 I'll start off by giving myself, giving you a quick introduction about myself. My name is Robert Vandonga. I'm the sales lead at IntellectU, or at least that's the main hat that I'm wearing most of the time. The other hat that I tend to wear about 20, 30% of the rest of my time is the project management hat, and that's mostly then on client projects working, mostly in the financial services industry, leveraging hyperledger fabric. I'd like to hear that there's, glad to see that there's some people commenting, so that's great to see. So I'll give a quick introduction about IntellectU. IntellectU is a digital finance organization, technology organization, globally active, and mostly focusing on the financial services industry. We started back in 2006 as more of a traditional technology integration company, working mainly with SWIFT, the global financial messaging organization, and then throughout the years grew that expertise up until 2014, where we started with a small R&D team looking into blockchain technology. And that team grew and grew up until where we are today, June, June, 2021, with a team of over 60 people in the blockchain team, blockchain and AI, I should say, and a tiny, tiny sparkle of quantum computing as well, but I won't dive too deep into that. So it's the focus of our five-year journey using hyperledger fabric. So IntellectU is one of the founding members of the Hyperledger Initiative under the Linux Foundation back in 2016. And for this session for the 30 or 28, 27 minutes that we have here today, I split it up in four sections. So I'll first talk about a bit the early days of working with blockchain technology and more specifically with hyperledger fabric. So that's 2016, 2017. Then I'll follow that by talking a little bit more about how to scale solution or at least how IntellectU experienced that. So that's 2017, 2018. And following that, a production-ready solution. So really focusing on 2018 up until today. And then lastly, I'll talk a bit about Catalyst blockchain platform, which really is the amalgamation of all the expertise and experience that we've gained over the last five years working with different blockchain protocols. And also if I interrupt myself, apologies in advance, it's hay fever season and I sadly am one of its victims. All right, so the early days, research and development, proof of value, proof of concept, experimentation in a void and treading uncharted waters. So as I mentioned, the timeline here is 2016, 2017. The IntellectU blockchain team, which grew from the R&D team to a team of about 10 people within that timeline. The team was really encouraged to experiment with different protocols, really engage with all the different blockchain technologies that are out there. During that time, we worked mostly with hyperledger fabric 0.6, with Ripple, with Ethereum-based protocols and with Corda. And actually fun fact there, we were one of the, if not the first organization to integrate with the Ripple net. So interesting tidbit there. And the blockchain tribe at IntellectU focused mainly on proof of concepts and proof of values. You can see we did, I've listed here three POCs that we did for clients and I'll dive a little bit deeper into the first two. So a trade matching and reconciliation system, a KYC data synchronization system. And then lastly, we also did an early POC on central bank digital currency with a central bank and a stock exchange. So treading the uncharted waters. 2016, 2017, what's the global situation look like? A bit of a hype train around distributed ledger technologies. As you can see on the graph below here of interest over time of blockchain from Google trends worldwide. You can see that the timeline within 2016, 2017 really started or kickstarted that DLT hype train, that blockchain hype train. And of course, with that much hype around new technologies also comes a certain level of skepticism. I know back then a lot of my friends called blockchain the solution, looking for a problem. I'm probably not the first one to have heard that back then. And I'm glad to say that today it's no longer no longer a solution looking for a problem. So what did we, how did we experience that at IntellectU in 2016 and 2017 was really focusing on experimenting with the different technologies in a void. So really not taking into account any non-functional requirements of paying attention to scalability, reliability, privacy, deployability, interoperability, et cetera, but really just familiarize with the different technologies that are out there. And so that's what it really was. It was technology driven, not so much use case driven or business driven, which that came with a certain level of misalignment between the business expectations and the technology and how far that could live up to those expectations. And at that first stage, 2016, 2017, there was a bit of a slow growing adoption. It was growing, but it was slow oftentimes because while you're working with multi-party solutions, so multi-party consortiums and consortia are most often built on business relationships. So with that misalignment between the technology and the business that was there in the early days, of course, the adoption was still relatively slow. So I'll dive a bit deeper into two of the use cases that we did back in 2016, 2017. One of them is together with Talindus. Talindus is one of the leaders in the IT and telecom services in Luxembourg. And so their challenge was that they were looking for a solution that enabled reconciliation, matching and resolution of different transactions. So together with Talindus, our back then relatively small team of about 10 people worked hard to work on a proof of concept which we delivered for Talindus that really focused on rendering the transactions more fast, cheaper and more effective. So this was really an interesting proof of concept. It was back before I joined Intellect2U. I've been at the company