 Hello. Yes, hello. Good morning, Dr. Roberto. We're just waiting to off at 10. Sure, I will meet Amir. Thank you. Dr. Mohammed, I think we should start. Yes, I'm here. Okay. So, Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. Good morning everyone, and I would like to welcome you to the second day of our digital forum as a collaboration between Hamid bin Khalifa University and the Ministry of Transport and Communication where we will be focusing on Qatar's SMEs and the opportunity to expand their knowledge and how to use the emerging technology and the latest technology into their digital transformation journey. I would like to welcome today Dr. Mohammed Abdullah, the associate professor from Hamid bin Khalifa University where he will be covering the blockchain and the benefits for SMEs. And I would like to welcome as well Dr. Roberto, the professor from Hamid bin Khalifa University where he will be talking as well about blockchain applications and use cases for SME business innovation. And I would like to welcome as well today Mr. Yazan Assafi, the digital industry director who is supporting the digital transformation for the industry in Qatar. And if I can start with Dr. Mohammed Abdullah, please Dr. Mohammed. Thank you very much, Ruan, for the introduction and thank you for inviting me to this very interesting forum. So thank you also for the attendees for coming and listening to this talk. So let me first share my screen. Dr. Mohammed and our attendees, we will be receiving by the end of the session questions Dr. Mohammed and his subject and we will be accommodating and supporting with much information. Sure, sure. Okay, so thank you again. So let me start. So today we are going to talk about Blockchains applications for SME. So my name is Mohammed Abdullah and I'm associate professor in the information and computing technology division at College of Science of Engineering at Hamid bin Khalifa University. And also in this talk I will have my colleague Dr. Nooriddin is going to present in the last part a demo on how blockchain can be used for applications for SME. So, okay, so my talk today will be divided into three parts. The first part will be given an overview on blockchain. We know it's an immersion technology. You may have heard a lot about blockchain, Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, but today we are going to give you like what does exactly blockchain means and what are the types of blockchain that can be very useful to SME. Then in part two I'm going to go over blockchain applications for SME and then in the last part we are going to show you a demo of how to develop a decentralized application on blockchain from design to deployment. So this is my first part. So we'll give as I said an overview on blockchain. So when blockchain started, when was the beginning? Actually the beginning there was an economic crisis, global financial crisis in 2008 which actually hit the whole world. And then actually the main source of people believe that this time that the main source for this problem was actually the centralized ledger that being hosted by the banks. So all the transactions that being like all the money of the users or all the movement of the money is being handled by a centralized ledger which is the bank and people were not available to see. There was no kind of transparency about how this money has been used. So this centralized ledger was kind of you can see it as a single point of failure. So there was an issue how to actually move from a centralized ledger to a distributed ledger. So this kind of when people started losing trust in the bank they were thinking about can I have a distributed ledger rather than having all the transaction being hold in centralized unit can it be hold among distributed fashion so that all the users can really see what contrast action can be handled. And it can be like and this will somehow create more trust on how the money is being handled. So this was a very nice idea but there was many issues about this idea. For example, how can I update this distributed ledger? How can I make sure that all the users whenever there is any transaction between any two users how can I make sure that this transaction is being stored in all the distributed copies of this ledger at all users and it is also consistency. And also how can I make sure that there is a trust among all these users or that any update in this ledger people will trust each other about the information stored in this ledger. So this actually this issue of how to update the ledger in 2008 there was this white paper like published by a person called Satoshi Nakamoto. He's actually a person who is very well known but nobody knows his real identity. He created was Bitcoin. So this Bitcoin, he was able to solve this trust problem of distributing the ledger and he invented was called blockchain and this is the technology based on what Bitcoin was implemented. So the blockchain actually it's a technology that provides rules and how to update this distributed ledger among all the users and ensure consistency and also trust among the users. So if you think about blockchain you may have heard a lot of terminologies on blockchain. You may heard about Bitcoin, Consurgium, Data Mining, too many aspects but what exactly is blockchain? So the question is for example blockchain is does only the Bitcoin the cryptocurrency or there's much more than that. Actually if you look at the blockchain, blockchain is as I said, it's a distributed ledger if you think it's like a distributed database. Okay, but it has two main features. The first important feature is a tamper proof. So whenever data is stored in distributed ledger it cannot be changed or modified after that. So people can trust that the data is really secure. And then the second part that it's actually there is this kind of consensus. So whenever any data is sent to the distributed ledger restored we are kind of there is a consensus among all the users of this blockchain network that the data stored on all the distributed ledger are consistent and the same. So this blockchain was able to provide consistency and also trust. So the three together this is actually our blockchain. So blockchain as I said distributed database system which can provide immutability tamper proof data and also consistent in terms that all the data stored in this distributed ledger base they are all the same. So based on this technology, this is the real blockchain too many applications have been developed on this. The most famous ones are actually the Bitcoin and all the cryptocurrency that you are hearing about Ethereum. Also there was actually more application decentralized app which is the smart counter. And also there appeared to be transaction trading and too many applications that actually today the SME can really benefit from this kind of application. So to give you more idea. So a blockchain if you really want to work on a blockchain you need to have a grasp of two technologies. You need to have an understanding of two technologies. First of all it has encryption because all the trust that we build on the blockchain you need some type of encryption and also you need somehow an infrastructure of some public and private key. Plus you have also you need to also to have a distributed computing because blockchain will be actually a type of a computer knows that they all have this distributed ledger stored on them. So both of them are combined so with encryption and distributed computing. That's what you need to create a model where a network of computers can collaborate towards a shared and this cured database. So now the question is now we are going to say with like okay so blockchain we said that it can be like and provide this immutable data structure and also consensus. So now we are going to explain how we can achieve immutable data structure how this blockchain doing this and this is actually this is the main idea of the blockchain. So the blockchain from the name of the blockchain is actually it's a set of blocks which are shamed together. Okay, so how this is happening. Okay, so assume for example you are like in a Bitcoin network and you receive the set of transaction. Okay, and you want to store them in the database. So this is the set of transaction that you receive. Okay, so now I want to store them in one block. Okay, so how the block is formed. So assume that this is for example the first block that the first set of transaction that you receive. So the first block actually there will be each block will have a block ID. Okay, and on top of that we will have also a nonce and nonce is a random number which we are going to understand its importance later. So this block ID how the block ID is formed the block ID is actually is it the following function. It's an encryption function. Okay, it's a kind of a security function we are going to explain later which is actually a function its input is all the transactions ID here. So all each of these transactions for any payment transaction that happens for example in the Bitcoin it has an ID plus this this nonce. So the idea of this block will be actually a function of these transactions ID and nonce. So this is now I formed one block. Now I assume I have another set of transactions that I received. So now I started creating more blocks. So actually the blocks are created this way. Okay, so every transaction which I receive I will put them in one block and I will generate block ID. But now we can see here there is kind of shaining between this block how this shaining is happening. So actually it's happening in this way. So for each block we also input in addition to the nonce we only put the previous block ID. So we take this block ID the previous one and you put it here. Now the new block ID the new block ID for each of these block will be the encryption function which will be function of the transaction ID plus the nonce plus the previous block ID. Okay, so if you think about it any any of these block IDs actually will be function not only of the previous block ID would be all the function of all the previous block IDs. So any ID here will have a kind of relation or a function of all the previous blocks ID. And so as I said here each block will include the IDs of all the previous ones. So actually this kind of shaining through this encryption function actually will make it very many any modification for any of these blocks can be easily detected. And we're going to see how in the next slide. So, so the temper first of all let me define that this encryption function this encryption functions are very popular function is called hash function, which actually the main idea of the hash function it can convert any input of any size into a fixed size string. So for example if you get all the transactions whatever the size of the transaction you're always get a fixed value, which is independent of the size of the transaction it has two main features. Okay, it's unique, which means that if you have different inputs we will always produce different hash values, and it's also secure, which means it's impossible to determine the input from its hash value. So, given this hash function. Okay, so the blocks will look like this in the function you'll have this hash point the output of the hash function, and this is how they look like they will like by the number all of them