 Good morning, good evening and good afternoon to everyone and welcome to the February 2024 hyper ledger financial markets mortgage subgroup meeting. Before we get started, I'd like to express our appreciation to the financial markets special interest group and the hyper ledger foundation for their ongoing support and making this group possible. I know as we go through this call, people are going to be joining and Karen, Tony will be joining us as the call progresses. So let's go ahead and get started. As always, please note that this meeting is being recorded and is under the umbrella of the hyper ledger foundation. So we ask that everyone abide by the antitrust policy and the code of conduct. The antitrust policy states that we avoid discussions of company specific products and projects. We don't make negative remarks about other companies or products. And the code of conduct means that we that we treat each other with respect. Don't discriminate and communicate constructively. We fully support hyper ledgers policy of openness, equity and inclusion. Everyone's welcome to our meetings and this is intended to be an open forum for sharing ideas and having a constructive discourse. We'd like to express our appreciation to all hyper ledger members and this slide shows premier and general members as well. If you're new welcome and feel free to introduce yourself in the comments. But lurking is more than welcome as well. I know I lurk on quite a few of these hyper ledger meetings. Here's our agenda for today. We've covered the introduction and next we'll go over some hyper ledger community information. And then we'll get an update from Karen Otani on hyper ledgers plans for 2024. And James will then give us an update on blockchain in the mortgage industry. Then we'll close with any questions and we may need to move some things around on the schedule. So please be fluid with us or please be patient with us as the agenda may change a little bit. So we always cover the slide at the beginning of each meeting and this is to reinforce that we're all on the same blockchain journey. But we just may be at different points along that path. This group is meant to help everyone on their blockchain journey and to demonstrate the feasibility of blockchain technology through mortgage industry use cases. We want to define potential implementation path for the mortgage industry and answer some of the questions of what does the mortgage company need to implement blockchain and how difficult is it to implement a blockchain. The next several slides. I always mention for those that are new to the group or would like more information, but I'll go through those pretty quickly. This slide provides links to different resources. The Linux foundation hyper ledger foundation financial markets special interest group. And then the second one from the bottom is the mortgage subgroup wiki. This wiki contains the meeting notes for our groups recordings from previous sessions and curated articles about blockchain in the mortgage industry. These are great resources and we'll reference them throughout the call. If you want access to these resources, you will need a Linux foundation ID or LF ID. This slide walks you through that. I'm not going to go over this, but it's just to provide you that information. You can also obtain the hyper ledger fabric certification. I highly recommend that. And for those that are new to blockchain, here are some links to free blockchain training that I've taken myself and I think it's very worthwhile. I want to remind everyone about the hyper ledger 8th anniversary event on February 14th at 10am Eastern and 7pm Pacific. We'll put a link in the meeting chat, but this is going to be a great opportunity to talk about some of the remarkable achievements of the hyper ledger foundation gain insights into the latest developments within blockchain and distributed ledger technology. And also to connect with some of the industry experts and tail trail blazers within hyper ledger so highly encourage that you join and we will provide you a link. Hey, the next part of our agenda. I believe I'm just going to check to see if Karen has had a chance to join us. Yes, she has. So welcome Karen. She has sent us some slides. So what I'd like to go ahead and do is just give Karen a introduction and then hand it over to her. Karen Otani is the senior director of ecosystem for hyper ledger foundation and has been with hyper ledger for 6 years. She plays an active role in building the diverse ecosystem of innovative companies developing and implementing enterprise blockchain in various industries. Her areas of expertise include digital assets, interoperability near and dear to my heart and blockchains impact on different payment models. Prior to hyper ledger, she worked as a strategic business manager in the blockchain practice at Tata. She's also worked on numerous overseas role with USA aid. Timonix International in various social enterprises. She's also fluent in French, Portuguese and Spanish and she is on the road and has joined us. Hey Karen. Hi. How are you. Hi, I'm doing good. I think everyone's doing well on the call. How are you doing. Can you see me. Yes, we can. Okay, I see your face. I'm going to go ahead and switch to your slides. Perfect. I am going to be doing this from the car. I'm on the way to an event in DC that came up unexpectedly on my schedule. That's quite popular. So I was able to get a ticket to it so I couldn't miss it, but I also couldn't miss this. So I'm, you know, doing what we all do these days, multitasking things at the same time. Okay, great. Well, thank you for joining us Karen and your presentations up. Just give me guys, I'd like to go. So I'll just turn off my camera so it's not distracting from the presentation. Do you want to put it in the slideshow mode or shall I. It is in slideshow mode. I'm sharing. Actually, Marvin. Marvin will still, we're still seeing our presentation that we put together. Let me stop the share and restart just to make sure. Hey, can you guys see the new presentation now. Perfect. And if you put that in like full screen, it