 Thank you, Lod. How are you? Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. We're meeting for the first time. Yeah, let's sit. Good morning, Hyperledger Global Forum. It's wonderful to be here. This is my second Hyperledger event, my first global forum. I had the privilege of speaking in Montreal, Quebec, and Canada in 2018 at the Hyperledger Member Forum. Was anybody in Montreal in 2018? Awesome. Wonderful. It's nice to see you again. Hope we'll have the opportunity to meet. My name is Hilary Carter. I am the VP of Research at the Linux Foundation. And my role at the LF is to describe through data-driven insights the opportunities, the challenges, and the technologies that are being created across open-source project communities. We've done lots of work with Hyperledger, and we're here to create a public utility that is free, just like the open-source technologies themselves, widely available. And our reports are designed to help inform strategy and decision-making and to overcome barriers to understanding what's really taking place in open-source project communities. We want to dispel myths and misperceptions. We've had the privilege of doing a number of projects already with Hyperledger. My previous role was at an organization called the Blockchain Research Institute where I did a similar thing specific to blockchain technologies, describing which projects were operating along different industry verticals and converging with different technologies. So, enough about me. Elon, please, why don't you take a minute to introduce yourself. Tell us about your journey at LAT Chain. Thank you, Harry. Well, good morning, everyone. I'm coming here basically to find a way to talk with everybody of you to learn a little bit about your projects and also to communicate about what we have been doing in LAT Chain. LAT Chain is an initiative that was born in the end of 2018. And it's actually a result of some research that we were doing in the Inter-American Development Bank in how to develop use cases using blockchain technology. And we found out some challenges that especially governments and public sector, mostly institutional players were dealing back then to scale up their solutions. So, most of the challenges were related with regulation and how they can be in compliance with the regulation of those use cases. And basically our proposal with LAT Chain is to bring the technology a little bit closer to the regulation in a way that all the use cases that in paper right now many organizations have they can start deploying it or testing, running a pilot. And basically that's what we have been helping organizations so far in a way to create a community. So LAT Chain is moving in two directions. It's providing an infrastructure where basically it's based on hyperledger vessels so organizations can connect to the public permission and version and it's also an ecosystem. So we are basically a global alliance where we are inviting organizations to be part of and deploy the use cases and the diversity of this ecosystem is broad. We are talking about organizations developing solutions but also providing, for example, consultancy, legal assistance education and so on and so forth. So what we have been seeing is that and actually thanks to the Inter-American Development Foundation is that we have been trying to promote the use cases and educate organizations that they can now execute use cases that sometimes we're on paper or just ideas. Wow, I want to talk about the specific role in a minute of the Inter-American Development Bank which is fascinating unto itself but you started by describing how you were working with regulators. I am from Canada and our financial services sector has a challenge because different jurisdictions have different regulatory bodies. For example, securities in Canada are regulated at the provincial level. So the province of Ontario, province of Quebec, province of British Columbia and the blockchain innovators in Canada have to deal with three different regulatory bodies. It's much more streamlined in the United States. Inter-American Development Bank, LAC chain, you have all of these different countries across Latin America. What is the regulatory landscape like and how do you manage a diverse set of regulatory interests across national or even regional lines? We have been the work that Inter-American Development Bank does is not only help countries in developing solutions but it's actually helping to mature their legal framework let's say and as part of many other aspects that the IDV is helping countries. So in this case we do a lot of research. Some of those research are based on legal framework of each countries to identify what countries of maturity level they have in a way that they can adopt for example digital identity and what we have found in most commonly in all the countries is that the regulatory limitations are based on anonymity of the transactions and the relationship with cryptocurrency while they are executing a transaction. So the transaction fee basically so what we have been trying to do is like getting rid of all those noise to the conversation so in a way that we can focus only on the things that are legal compliance. For example right now there is a country that is a stock market regulator in one country of the Caribbean that is actually adopting one of these solutions to meet up the supervision to all the stock market so this way they are adding efficiency to the stock market but also reducing the cost for the players or the members of this stock market and this is just because one small thing and it's like the regulator found out that the transactions were not anonymous actually in latching we are doing two anonymous signatures for every transaction so every node is signing that transaction but also the user is also signing that transaction so for the regulator this is like music to the ears because it's actually the way that they