have the fixed size. So let's see now how this training, okay, will make it very easy to detect any kind of modification for example assume that one of the blocks here the second block here. Okay, someone tried to modify the value of the block here. So when you try to modify the value of the block here, this the block ID will change and then this will move to the next block, and then this will also change this block ID. Then here at this one, this block ID is actually computed, it will be different from the original one store. So, and this will propagate through all the common, through the all the next blocks. So as you can see there is has been a broken the chain has been broken. So I can easily detect whenever any change here, I can easily take there was something problem with the blockchain and someone tried to modify the data. And also there is another feature I can know exactly where is the block that had been modified. So, for example, at this stage, when the block ID start to change I can know that for example this block, the one that will the data has been modified. So as you can see, this is creates this trust in this blockchain that data store there it's trusted secured nobody can change. So now we solve the problem of the trust to the blockchain. Now the issue of the consensus how can we make sure that all the users will have the same distributed ledger and all of their network nodes. So this is actually done by a consensus. Okay, so how does consensus work. So I assume this is your network of this is your blockchain network and actually you receive a multiple of transactions. Okay, and actually all the transaction one is sent to the network. It's all goes to all the nodes of the network. So we all receive the transaction, but they can be received and not in the same order. So there can be some issues. So how can you make sure that at the end that all the nodes can receive can have the same distributed ledger. So this is so so how to solve this. Okay, how to regulate the blockchain to create this consistency. So the idea here comes that we need to select a leader for updating the ledger. So among these networks, the way to do this, we're going to select one node. Okay, he's the leader and this one node, he will be the one that creates the block. And then once he creates the block, it will be sent to all the nodes to add it to their own blockchain after verifying it. Okay, so another question. How can I select the leader. And actually this is leader issue or how to select the issue. This is the most popular mining technique that we all heard maybe about Bitcoin and how why is taking minus post so how you're going to see why mining or this how it relates to consensus algorithm. So actually to select the user. Okay, we do some race based election mechanism. There should be some race. Okay, that the user will go and try to compete with each other to find the to select to be the lead. Okay, so the way it is done in the in the Bitcoin, for example, it's actually by solving a buzzer. Okay, what we call a proof of war to prove of war means that all the users needs to do some more to prove that they can be selected at the lead. So how the buzzer is designed. The buzzer is designed in this way. Okay, there is this target value which is determined. Okay, and each node needs to solve the following. So they have this hash function which we defined before, which is a function of the previous block ID and the transaction ID, plus this nonce. So actually all the nodes we are trying to find this value of nonce. Okay, which make sure that will satisfy this target. Okay, and this actually in a very exhausted process technique, which actually is done in this way just like you go and search for this non keep searching keep searching. So until you find the value of the nonce that satisfy this target. So this is a very simple code that doing it. Actually, if you look at this process is actually a very highly competition process and they actually can go to 1000 per hertz per second. It consumes electricity and time consuming and cost. But the question why and this is process is called mining but the question why we are doing this actually the purpose of doing this is to make sure that if anyone's if not make easy for example let's look at model if this is what a very simple way to select the leader then for example can someone an attacker can go to the network and he can easily claim to be a leader with a very simple work and then he can really creates blocks which are not trusted. But now with this kind of a proof of work technique. Now a person really wants to go and attack the network he needs to spend a lot of money and effort in order to do it so it make it very difficult for an attacker to modify the network. And also this process of mining to incentivize people to do it actually they actually whenever a person is selected as a leader they are rewarded a Bitcoin. Okay, that's why a lot of people try to join Bitcoin network is to try to solve this puzzle and if they have been selected they will be given a Bitcoin which now they are actually they are a good investment. So as I said it's make it very hard for the attacker to alter this transaction within the block. So now this is like a general idea how the blockchain works and what I mentioned so let's look at the blockchain timeline how the blockchain involved with time. So the blockchain in 2008 this is was a white paper that we said about blockchain and then Bitcoin started to show up. Okay, and it's merely was merely a distributed database system and then in 2013 became blockchain 2.0 which is based on Ethereum smart contract. Okay, we should actually that idea of the smart contract came into the picture and I think this is what's mainly very important. And you see this is very useful for the SMEs and then we started the first deployment 2015 decentralized apps and project and then recently 2019 they started doing blockchain 3.0 which actually trying to solve one problem with the blockchain which is a scalability which we are going to explain in a few seconds. And as I said this old this from 2013 to 2010 now it's barely based on distributed compute. So what is the blockchain 2.0 so there was this guy. Viltag Buterin which he actually talked about developing Ethereum which actually he thought about rather than having only distributed database what if you can develop actually and this decentralized application on top of the blockchain so on each node rather than have only a database you're going to have a computer virtual machine which can run a specific applications. And these nodes will collect together and they can form a consensus on how to run a smart contract. So what is the smart contract so in the smart contract is actually a kind of a business logic for example if you have a contract really which is happening in real SMEs you can convert it to be running on the blockchain. Which is a set of business logic which can include also signature of the stakeholders the rules of the contracts even some regulation regarding the contract and they can be stored over the blockchain and then they can be. Execute and this has been seen too many like it has really many application and finances and health and trading as we are going to see it. Also we need to mention there are two types of blockchain there is a public public blockchain and private blockchain so the public blockchain is actually. It's mainly like the Bitcoin or Ethereum it's open for public participation is publicly ordered for example you can go to the Bitcoin network and actually can download the whole blockchain and see what's going on now. And it has two different usually the consensus algorithm there are this proof of work which we explained there was another one called the proof of the stake. Which are different type of different consensus algorithm to select the leader but usually they have a poor throughput but because they are public. Now there is also a type of blockchain which are private blockchain sometimes they call permission consortium blockchain they're all under the umbrella of private networks only authorized parties can join this blockchain. It's mainly for example if you are developing and if you have a blockchain with different MS SMBs working together they can form a blockchain to facilitate working together but this will be only private. It can be closed or open for public to read and it has different types of consensus algorithm proof of authority is on time for tolerance which actually much less in terms of working because now the parties know each other so you don't need to spend a lot of effort to prove their trust. And they have good throughput example for these networks like hyper ledger and core. But the problem with the blockchain it has some limitations. Okay, it's making very network safe but does not scale well. Okay, so for example in a centralized system when you increase the computing nodes in a centralized system you can actually you can do more transactions. However, in a blockchain, the problem that when you increase the network size you mean add distributed nodes, actually, you can really achieve higher security because more nodes when they involve in blockchain they can provide you more security. But the problem that these nodes needs to connect to each other they need to communicate to each other, so may end up having a higher communication overhead overhead. So the scalability of blockchain was an issue really for the blockchain. So we have a constraint scalability, we have the limited number of transactions that can be done for example in Bitcoin 7 transaction per second, Ethereum becomes a little bit better 17 transaction per second. You can have a lot of latency and sometimes you can have a lot of actually energy that we spend like with approval for. So how we can solve this so blockchain 3.0 came with this addressing scalability and actually they try to think about it and there was actually a trade-off between security and scalability. Here in this case now rather than saying if all the transaction I can divide the blockchain into two things on-chain and off-chain. So not all the transaction needs to be done in the blockchain I can do some transaction on another channel. So for example in this case if these two users trust each other. So they can actually for example on the blockchain they can block a certain amount of money and then they can go out of the blockchain they can handle all the transaction among each other. And once they finalize this transaction they can send it back to the blockchain. So this will reduce the effect of the load on the blockchain and make it more scalable. But at the other side there is also security issue because not all the transactions here are secured. So you need to select who are the users that will be going to the off-chain and how to really make sure that whatever they are doing is really secure. There are different types of this kind of scalable network. For example the one that I mentioned state channels and there are two projects now working on that is Lightning for Bitcoin and Radiant for Ethereum. There is this also side-chain another type which actually rather than having on-chain and off-chain you can have two blockchain networks. You can divide the blockchain into different blockchain networks and then they can connect to each other so make them and you know