should present just like flies. There you go. There you go. Okay. So we should go to the next slide. I wanted to take this opportunity. You know, I know this audience and sometimes the people who are new to the hyper ledger community. Or who maybe are more honed in specifically on the mortgage. You know, ecosystem. So when I provide a little bit of an overview of hyper ledger itself. So who we are. So hyper ledger mission is really about building better together and together being, you know, a key word in that tagline. We are the home for open source enterprise grade blockchain technologies. We are really at the forefront of what enterprises and organizations and governments are doing with with this technology. And, you know, more and more serving as part of the basic infrastructure as long. Next slide. We are a part of the Linux foundation so hyper ledger foundation is an umbrella for several different open source code projects. The Linux foundation is itself also an umbrella for many different open source foundations, working in different technologies from those in your phone and your car and your computer in movies, even. So hyper ledger is the sort of DLT blockchain home at the Linux foundation for what's being done there but we, you know, leveraged and build upon the best practices that the LF has been doing for many years. Next slide. And our key three main things that we focus on, obviously open source that's I think clear most people know and are aware that our technologies are free for anyone to use and participate in. But an additional sort of nuance that made me people aren't just familiar with is open development and open governance. Open development rate really is all about how, you know, anyone can get involved in the development of the code in becoming a maintainer and open governance is really about how the code itself, how the direction of what each project is taking the roadmap is also open as well and is decided by any sort of, you know, you know, closed group of companies or company as Marvin mentioned we are celebrating eight years. And we have this event that we would invite you to join us. I also have a slide on it as well. So we've been around, you know, since the really the beginning, and we see hyper ledger as having really shaped the enterprise blockchain ecosystem. And these are just some figures that can support that influence so we have eight projects that have graduated five that are incubating and even more that are in the labs. And these are innovative young projects that sometimes eventually become incubating or graduated projects. We have a number of special interest groups are long, you know, various topics such as this one regional chapters. So we're, we're, you know, very, very global we have communities that are active in the Americas in Brazil and Japan in India. everywhere. So it's a it's a truly global community as you can see as well by the number of meetups and participants. Next slide please. And while, you know, this group focuses on a very specific topic of use cases. Our technologies are being leveraged and applied in production use cases in almost every industry that you see here. So we have examples of this on our website with our case studies, which I encourage you to take a look at these are production examples. And then we also have excuse me, I use case tracker. That includes, you know, advanced stage projects in a variety of industries as well so I encourage you to look at that, too, if you're interested in what's happening outside of the market space. As a foundation, we are, we are a membership organization we are our activities, our events, our staff are all funded by our members, which allows us to provide the technologies free and open for anyone to use. That allows us to build the communities that the technologies benefit from, and that companies then benefit from by leveraging and building their products and services on top of. So, next slide please. You have your members, you have general members. These are all companies that are using hyper ledger building a hop up hyper ledger or just supporting, you know, the enterprise ecosystem and an open source technologies being available for them. Next slide please. We also have associate membership for governments and institutions. We also announce our new members on about a quarterly by monthly basis basis. So, keep an eye out for new members that are joining. Next slide. Part of why companies join as members is because they are building products and services on top of our code that are critical to their lines of business, which means they want to make sure that that code and that community that is building that code has longevity and sustainability to it isn't tied to the future of any one organization is vendor neutral and like I said earlier, developed in the open and governed in the open because they feel more secure in the future of the of the code that they're using with that framework. Next slide. And when you join as a member, you get access to our in house experts such as our team. A lot of community tools and resources introductions within our community we have a number of member only events including a member summit that happens once or sometimes twice a year like it did last year. Like the case studies that I pointed to you on our website earlier we do a lot of content creation with our members as well, speaking opportunities things like that so if it's something you're interested in, please reach out. Next slide please. So as I mentioned we've really been here since the beginning of the blockchain space building and shaping enterprise markets. And we are open global and trusted as a result of that. Next slide. This shows you the timeline of some of our projects that when they became, you know, we're contributed to hyper ledger. So from the very beginning in 2015 we had fabric any Roja. And as we went along did July netting in D code basis contributed cello which is a tool that you can leverage with hyper ledger fabric. And then as we move along you can see just the progression and addition of all the projects that you see there today. There