 Okay you're live. Thanks so much David. Appreciate it. Hello everyone, my name is Tanveer. I would like to extend a warm welcome to all of you for joining us for the Hyperledger Meetup that we're doing virtually. We do several Meetups that are in person but we do a lot more Meetups that are virtual and it allows us to get speakers who are in other parts of the world like David Palmer. Really appreciate David joining us. He heads the blockchain group at Vodafone. He is widely followed across different social media platforms, speaks a lot at some of the top blockchain events and conferences globally and also is an evangelist for you know it within the web space. So very excited to have David join us today from London and I'm here in San Jose. So David welcome to our Meetup, today's Meetup. Thank you so much for joining us. Great to be on in this meeting Tanveer. I'm really excited to have this conversation. I was in San Francisco in June so I was in the Bay Area and June really loved it so I feel like I'm coming back home. That was actually a good conference, the Blockchain Expo North America. It was nice to see you on stage in different sessions David and I really appreciate you when I invited you. I was very excited that you agreed to you know to join us. There's you know a lot of great things we'll be discussing mainly around how global brands are leveraging Web 3 and the metaverse either for business transformation, to create competitive differentiation etc. When we have some time later on in the chat I'd also like to talk about the book that you written and get some details on all of that. But before we go there, just for the audience to get to know you David, your role tells a little more about what are some of the things you're doing at Wodafone and what specifically attracted you to the blockchain space right? How did that happen? So yeah I mean I've been in Blockchain Web 3 for many years so I started looking at Bitcoin when it was not fashionable when we were all crazy trying to mine it on our hard drive and really got excited with Ethereum. So you started trying to program smart contracts many many years ago you know with Ethereum. I'm still a big big believer in that. But now you're in my role sort of helping Wodafone look at blockchain and Web 3. You know use a lot of platforms, Hyperledger, a number of the Hyperledger platforms and as well as some of the other public blockchains. But it's really looking at what attracted me to it is the potential of the technology to extend the automation boundary. Just at its simplest level you know the ability to provide trust and transparency which you know is the use case that's supporting cryptocurrencies but can be used for so many other corporate use cases. I was really attractive because it takes it to the other level you know we can have a lot of automation internally because we trust the organization. Well organizations don't even trust themselves internally but there's enough systems and processes to be able to have that. But externally this is where you have credit checks, you have supplier checks, you have you know so many checks and the ability to have trust and automation you know with that external boundary with when you're dealing with external companies is something that was fine and which was you know I found fascinating. So really I was really attracted by what could blockchain and Web 3 do for telcos. You know what could they do for roaming agreements? What could it do for IoT? What could it do for contracting? And that was really the start of the journey which led to a new platform being born out of Vodafone which I am the chief product officer and co-founder of called Digitalized Broker which is about using Web 3 precisely to extend that automation boundary for IoT devices. You're expecting maybe in the next five to seven years any 100 billion, 70 billion IoT devices. Smartphones are also devices but where those devices can trust each other across organizations and ecosystem boundaries, where they can digitally sign using encryption, where they can transact using wallets and tokens. You know it is essentially what the Digitalized Broker platform is about and then we've used Web 3 to provide that new age of automation. So yeah that's what I've been doing for the past years and also very big taking that into Metaverse, taking that into broader Web 3 and always looking for the next sort of next evolution of the technologies which hopefully we'll discuss today. I can't wait to get to that. You know to set the stage right and actually before I do that but those who are not familiar with Vodafone they have a it's among the largest telecom providers or wireless providers in the world. I looked them up, read a little more about them. I think they directly operate in about 22 countries and then through partners in another 48 different countries. At one point Vodafone owned a big share of Horizon Wireless which I think is a big name in the US. So I worked for Horizon for five years in Southern California. So I am an alumni and I have a lot of respect for the company, the brand, the network, the operational discipline and also when I'm in India I always use a Vodafone mobile phone when I land there. So I am a customer whenever I'm in your markets. So I think it's a phenomenal story of what Vodafone has accomplished and now it's going beyond as we get into connected devices and connected transportation and autonomous transportation and mobility I think we'll hopefully get to hear about some of the use cases. But I want to start really basic. So if you have to explain Web 3 and Metaverse to a business executive right from your perspective how do you explain that in an area? Yeah. So difficult question. It's always hard to go to the basics. So I would say blockchain and Web 3 is about trust, it's about digital trust, about digital asset ownership portability and transactions. And I would say that the Metaverse is, yeah, the Metaverse I'm going to take a bit more time on, right? Because I believe that if we take the Metaverse as this basics we'd say it's immersiveness. It's about a new immersive virtual reality which allows us to do things that we can do in the real world in the virtual world. But actually it's a lot more because as I'll explain later I believe that the Metaverse will replace the web browser. I believe the Metaverse will be the place where people