how to trust each other. There are projects like Plasma, Proof of Authority Network, Liquid. Another type of blockchain which actually scalability is called multi-chain which actually deals with inter-blockchain connectivity. For example if you have a Bitcoin blockchain you have Ethereum how can they connect with each other? How can they talk to each other? There are projects like Cosmos, Polkadot, One Chain. And lastly there is also this charging techniques which actually rather than having all the nodes having all the database they work on the same that all of them insert database. We can actually divide the database into multiple charts and they can be maintained by different nodes parallel to each other. And there are projects like Rapid Chain and Ethereum 2.2. So now I just give you an introduction to the blockchain. The next part I'm going to give you a blockchain applications for the SMEs. So I actually know that also you are going to give some introduction to this part and also my colleague Dr. Roberto I think in his next talk he will also provide much more applications related to this SMEs and how it will benefit them. So if you think about the blockchain benefit for SMEs we can see it has too many benefits. Just maybe four of them which are very clear. First of all it actually can do secured fast and cheap cross-border payments. So for example you can expand your customers because you can enable SMEs to perform secure customer transaction without any intermediary involvement. For example if you use Bitcoin you can bring customers from outside the world there is no issue and actually the transaction by then I just want to mention that the transaction are very fast and cheap compared for example to bank transactions. And also you can also even you can even influence can securely send receive money across the world at cheap rates. So these kinds of for example you can even hire talents from outside and you can provide them like their payments easily without any kind of issues through the blockchain. Second part which is the cheap and secure cloud data storage. Yesterday there was a two nice forums about cloud computing and one of the issues was raised when you use cloud computing you need to make sure that the data is secure. The blockchain is actually one of the technologies that can be really very useful in providing secure cloud data storage and there are many applications now they will provide this kind of data storage based on blockchain. So rather than having all your data within a centralized place you can actually use blockchain networks to provide this kind of cloud data storage and also it allows SMEs to scale indefinitely while ensuring trust and safety at the same time. The last second one the smart contract which is actually very important based on Ethereum it allows SMEs to automate and speed up the traditional process by eliminating all the intermediaries. And finally we have this trust usually when we have blockchain this can generate or can gain the trust of your customer and expand their business. For example if you can look at the smart contract this is like if you can see the comparison between a normal contract smart contract. For a traditional contract it can take for example one to three days to just execute a contract with a smart contract it just takes minutes because everything is done automatically on the blockchain. Manual remittance for the traditional contract smart contract automatically remittance you can easily money be transferred directly to the customer. Escrow necessary you don't need sometimes you need guarantees while for the smart contract guarantees doesn't need is transparent everybody can check what's going on. It's also it's expensive while in smart contract it's much cheaper. Sometimes you need physical presence for what signature for smart contract you can have only virtual presentation signal as I said because it's based on all based on encryption so all that it's very secure and trusted. And finally sometimes you need lawyers have a smart contract may not need lawyers because you can involve all your government regulations in your smart contract. So what are the potential applications. There are three potential applications and I said that way. I think we'll expand more on this. So the various one that supply chain management very important application. So it actually I think most of the SME they have issues with the tracking products and tracking product products between SMEs how do you share data. So I'm going to see that supply chain management will going to have very efficient collaboration you can easily detect what's the problem with with any of your product you can easily track it and because everything will be stored in the blockchain. Also that and the course sharing you have any governmental documents any contracts between the between yourself and the customers any data records this can be stored in the blockchain and can be easily used. And finally we have this peer to peer electronic trading with all the payments can be done very quickly through through the blockchain. So to give you like an idea for example for the blockchain supply management for SMEs. So usually SMEs they don't have enough resources to track their supply it's a big issues to be able to survive in a competitive company. For example here you can easily I'll give an example for example if you want to track a food product for example or any product that's coming from your exporting from outside. Usually you don't have any clear information on how to know how the product has been through from starting from the point of original internet comes back. Now if you can connect all the stakeholders in this blockchain okay so easily you can whenever any transaction habit is sorted from the origin it will be stored in the blockchain and you'll have an access to the blockchain. So everybody will access the blockchain and will be able to put this information there so we'll have the single point of truth and transpiration and will be trusted. For example if a product has been you know stored as you know for example if the product for example there's an issue in the product with the storage. For example you can determine when was this happening at which level through the supply chain management this error has happened and actually this information cannot be changed. So it can provide secure cost effective platform facilitate infant inventory management and manage external supplies also manage multiple payments and ensure high quality seamless service for customers. Another one which is like how to do like for example smart reports sharing for SME so usually they have like most of the SME they have secure certificate and official document sharing. So they need to a lot of the time you need to authenticate exchange authenticate documents between them and with the government and sometimes this is a very this is process you need for example to create the document go through printing signage also you need to protect them secure them. And finally you need to authenticate them and make sure that sometimes you need to go through different agency takes time and sometimes you need to fly even in order to authenticate. However for blockchain it would be very easy for example if you have this person he wants to for example to generate a certificate from this entity. So all of it you know he was going to request a certificate like this and then this entity will create this digital certificate and then it will store it in the blockchain so how do you will store it they will take the digital certificate. They will hash it okay and then they will sign it this signature this is a digital signature okay and then this will be stored in the blockchain and then this information will be sent back to this use. So whenever for example another entity here this user he wants to for example to take this to tell him that I have this certificate all what he needs to do is just send him this certificate and the transaction ID stored in the blockchain. So this entity will find this transaction ID in the blockchain and he will get the certificate he will do the hash and he will check the signature. So once he verify this information the hash and the signature then they will be able to verify that this certificate is collected and this can be done in the last few minutes. So this is a very simple and a very nice example also for smart records. So now I have like and also the blockchain can have also these timestamps for so any information I transactions which is stored in the blockchain is timestamp which actually can prove existing of a data at a certain point of time. So I just think I provided like an introduction to function and how can some application that can be used for the SMB. Now I will go to the third part my colleague Dr. Nori Dean who will give you a demo of how to really implement blockchain decentralized apps on blockchain. Thank you very much. Good morning everyone. Can you see my screen. Yes. So so in the last this last part of the presentation, I will we will be discovering how to design and deploy a decentralized application or blockchain based application. So first of all, so in the traditional web application or mobile application. So generally this application rely on a single or a centralized server to to manage the business logic or to house the business logic of the applications. If you look for example to Twitter's Gmail Facebook or Overs all of this application are centralized or hosted on a single server. This kind of architecture have some security drawback. Mainly it is very nervous to censorship. It have some privacy concerns and also very nervous to deal with services. In the other hand, blockchain architecture is completely different instead of having a single server to host all the business logic of the application. Now we have a distributed set of servers that are connected and communicate with each other in a secure manner using a blockchain protocol. And also are governed through a smart contact that define all the business logic of the application. Nowadays we have plenty of decentralized application that use this concept. For instance application for distributed cloud storage distributed computing platform like column distributed or peer to peer communication and messaging. Systems status jammies decentralized peer to peer open market for digital asset and so on. So let's now focus on specific application that can be useful for SMEs and see how we can define a decentralized application for these services. So if you consider leasing service for SMEs traditional way we do leasing is generally based on hard documentation to prove the evidence of transaction. And this is time consuming and expensive. Also this is such kind of system it's difficult to guarantees or provide guarantees about fairness and transparency of the system. However, when moving to a decentralized system with a smart contact. So this will be automatically provide more transparency, more fairness and cause optimization and also more importantly to build trust among the different stakeholders of the systems. So if you try to define the workflow of the system of this application. So initially we have a leader that have service that you want to leave. So for instance if you consider concrete mixer track service. So this service need to be first registered to the