is a project lifecycle. Some projects may have been contributed in the past that you don't see here anymore. And that's because they, they have been archived. That's just a normal part of the project lifecycle. Sometimes projects, you know, are reached a natural end they fulfill their purpose. And sometimes just, you know, there isn't a need anymore for that project or there isn't a community around it. And so we have a method in our open governance. This is discussed in public meetings where there's a there's a discussion about archiving so some of those, you know, may not be there here, but that's what we have today. And this slide I wanted to highlight just because, you know, there's always been a lot of interest in the ethereum community the huge developer community, and a lot of people are using and interested in hyper ledger basic today. And while hyper ledger basic was contributed to the foundation in 2019. We actually had, you know, ethereum participation and support since 2016 2017. So even earlier there was this project called hyper ledger bro that was honestly ahead of its time. And it allowed for you to use, you know, EVM with different ledgers. And since then, though, basically was contributed we've gotten, you know, EA and EF as part of our community. We've got an EVM fabric labs, so long as a solidity compiler and hyper ledger basic is one of the main ethereum mainnet clients. So there was recently some news that came out about some events around the ethereum client diversity. And, you know, basic is one of those EVMs that contributes to the client diversity and thus the security of the ethereum mainnet. Next slide. So these are our current graduated projects. If you can find more information about these other website, I'm just going to highlight a few that maybe, you know, our adventurous I know I didn't I'm not highlight highlighting fabric because I think that's a code base that this community is already familiar with and has used. So, but of course fabric is, you know, one of the most widely used BLT out there has been used in more production use cases than any other permission BLT. So, so I'm highlighting on the next two slides. One that you may be you may want to learn about. So, as I mentioned earlier hyper ledger best you this is a client of ethereum, it has both public and private options. You can use all ethereum smart contracts and token standards on it. There's a lot currently by the financial industry, because, you know, a lot of companies in that industry want to be able to work in both public and private spaces, and don't necessarily want to make a decision on that right now but want to have a future option So, you'll see bases being used in a lot of, for example, there's the city. The city just launched their token services with Merisk. They're using that finality, if you've heard about finality, sort of like holes, they're acting as like a manufacturer wholesale CVDC. I mean, the private sector on that's leveraging hyper ledger base to the strict CVDC sandbox is as well so there's a lot going on with me to right now. Yeah, next slide. Hyper ledger cacti so interoperability is a challenge that everybody's always wondering about how do we do this. And hyper ledger cacti was a team of people from Accenture Fujitsu and IBM came together at one of our hyper ledger events our global forum. And they said, you know, let's, let's actually get to work on this and figure out a way to make this happen and cacti is very is a bit different than some of the other interoperability tools you might be hearing. Out there like bridges, which has gotten a bit of becoming infamous. This is not about creating these sort of specific one to one networks or creating a network of networks. Cacti takes a very different approach and provides these solutions that allow them to adapt to new protocols very easily so there's currently connectors between fabric basu corda. And then a few with some public chains to as well. And take a look at cacti and and harmonia with a lab that was actually just contributed by our three. That also is is a complimentary interoperability tool as well. Next slide hyper ledger fly firefly. This is a really useful project for you to get to know if you're looking for some more. You know, abstraction from the sort of layer one. Work that there is it allows you to, to launch networks very easily. They like to call themselves the open source gateway to web three, because it's a complete stack for you to be able to build and scale web three applications. And, you know, just get launched to production. Connecting to the system. So, this was contributed by our member hyperlido. And, and they recently reached. Last fall, graduated status of log there if you'd like to catch up on that. Next slide please. There's a number of leadership that hyper ledger foundation engages in some of it around you know the case for open source or, or as of late, the central bank digital currencies. We have a book that I encourage you to stand you the qr code right there and hopefully it works. And take a look at it. If you're interested in how our technologies are being used for CBDC. This is a nice overview. I think there's about, I think there's like 1718 examples in there. So quite a few of the research and pilot projects and even live CBDCs that are out there in the world are using either type ledger fabric basu tactile or any Roja as well. This is a map of that you'll find in the ebook that that has all the examples you'll find in the book of where hyper ledger technology to being used you can kind of see we have the little logos. They're all mapped everywhere. And it just shows, you know, open source really is something that governments are valuing for their research on this use cave. So, you know, you're already involved by being here at the mortgage subgroup of the financial markets sake, but there's other ways that you can get involved if you have certain connections with Latin America, or Brazil we have regional chapters there that are really vibrant communities that put together lots of good content presentations but also do sometimes they're