need to support this kind of adventures. So is the takeaway then that in dealing with regulators start small focus on a particular issue, a particular use case as a means to help overcome those barriers to implementation. We have found that at the beginning on paper because many organizations have on their papers use cases that they want to pursue but they are dealing with this scale up challenges but we have found out that many organizations are willing to move forward as long as there are other players who are willing to move forward and the position of the IDP is actually that is like let's going to take a leadership role in the implementation of use cases and let's going to deal with the government that we work with to support use cases. One of those use cases is actually very it's very amazing which is Cadena and Cadena is a solution to integrate customs in so the challenge is that we are very large let's say continent with a lot of countries when talking about more than 20 countries including islands in the Caribbean and facilitating the exports and imports of those commercials agreements is actually challenging so we actually are doing a solution to integrate the information that is actually private but using the setup actually which is to enable private channels with using hyper ledger vessel and they are able to share information between customs so this is actually one example that we have been using to teach within the Latin America how they can scale up projects using blockchain and basically get rid of the noise that these technology can bring providing good examples of real use cases. I am tremendously excited about the opportunities to reduce border friction and you mentioned the role of leadership we had a pilot project in place that was using blockchain technology to reduce friction between trade friction between Canada and the United States and it was championed by leaders in government, leaders in enterprise and along the line unfortunately the project did not come to fruition that leaders got cold feet and the key players backed away and it is very frustrating because those of us who know that these are pure value plays unfortunately there is a negative association that is often associated with blockchain projects unfairly what is the you have been in a very fortunate position I think to have a multinational organization like the IADB being behind your project how important is that leadership equation to the success of black chain and the implementation of technology projects like hyper ledger that deliver real business and social and economic value is a totally new world when you have an organization like IADB supporting specifically the project and it is because of the reputation that this organization can bring to our projects actually many organizations startups or private sectors are willing to deploy their use cases just because they are tied to the inter-american development bank name just because of that that is bringing certainty and kind of reputational level to their own projects so this is actually very important let me share a little bit of the experience that I had we are constantly meeting with many of you having that situation too but we are constantly meeting with regulators or banks or institutions that are very well positioned in each of our countries probably and when we start a conversation about blockchain there is a lot of noise around that conversation if it is related to the merge, if it is related to kind of hacking if it is related to cybersecurity things and when we educate because I usually say that 70% of my conversation is kind of education and the 30% is just specifically talking about specific solutions it's like when we are educating why is this technology different or how we can see it and we bring to the conversation that Latching as a project has the inter-american development bank as a support or this is an initiative coming from the IDB the conversation is totally different and the atmosphere that you can feel in the room is totally different just because you have a well-reputation organization so this is actually the leadership of the organization and this is actually something that probably you have seen with the conversation in any areas is actually in that way we are in a very different position because this organization is actually pushing forward to move the technology and it's just because probably everybody here in the room knows about it is that the potential blockchain technology can bring to our countries so the focus of the inter-american development bank is to promote the development of the countries and we are seeing the blockchain technology as one of those technologies that can close those gaps gaps in inclusion, in education in financial system so that that's actually what we are looking in the inter-american development bank and it's very aligned to the technology so that's a motivation to promote it Wonderful We need more inter-american development bank type leadership across the different regions I would love to see that play out elsewhere you have listed a number of excellent use cases do you have a particular use case that is inspiring, that is developed and is adding immediate value that you would like to describe Yeah Well, there are many projects going on with different levels of maturity the project that I love most is actually we call it in Spanish Neonamas which is basically no more gears it's actually a solution to fight violence, intra-familiar violence and we are enabling on our phones or the phones of every person a panic kind of bottom where when you push that bottom basically the phone is recording everything that is happening location, what is the microphone the picture, everything is recording it and it's creating a notarized document of that on blockchain, particularly to give the legislation or the judge the opportunity to confirm that that event actually happened there is a