blockchain. And whenever new lease is provided is created. So Newton we need to register all the information related to this lease into the blockchain. This information could include the name of the tenant, the transfer date, the service ID and other information. So some of this information can be public or viewed by other SMEs so to ensure more transparency and provide more fairness. Same thing when new lease is created. So this will generate new transaction or new recording to the blockchain and so on. So actually in order to build the system we need to have or use set of tools that are essential to build this decentralized application. So basically we need a programming language solidity is one of the famous objects oriented programming mainly designed to write smart contract for Ethereum or Ethereum type smart contracts. We need a kind of IDE. Remix is a browser based IDE that allow you to compile, deploy a smart contract to an Ethereum network. It allow you also to manage your wallet to create that host your Ethereum address or blockchain address that allow you to send the transaction to deploy for instance your smart contract. MetaMask is a web browser plugin. It is a very useful tool that allow you to manage wallet and also it act like an intermediary between your, between the IDE for instance and a blockchain network. So it allow you to inject a new transaction to an actual blockchain. Web3GS is a collection of JavaScript library if you want to develop a web of JavaScript based web application. So in order to be able to connect or communicate with the blockchain to send data through your application, you need to use this useful JavaScript library that help all the functionalities to access to remote Ethereum network using either HTTP, IPS or WebSocket. Infora is an IPI suite that provide direct access to a specific blockchain network. If you don't have a local network node or a blockchain node installed in your machine, you can refer to this in Fora. Actually, if you look to MetaMask is using in the background using this Infora service in order to be able to access to a specific blockchain network. So this is the global architecture or the basic architecture of a DAB or decentralized application. So the client in the client side you have your web application for instance that use Web3GS in order to be able to send transaction through JSON RPC to one of the intermediary. It can be either directly a local Ethereum node installed in your machine. So this is more secure and more decentralized. Or you can use one of the intermediary like MetaMask that itself use Infora Ethereum provider or use directly Ethereum provider that allow you to connect with any specific Ethereum blockchain network. And at the beginning you have to use, you need to first design your smart contract using solidity and dynamics to deploy it. So this is an example of smart, the actual smart contract code developed using solidity language. So we have, we need to define our smart contract. We give it a name. For example, here we have leasing tracking contract. So we need to also define all the data selector that will hold different information related to this smart contract. For example, you need data selector that hold the information related to the different equipment used for this service. The data selector for the different tenant available in the system. And also importantly the tracking information that will be saved in this data selector that will contain the equipment ID, the name of the ID of the tenant, the equipment owner and the date when the lease has happened. So this is the data selector. And here we have the list. We can from this data selector create a list or ray of equipment, tenants and track. Solidity will give you also the possibility to define some rules or some condition, a way to define condition how to access or to call specific function in your system. That we call it modifier. So it is used to automatically check a condition prior the execution of the function in a more declarative way. For instance here, this modifier allow you to define that specific function can be only executed if the caller is the owner of the equipment here. Okay, we'll see this in more details in the next slide. So here we have the three main functions of our smart contracts. So that consists mainly in creating new tenants. So the creation of new tenants. So from the client or from the user side. So we need to call is he called this function by sending a transaction that specify the name of the function with the different parameters of the function including the name of the tenant. It's blockchain address and the type of the tenant. Same thing for the equipment and same thing when creating a new lease. So note here that when creating new lease we need to call this modifier, which is only owner, which specify that only the owner of the specific equipment can call this function to create new lease for this for this equipment. So this is this is the big picture of the decentralized application on the big picture of the smart contract that can be using that can be defined for this services or for this application. Now let's try to let's see in action how we actually deploy this contract to an actual blockchain network and how to start interacting with this blockchain network. So let me allow me to share this. So here we have in this screen we have our remix the ID that allow you to compile and deploy smart contract here actually the complete code of the smart contract that we just saw that we just defined. This is the different data structure and this is here are the three main function that we can call in order to create a new tenant or new equipment and also to create a new lease. So in order to deploy this contract we need we need here in the solidity we click this button compile this contract so this contract will be compiled and now it is ready to be injected in a specific blockchain network. Here we can use our second tool which is metamask here metamask actually give you. So it is connected to a specific blockchain network and he is also managing your account. So here I have an account with this address actually I'm connecting to the main Ethereum network. Actually I don't have any balance on this main Ethereum network so we cannot really send any transaction to this main Ethereum network, but they can all collect to a test Ethereum network. And we have a list of four test network for Ethereum so we can choose any of them. So for instance Coven I have some balance in this test network Coven actually this balance or the value of this ether actually doesn't really has any value because it is just used for testing or for development purpose. So now also I'm connected to this network using my account so automatically remix will recognize that I'm connecting to this network and recognize the account that I'm using to connect to this network. So now I can directly deploy my contract by clicking to this button. So once I click so remix metamask will ask permission to actually really perform this transaction because this transaction will have some cost. So it needs my confirmation. So once I confirm says this will be sending a new transaction to a blockchain to the Coven network. So this will take a few seconds. And also it's deployed so we will see a notification that my transaction have been deployed. Yes, so actually here I can see my transaction that have been contacted have been deployed and this is the address the actual address of my contract. So I can check actually this in the network the actual explorer of the coven network. So we can send I can search for my contract. So actually to give me the details information about my contract it has been deployed 3042 second ago and using my from my accounts. So this is the actual information regarding my contract. So once I created my contract, and it is deployed in actual network, so we can access, or I can call any of the three function by sending new transaction. So for instance, let's create a new. Let's create a new tenant for example my name and give it and specify my my ethereum address on a blockchain account and then the type of the tenant for example SMEs. So I will send a new transaction. So this again will ask me a confirmation this is new transaction that has some cost. So also confirms that this will create a new transaction into the blockchain to call this function. So actually in the actual blockchain network. This will actually execute some of the ethereum note that has the virtual machine as had been explained by to call Mohammed. So it has virtual machine does the virtual machine they will execute this will execute this transaction which mean that it will call this function. Yeah. So, yeah, so here we can check, for instance, we can check the information about my talent. So this will send transaction to the blockchain and retrieve all the information about the first time. So again, I can do the same I can do the same thing when I create new equipment create a new lease. And this all be translated to a transaction that will be sent to the blockchain and then executed by the virtual machine in the blockchain network. So this is a global picture or how blockchain work in the background. So I think we are almost on time. So thank you for your attention. The floor is your from him. Mohammed. Yes, I cannot start my video. I'm not sure why the host has stopped it. I'm here and but I cannot start my video. Let me double check. Yes, it's working now it's working. Thank you. Yes, Dr. Mohammed. Would you like to add anything because we would like to go ahead with the questions. Yes, please go ahead with the questions would like to listen to them. Yeah, inshallah. And so the first question we received is that can we mine big time in Qatar. No, it's illegal. The one that I mean this is currently illegal. But yes. And and do you think Dr. Mohammed there will be studies regarding this to obtain approvals and acceptance to have in Qatar or or there are no initiatives for this at the time being. For the blockchain technology itself yet definitely there have been a lot of interest and really employed blockchain. I'm aware there are like some companies here in Qatar startups like Q chain and Q pay. They started using blockchain, but they will not be used in terms of the Bitcoin. It will be mainly private blockchains and that will be helping the SMEs and there are. Yeah, so and we are aware that the blockchain is of high interest now in Qatar and they are working even in developing some strategies and footprints of how blockchain can be adopted in Qatar. Yes, thank you so much. Dr. Mohammed one more question. The application that we have discussed earlier. And one of the audience is asking, can you specify if this application is for small businesses as it seems it's only related to banks. No, this is the application. I'm not sure which part he's talking about. But yeah, what I mentioned here, blockchain is not necessary to be done through payments and banks are not involved with one that I mentioned for this supply chain management. There was no actually banks involved. There was no payment. Actually, it's all about really running all the transaction about different SMEs, maybe inside cutters and outside cutters, how they can look at the supply chain management and how they can track it. So there was no payment here regarding the banks