they're doing hackathon sometimes they're doing different series speaker series or learning series. The India chapter is is prolific. They're really a model for, you know, an engaged community. So I encourage you to take a look at that as a way as another way to get involved. Next slide please. As Marvin mentioned, we have this upcoming events we are celebrating eight years. And we really wanted to take this moment to reflect and bring some really, you know, high profile leaders from our community that have been a part of our history and are also a part of our future. So, please register and join us on Valentine's Day back one please. So, we have a number of workshops, you know, if you're I highlighted a few of our projects we have many others. One way in which we get and we help people get started is through these online or sometimes in person workshops. They're recorded so the ones that I highlighted in green here are upcoming. I want you to, I mean, I think one is basically going on right now. So you'll you can catch the recording for that. But we have a zero knowledge proof that's coming up in April. The other ones are previous ones that I've been reported so these these often get very in depth or you know two to four hours long don't get intimidated by that. It's not boring. It's it's for it's made for people who really want to get into the details and not and move beyond the surface level information on these projects and applications. Webinars are, you know, typical one hour so more like giving you a highlight of a use case or something that one of our members did. These are our members that are sharing what they're doing with our technologies. And I encourage you to sign up for these. Another way to get involved and get your questions asked and when you're wondering like, let's say you, you go to one of these workshops you watch a recording but you get stuck on something. The place to go is discord this is where our open source community communicates and meets there's a channel for for almost everything you can imagine in there that you might need help with. Why do companies get involved because you know, sometimes it seems like, oh well what you know what if I'm not really sure what I want to do or, or what I want to build if I'm not building thing you know why use open source why get involved in our community. You know, this is a question I get a lot so I thought I kind of preempt it here. I'm leveraging existing infrastructure existing. Foundation that are not where you compete on helps you decrease time to market and accelerate the work on a project you're doing. You'll, as a developer, or a technical person you gain experience, working in open source that also makes you very hireable that and for companies, you know that means you're building an in house expertise as well. That's very valuable. Like I said, everyone's on discord if you need help so you can tap into this, this much broader community that's there to help, you know, you know, from their own good well essentially to a certain extent obviously. And more importantly is like if you really get involved you can help shape the direction of what the project is working on to fill to fill your needs and your use case. And, and you help make sure that this is something that's going to continue and and if it's something you're leveraging for your use cases, it will be there will be longevity to that community and to that code. Next slide please. So, you know, love to hear what you all are interested in, you know, in terms of what our outlook is for 2024. I think you're going to see a lot more. We have a lot more workshops plans, both virtual and in person on the topics that we find we're hearing a lot of interest from so you'll see. And, and also just repeating ones that I think we found successful last year you'll you're going to find workshops on CBDC on base to on fabric. Coming up this year, as well. So, you know, sign up for our newsletter on our websites, so that you can be abreast of when those are available. And another thing that I think you'll find like just in general topics that we see of interest there's going to be a lot of, I think, discussion around CBDC, you know, applications and financial services. And also, you know, things related to zero knowledge and privacy, as well as there's a lot of interest that's why we have a workshop coming up on that topic itself. We will be doing our member event at the end of October will be announcing that very soon. That is a member only event so if you want to attend that you obviously have to be a member. And then we will be having a presence and a lot of upcoming industry events. So, we haven't made final decisions on all those just yet. But, but you know, it's some of these major ones that are coming up you will see hyper ledger there so we invite you to come. Join us at the event. Our members can join us at our booth and come say hi to us if you happen to be there as well. We'll know more about that on our website under events. When those are officially announced. And these are just, you know, all the different ways in which you can kind of engage and get information or reach out to us. We're all always open and available to chat and talk and help whenever someone in the community needs. I can. Thank you so much. So yeah, if there's any questions, let me know. I'm happy to clarify anything. Thanks Karen that was great information this is Marvin I, I do have one question for you. In 2003 there was the whole crypto winter that I think impacted a lot of what was going on within blockchain, not just from a crypto perspective, but within the past month or so it seems like things are beginning to grain gain traction again, but with a slight twist you mentioned B. So quite a bit and what I'm starting to see is there is a lot of interest, but from a more ethereum perspective so using that as a token using B. So in what what do you think about that what are you seeing out there because that that's what I'm interpreting from what you just mentioned. So what in terms of the shift out of crypto winter. Yeah, yeah, and how things are gaining traction