interact with content and where businesses interact with the digital world. And as a new operating system which is going to feed the content to the people who use that new immersive web browser, it should be able to draw on a number of technologies, AI, Web 3, ERP, Web 2 to provide the right components for the right solution. So I would say to a business executive that the Metaverse is not just immersiveness, it's actually a new digital operating system which will allow users, businesses and consumers to incorporate a number of technologies into digital experiences. Thank you for that. Now last year there was so much of talk and a lot of hype around Metaverse and Web 3, Facebook changed its stock sticker symbol in June I believe, October they rebranded the whole company as Metaverse. This year some of that buzz may have that hype may have died, but I think we've actually seen companies making progress and bringing that utility or creating that value. What are the big use cases that you are most excited about right now? Yeah, so you're absolutely right. Last year or 2021 the Metaverse was at the top of the hype cycle and we had all of the usual suspects coming out and saying, okay it's going to be a 15 trillion opportunity, it's going to be a 5 trillion opportunity by 2030. So we had a lot of big forecast numbers. This year of course the headline has been chat GPT, open AI, generative AI, 100 million followers and 100 million users in six weeks and it's taken over, but actually as I said I just repeat my point, the Metaverse and AI are linked, the Metaverse and Web 3 are linked, the Metaverse and Web 2 are linked. As you accurately said, Facebook changed its name to Meta. They've got the potential to bring billions of people to the Metaverse. So do Apple, but Apple are creating their own Metaverse. Web 2 will be very important. So in terms of the hype cycle, the success of AI will be the success of the Metaverse. The success of Web 3 will be the success of the Metaverse. If we go back to some basic stats and we look about where the adoption of these new technologies are going to come from, population by 2030 will be just over 8 billion. The penetration of mobile phones globally will be near 8 billion. I see you're talking, everyone who, I think they'll start issuing mobile phones to babies when they're born right in the operating Vienna. The majority of the world now have a smartphone. What's really interesting is at the moment there's 4.5 billion digital wallets and by 2030 we're expecting 5.6 billion digital wallets. So if you look at the things that have and social media over 4 billion, they may be approaching 5 billion pretty soon. So if you look at the things that have penetration in the world, it's mobile phone, people increasing, mobile phones increasing, social media and wallets. Those are the things that have got penetration. If you look at Web 3, amount of digital wallets is just over 300 million. So it's nowhere near the penetration of wallets, nowhere near the penetration of social media, nowhere near the penetration of smartphones. So that indicates to me that if the Metaverse is going to get adoption, if Web 3 is going to get the adoption, it's not going to be with each other. It's actually going to be where there's a convergence with the smartphone, where they're converging with FinTech and wallets, and where they're converging with social media and Web 2 platforms, right? Initially, that's going to be the initial phase. So it goes on to come to your question about what are the use cases I'm excited about with the Metaverse? I think there's some really exciting stuff happening now. On LinkedIn and other platforms, I keep getting these snippets of AI writing code, and AI generating film content, etc. And actually, I believe that for AI to have a presence on this app, for us to be able to interact with it, for AI to be at the end of a web browser with dynamic prompts, not just voice or text in an interactive way, that AI is going to have to take on a persona, an environment which will be provided by the Metaverse. So I describe the Metaverse as AI on Earth, right? So it's going to be how these 300 million jobs, which are lost and replaced by AI robots, we're going to interact with them on the Metaverse. And that's why that Metaverse has a point of interaction, it's the touch point. It's such an important thing. So in terms of use cases, I think some of the use cases in film, I think some of the use cases in virtual showrooms, I think some of the industrial Metaverse use cases in terms of digital twins, I think some of the retail use cases, which are linked to showrooms, etc. are really exciting, but I believe they're only the beginning because I believe that the use cases that will come are where we start to mesh these technologies. So you mesh the Metaverse with tokens, you mesh the Metaverse with AI, you mesh it with Web 2, or a combination of all of these. And that's where we're going to start to see some dynamic use cases. Just going back to your point on the hype cycle, you've got to remember where we were in 2021. We were on the back of being at home for two years on the back of a pandemic. And of course, being at home for two years, it's like, okay, what can I do virtually, which I cannot do physically? I can't go out, I can't go to a party. So let's have a virtual club, let's have virtual socializing. And what we've seen now post pandemic, we were told that nobody would travel again, or not many people would travel, not many people would go to conferences selling out, right? People are now enjoying physically socializing, right? So this idea of a all-encompassing Metaverse that would replace the real world, and it would be this big, persistent thing like the Matthew Ball definition, I think is dead, right? I honestly believe that's not going to happen right now. I think where we are with the Metaverse right now is that we will have several mini-verses, right? You'll have the Apple Metaverse, you'll have the Meta-Metaverse, you'll have other Metaverses that will spring up. And then in order to get dynamic journeys and portability of identity and ownership and all the rest of it across it, you'll start to see some interoperability. And then eventually, down the road, you may see some convergence. And I think that's important in terms of realizing the development. But in terms of use cases, I don't think