 And we are live. What's up guys? Welcome back to another episode. I got an exciting guest for you today I got Anne Connelly, which is the network lead with Ixo. Ixo is really interesting That's why I got her on the show and plus she's from Toronto as well. So local Torontonian She's also the faculty at Singularity University and is on the board of Blockchain Canada and how you been? I've been great. Thanks so much for having me on today. It's my pleasure. You and I we actually had a Video before this but due to technical reasons. We couldn't actually show the video so basically we want to do this again and actually make it right and When you approached me, I think it was because we sat down at Defcon that was in September I believe but before that you approached me with Ixo and what you guys are trying to accomplish and do which is Something it's quite big actually. I won't lie. It is as massive what you're trying to do Which kind of got my attention It's quite different from what everyone else is trying to do and kind of like to start off this conversation with you first question I have for you is what is Ixo? I've lost you been there. It's alright. I think okay. You're back. Sorry I'm so to preface. I'm living in South Africa now. So our internet is so so yeah, so we I want to pause so She's in South Africa. I'm in Toronto. There is a leg So if you guys don't see our words and our mouths sink properly There is a massive latency issue with the internet connection Yeah, sorry about that But this is one of the most exciting things about being in South Africa is being at the heart of everything that we're working with with Ixo So essentially our passion is really solving some of the world's grandest challenges looking at issues like climate change And access to water and access to healthcare a lot of the issues that the UN is trying to tackle through their sustainable development goals And when we look at the problems that are tapping the space one of the biggest ones is a lack of access to trusted data So when you're looking at all these organizations all these people around the world trying to solve these problems They're very much going into it blind. They don't have the information They need to make reform decisions about their work and to actually optimize their work And so for us at Ixo we're creating a blockchain based protocol that enables organizations to create impact claims so you could claim that you taught a hundred kids or you planted 10 square kilometers of trees whatever it is as long as it's in the impact space and then that claim gets validated by evaluator Oh, either a human or a data source of some kind and then you have this verified impact claim that is essentially proof of impact It's proof that what you say you've achieved has actually happened And this is really exciting because the proof can open up access to social impact bonds impact investments Impacted economy that we've never seen before And the data that is collected as a part of these claims becomes a part of an open data comments A global impact ledger that organizations and researchers around the world can use to actually make the work They're doing more effective So let's talk about this for a second What are the major problems you see in the world today that you're trying to tackle? Yeah, so the main two issues really are a lack of funding for sustainable development initiatives And then a lack of effectiveness of those initiatives So when you look at this is Daniel development space in the funding side of things, there's a lot of fraud Which is an issue. I'm sure you've all seen it in the headlines and that kind of thing and so for impact investors for them to want to be switching their investments over from a Traditional investment vehicle into the impact space They have to have these evaluation mechanisms to be able to prove that what they're investing in is legitimate And the problem is those are very very expensive And so one of the things that we're tackling is looking at how you can use data to drive down the cost of that evaluation and make impact investing a much more attractive Investment vehicle for investors that are out there. So this is a massive market Right now. There's more than a trillion dollars that goes into the sustainable development space every year And if we can get more impact in the past minutes, it's upwards of 25 trillion And you're mentioning data like what what kind of initiative of plans you guys have to kind of track the data to confirm that data is legit Yeah, so we're looking at it from a couple of perspectives. I mean, we're we're using Data schemas to ensure the actual quality of the data is good But in terms of trying to determine what you know, whether the impact Is quality or not we leave that up to the users of the protocol We're very much an infrastructure operation where if you as an organization to look for us It's good enough if someone says they clean the beach and take a picture of it and that's good for you Then that's great for others. They may want to see, you know Have an IOT scale that connects the weight of all the garbage that was picked off the beach And then you have you know subsequent levels of funding that are given as a result So we really leave that up to the users who are building out on the protocol And can you kind of give us like a rundown of how would this would look like once it's launched like what like? Let's say you guys are up and running operational Would I be able to use a platform to help right away? So what you'd be able to do is to build out an application So a really good example of one is actually the first one we built out called Ampley And Ampley is looking at the early childhood development space in says Africa So in South Africa preschool isn't free costs a lot of money and most parents just can't afford it And so there's an incredible government subsidies for over 800,000 kids across the country but in order for these preschool teachers to actually access them They have to fill out attendance every day on paper and it's this insanely inefficient process And so what we've done is built out this application that enables them to take attendance through a mobile app It's very simple and very basic, but each attendance Will essentially create an impact claim that a child was taught And down the road what we hope is that these impact claims will enable them to access automatically these government subsidies So the government knows that they're legitimate and it makes a lot easier on the teachers So we're in 72 schools across the country more than 55,000 attendance records taken so far Which is very exciting. That's amazing. And then you guys anything else down the road map to start targeting We have a few exciting projects that are coming up in terms of concepts on the on the protocol I can't make any exciting announcements yet, but we're looking very much at Issues around climate change and environments are one of the projects. We're very excited in the area of cookstokes So in developing context a lot of people will cook and keep their homes with fire And this is bad both from an environmental perspective where you know They're burning trees cutting on forests, but also from a health