but from an ethereum perspective, at least that's how it seems to be starting. Yeah, I think I think that, you know, things are are definitely looking up. I think some of that also has to do with, you know, more and more kind of clarity on regulations and what governments are doing. The event I'm actually going to is at the OCC. There's a whole event there on tokenization I think that that also really gives more, you know, confidence and stability in in the industry overall, we are we are lucky and that we're some somewhat you know, sheltered from the ups and downs of crypto it definitely affects, you know, invest the investments that companies make or the Sorry, hold on. Sorry, definitely affects the enterprises, you know, how they focus their resources, but you know, being that we are not in the specifically the crypto space. And even when there is a crypto winter, you know, our work continues, because our work is really, while there is definitely a lot of connection to financial applications and you know, things related to crypto but more so like, you know, existing infrastructure and existing financial payments and currencies and things like that or, you know, the way that the private institutions work together so I think there is somewhat that that work still continues because this is about changing the way companies work, even in whether or not it's related to the crypto space right. And this is about building your network of supply chain like our trust your supplier this has been really successful continuously pressure supplier continuously wins awards that's built on hyperledger fabric. There's just, there's just a lot of diversification in our community so for us the work has always continued but you know we certainly see a big change happening. And it's looking more positive for the crypto space. Okay, great. Thank you. There was a question in the, in the chat, I'm going to go ahead and answer it. And then if you want to chime in as well. I believe that the mortgage industry is one of the focuses of the subgroup, but from a quick scan of members I only recognize that center and Integra. Are there other mortgage related members that Alan may have overlooked. There are several other mortgage companies, specifically a stock of Pazza, for example, I believe that they are a member of hyper ledger that I think they joined recently. They actually presented a couple months ago. JP Morgan Chase B of a third the large finance institutions that they also participate within hyper ledger and we've had some of them join us on the mortgage subgroup as well in Karen was there anything you wanted to add or or James as well. You know, actually I was going to add to that Marvin with there's a numerous other companies out there Alan that are working in the blockchain space. They may be involved with hyper ledger they may not but definitely there are other companies. If you go back through our presentations over the last three years you're going to see highlights for those if you take a look at the wiki I'll be talking about that in a moment. And you'll find highlights from those as well and in a few minutes I'll give an update on the mortgage industry and I've actually got several of those topics I'll be covering today. And Alan, I see you're asking about the name so I may have tried to answer that question to focus. I just mentioned companies or mortgage companies that are members of hyper ledger. But as James alluded to there are a ton of mortgage companies that are involved in hyper ledger in blockchain and have presented to this group and James will cover those. You can take a look at those that are wiki as well. Yeah, you know, I definitely wish there were more. And, you know, why that is it may be that you know what they're working on is, you know, more in house things that they're not necessarily sharing publicly. And so we haven't engaged with them. It may be that they're using, you know, other technologies and are haven't explored hyper ledger yet. Although I do think a lot were a lot have have used fabric in the past so there's a myriad of reasons but I definitely, you know, would love to see more and encourage more companies to, you know, take a look at what's happening in our space I think it's pretty significant. And if you're not you're missing out. Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things that I did want to stress is just the advantages of hyper ledger fabric and firefly there are so many tools out there I think what Karen really underscored is there are so many channels and avenues and sources of information from a hyper ledger perspective that allows you to get up to speed and build things within hyper ledger that you may not be able to within other platforms but I don't want to venture too far into that but if you do want to have a side discussion with me about how we've been able to build within hyper ledger in reach out to me and I can definitely tell you and I can. James and I can give you a ton of names of the other mortgage companies that are working within blockchain and hyper ledger specifically. And then there was another question what are the opportunities for a new be within hyper ledger in Karen I did you want to answer that. I know you're, you're at another event so I don't want to. Yes, of course, I'll have to run. Yep, I'll have to run in a second but opportunity so if you're, if you're a technical person. We have a lot of different trainings, so I encourage you to look on our website and check out some of the online trainings that we have the workshops that I mentioned as well. And then definitely definitely join the this board where you'll see the community meeting don't be shy don't be afraid they're very welcoming they're open. They're totally normal to have new people show up and ask questions. That's what this community is all about. There are also. Once maybe you get past the beginner stage we've taken some courses, you could start even joining some of the contributor calls. And, you know, engage in discussion about what's happening in the fabric community. So that's where I would say get started. The other thing