking: My goodness! How could this apply to criminal justice and chain of custody? How could it apply to philanthropic aid? How could it apply to development funding?"

During her career, Sheila reflected a lot on technological pitfalls, how a technology can take the best of it and how it can be ill-used. Research on data privacy brought Sheila to another realization:

"It's a very natural extension to thinking about blockchain technology, to realize that a lot of the concerns that we had could theoretically be addressed by this relatively new technology."

Position at the World Economic Forum

When Sheila learned about a position opening at the WEF through her friends in the State Department, she said:

"I honestly was thinking that they wanted a cryptographer, which I'm not. And it turns out they really wanted somebody who had done policy, who understood tech, and who particularly understood tech-impact and social good — and that was that was pretty much my entire career. And I've just been absolutely thrilled with the openness of the forum to really deeply engage on these questions with impact and try to lay the foundational framework of this technology to really achieve transformational social good."

Sheila was hired in October 2017, not long before the forum in January 2018. That year, the word "blockchain" entered the WEF space for the first time. I remember those first discussions and crypto events, even if held with an outsider manner that was felt in comments we at Cointelegraph acquired from some important WEF guests. But blockchain entered the agenda of the forum, and that was the beginning.

In April 2018 after a private session with "a bunch of CEOs and ministers of governments," the WEF published a report titled "Blockchain Beyond the Hype," which differentiated between crypto and blockchain as well as explained what the technology is useful for.

"I felt a tremendous responsibility after Davos, seeing the absolute insanity in Switzerland to articulate that a lot of this was hype. The idea was: Let's just put our name out there saying 'look, there is hype, true, but this technology is also real.' Both those things are true. Something can be overhyped but still useful."

Pragmatic crypto optimism

The WEF has had a constant and steady voice throughout the highs and lows of crypto. And it is particularly pleasurable to see that Sheila does not share this skepticism about crypto.

"Crypto is the first proven application of blockchain technology. And I think that's a completely fair thing to say. Think about the internet and pornography: No one likes to talk about that, but there's a reason that there's uptake in some of these cases. It doesn't mean the technology itself is flawed or bad or it could only be deployed for evil purposes. None of that makes any sense."

How to handle the skepticism? Sheila believes we have to design security around the technology. "We have to be that dramatic about it because of the way that this technology is starting to permeate, because of the nature of the transformation that will actually happen if this ever becomes more normalized or more mainstream."

She described herself as a pragmatic optimist. This means that, in her opinion, blockchain's application will remain narrow for quite a while — not so different than other technologies that made their path to adoption, such as the internet.

"I am a Bitcoin maximalist — if you want to put it that way — but I have a much longer time horizon. It's going to take quite a bit of time and I actually have no problem with that. I think it behooves us to be very thoughtful."

Sheila also thinks that the problems that exist with Bitcoin are solvable. "I won't say that they're completely solvable. I won't say they are easy to solve. But I think they are solvable. And again, this is reminiscent of the early internet, right? There were all kinds of problems of the early internet and they were slowly and painstakingly solved."

"What I like and what I don't like about Bitcoin are the same thing, ironically. I don't like the fact that we don't really know about ownership. But I think that Bitcoin has retained its diversification, its decentralization more than a lot of other protocols out there. And so, I think that Bitcoin has possibly partially saved or possibly has a better chance of remaining true to those roots and to its origins.

"I don't think Bitcoin is going away. I think that it is deeply important to the ecosystem. I think that its maintenance and its enhancement is deeply important to the entire ecosystem. And I think that it will always have a certain unique role to play. Whether that expands and becomes like the one coin to rule them all — or the one protocol to rule them all — is a matter of 'let's wait and see what happens.'"

How blockchain can tackle the erosion of trust in public institutions

Experiments with blockchain are taking place in various countries, but it is interesting to note that Sheila's enthusiasm mainly lies in observing developing countries' experiments with blockchain.

"There's a lot of opportunity outside of the G-7 or even the G-20. I actually think this technology has the potential to elevate some of those economies. Decentralization is not a radical concept in many parts of the world. It's kind of already happening socially."

As an example, Sheila mentions adoption of such innovations as WhatsApp and WeChat, which first blew up in places outside of the United States "I was on WhatsApp with my cousins in India years and years before any of my friends in the U.S. used it. The world is big."

Thus, the WEF is conducting projects in such countries as Colombia, where it is applying blockchain to enhance government accountability and to reduce corruption — so practically, to rebuild trust.

"I actually think that this technology — if it's done correctly, and if the policies around it are designed to mitigate human tendencies toward things like corruption — could provide access to information that could enable third parties or other groups to actually come in and conduct audits. You could actually stem the drop off of trust in public institutions because, in my opinion, that is one of the biggest crises we face."

Latest WEF developments

In May 2019 the WEF announced the formation of six "Fourth Industrial Revolution councils," dedicated to different technologies — one of which is following blockchain.

That was in part a result of realizing that the WEF has tremendous credibility as a trusted source for cutting-edge information. The forum is also a place that is trusted by institutions, and they participate in its meetings in full privacy.

"We are a trusted place for a lot of these world leaders to come and experiment and share both their challenges and their concerns, but also their successes.Within the six technologies we chose, blockchain is key among these — perhaps even more than any of the others. Because it's such early days still, the forum's voice can be really important. And central banks really trust us to appropriately share what they're all thinking about, trust us to bring the right experts to the table to help educate them about the technology."

The council is comprised of geographically and gender-diverse members (over 40% are women) as well as use cases: banks, regulators, governments, social enterprises and startups. It also represents different opinions on crypto — from Bitcoin maximalists to blockchain skeptics.

The discussions on adoption of blockchain technologies keep coming. The WEF is educating regulators and institutions, helping them be less frightened and embrace the new technology. Thus, at the last forum, the WEF announced its decision to establish a global consortium for governing digital currencies, and it also released its "CBDC Policy-Maker Toolkit," which is designed to help central banks create their very own state-backed cryptocurrencies.

"We need to build this technology because someday, people's lives are going to be at stake because of the security around it."

"This technology is about empowerment"

Being a powerful woman is also about believing in what you do and its potential to make the world better. I couldn't help asking Sheila how she would explain blockchain to her daughters. She said: "Now, I'm rather like 'Mommy is working on a different kind of money' and 'Mommy thinks technology can help people.'"

"What I'm going to tell them is that this technology is about empowerment. It's about giving them power in a system that may have been set up to disempower them. I would like them to take away why I am so invested in this technology, why I'm so passionate about it and why I truly believe it can be transformative."

"We are brown women, we are minorities in the country that we live in. And part of what I always tell my daughters is that 'your voice is your power and you use your power, you use your voice to not just help yourself, but to help other people — to help people that don't have access to their own voices for any reason.' We have to be very mindful of the fact that people aren't always treated the same."

Her daughters should be proud of their mother, and the blockchain community should be proud of its advocate.

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