for about a year and a half now, but it was definitely interesting to see the POC and to talk with some of the early employees of the blockchain team that worked on the proof of concept. Then secondly, a second proof of concept that we did was for KBC Bank. Their challenge was that they were having or they were at least looking for a solution to optimize the synchronization and reconciliation of know your customer data between the different branches of KBC Bank. So we worked together with KBC. We built out that proof of concept using Hyperledger 0.6 and that was also a really interesting learning experience for the team. Moving on to scaling solutions. So we'll talk a bit about the growing adoption of blockchain and how Intellect2U experienced scaling DLT solutions. Timing here, as I mentioned, 2017, 2018, our blockchain team grew from about 10 employees to over 25. And as you see, the different protocols that we use during that time is smaller. And this is because we started to really focus on the protocols that we thought were going to be the winners, so to speak, in blockchain adoption. Being at Hyperledger Fabric back then, it was 1.0 and 1.4, R3's Corda, both the open source and the full-skilled solution of Corda, as well as digital asset modeling language. And so the importance, the really crucial parts of this timeline was really the virtualization and containerization and other methods of abstraction that became more and more widely adopted, which really resulted in blockchain technology, as well, at least enterprise blockchain technology, as well being more and more adopted, right? Using Kubernetes, Docker, as these methods of abstraction really eased and lowered the barrier to adoption for blockchain technologies. In terms of the industry shifts, we saw that whereas in 2016, it was more so technology focused, right? What are the different protocols out there? How do we use them? How do you write chain code and go? How do you work with multi-party systems? Shift from that technology focus to being more business and use case focused. As I mentioned earlier, it moved away from a solution looking for a problem, which some people say blockchain might've been to identifying the specific business cases and use cases for which distributed ledger technology can add value. And this really had an upward spiraling effect. We saw that more and more organizations focused specifically on distributed ledger technology popped up, they were getting more and more funding, and it really created that upward spiraling effect that resulted in the growth of adoption of blockchain technology. Another industry shift that we saw was moving away from the why use blockchain to moving to the how use blockchain. So that really relates well with the business and use case focus as opposed to the technology focus. And of course, if you're moving to that how to use distributed ledger technology, there is going to be a lot of different organizations, a lot of different people throughout the world that take different approaches, which again in itself, it increased the complexity quite a bit. And what we saw at IntellectU was really what worked well was knowledge sharing. So people now knew and touched with different distributed ledger technologies. Now they wanted more information, workshops, what use cases are there, what trainings are there. And that for IntellectU was also a bit of a tipping point moving away from being a purely technology focused organization to a more holistic organization that could help these different organizations identifying which might be the protocol for their specific use case, et cetera. So two use cases that we worked on during the 2017, 2018 timeline. The first one is Bucky. For Bucky, we worked together with the studio, which is the innovation venture of Belfi's Bank, one of Belgium's leading retail bank. And together with the studio, we found a solution for the challenge that they had identified being it that students are increasingly going to school by car, which results in extra traffic jams and reduced air quality and just the general physical security. So at the same time, schools and cities, we're trying to incentivize these students to exercise more and focus more on sustainability. So together with the studio, we built a solution called Bucky, which is a mobility solution that incentivizes students to go to school by bicycle or on foot. And they're incentivized with Bucky tokens, which are tokens that are backed one-on-one with fiat currency by an e-money license. And these tokens can then be used at a local fair or local merchants by the children that are incentivized to go to school by car, by foot or by bike. And this form of gamification has increased, has successfully increased the bicycle usage by over 200% and is today being used by over 25 Belgian cities. A second use case is my waste. So again, working together with the studio, Belfius Innovation Venture, the challenge that they had identified was that the amount of waste being produced by the citizens of Belgian municipalities, it has been negatively impacting the environment. Of course, this is a global problem. We're all aware of this. And people today are not as aware of their waste production as they should be. While the concept of smart bins, smart containers became increasingly prevalent. So therefore my waste, the solution that we built, makes it possible to really measure the weight and frequency of each garbage collection. And so to make these citizens of these municipalities more aware of their waste production and to incentivize them more to recycle and to reuse, my waste introduced a token, again backed by fiat currency, that rewards end users for their ecological sustainability efforts. And these tokens can then be spent at local merchants on green or ecological products. Now the third and the last phase of the timeline, I shall say, is that a production ready solution, how