were not involved. So blockchain is not only about payments. There are too many applications. Okay. Any like the one that we, Ethereum, the smart contract that my colleague Dr. Nohr mentioned. This is all about storing all this information on blockchain and can be easily tracked. There was no payment. If you want to add payment, there is also this. It's another application for blockchain. But there are too many applications where there's not really involved with payment in blockchain. Yes. Thank you, doctor. One more question that we have received. If there is an error in any of the blocks, how do you change the ID once there is a tamper or does the ID change on its own? Yeah, whenever the ID is being detected, then this will be detected by the whole network and this node will be removed from the network. Okay. So it will once it's so this can be easily detected and the node will be removed. Okay. Thank you so much. Can you please give us some example of use cases for different domains and also which blockchain technology is recognized globally? Yes. So for that, there are too many applications actually on this. And for example, this is, for example, in medical records. Okay. And now I know that, for example, in Qatar, you know, like the medical records. Now we have different places like Hammett hospital and have a private hospital have doctors and all these medical records. For example, they are located on the different database. For example, the vaccination, which is going very well in Qatar now. Now imagine that you can now if you want someone wants to get his vaccination record, he needs to go to, for example, to, to a hospital to get it or download it online. And then he needs to present it by himself to another entity. For example, if he wants to travel through Qatar, imagine that all these, all these entities, they are connected together through the blockchain. And this certificate of vaccination certificate is stored there. So it's easy, like for example, for example, if you want to travel, then for example, Qatar and we can access the blockchain can really know that you have been vaccinated. So it facilitates a lot of record medical record sharing between different entities. And also there is also this in the fintech, there are a lot of applications. And actually, if you can listen to Dr. Roberto in the next presentation, I'm pretty sure he will give you a lot of applications on fintech. And there's also in the energy trading. Okay. Also, there are a lot of issues with the rewarding function, a lot of application with the rewarding functions. Actually, we even developed something in a Q code Mocafa, which is actually based on trying to provide people with incentive to do more activities and they will be rewarded. And these rewards are all done in blockchain. So there are too many applications. Anything you can think about the blockchain can be really very useful. And actually, we have our emails, we can really provide you like a text or a document about all this application and we will be very, I mean, we can really discuss with the developer or answer any question from the attendees, just like share with them our emails and we'll be so happy to answer them. Dr. Mohamed, if you can just put on the screen your emails for the attendees just to grab it. And we have one last question. Okay. And Qatar blockchain transactions are legal. Are they legal? And can we make payments in blockchain currency? So Qatar, so as I said, the Bitcoin and the issue of the Bitcoins is like, it's not legal, but there are many other application which is kind of legal. You can implement blockchain. We do sometimes blockchain here. But in terms of Bitcoin itself, okay, it's currently illegal in Qatar. So don't do mining. You cannot do mining in Qatar. So for this specific application, it's illegal. But if you want to implement the blockchain for your own application, that's completely fine if it does not include payment. And also, I know that now there is an effort to regulate also even how to do cryptocurrencies inside Qatar. But this will be mainly governed by the Qatar Central Bank. It will not be through the Bitcoin. Let me share my, this is my email. Okay. Okay. Oh, sorry. This is my email. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Dr. Mohammed Abdullah, associate professor from Mohammed Malkhalifa University, Dr. Nauddin. Thank you so much for this beneficial session. Thank you for your time. Thank you for the information. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We really appreciate it. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much. And now we would like to move to our last session for the day. Dr. Roberto will be covering the blockchain and will be sharing more information with our audience. Dr. Roberto. Hello. Yes. Good morning. Good morning, everybody. Can you see me? Yes. Can you hear? Yes. Okay. Everything is fine. So let me share the presentation. I have an issue with my file. That's quite normal. Of course. Be with me. No worries. Take your time, Dr. Roberto. Just until your files are ready to be shared with the attendees, I would like to remind our attendees as well again today that digital transformation of SMEs is running daily webinars to educate the SMEs on the importance of the digital transformation, what opportunities and benefits and packages can offer the SMEs to support their journey in the digital transformation. We collaborate and partner with big technology and service providers and worldwide where we will be educating the SMEs on a daily basis on the services that the SME is offering for the time being which covers e-commerce, web presence, and cloud services. So please, if you can visit our website, moutof.gov.qa, you can find more information related to the webinars that we are covering, details how to register, logistics, timing, dates, and covering the details of each webinar. You can choose which is beneficial for your company, register, and attend. But Dr. Roberto, we can see your screen for the time being. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. And the mic is... Presentation mode. Yeah. Thank you very much. So I would like to thank all the attendees because this is quite an interesting exercise for us to discuss about FinTech and blockchain because at the HBKU College of Science and Engineering we also have active research on both FinTech and blockchain in particular on FinTech. I have a national research priority program ongoing and blockchain, as Dr. Mohan said, is quite an active field of research. So one slide about me. I should understand something about what I'm telling for a very simple reason. I'm directing a laboratory here which is a persecuted research and innovation laboratory. We aim to achieve impact and to generate innovation. We are producing also a few patents exactly on these topics like blockchain as well. I'm a full professor at HBKU CSC leading the cybersecurity research and innovation lab. In the past, I was a global head for cybersecurity research and non-capable labs like conducting research with three departments that were depending on me. I founded a startup that was successfully exited in 2015. I've been a consultant for the United Nations on many topics regarding cybersecurity. I was like also involved in governmental activities. As for my education, I have a PhD in computer science. I got two years post-master studies in operational research and strategic decisions, basically economic management, master of science in computer science, professional certifications in the field. People in the field can recognize those quite well. So let's move to the real meat of this talk. Thank you so much Dr. Roberto. But please if you can expand the presentation and go to presentation mode because it's a little bit not clear for the audience. It is presentation mode. Because we can see the next slides on the side. Ah, yeah, okay. Thank you so much. Is it better? Yes. No, you see the slide here. Okay, so let's stay in this mode. If you can, Dr. Roberto, just press F5. I will go on presentation. Just F5, Dr. Roberto. F5 gives a different message. It does not show the... It's Microsoft team notification if I press F5. So I know how it should work. Let's see. Go on slide. Is it fine? Okay, yes. That's the presentation mode. Okay, so let's go on. Sorry for this delay. So let's say what is the agenda? So introduction and background. SMEs, typical challenges. We have Fintech and blockchain, game changers for SMEs, which is the public of this talk. Blockchain. We will discuss some interesting use cases. So I hope that you would be able to bear with us because use cases are really tailored for the SMEs. And then we also show some real-world solution, code solution that you can take and put at work in your organization or company. Or we also draw some conclusion at the end. So introduction. Why Fintech and blockchain? Actually, it's a... Fintech, it's something to be in. There is a recent research survey that shows that Fintech has a market value of 5 trillion, so 5,000 and plus million US dollars in 2019. And over 2025 is going to expect it to grow about 25 percent per year, year over year. So it's extremely big growth. And why this is the case for Fintech? Well, because Fintech can improve and automate the delivery and use of financial services in a few words in order to be understood by all the audience. Basically, what Fintech aims at doing is basically to remove the middleman. So the broker of financial services today is typically a bank, is a trusted party. That activity is rewarded with a fee. With Fintech, the middleman, so the trusted party is basically not there anymore. So this is exciting because this means a reduction in cost. Where Fintech is going to produce this type of big gains? Well, because there are specific, of course, softwares that deal with what Fintech can do. And in particular, we're talking about financial risk management software, financial fraud detection software, blockchain and cryptocurrencies. And this is like a strict relationship with the previous talk. Crowdfunding platform, robot advising and stock trading applications. Probably some of you have touched some of those. But we would see also that there are either topics which are quite relevant for SMEs, for instance, supply chain funding. And fraud detection is something that is also very interesting. And so with decentralized application. So why SMEs are important? Basically because they are 98% of the product companies in Qatar, SMEs. They are the backbone of the national economy. And this is true, not only for Qatar, but this worldwide. And this is very critical for social development. Without a very healthy SMEs ecosystem, it's very difficult that the society itself is healthy because the SMEs are basically the trade union, the link between people, innovation, big company and solutions at scale. So without SMEs, that would be basically no progress. So SMEs, typical challenges. It's exciting to be like the leader CEO of an SME, but it's also a nightmare in a sense because the challenges are multi-dimensional. You have to embrace technology. And I would like to just point out that this is particularly true in this period. COVID has pushed all companies to have a remote presence to be online. Basically in one week, we moved from normal life to an online life. And the same is true for companies. I