the Metaverse will replace the physical world. It was never going to do that. I don't think that we want to do everything we do in the physical world, in the virtual world. It's going to be where it adds value. Where it adds value from an entertainment point of view and where it adds value from a business point of view. And in my book, I map out a feature set, right? So there's two features in particular that I used. So I've got this business opportunity quadrant. And there's two features that I map on that quadrant. One is the added value of immersiveness. And the other one is the added value or the benefit of removing geography. Because two of the key features of the Metaverse is it removes geography. And it can bring a level of immersiveness that you would not otherwise get. So when you look at those where you have high benefit from immersiveness and you have high benefit from removing geography, those are the sweet spot use cases. Some of the examples that get me excited are education. If you look at, you know, there was some study I was watching. It could have even been on one of these forums, hyper lecture forums. But it was talking about the benefit of every child having a personal tutor. And of course, you can do that now with AI, right? It's going to be possible. You can have a lot of help. But, you know, the benefit of Metaverse education where someone in deepest Africa or Asia or a poor place where geography was a boundary, right? I can't physically get into the US. I can't physically afford to set up there. It's removed. And the level of immersiveness is high because it's a course that involves physical touching that you couldn't do before. You could do online courses, but you couldn't interact with your class in an immersive way. And you couldn't do medical procedures. You couldn't do engineering stuff in the same way as you could now. But the Metaverse now makes that possible. Then I think you're in a position where, you know, the Metaverse universities or Metaverse training and education becomes really exciting. And I think that's one of them that, you know, that really excites me because it can bring about real change. It can actually increase the, improve the productivity of the world, right? By making people more productive and providing, extending the amount of education that's available, the opportunities in education. But there are others. I'm talking a lot, maybe Tanviya, give you an opportunity to ask some questions. But we'll delve a little deeper into one or two use cases in a minute. I love one of the things you share. I follow you on LinkedIn and you put up some great posts. One of your articles you shared was how Bank of Merica, which is really surprising because banking is fairly, you know, they are slow to adopt. They're very risk-averse, very highly regulated. But even a banking institution is now, you know, how banks are also leveraging the Metaverse where they do their new hire orientation for bankers. And, you know, you can put on the, you know, the, the Oculus like glass, right? And now you can get simulation on how to deal with the IRA customer or, you know, like a bank robbery that's happening and how do you deal with that, right? I thought those are very powerful real life uses, you know, using the, you know, the Metaverse, right? And so when you spoke about education, I think, yeah, that's definitely a very exciting area. I want to switch gears a little bit to see. Now, you, I think you were the ones who coined this whole thing of the, the economy of things, right? Yeah. So how did that, you know, how did that happen? And then where are we now with the economy of things, right? And I also want to learn a little more about what you're doing with, you know, the digital asset broker, one use case, right? That, where you feel that there's, you know, some real traction that you can talk about. Yeah. So the economy, so as you all know, you know, and I've been in this sort of internet of things, machine to machine, a long time. So we've gone from machine to machine to internet of things. And now we're talking about the economy of things. Internet of things is about connected devices. And as some of you may, may know, you know, Vodafone and companies like AT&T and other operators, you know, are leaders in managed connectivity of devices. And the internet of things has largely been about connecting devices, connecting sensors, you know, connecting cars, connecting drones, connecting cabinets, connecting street lights. And that has been the focus, connecting them. What you'll find though, is that there's a lot of investment in connecting these devices. But these devices aren't really, you know, a lot of 75% of the data isn't used. That's the first thing. And monetization or return on investment isn't as high as it could have been or in line with expectations. And why is that? It's because essentially the models have been siloed models, right? So it's been, okay, I'll put my devices on the platform, I'll connect them and I'll take the data and I'll use it. Another company will put their devices on the platform, they'll connect them, they'll use the data. But there's been no interoperability, right? So you have siloed connected devices, siloed data, siloed use. And the economy of things was looking at, okay, can we have a position where, you know, a street light can send data to a mobile camera? Or could you have a camera selling data to a drone or or a car selling data to a car park? And could they do that across organizations? Could we break the silos? Could we make it interoperability? Could we make them trust each other? And that is really the economy of things. It's about, okay, you know, what is going to be the biggest currency in the world going forward? So it's going to be data, right? The metaverse will need data. There's going to be the explosion of demand for data going into LLMs, AI LLMs, because that needs data, right? Yeah, we've got this false impression that AI happened overnight. They've been training those open AI models for years. And it'll only be as good as the data that goes in there, right? So on the one hand, you have a load of IoT devices that are producing data. On the other hand, you've got demand for data, and you can't bridge them, right? The economy of things is basically opening up devices so that they're interoperable, right? So what does that mean? It means