perspective where they're breathing in all this party doesn't matter And so there's a lot of projects that are out there that will provide people with cookstokes These little mini stoves that they can use instead And that's great But from the perspective of saying impact investor who wants to know how many tons of carbon have I pulled out of the atmosphere because of these stoves Newly information they can really get is a stove was delivered or it wasn't you know and and with applications like With it's own protocol what you can end up doing is if you get say an IOT Enabled cook stove that can transmit data every time it's being used every time it's turned on or off and then Impact investors can know exactly how much carbon they've eliminated from the environment And they can have access then to carbon credits and health credits as a result of this So your major play-doh, too, is you're trying to evolve and integrate all these IOT technologies Within in South Africa We really want to try to take humans out of the process of Creation of the impact claims and evaluation of the claims as much as possible And this is for a couple of reasons first and foremost It enables you to get a higher quality and a higher volume of data. We call it high resolution data So and and it also helps eliminate fraud in this process And so as much as you can try to incorporate data into things and it becomes a great feedback loop, too Right where you get this amount of data that then come back and help with the evaluation of future in my plans as well But you're also mentioned when you and I were talking in Mexico that It's a massive market for like impact bonds. I think they have them in the UK I think they have them in Canada, but like you said, it's very difficult to track So is that your main let's say target at the beginning focus is looking for investors for impact bonds Or can like say a regular person like say my father my mother over there kind of like you participate in this network Yeah, I think at the end of the day anyone can participate We want this to be a real community effort in terms of trying to solve some of these sustainable development goals Now in the early stages, we do want to target impact bonds because simply of your scale You know and you can get one set up And the amount of money and the amount of impact that you can have as a role as a result is enormous But as I said, you know, this is infrastructure We want everyone to build out on it and everyone to try to tackle some of the challenges They're most passionate about whatever those are What do you say are your biggest challenges right now? Biggest challenges. Oh my goodness You know when I look at all of them the challenges that UN has identified as being most critical of it bring just everything from gender equality to access to water It's a climate change. I think when I look at them all climate change is such a critical issue that spans The entire world and every person here So I think that's the one that we certainly need to take a really serious look at especially in the current political climate And have you guys been looking at it for at XO or that's like later down the road map We're definitely looking at doing some proof of concepts around Environment that we're all really passionate about and so we will have some announcements about that very soon. So how long are you guys within like if I'm you know Zooming out of your road map. Where are you guys in the road map? So we have been working on this is sort of in conception Our two founders Dr. Sean Conway and Lowen's piece have been thinking about it for about four years now Actually, their initial Conception of it was built out on ripple because if you're in didn't exist, you know And so this is how long we've been dreaming about this and and the idea has grown as the tech in the space has grown as well Now the full exit team has come together Earlier this year in about July and so that's been very exciting But we've got we're looking to have our MVP ruled out by Q1 up next year, which is really exciting and so we'll have a few more applications building there beautiful and So then he would say maybe you guys will be fully operational next year at some point Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we'll be looking to have we're gonna be launching a partnership program in the new year that looks to bring on new partners that want to be building out and having a greater impact and tracking their own impact using XO So we'll have more information on that Yeah, in the new year, but we're I mean this for us is very much a community initiative We want to be working with as many people as possible to see how we can help you Optimize your own impacts and really see the change in the world that you're trying to achieve Do you see in the future that if you're like say a foundation charity trying to make change and impact that? Obviously not through legislation Well, maybe to legislation because you are a tax exempt that if you're not using Certain technologies to be more transparent to actually track the data to show people exactly what's going on with their dollar that they put It in that they're pretty much be out of business That's that's really what I think and I think it's not even just about being able to track your dollar I think it's about what is your dollar achieving? How are you going about things? So there's really exciting work happening with UNICEF Innovation Fund who's one of our funders They've got projects where they're looking at how do you track the path of Ebola using cell phone tower data and Looking at the patterns of movement people on different days of the week based on markets and transfers and that kind of thing And so how can you predict where disease is going to be in the future? And so instead of just this reactionary style of Aid we're going to be seeing use of data playing a much much larger role And so that's why it's so important with the data that we're using is high quality high resolution and a hundred percent trustworthy That's amazing. I know when we're sitting down as well as bring back Mexico about You guys are planning to use a lot of a lot of oracles to cross for our friends the the validity of the data, right? Yeah, so we're working with a lot of partners to bring in their data sets particularly in the early stages We build up the volume of data that we have so again Looking at UNICEF. They have access to some data from Google and from telephonica and a few other sources So being able to leverage what we already have to make is as effective decisions as we possibly can now while we build up I'm much larger and to decentralize that a base of data Is what we're hoping to do so if people want to get involved with you or kind of figure out What XO is more or somehow just help you guys out. What's the best way they can get in contact with you? Absolutely check out our website xo.network and you can join our slack channel our telegram group and follow us on Twitter We're at at XO underscore foundation And you can also just shoot me an email and an XO foundation Awesome, and thank you so much for coming on show. I wish you guys all the best and I'll speak to you soon Thanks very much. Take care. Bye. Bye