mean, with prohibition in some countries to go to work, companies had to arrange themselves in order to be online. So embracing technology is not a choice. It's basically the only way for companies to survive. This has been shown in COVID for telepresence, for remote work or smart work. But this is also true in terms of embracing new technologies for making business in a different manner. If you're not able to do business in a different manner, you're going to get into business pretty soon. So put this in your internal roadmap. Attracting new customers? Well, yeah, sure, because as an SME, you need to thrive. And in order to try, you need to expand your business revenues. There is only one way, basically, is to find out new customers or to do cross-selling among the customers and the product you have. One thing where SMEs, unfortunately, are very penalized with respect to big companies is in financing. Financing is an item, because sometimes you need to have anticipated cash in order to produce the product you have been requested. And access to finance is always an item for every company, not only in Qatar, it's typically worldwide, for a very simple reason that it is said that banks lend money just to people that basically do not need it. If you are an SME, you need to have money to produce something. You need to discount probably your invoice. It's a common technique. But not only that, you need to somehow be able to get money from the small market. And the small market typically have higher fees. So financing your activities is always a problem. And this is where blockchain can help you. Increasing revenue, of course, this is very important. One way to increase revenue is to reduce the inefficiencies in your processes. And many processes that we run today think about all the paperwork-based processes are highly inefficient. Increasing revenue can also be achieved through decreasing costs. So enhancing the efficiency of the processes of your company. And then another point where you have typically a challenge, it's no surprise, it's in processing payments. Think about, okay, you deliver the product, you have like a promise of payment in like 60 days. And then you have to process this payment. There is a delay. And you have to spring to the bank that there is a delay. And then you have to go to the bank to discuss how the loan will be repeated later on without the new fees that you have to pay to the bank. On the other hand, you have to push pressure on your clients in order for him or her to pay and so forth and so on. So processing payments is, again, very inefficient because typically it's dealt in person, requires a lot of middleman, and it transfers costs, into the cost to the company itself. Blockchain can solve this. Okay, you will see how actually. Now, FinTech and Blockchain are game changers for SMEs. Blockchain has the potential to offer enough benefits for the development of SMEs. Well, basically Blockchain can provide SMEs with a few key features that basically will improve your business overall, which is trust, speed, security, and protection against the identity fraud. This is the very basic. You will see that there are many more. As Dr. Mohamed said before, and Dr. Nadine complimented, it's basically the, if I can say about Bitcoin, the hunting of Bitcoin is in numbers we trust. So the trust in Blockchain is basically not relied to any TTP, the trusted party that says, well, you can trust us because we are established. We are here since a long time. We have a lot of money. No, you basically trust in mathematics, which is behind the Blockchain. And mathematics is a universal language. Everyone can prove these proof things. So it's a real trust. Speed, how long does it take a transaction? Again, just for ease of reference, even if it's even in Qatar, of course, for instance, Bitcoin authorizes transaction in a matter of minutes. So in 10 minutes, you could have a money transfer of whatever amount you want committed in just 10 minutes, which is relatively difficult to have through a trusted party. We all know about the delays of days when you do international money transfers. Trust is there, speed is there. Security, as I said before, in numbers we trust means that the security is for everyone to get proved. It's not security. Security is not security through trust. It's basically security because of the algorithms that is there can be basically trust. Protection against identity fraud is a sub-property that comes for free when you use distributed identities. We will talk later on. There are many more. Dr. Robert, we're just receiving some comments. If you could enlarge the slides, please. Yeah, sure. I'll try. Yeah, but... Or if you can press on the three dots and select hide presenter view. You see the three dots, Dr. Robert, below? Yeah, yeah. I'm here. Hide. What? Presenters. Yeah, I see. I don't have the presenter view in the three dots. I would like you to take a picture. But I mean, I can see it relatively well. Is it okay now? Yes. Thank you, Dr. Robert. Yeah. Let me know if there's something else I could do, but that's what I can see. I have another screen here. It looks like a decent. So, blockchain is also there to solve what? The cash flow problem. I believe everyone in SMEs is interested in this. The paperwork issue, which is, again, is an deficiency because it takes time, time is money. Not only that, things can go wrong with paperwork. With digital, it's much, much easier. And blockchain also solves the problem to go global. Why? As I said before, because blockchain basically, as a technology, does not know boundaries, physical boundaries. Now, let's move to the next slide. As I say, game changers for SMEs, yes, funds availability. Let's talk about funds availability. As I said before, international payments can become a lot easier and not only easier, can also become a lot cheaper. Because remember, when you have an international transaction, the number of fees really adds up quite quickly. And not only that, timing goals is an issue because you can deliver a service in time. And as soon as you deliver a service, we will see that there are specific technologies, which is contract technologies, that as soon as the delivery is done, the funds are transferred. So this is a very exciting possibility for SMEs, because you reduce the amount of exposure towards the bank about the loan you received, if any, because we will see that there is also a way to really skip completely the loan part from banks. It's a more cost efficient process. Of course, it's a digitalized process, so it moves at the speed of light, basically. And taking again the example of Bitcoin, as I said before, it really takes a max of 10 minutes in order to validate the transaction. It can also be speeded up with other blockchain technologies that you can use. Think about the algorithm, for instance, it's very efficient. So timing is becoming really marginal when it comes to processes that are put in the blockchain. And this, of course, reflects reverberates in higher efficiencies. More secure transaction, why? Well, because first of all, they can be automated. When there is automation, you remove what is technically called the systemic error that the process itself can convey. And it's more secure transaction data can be used in exchange in a very private way, strong algorithm for encryption and so far and so on. And it's a secure transaction, not only because of the technical properties, but for instance, assuming that you're buying a load of, I don't know, fruits from India, you want to eat livers to Qatar. You wait for the cargo to arrive and then you check the cargo and then you say that something maybe is routed. Well, with the digitization and using your blockchain, you can also have online tracking of the goods. Think about this. So the refrigerator checks the content, the value that comes from this analysis of data, like the cargo is routed or not, you put in a blockchain, so it's immutable in a sense. And you can know the state of your cargo, the content of your cargo, before inspection at the Hamad port. And this is very good because if you know that one of those type of fruit that we are importing, like mango, it got routed during the transit, you can, we know faster delay or there any one. And so you can basically satisfy your customers in a very time-efficient manner. Think about that. You know exactly the state of your goods. You can track goods. You can track the state of goods, which is something that basically you don't know now. You receive the cargo depart, someone there inspects the cargo and so forth and so on. You can also change private information in a very secure manner because you can add the layer of confidentiality and the CCT that you would like to achieve. And basically, this is also a very good property because sometimes information that are leaked around, especially with regards to transaction, can also be very useful for your commercial opponent, let's say. Now, what are the typical use cases for blockchain-based applications when it comes to small and medium enterprises? In this part, as per the agenda, we'll discuss a few of them. Well, trade finance, of course, this is one of the key points. Well, there are some studies that suggest that at this moment there is a gap between the trade finance needs of SMEs and what is actually provided. And the gap is around 1.5 trillion, so it's 1,500 billion of dollars. So basically, it's 10% of the overall business that is going around. This gap could be reduced by 500 billion in terms of trade finance using blockchain technology efficiently. So, trade finance is one of the key elements of blockchain technology for SMEs. And remember, there are studies. It's not myself. There are studies who went through looking for them that support this. What's the meaning of that, basically? Well, is it possible to achieve very efficient trade finance because transparency and consensus mechanism make trade finance much more efficient? And this is basically exactly what blockchain has been meant for, to introduce transparency and efficiency. One use case, for instance, related to trade finance is supply chain. Supply chain is somehow misunderstood in the sense that supply chain we focus on the latest steps of the supply chain. But supply chain, when it comes to physical product, goes to the very beginning of the generation of the product. Think about, I don't know, I have a chair in front of me. The chair is made of clothes plus iron. The supply chain includes the generation of the clothes plus the excavation of the iron in order to produce the chain. That's the real supply chain for the item. If there is SME, of course, you are not full cycle. You just focus on a segment of that cycle. For that segment of the cycle is probably way of problems because you are basically financing or refinancing with trusted party like banks just the last layers of the supply chain. While other layers which are deep inside are not financed and you know very well that when something is under financed in a cycle sooner or later the inner cost of those under financed elements will evaporate on your final product. You know that and the question is how can you take the full cycle into consideration? Well, basically with blockchain because with blockchain you are able to put the full cycle in the same context. You give access to