that two devices that are from different owners, different parts of the ecosystem can identify each other and trust each other. Why? Because they've got an interoperable digital identity, as you do in WebTree, right? And how do you authenticate it? You have verifiable credentials, and you have cryptography and a digital signature. And if you're going to do all that, and my device can communicate with your device, and I've got data, you want, then I want to be able to transact it. So part of what we looked at was, okay, we can connect the devices, we can make, we can provide an interoperable identity, we can have verifiable credentials. But actually, can we put a wallet on the device? Can we attach a payment credential? And can we link that to a smart contract so we can automate payments for different things? And that is it, right? And we believe that those, that set of capabilities opens up a whole economy of services and data for these billions of devices that are out there, right? Providing new monetization opportunities. Some of the things you think about are fleets, right? If you look at big fleets that are on the road, if they've got a dashcam, could that data at a specific point in time be sold to an insurance company? If you look at the supply chain problems we've had, how many of you have seen Amazon trucks come to your house, to my house, the parcels are never for me, but I'll have three or four deliveries in a day from the same Amazon, right? And they'll go back empty. You'll see them come at the start out for the go back empty. What about if you could sell data on the capacity of those vans or those trucks and sell the spare capacity, right? So they come full and they go back full. You know, and you have other sort of opportunities where data in near real time can make a difference, right? And that can be sold and that can lead to services. So that's what we've done with the digital asset broker, which is essentially more specifically to build into the SIM card. So we're starting with SIM cellular devices to begin with, but it will extend to others. Yes, SIM card is as in the card that goes into the SIM card rather than the phone. Yeah, various forms. So you have SIM cards that go into the phone, you've got the eSIMs, which are sort of woven into the device and you've got or any connected device, right? Any connected device. Yeah. But what we've done is we've linked that to blockchain. We've got the ability to generate cryptographic keys and attach that to the SIM and the device in the SIM. And essentially, what you're able to do with that is to allow the device to externally sign on chain, right? So all of a sudden the device is able to sign, it's able to access smart contracts, it's able to access payment credentials, it's able to execute, it's able to look up and verify identities and the credentials of identities of different devices. And that's basically what we've done. And we've built, I think, the biggest economy of things platform or one of the biggest Web3-based platforms in terms of ecosystem because we've then enabled 160 million devices that we have on the Vodafone IoT platform with the DAB capability or the economy of things capability. So it's a ready made ecosystem, which we're now extending beyond. So that's essentially what we've been doing, but Web3 is the glue, right? Web3 is the glue that allows the devices to trust each other, that allows them to, you know, to essentially access smart contracts for automation, you know, that facilitates the verifiable credentials and that allows it to scale because it's a decentralized model, right? So it's not a centralized model. So that's what we've been doing and we believe that there's a bridge to the future well. So we believe that there will be a metaverse of things. So we believe that the data from IoT devices and the link to digital twins of devices in the industrial metaverse will be pretty big. But also we're seeing now that, you know, billions of devices across the world in different scenarios being used for different things. What better source of information coming into AI, large language models. And we want to now, in the future, connect the data coming from devices and allow that to be sold real-time to LLMs. Now, how much progress has been made? And I'll use this as an example. I heard you talk about this use case on a podcast you had on a fairly popular podcast, you were a guest speaker on where and it's two scenarios, right? Either, you know, a person owning a car or it could be a corporation owning a fleet of cars, right? Electric cars that they need charging. And so there has to be a commas between like the car and the charging station, right? And that's where, you know, I guess, you know, the Web 3 will come into the picture where that can happen seamlessly, right? So that use case I thought was very fascinating, right? So because imagine this, right? Like, especially in the scenario of the fleet of cars, you know, hundreds of cars in a fleet and, you know, daily these need to be charged or sometimes more than once a day. There's so much of, you know, transactions happening. Can that potentially all be made seamless? Now, for a use case like that, is that already, you know, can that already happen today or are we talking in the very near future? No, no. So one beauty of the Digitalized Broker Platform and what we're really proud of is that we've taken it from an idea, from proof of concept through to MVP, but it's actually live. So we launched the Digitalized Broker Platform, it was launched by our past CEO of Vodafone at the at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2021. And we've been sort of pushing it ever since that we launched EV charging last year live in the UK. We're now extending that across Europe. And it's live and it's a great example of what I said before, which are devices having identity. In this case, cars having identities, these are individual cars or fleet cars or OEM, you know, auto manufacturer cars, and then communicating with another device, which are the charges, right? And you have charges with an identity, cars with an identity. And what's even more exciting is that if you look at the identity quadrant or triangular triangle, you have people, business and things, right? You got, you always have people, business and things. A device cannot exist on its own. It has to be, it has to have a