to build that, the DevOps challenge, different use cases, different approaches, and the IT infrastructure. So 2018, up until today, June, 2021, our blockchain tribe has grown to be over 60 people large, globally active, focusing mainly on the protocols, hyperledger fabric being at 2.3, Kordak, Kordak Enterprise and Open Source, Damol and Catalyst Blockchain Platform. And I'll talk a little bit about Catalyst at the end of the presentation. So the industry shift that we saw here was that at first the shift happened from a technology focused approach to a use case and a business focused approach. And now in this time, we really moved away from that business and use case focused approach to really a holistic approach. So really making sure that the technology, the business and use case and the IT infrastructure are all aligned. And there the collaboration is really at the center of building a production ready solution. You're working with multi-parties, you have to collaborate to make it happen. And this is something that has been a challenge, still is a challenge. Of course, organizations throughout the world have not been working that closely, that intensely together as they are today with distributed ledger technologies. And here I really want to give a shout out to hyperledger as the community around hyperledger really is the power of the greenhouse and all the products within the hyperledger greenhouse. And I think that's a really admirable community and project and just ecosystem that they've built around that. So I respect that quite a bit. And specifically on use cases that we see have been gaining more traction. Of course, we have a bit of the filter of working mainly in financial services industry, but the use cases that we see are popping up more and more around programmable payments and central bank digital currency. So here we see throughout the world, there's collaboration between the private and public sector on proof of concepts, research projects, working groups, just like our three CBDC working group that happened a couple months ago and real life project implementations. There's quite a few live central bank digital currencies today like the sand dollar, some of them working with distributed ledger technology, others not so much. And also what we see is this new market places popping up in the financial industry. So thanks to distributed ledger technology. So whether that's in the insurance space or reinsurance space, in the commodity space, trade finance, really combining that with distributed ledger technology and multi-party workflows, multi-party smart contracts. Now more specifically for intellect to you within that timeline. So today we've done over 40 different blockchain protocols, mainly using hyperledger fabric, Corda and Dammel. And we really take the approach of focusing on the use case and then deciding on which protocol we're using to underpin for the solution. And as you can see here, there's two more use cases that I want to talk about and I'll do that in just a second. So we have the first one here, Circlo. Circlo is the third use case that we've worked with the studio for. And here the challenge was that end customers are buying their goods online more and more so. We see that today with local merchants like smaller mom and pop shops being left behind. And existing solutions, although there are quite some significant and impactful solutions today like Shopify, but existing solutions today really are not fully ready for that digital change, which creates a lot of challenges for the municipalities and the local merchants within these municipalities. And additionally, we've seen in the last 18 months that the impact of the coronavirus really shouldn't be underestimated as cities are continuously looking for ways to boost the local economies. We see some governments are preferring the approach of helicopter money, which might or might not work as well if you're trying to boost local economy specifically. And so Circlo, what the platform aim to do was it aim to enable citizens to buy and spend local tokenized gift vouchers powered by Hyperledger Fabric, which removes the reconciliation challenge which leverages smart contract rules and validations to determine where these specific gift vouchers can be spent. And today Circlo has been adopted by over 30 cities in Belgium with over 13 million euros being tokenized, which are put in escrow in a bank account while in circulation. So fully backed one-on-one by the euro. And then the second reuse case I want to talk about, and I think it's one of the most powerful ones that we've been working on over the last few years with Intellect2U is CUBE, which stands for KYC utility for banks and enterprises, KYC being know your customer data. So for this project, we've worked together with Isabel. Isabel is Belgium's largest fintech, offering different services, financial services to banks and corporates, including multi-banking services, accounting tools, et cetera. And Isabel is owned by the four largest banks in Belgium, being that KBC, Belfius, BMP Paribas, and ING. And the challenge that they had identified is that although know your customer processes are really critical processes for banks, given the increasingly strict anti-money laundering rules, the procedures that underpin these processes remain very manual and labor intensive and are oftentimes not quick, not fast, not efficient. So these banks need to identify, need to verify all their clients, need to keep that data up to date. And since the majority of corporates have bank accounts at more than one different bank, the collaboration between the banks could significantly reduce the costs related to onboarding and KYC data upkeep, as well as improve the customer experience. So the solution here at CUBE is the first decentralized corporate know your customer platform in the EU, which allows the sharing of verified KYC data, both on onboarding