very funny relationship between observer and the violence usually the violence occurs when nobody is watching but you feel that you are being under watch that is actually minimized so this is actually having into ways to prevent the violence occur but also to provide a tool to the people on the violence to basically have a tool to protect themselves so it's changing and that's what I love it because it's changing the, let's say of the proof of the violence it's not my word against yours it's actually something that is recording a moment in time, is this in a particular country or is it all across the blockchain ecosystem? Well it's actually happening in Colombia right now but we are through the inter-american development we are expanding that to cover all basically all Latin America and that's what I love it because it's actually very important to protect life and the other thing that maybe I would like to talk is about LACPAS LACPAS is an initiative that we started to develop with the World Health Organization specifically in Latin America which is the Pan American Health Organization to promote the vaccine certificates so in every country you have and probably you have seen with the COVID we have that vaccine certificate so if we want to ensure that those certifications are valid so we are developing with 11 countries a program where we are going to basically standardize the vaccine certification we're doing some similar things with educational diplomas and in some other Wow amazing I'm very inspired by the safety application I think from my perspective as a woman as a mother of a daughter one of the opportunities that I appreciate most of all in identity applications is when we have to show our ID to gain entrance to a facility of some kind whether it's a pub or a bar or wherever and in doing so I have to give over my name and address to a complete stranger and I think the extra layer of privacy is extremely important and we'll create a lot more trust I think our whole internet culture does not serve girls and young women and women at large and these are the kinds of solutions that inspire me and very much get me out of bed absolutely every day so awesome awesome let's talk a little bit about some of the friction and the obstacles that you've had to overcome I mean every day is not a picnic clearly so what lessons can you give this group about overcoming some of the really significant challenges that blockchain has faced yeah it's everything about education if we go to the bottom of all the fears let's say it's everything about education it's because most of the organization doesn't understand or at least in those organizations that are starting to understand groups are not understanding well what is the technology or how this kind of technology can work and for example we were working with some organization that is actually a regulator as well and the IT department had very clearly the solution how to what to implement in how this kind of solution going to fit but the legal organization the legal department didn't understand anything about it so it was a challenge an internal challenge that they were facing and we were kind of in the middle trying to educate on both sides because at some point even though they had a very clear understanding of the solution they were not clearly 100% of how the network might be might be working so everything is related with education and that's why I say like probably the 70% of our time has been like trying to educate to educate people and to teach how we can differentiate ourselves within a public permission because that is also a concept everything or many organizations are thinking that the information that putting in blockchains will be like visible to everybody and you are going to be publishing private information or a strategic information that shouldn't be there at the end of the day it's not there but it's some of the concepts that we need to like clarify when we have these conversations Ilan what tooling do you use to assist in your educational work do you host roundtables do you have one-on-one meetings do you use research what are the tools that you use that have brought you success in that education that's a very good question because the need of the location might come from different perspectives for example one of those perspectives is technical the maintenance here that are very well in terms of programming well that is actually a need that we need to close in terms of maturity but also what we have been doing is like bringing education platform one of the partners of LACNED maybe we can talk about LACNED in a few but one of the organizations that we are promoting within LACNED is an orchestration entity that is called LACNED LACNED and we are one of the partners of LACNED is actually RETLAG which is an entity that groups like 2020 100 universities across Latin America and the Caribbean and with them we are developing a program where we are talking about training that teachers of these 2200 universities to spread the knowledge of blockchain all across Latin America and the Caribbean so that's how we are getting started but we have already created materials that we are inviting organizations to participate now what is happening in reality is when we are having a conversation in a group session is that we usually bring different skill sets to the conversation for example one of our teammates is very well master in legislation and he is not a master in every legislation of each country very well so when we are going to talk with a regulator we usually go with him because if there is a question about regulation he might be that person who can answer well that kind of doubt we are doing the same thing with the technical level so we go to the sessions with a group of people that can basically collaborate in different aspects of the most commonly questions that the organization can have so stack your teams with diverse