derived identity of a business or a person. But in this case, you have a device, which is a connected car, a device, which is a charger. And we can also link that to the identity of the person driving it, right? So if you think about, you mentioned fleets. What's important for fleets to know is, you know, in Europe, you have fleet cards. So what will happen is, fleet companies will issue cards or payment means to the drivers, and where you have a temporary driver, maybe they'll pay by themselves and claim it back. You've got a huge industry managing drivers and their payment credentials, and then you're looking at fraud, you're looking at authentication, you're looking on. But essentially, what we're able to do here is say, okay, Mr. Fleet Company, you can have, you know, an identity for all your vehicles. And you can put a payment credential linked to the identity of your vehicle. So you put the, you attach the wallet and the payment credential to the vehicle. And you can then authenticate different drivers, different fleet drivers, temporary, whatever, to that vehicle and authenticate them to use that one payment credential in the vehicle. So you've got many drivers who can use one payment credential. So that simplifies the model for the fleets. But then the link of the digitalized broker identities and wallets and transactions and smart contracts makes the actual transaction itself simple, right, and seamless. Now, Tesla are able to do this because, you know, the car is Tesla, the driver is Tesla, the chargers are Tesla. So they have a closed loop system. But what we're able to do with Web 3 is allow different auto manufacturers, different fleets, different charging companies across and different people to all trust each other using Web 3. So you have the same experience as you would with Tesla, because blockchain and Web 3 is providing the trust and the smart contracts and the payment mechanisms. So that's actually life. And we're looking to essentially have 90 plus over 90% coverage of charging stations across Europe. And we are in discussions now for the US. There's been some, obviously some announcements with Tesla and some of the big auto manufacturers in the US recently. But we believe we have a solution which can bring together the ecosystem and facilitate peer-to-peer transactions and agreements. This is beautiful. So I think this is the exact example of creating that real world utility, right? If I go back at any conferences two, three years ago, the whole thing was like, hey, we need to see utility. And I think now this is coming to fruition, which is great for the industry, right? Now you work for a very big name in the mobile phone business. I want to get your thoughts on does the mobile phone actually have a future or is this going to die in a few years and we'll all be wearing glasses, right? What will the future look like three, three, four years from now? I can give you my opinion. So I do a number of presentations on the metaverse and you'll see, there's one slide I present where you start off with the eight billion smartphones and then you start seeing the smartphone with the glasses, which is kind of what Apple presented. And then you start just seeing the glasses. So I think you'll have convergence of access devices. But we've got to be realistic. There's eight billion smartphones in the world. It's taken us a long time to get that level of penetration. And a lot of the use cases that we have, a lot of the user journeys and experiences and everything we do is app-based and it's based on the phone. So I don't see the phone going anywhere soon. I think there's some developments that need to happen with the glasses. So at the moment, you have two ways of content being delivered, right? Two main ways. You have streaming and with streaming you need less hardware. You need less bulky devices because it's about buffering, et cetera. And then you have downloading and the way you need memory. And I think at the moment, the devices that we use to access the metaverse are sort of bulky devices that have memory and that have a lot of hardware. I think as we move to streaming and then we will need to do that, then the glasses become thinner. And I think that's the point at which you'll start to see more convergence with the mobile phone as we get more used to the metaverse space and interacting with content through the metaverse. But I think for now, the glasses will be there and they'll coexist with the smartphone. And we will need that. So what will be important is that people are able to access metaverse content and participate in metaverse communities via the mobile. I think we look at some of the forecasts for metaverse opportunity, which everybody's backing up from now, but I'm going to hold them to it anyway. But you had Mackenzie, for example, the forecast back in 2022, the metaverse opportunity would be worth US $5 trillion. We had a city come up with something in the trillions. And I think now they're sort of moving away from that. But even if it's $1 trillion, that's 1% roughly of global GDP. That's not people at home with a set of glasses. That's people driving their vans, people that work, people in different circumstances. So I don't see everybody in the workspace or whatever walking around with the big glasses. You've got to be able to access it on the move. And I think it's going to be important to be able to access via the mobile phone. And I think the mobile phones will become more 3D ready. And then they'll be able to interact with different glasses in the medium to short to medium term. But I think in the long term, you'll see a convergence where maybe it's just another access device, and which will eventually replace the mobile. I think right now, watches are very popular, people wear the AirPods or similar brands. So the compute will still be on the device, but I think this will be just another accessory. Yeah, that's the way it's going now. It becomes another wearable. So that's definitely how Apple have approached it becomes another wearable. And you'll link it with your headphones and you'll link it with your phone. But long term, I think that the potential of the metaverse as a point of interaction as a new web browser, as the point of interacting with content and people and communities is so profound that it will be a replacement. But of course, this will take time. Super. Now, to our