processes and data updates between the four banks that I just mentioned, as well as Isabel, which results in quicker clients onboarding and improved compliance. So lastly, Catalyst Blockchain Platform. As I mentioned earlier, Catalyst Blockchain Platform really brings together all the experience and expertise that we've gained over the last five years in working with different distributed ledger technologies. And the challenges that we've seen when working with these solutions, we really containerize them, sorry for the joke, in three different sections. So first one being a deployment and setup, the second one maintenance, and the third one, the management of your networks. With regards to deployment, it's oftentimes a lengthy and manual process to set up your blockchain network, and it oftentimes also requires high levels of expertise. With regards to the maintenance, it's quite a manual process, lots of manual scripting, reactive processes, and it requires quite significant resources from the teams. And then lastly, management, the management of your networks, the network governance, it often still happens centralized, unfortunately, as we see today, and there's few options available to perform your management of your network on chain. Now, what we have done with Catalyst's blockchain platform is we've made this setup and the deployments quick through automated processes. So instead of having to manually script everything, we've built a user interface that easily allows you to set up a network, add organizations, add nodes, your ordering service, et cetera, and really abstracted away all the technical aspects related to the deployment of a network, specifically here for Hyperledger Fabric. In terms of maintenance, we've integrated some open source tools that allow you to really quickly monitor, you can also forward the logs of your monitoring system to any existing monitoring tools that you might already have in your tech stack, and really, again, automate a lot of these processes with auto recovery failover mechanisms, which allows your blockchain team to free up time, to not anymore spend a significant amount of their time maintaining existing networks, but instead they can build value-adding applications on top of these networks. And then lastly, in terms of the management, we've added some fully decentralized on-chain governance models, which allows you to create end-to-end platform for managing your network and all the different policy configurations. So some of the main features of Catalyst's blockchain platform, it's fully Kubernetes-based. As I mentioned, as long as your infrastructure supports Kubernetes or OpenShift, that means you can deploy Catalyst's blockchain platform. And we also really took the approach of being cloud agnostic. So whether you want to deploy part of your nodes in your network on cloud and parts on premises, bare metal, whether you want to have different cloud providers for different nodes, different organizations, each organization that's part of the network might have their own cloud service provider or in-house data centers, no problem. As long as it supports Kubernetes or OpenShift, you can deploy your network using Catalyst's blockchain platform. We've also integrated some enterprise-grade security functionalities, integration with HSMs, with HashiCorp Vault, with Kubernetes Secrets, all to control the access to your security materials and your digital entities. And then lastly, of course, we see some of the clients we have today, they request support. So we also have 12 hours a week support, as well as 24 seven support for all Catalyst's blockchain platform components and all hyperledger fabric components. I wanted to give you a demo of the solution, but since we're already almost out of time, I'll show you these screenshots. So here you see the orderers, the section around orderers, so you can deploy your network, modify the setup completely within the user interface. So within a matter of clicks, you can add or remove a peer, you can modify your ordering service, set up a new channel, add an organization of one of your partners to a specific channel, et cetera. And around chain codes as well. So all the usual stuff in terms of chain code management, updating, et cetera, you can all do that straight from the user interface. You see there's a red dot next to the Q&A. So do you help build blockchain-based solutions for early stage startups for free or there will be any commercials involved? So there we typically take the approach of looking at that from a client per client perspective. So we've done that in the past. There's definitely room to identify that, any opportunities there. So feel free to reach out to me. I see that was the only question, maybe a question from me to the audience here. I know this wasn't the most technical demo, it was more business-focused, but in terms of having worked with different distributed ledger technologies or specifically with hyperledger fabric, what were some of the challenges that you've seen that you thought were interesting to tackle or maybe haven't tackled fully yet when working with distributed ledger technologies? Feel free to respond in chat or in the Q&A. Using Kubernetes versus Docker. All right, that's an interesting one. I'll be happy to come back to you on that one, as I mentioned, I'm not the most technical person. Definitely not in the session here, but also not at our company. So feel free to reach out to me and I'll be able to connect you with one of our technical geniuses. Okay, you did that, okay, all right, understand. All right, I see that we're almost at 10 to the hour. So appreciate everyone's time. I hope that I've added some interest to the Hyperledger Fabric Global Forum. If you have any questions, do feel free to reach out to me or if you want to connect, feel free to do that. Appreciate your time and enjoy the rest of the coming Hyperledger Global Forum.