representatives who can understand the technology the legal frameworks the business opportunities and have the communicator one of my challenges in research is I often work with extremely technical people who really understand the tech but their ability to communicate and distill the opportunity that the technology creates is not always that easy so diverse teams, different skill sets that's a practical take away it was a theory of mine but it's nice to hear you say that that has brought success so let's talk about LaNet tell us about this particular network we were talking about how organizations can scale up their use cases and one of the challenges that we were facing with organizations I'm talking about institutional players or governments is that they need to sign a contract somebody who can ensure basically assure that the network is going to be available so who's going to play that role for organizations and LaNet is that organization LaNet basically orchestrates the Latching Network we say that Latching is kind of an ecosystem based on hyperlegia but it's called Latching so LaNet orchestrates the Latching Network and basically organizations can sign up a contract a service contract with LaNet to deploy their use cases on main environment so with this contract organizations and specifically when they go to the League of Review they can see that there is an entity that is support the infrastructure that is going to ensure the availability in the long term of the infrastructure the information is going to be there and basically that's the value proposition that we are providing through LaNet as well there are similarities with some other kind of IT products for example you can have a support team helping you in case you have problems with your note or any other connectivity issue but basically that's what we have been doing and some of the things that we have been learning and we are doing also through LaNet is that consultants in services we have been like exploring a large diversity of use cases from CDDCs to educational certificates let's say and for those use cases we have like successful proof of concepts or solutions already on production and what we have been seeing is organization that needs to close the gap of education that they tell can you teach us about what you have done in for example in CDDCs or how can I deploy my national blockchain services let's say so we do that service through LaNet as well so LaNet I'm going to summarize is essentially it's like a blockchain as a service yeah distributing nodes and can you give us a sense of cost can you come to Canada and help us out how can you go about that pricing I love because LaNet is a non-profit organization so we are going to talk about cost don't expect much to it probably your cable in your house is worth more than the subscription that you can have in LaNet which is around $170 per month so it's kind of ridiculous but yeah that's a business opportunity amazing let's dig into Basu specifically as architecture what was it about Hyperledger Basu that provided the kind of innovation that you were looking for couple things the first one is the concept that is behind that is very aligned to what we are looking in LaNet which is the open source we are very tied to open source everything that we have been doing is open source and having the support of Dino's foundation Hyperledger foundation is actually very aligned with what we are looking for and we have been trying to participate in the kind of events but also to expand our participation and integrate Firefly and some other functionality that we can take advantage of or put in to service to our governments so that's one of the things the other thing is actually the possibility to create a public permission network which is actually what we have been doing we found out that our model is actually deploy public permission we are agnostic to the technology however the best protocol that have fit to this vision is actually a public permission network and it's Hyperledger Basu and also there is another beautiful thing it's actually the developers community I don't know probably you have better numbers than mine but probably 80% of the developers are solidity developers this is actually very compatible with Hyperledger some of the things that we have been seeing is a lot of adoption using solidity as a protocol for smart contracts amazing we have one minute left Ilan I'd like to give you the opportunity to share final takeaway about what people in this room can do in their own communities, their own regions any final thoughts? yeah well one of the things that we believe is very important is try to create collaboration between organizations and specifically where we can add value between us we have been seeing like for example the use case that we had with BNDS which is the national bank of Brazil of development where we have been collaborating to deploy their network as well for Brazil and it has been a very good relationship and based on the collaboration in a way that we are expanding this we have been working with World Bank to deploy use cases across Latin America it has been very successful in a way that we can well we have a very aligned vision between organizations so that is something that facilitates the conversation but actually that is helping organizations to adapt where there is no multilateral or there is no multi-regional blockchain infrastructure so for example in this case we have been able to collaborate with Africa where it is possible so I believe that probably talk to each other see how we can collaborate what we can do together has been like an opportunity especially this time where we are basically growing and growing every day and we are discovering and still discovering what this technology can bring us Wonderful, keep managing those relationships keep collaborating it is an absolute pleasure Thank you so much Thank you very much everyone