guests today, we will start taking a few questions in about five or 10 minutes. So we'll be happy to take a few questions. So if you have anything, you can put it on the chat. David, I wanted to talk about NFTs for a couple of minutes. So when we talk about metaverse, whether NFTs already come up, Starbucks is doing some cool things with NFTs and creating loyalty points. Nike is doing a lot with NFTs, right? I think a lot of the shoes, both high-end and different price points, there's NFTs there. I think they even sold a shoe for $20 on one of the popular models. What are your thoughts on NFTs and within the enterprise? Is that a big thing for you folks and are you doing anything with NFTs? So I think there was an announcement. So there's two major things that you'll find in terms of NFTs that we've been associated with. One was selling the first SMS that was sent as an NFT. And I think that happened in 2021, December 2021, or maybe January 2022. And then the next one was recently an announcement that we were going to use Polygon and we were going to issue NFTs. I think if you look at NFTs, they're very, very exciting. I think they're exciting for a number of reasons because they represent digital ownership, but they're getting more sophisticated, right? So if you look at what NFTs can do, there's a number of things they can do which are really exciting. I think some of the if you look at some of the new standards that are coming out, you have time bound NFTs, right? So you had NFTs which are non-fungible and they represented ownership of the asset. And now we're seeing the emergence of time bound NFTs where essentially that asset could be rented out. It could be leased out. It could be a temporary ownership that you transfer. Recently, we've also seen loyalty or royalty NFTs where essentially if you create an asset, be it a service or a software or whatever, every time that asset is sold or exchanged, you can get a royalty from it, right? So that's another cool thing. And then recently, you're seeing smart contracts come out where essentially you can either lock that NFT in for finance. So you have a house that becomes an NFT. You can lock it in and you can get finance on it as you can with other digital native assets. And then you've got other NFTs where you can bundle it into, you can bundle NFTs in with other tokens. So, you know, fractionalized tokens or ERC 20 tokens in Ethereum language. So I think NFTs are going to be a very, big part of the token economy. I think they'll be a very big part of the economy. Again, they were at the top of the hype cycle in 2021. It's gone quiet. But I think you'll find that in industry, there's a number of, we're only beginning to see what can be done with them. You know, can you make an NFT, you know, the token of ownership represent ownership in the car, right? Can that then allow you to have a digital copy of it? You know, can the NFT then, if you have a car, which is, you know, the ownership is represented by an NFT, does the NFT become the point of sale, right? So you sell the digital version, you get the real version. You know, will you have NFT mortgages? Will you have NFT credit default swaps? Will you have NFT hedge funds? I mean, the potential of NFTs, as I said, we're only beginning to see them. So I'm really excited about them. I think there's, you know, in terms of digital asset broker, you know, we look at NFT, you know, issuing NFTs for every IoT device that we register on them, right? So that, you know, that represents the digital ownership in both sides and could be the basis for transaction, you know, the needs of transacting those assets going forward. And I, you know, I mean, I look at all of this, you know, regardless of, you know, where the use cases happen, etc., right? With, you know, everything is happening with web premeter words. I think 5G being the underlying, you know, all this massive sharing of data, 5G makes it so much of easier. So I think a lot of the, you know, the voodoo phones of the world will be the ultimate thing because at the end of the day, you'll provide that 5G connectivity, right? I think it's a great time. Yeah. I mean, most of the technologies you look at need connectivity, cloud, Metaverse, AI, Web3, Web2, I mean, they're all, you know, the connectivity is underneath all of them, right? And connectivity is needing to evolve. So I think 5G is one of those evolutions or improvements we have, but there's other things, network slicing, aggregation, there's a number of things that are on the way to make, you know, that connectivity more efficient. But it is the basis of everything. You can't have a Metaverse without connectivity. You can't have autonomous cars without connectivity. You can't have AI without connectivity, especially where talking about going with AI, which is real time, right? You're talking about AI workers and AI digital assistants and, you know, they've got to be able to act real time. When you start getting to that goal, which is a way off, but when you start, you know, then you need some superfast, consistent, low latency connectivity. My final question before I start taking some Q&A, David. Now, when this change of value between devices, right, does it still make sense for the fiat currencies to be, you know, for that value to happen, or does it make sense? Will it be more efficient if these machines are buying and selling data or the exchange of value is through a cryptocurrency, right? Or a digital asset, or will we see a hybrid approach, right? Really good question. So I think if we look at the original use case for Bitcoin and others, it was as a medium of exchange, right? It was, okay, I can use, and we had the famous story of the Bitcoin pizza, right? The guy paid the Bitcoin, these pizza with Bitcoin, and it's, God knows how many millions, or it's, yeah, that would be worth now. But it's hundreds of millions. But it didn't work as a, it hasn't worked so far as a medium of exchange, right? Yeah, using tokens to pay for things, because essentially what you're doing is you're going from a token to a fiat, and you've got this massive exchange with two systems that haven't so far worked well together. The other thing that's been really negative with tokens as, you know, crypto as a medium of exchange has been the gas fees, right? And the variation in the gas fees, and the time to finality, and some of these other