that to your providers. Providers can also see where your supply chain is like lagging. Every step of the supply chain can be put under control. Put under control means that according to this use case you can have a clear understanding of the state of financing or under financing of this module supply chain. And this leads to what? Basically this leads to either efficiency that you can get. Think about just in time if you have a like-still warehouse. Think about faster invoice financing of course because the goods you know exactly where they are. You know that they've been delivered. You know that they've been accepted and so you can issue the invoice as soon as possible and we'll see that around that is also for receivable and automatic payment without issuing an invoice. Faster transaction processing of course at the speed of light which is electronics. Improve cash hold for suppliers yes because SMS goods are delivered at better rates if you discount your invoice at a certain point because you can also show the money lender which typically is the bank or third party as we'll see that around. You can also show that you have the full control of your supply chain cycle so there are basically very little chances that your product gets delayed. And this is quite exciting from the point of view of the SME because you don't need to establish a trust relationship with your lender but basically the lender has simply to trust what is in the blockchain and this basically reduces a lot the fees that SMEs have to pay in order to access financing. Another case for SMEs which is quite standard and it's basically the holy grail it says is the use of smart contracts. With smart contracts what is a smart contract basically? A smart contract aims the objective is to be exactly like any other contract that you are signed with third party where there are penalties for not delivering where are premium if you achieve some like a benchmark like delivering one week in advance but the main part of this smart contract, the excellent part why it is the future is basically its execution is automatic. So the two parties decide what to put in the contract I want the cargo to reach a port in two weeks if all 100% of goods are in good standing I will pay these if the cargo reaches in two weeks you have a premium if the cargo reaches with one week delay you have a penalty if part of the goods are routed you have this other penalty when everything is there this contract which is a digitalized contract the execution of this contract happens automatically so as soon as the parties agree that something happened the contract issues the billing the contract transfers the money and this is something incredibly fast and incredibly cheap think about that with this way of working you are basically removing any intermediation and removing intermediation has two main impacts the first one is that it reduce cost of processing and the second one it reduces fees as well so you can only have to gain something by this smart contract stuff. Smart contracts probably have heard about Ethereum which is like blockchain technology meant for enforcing start contracts but it's not the only one there are also others like Polkadot, Cardano the UpBuilder, Confidiel it's a very rich ecosystem that just flourished and you just need to choose exactly which technology you want to adapt and basically this has to do with the size of your company, your IT function and so on another way that the blockchain can help SMEs is for founding as I said before one of the major problems for SMEs is look for founding and how to grow well this is easy issue are like a very good with a very good balance sheet if you are like a normal company which is exactly working for improving the balance sheet that's much more difficult and if it's difficult this translates typically in higher fees that you have to pay for the founding to get received so what blockchain is promising would disintermediate this process disintermediation means that blockchain can put in direct contact people who owns or want to lend the money with people that needs the money if you think about the current model which has been around for 100 years is basically there is a middleman which is the bank the bank collects money from people that have money and lends for a fee which is called interest at least in Europe that need money disintermediation is needed because in this way you can have a process which is easier cheaper and faster not only that you can also use a lot of power work think about going through smart contracts commissions and brokerage fees so it's a win-win situation going for founding through blockchain another application of blockchain which I would like to discuss with you is basically identity management nowadays and that refers to the last bullet point in this slide there is one very dreadful attacks if you are an SME which is called back which means business it may compromise and the attack goes very very swiftly like this some external attacker takes control of an email address with boom you are in a relationship with typically a client and from this address you will receive a service email that first bid trust and then a certain point from that email address can be internal or external to the company there will be a request of funding of funding transfer to an account which is not typically the one that you use but the email will explain this is an emergency situation our cargo of mangoes is blocked in a port along the way it has to be released otherwise the goods get and it takes this amount of like I don't know 40,000 dollars to get the cargo released send this money to this account well sometimes and actually unfortunately many times this type of phishing I would call it scam is very successful and there are damages in the order of millions per company and billions worldwide with this BEC so remember this business email compromise this is very serious problem nowadays because companies I mean they are there to solve problems okay if you are the chief financial officer or the one that can sign like the CEO even always small company and you receive an email from an account that more or less you trust and it gives you a sense of urgency and the amount that has come that's a fraud the point is that with the blockchain is it possible to have this identity management to be checked in real time and when this identity management is checked in real time this means that you are able to actually verify with no delay that the people that is making the claim is real the people that you would like to talk to and is not an imposter okay so and this is very very very important because with one technology you solve a big issue not only that you can also establish trust in a faster manner now I suppose and I discuss with you a few of the applications of blockchain to SMEs and sometimes I said well you know you need to do this you need to do that but you are thinking well but I'm really a small medium enterprise I have some IT but we really don't have the capacity to build blockchain we don't have the capacity to come out with a framework design and so on this is very understandable so I focused here on the last part which is related to real world solutions so solutions that do implement blockchain, real blockchain with all the pros of the blockchain in a way that you don't need to go from scratch you can just use the segment of blockchain that you really would like to use the first solution is a loyal which is an interesting solution and think about that as an SME you are basically also having some sort of customer loyalty reward okay you have customers in order to retain customers there are studies that show that is good to reward customers with discount or with goods or you know you name it the problem with these rewards towards customers is that basically it only works with your company so the attractiveness of the reward that you are giving to the customer is limited what if your reward process could be entangled with the reward process of a different company or many companies or a franchise and that's actually what loyal does basically you can issue your reward system you can tie your reward system with the network of other agents I mean I don't know you are producing again shares and you want to give like a 3% discount to your customer to buy another shares but I mean that 3% what should I be doing is not really interesting to be yeah but you can maybe making an agreement with Carrefour for instance so the 3% that you give to the customer can also be spent or used on Carrefour products so you have synergy Carrefour has an interest because you can get new clients you have an interest because the reward that you are doing really make your client loyal to you and so on so this is the general idea of loyal and it based actually on blockchain because the transaction has to be mutable and the transaction has to be verifiable and this is a very interesting type of application it's just one of the many applications for loyal to program management and of course one specific aspect of this loyal is that consumer privacy is quite important you don't want the data of your consumers go public and this is a problem because if you want to spend your business also there are different privacy regulations depending on the country you are working on this loyal takes care of it you just use it as over the top solution and that's it so GemOS basically and in particular Gem Health is a specific blockchain which has been set for the transfer of medical records medical records is an item in many context for every simple reason there are a lot of restriction in having those data flowing around this is very reasonable because it's very private can disclose your hidden case close your mental status and so on so are protected under every legislation however the transfer of medical record is extremely important for instance I'm at South Qatar I need like hospitalization and then the insurance need to access my data all these data is transferred what are the what are the guarantee about the privacy the security of those data well basically nowadays is a nightmare but if your solution is based on sort of control blockchain permission and blockchain like the one of Gem Health is it possible to have a seamless transfer of your medical data also to your doctor in Qatar that can consult with the doctor in Italy for instance where I come from and this way you have ease of access to your health record for the doctors that need to access those records plus also the insurance can have access to your medical record for a smooth less liquidation of whatever amount is needed even for paying the cares that you received in a different country so these are the other things that you can use over the top WAVE is also quite interesting it's a solution for the materializing documents so you go basically paperless and it's like actually what the government of the United Emirates has done last year the government is paperless and how they do that we're basically with the blockchain solution every document that is generated by an administration is put in the blockchain there are rules that control who can access the document who can send the document who can read the document who can append to the documents and this way everything is basically presented at zero time to the table of decision makers and