issues we've had, you know, low TPS making that finality really hard. Of course, one of the big stories in Web 3 and Blockchain has been Layer 2s, right? And Layer 2s, you know, ZK roll-ups, optimistic roll-ups, you know, these things are making, you know, the transaction costs or the unit cost of transactions go down. We're also seeing some pragmatism in terms of what can be done on-chain and what can be done off-chain. So I think things are getting better. But I also think that the fintech and banking world are also coming to the party. So one of the partners we went with Mastercard recently introduced something called tokenized deposits. So you've got the Mastercard token network. And essentially what that's doing is allowing, potentially allowing users to take money directly out of their bank accounts and move it into tokens. So acting as a stablecoin, but without having the intermediary of my money, I buy a stablecoin, you know, the money in your bank is a stablecoin in whatever denomination. So that is potentially pretty big, right? And that could lower the barriers between tokens and fiat money. But there's another way to look at it, right? So that's where you're going from fiat to tokens. But the other way you look at it is, okay, why are people going from tokens to fiat? Why are we doing that, right? Part of it is that that's what people are charging in. But where you have exchanges which are already allowing you to exchange tokens. Actually, if you look at exchanging tokens, the different tokens, why can't you just pay in tokens and exchange one token for another? Why can't, you know, for example, you know, Vodafone pay for office space using a Vodafone token and we work pay for connectivity using a WeWork token, right? You know, that's where you have what I call digital barter, which is essentially where you have tokens being exchanged, tokens which have a service value being exchanged, rather tokens which have a service value. And you don't need to go out of the token economy. And essentially, you know, that's something that hasn't been exploited. It's always okay, let's on ramp and off ramp. But why? Why are you doing that for everything? Why do you need to do that when you've got exchanges that are coming in there and you can exchange one token for another? And I think the more, you know, the more vendors or, you know, suppliers who are able to take token, etc, you know, then maybe that could be a useful supplement to, you know, where things can be done from start to finish in tokens, right, and consumed in that way. But where you're going into fiat, then there have been barriers. But I think there's a lot of innovation in the banking and finance community, which is trying to bridge that tokenized deposits being one of them. This has been a riveting conversation, David. Now I want to take a couple of questions from the audience. And this is a great question. And I'll just modify it a little bit. The question is around what do you think are some of the elements that can speed up the metaverse adoption? But before you address that, could you also tell me what are some of the challenges, you know, that, you know, towards driving, you know, more adoption and then what can speed it up, right? So obviously the challenges to adoption are the handsets, right? So I think there's two major things, right? The metaverse generally needs consistent high speed, low latency connectivity. And what you'll find is that a lot of the countries that need it most, who can benefit most, don't have that kind of infrastructure, right? So there's got to be equality of connectivity. And that's a challenge at the moment, because generally, the rich countries, you know, have the infrastructure to pour one stone. So you could have a metaverse for the rich, which isn't, you know, I think the goal of it. So I think that's a challenge. I think another challenge is the price point to enter. So I think what, you know, we're all excited about the Apple Pro headset announcement. But then when we saw the price point, you know, yeah, I think professionals, I would be the first to put my name down to buy the headset, right? But, you know, you're thinking you're a poor person in African or Asian or another country, and you simply can't afford it, right? That's the years, wages, or, you know, earnings. So, you know, those are barriers. If you're going to get high scale adoption, the cost of entry needs to be low. And the means to entry needs to be widespread. And I think at the moment, those two things are challenging. And I think one thing that was exciting and very smart about Apple's announcement was they came with content. So straight away, they said, right, you can get all these movies that you can watch on the headset. You've got, you know, everything on the App Store will be available on there. So straight away, there was content. And that's going to be a big carrot for people to be able to adopt. It's like, okay, I'm going to go on there because I can get this content or I can get, I can use all my content I've got, but I can get some new content. So I think those are considerations. How do you meet those challenges? I think you've got to put the boundaries low to begin with, right? So while, you know, some people can use some of the most sophisticated, you know, immersive VR software and communities, I think you've got to start off really simple. And you've got to, you've got to make it accessible on a mobile phone. Eight million people and you've got to make, work with wallets and you've got to make it work with social media. Because I think where you embedded in those things. And I think we're closer to that now because, you know, I believe what's happening naturally is we're moving away from building this infrastructure called the metaverse, which is this, you know, this all-encompassing metaverse, which sits alongside the real world. And I think a more pragmatic view now is you're going to have the metaverse, you'll have the Apple metaverse, you'll have, you know, other metaverse is the Instagram metaverse and Twitter metaverse. And eventually they'll come together. So that allows you to get quick adoption because it allows these platforms who have the ecosystem to quickly embed immersive experiences and to get people familiar with it. And then they'll want to move that and port that across, which will start converging towards what