in a way that is again secure and confidential think about the application of this WAVE to financial transaction it's very good because nowadays what you do you probably generate an invoice in your office then you scan the invoice and the invoice is received in the mail of the secretary somewhere then the secretary takes your email goes to finance and say yeah we should pay this come on this is really I would not say pretty historic but it's completely different from what you could do now in a much more efficient way you generate the invoice locally automatically the invoice is transferred to the financial department of your client that will proceed with the payment if you don't go for smart contracts so this digitalization of documents is one of the first thing I will do if I were like the CEO of an SME in order to speed up the process even the decision process within the company another point which is a real world solution is aligned commerce is one of the many solutions that you can use for cross-border payments again cross-border payments managed through blockchain translates in removal of the intermediation this translates in reduced fees this translates in fast execution in a transparent record of everything and in a steel of security that you probably cannot even have with the process that you are going over around at this very time Facto harmony is something interesting now it's developed on it's a blockchain or blockchain basically you want to build your own blockchain you don't need to start from scratch you don't need to get crazy in order to see how can implement a blockchain you can use one of these blockchain or blockchains that enables you to leverage a blockchain this one in particular is based on bitcoin if you cannot use that one on bitcoin there are others even for free of course with less features but there is this idea of blockchain or blockchain that is quite important so in conclusion so I would like to leave for like a discussion I have to say that it has never been a better moment for being the CEO of a small a medium enterprise for a very single reason there are opportunities there that they were not in the past so if you are like fast enough to get those opportunities you can really move your company to the next layer to the next step to the big game and those steps that you have to take is to embrace digital transformation first of all dematerialize your processes the most that you can do is to dematerialize the most and possibly put those processes in a framework of secure management which is something that basically blockchain provides you then we can discuss about what would be the best segment of your business to get digitalized first we can discuss what is the best solution for electronic payments but that's okay it's sort of the taste that have to be discussed and decided once you have taken the decisions and I believe that this series of webinars yesterday there was cloud today is in blockchain are quite relevant because if you are able to see the possibilities of technology and you are able to put that in practice that's where entrepreneur like you are needed you really can make the big jump because never like in this moment there have been opportunities for companies so I would like to thank you very much this is the website of our laboratory where there is a lot of resources in terms of scientific research and this is also my mail so if there is any question I really would like to discuss with you about what I just thought of what we have been discussing after now thank you I see question and answer Dr Roberto yes can you repeat sorry can you repeat what the last part please it wasn't clear and you were cutting off yeah I need to drink a bit so as I said before I don't know from which point I was cut off by internet is that as a company SME you need to embrace the digital evolution and the main concept I would like to transfer to you is that as an SME there is never been a good moment like this for doing business for a very simple reason the business now is at the age of transformation if you go for digitalization you can really bring your business to the next level so this means you can really increase your revenues you can really multiply by 10 or 100 or even 1000 or more your customers you can really go far you can have your company thrive and move into the big game in order to do this you need to go for digitalization digitalization or your processes in a framework of security this framework is good is provided there are several solutions but one of the solutions that is very hot and it's proving very good is going through blockchain as we have seen also blockchain provides you the capability of accessing the founding of having a fast processing time of having identity management and so far and so on there are many many many possible implementation and features of blockchain so first thing is to decide to go for digitalization or not if not I believe there will be difficult time ahead once you decide for digital for digitalization you need to do like an assessment of what sector you want to digitalize first and the ones that you should digitalize are the ones that are like providing the more value to the company and then you start thinking about what are the technologies that you need to adopt we discussed a few cuts of the shell technology that you can take and implement you can also think about better about your needs and selecting the specific technology that will address also your needs this is the website of my laboratory this is also my mail if you are like curious about something please let me know and I would like to leave the floor to questions thank you thank you so much Dr. Roberto if you can just put the back the slide with your email address just for the attendees if they would like to contact you further yeah that's my mail yes no Dr. we are just seeing the if you can just it's on the preview if you can yes thank you so much yes so Dr. Roberto we received a couple of questions for your session as more users use blockchain is there a limit to the capacity of blockchain networks that you have mentioned and how will these limits how will they be addressed basically there are solutions that are designed for scaling like Algorand is a blockchain technology that can support tens of thousands of transactions per second so those are the limits that I would say for an SME are basically very far to reach limits but yeah of course there are theoretical limits but advancement in the field are extraordinary exponential so I would say that for SME with tens of thousands of transactions per second you should be okay if more like a transaction power is needed for some specialized solution but I would say that this is not basically a limitation for an SME yes thank you Dr. Roberto one more question regarding the smart contract when do you enforce penalties or when is the contract delivered properly does the fund transfer has to be from the blockchain as well or can it be linked to a bank account at this moment is within the blockchain of course but of course it can be linked to a bank account if a bank offers the API the application program interface to interact with the blockchain so if a bank decides and if I were a bank I would go for it because this means continue surviving if bank is on the blockchain yes also the bank you can send the contract with this contract I order my bank to move this amount of money from this bank account which is my account to this other bank account which is the bank account of the other guy so it's perfectly possible in principle at this very moment everything is in the blockchain but it will be in the bank account but still it's possible also for some blockchain like Ethereum or Bitcoin then to cash out this means moving the money out of the blockchain but it requires a further step but in the future I'm sure it will be also directly the bank involved in this process thank you Dr. Roberto we're still open to receive any questions from our audience please I see there's one since Bitcoin is legal in Qatar can the full power blockchain application be realized yes because basically the Bitcoin is one application of the blockchain full stop as I said before you can have a blockchain for checking the status of a shipment I mean the mango coming from India are they rotten or not you can put this information on blockchain so it's completely a blockchain completely disconnected from Bitcoin Bitcoin is an application of blockchain so you can come up with the applications you want for blockchain there is no need to be based on Bitcoin the touch is just an application Bitcoin is an application of blockchain so yeah there is one question basically we're still in the bank's approval the current time otherwise the transaction has to be done using cryptocurrency yes it is like that but still there are like blockchain systems that are basically self sustained ecosystems because if you only give a blockchain and you start trading within that blockchain with smart contracts you reduce a lot your dependency on the bank itself so is this included Dr. Roberto from cyber attack yeah blockchains are normal one standard one that you can take also from open source project as I said is a strength in number so their strength is coming from the maths that is behind so to the state of the art blockchain are very secure there are threats that are coming from quantum computing but there are also ready solutions proposed from blockchain that will survive the arrival of a quantum computer so there are probably the most secure things that you have around Dr. Roberto we received the question but I'm not sure if it's our role to answer but they just wanted to understand why do you think it's illegal in Qatar it's very reasonable because every state as the right and this is more wide as the right to mint its own coin if you use cryptocurrency basically you are eroding the right of the state to mint coin because it's someone else also that is producing coin so from this point of view is perfectly logical that the state could ban the usage of cryptocurrency simply because it's an erosion of the mint rights that every state has very simple yes thank you Dr. Roberto I'm not sure if we still have any more questions we're just receiving some feedback Dr. Roberto and I'm sure that our audience can communicate with you and our other professors any time through your email addresses so for the time being Dr. Roberto, Dr. Mohammed, Dr. Muriddin I would like to thank you for the great session we run today and for the attendees who have supported us throughout the journey and our digital forum today and yesterday I would like to thank Ahmed bin Khalifa University and Dr. Munir and the College of Science for the collaboration with the Ministry of Transport and Communication thank you for your time thank you for your knowledge it was a pleasure having you today and I'm sure that we have perfectly delivered the importance of the digital transformation and the benefits that the SMEs will get out of it to continue running their business in any circumstances that we're going through and thank you so much for your time and your knowledge thank you very much it's been a pleasure looking forward for collaborating bye everyone thank you Dr. Roberto thank you Dr. Mohammed and thank you Dr. Muriddin have a great day thank you everyone thank you