more of the ideal metaverse. So I think those are two things, price point, access devices, and providing the incentives for existing Web 3 Internet and other platforms to embed it in their current solutions. And so we spoke with the challenges and then any suggestions, you know, in terms of speeding up the adoption, what advice would you give, you know, to any of your peers, right, based on maybe some of the challenges you saw in your own organization, you know, getting, you know, buying from, you know, at the board level, senior management level to, from that perspective, any suggestions on what are some of the things they could do to drive? So in terms of the business metaverse, I think digital twins, you know, and the industrial metaverse is doing pretty well. In terms of the consumer metaverse, I think that is exciting. What one of the big things I'll say is don't try and sell a big bang, right? It's not going to be a big bang. As I said, it's not going to be this, you know, you're going to sit down one day and the next day you switch on and this is metaverse and we all go into it. It's not going to, it's not going to arrive like that. So part of the advice I would give is pick an area of the metaverse and that's value. And the metaverse will not add value to every business, right? Again, you look at the two key factors, you know, the value added from removing, so the benefits of removing geography, the value added from the levels of immersiveness. And clearly, if you're a car mechanic, maybe the industrial metaverse will help, but if you're selling hamburgers, maybe not, right? You know, it depends. So you've got to find the right area where it adds value and don't sell the big bang and take value added steps, you know, use it where it's going to add value. And I think that's where we're going with it now. Where does it add value? Education, yes. You know, immersive 3D movies, yes. I think those are the sensible things. But then the other thing I would say, and this is from being on the ground with it, is that the metaverse does not exist in isolation, right? The metaverse works with AI, it works with Web3, it works with Web2. And the magic will be how you combine the metaverse or how the metaverse could combine these technologies to provide new businesses, new solutions, new opportunities. And I think one of the key ones where these two things really need each other is AI and the metaverse. I think they go together. AI needs a persona. You cannot interact with AI in isolation. If AI is going to replace 300 million jobs, then it's going to replace people that we call, people that we interact with physically. And how's the AI going to bridge the physicality and the environment? It's going to be metaverse. And in the same way, the metaverse needs the intelligence of AI to bring personalized experiences, right? So you look at these two things, and I think part of the magic of the metaverse is how you can then use it as a bridge to interact with these other technologies and give them personal physical interaction experiences. And I think that is the key to unlocking it. Once you realize that AI and the metaverse go together, AI and Web 3 go together, AI and Web 2 go together, then you realize that the metaverse doesn't exist in isolation, but it's a complementary technology that actually brings all these things together for our benefit and the benefit of the customer experience and our convenience. And that then has more power than just we're moving to the metaverse. Super. And I'm so glad you addressed that. That was one of the questions I had on my list. Should leaders like you business executives, leaders like you driving blockchain projects, should you do the big bang, sell the big vision approach or prove one use case and start from there? So thank you for addressing that. We're almost done. I just want to take a quick pause here. I did see a question on real estate and NFTs. I want to share with the Hyperledger community that on August 22nd, we are hosting an event called Token Expo. It's in collaboration with Hyperledger and a few other entities. In the ecosystem, we have great lineup of speakers. We'll be covering use cases on real estate, capital markets and supply chain and many other areas. So it's a four hour event, 90 in California time, which I believe is 4P and GMT. And I believe David and some of the folks at Hyperledger will make those announcements very soon. So please try to join us on August 22nd. David, before we end, you didn't tell me the name of the book. As you mentioned, you're writing a book. When is it available? Where can we find it? And what's the title of the book, right? So the book is called The Business of the Metaverse and it's published by Kogan Page. And I will put a link in the chat here. In fact, I'll try and do it now. So yeah, really excited. I put my heart into it. So I do come with maybe different viewpoints from what you'd normally find. But I believe that it should add to the conversation. So I'm just going to look it up and I will put it on. While you post the link, there was a couple of questions. Yeah, we will share the event is token exposed on the 22nd. I'll work with David Boswell and like I said, the Hyperledger folks to push that out to the Hyperledger community. It's the 22nd, not the 26th. In the meantime, we'll have David post the link of the book. If you can. I'll post that now. I've got it. Perfect. So David, thank you so much for your time. We are reaching the end of the hour. This was a fascinating conversation. I wish we had more time. But I'm hoping in the future, we'll have you back. Join us for a future event and maybe even do an in-person event in London, if that's possible, and do something in person in the future. With that, I want to turn it over to David Boswell. Folks, everybody, thank you for joining us. David, thank you so much. I will definitely be in touch and I look forward to reading your book. Okay. Yeah. Hopefully everybody got it. I posted it. I just posted it in the chat. So hopefully everyone. Yeah, perfect. Good. Yeah. Thanks for posting that, David. I'll also share it with everybody who signed up to the event and I'll send a link to the recording, too, for everybody who signed up. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, everyone. Have a great rest of your time here for organizing. My pleasure. Take care, everyone. Bye-bye.