I would say is look up wherever your base look up. Just Google hyperledger meetup in your city. And there may if it's a major or even a midsize city, we have a lot of meetup groups there. Because there you'll find, you know, local people that you could connect with they often do in person events that you can connect with to help you on your learning journey as well. And then once you start building something, come tell us about it. Let us know because the thing with open source is that anyone can use our technology so we don't always know what people are doing with it unless, you know, they come and share it with us. So let us know what you end up doing. Thanks Karen that that was a great answer and one thing I just want to toss out there. Just go on GitHub, do a search hyperledger whatever type of application you're thinking you're building chances are someone's already taken a run at it or at least there's quite a bit of information out there. So, check out GitHub. And before I go, Alan, who I think asked some of the other questions, you know, if you want to talk more about whatever it is you're looking to do or want to learn more about the community, please, you know, feel free to reach out to me. You can reach me more simply. I mean, my email is kind of long so membership at hyperledger.org is easy to remember. And, you know, feel free to email me there if anyone has any follow up questions. Okay, great. Thanks Karen we definitely appreciate you joining us you've given us a wealth of information and really interested to see what else hyperledger is going to be doing in 2024 so thank you. Great. Thank you so much for inviting me. I hope it was helpful. And we'll see you online or in person somewhere in the world. Thank you very much Karen your support and the support of the hyperledger foundation has been fantastic. We greatly appreciate it. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, thanks Karen. Now going on to the next portion of our agenda the status of blockchain in the mortgage industry. I think Alan you'll find some of this information really interesting James always does a fantastic job of giving us an overview so take it away James. Thank you Sarah let's go ahead and bump up to the first slide. I've actually got a lot to cover today so I will move pretty fast. You know the fortunate thing all of this information and more is available from our wiki site. During Karen's presentation, you guys heard about hyperledger Bezu I thought this would be a great way to, you know, open our discussion today. The first articles from Mark Lewis he's a managing director at Colato, and he really discusses the advantages of hyperledger Bezu. He goes into a variety of different case studies as you can see by the article covering everything from supply chain identity management voting health care you name it. Three of the big topics that really focus for this group. The first one was in banking and finance discussing decentralized finance applications like payment systems asset management and smart contracts. And how hyperledger Bezu provides secure and transparent financial transactions reducing cost and complexity. He also has a use case related to real estate and blockchain based real estate transactions reducing reducing the risk of fraud, simplifying the over process overall process and reducing costs and you know those are themes that we hear continuously throughout our, our blockchain journey. And then the third one is really around digital identity, allowing users to manager their personal data securely and privately on the blockchain, particularly useful in both the finance and the health care industry. It's a great article with some great use case scenarios. I'll admit it is a little bit of a sales pitch for Colato but I do think that the content is worth taking a look at for this group. The second article this is actually coming out of a company called block BR which is located in Brazil. Block BR is a company that develops tokenization infrastructure, and the articles really about the investment potential being developed through real estate tokenization, utilizing fractionalized investing. So asset owners can split them into hundreds or thousands of tokens with very low value. This allows smaller investors to participate in the market and have greater great greater gains than the CBDCs and savings accounts. The token is produced and traded on a blockchain platform with high quality security total transparency and agility, and it eliminates financial intermediaries between the public and the bidders which reduces the overall operational costs. So token platforms work around the clock providing users with the ability to buy and sell tokens at any time day or night from literally anywhere on the planet. Fractional real estate tokens allow diversification of portfolios investors pay less and distribute their capital into other assets. This article two is a bit of an advertisement for Block BR because the Block BR platform is where Brazil is trading these real estate tokenizations. But we have been, as you guys have seen over the last year or more with several of the articles, we're seeing more and more of this type of activity. Not only, you know, in South America, but we're seeing it in Europe, we're seeing it in Asia, we're seeing it in the Americas. Next slide. Okay, this next article is from the Scotsman guide. I actually found it a fairly interesting article it covers a lot of the topics that we've covered over the last probably year and a half to two years now. It ends up with a lot of statistical information so you'll remember previously we talked about the Fannie Mae survey that was out there that pulled hundreds of senior mortgage executives in 2021. As you'll recall 25% of those respondents were at least somewhat familiar with the black chain concept, but 68% had yet or yet to consider using it in their organization. We've also seen production expenses hit a record high of about 13,000 per loan in the first quarter of last year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, which is well above the long term average that we've been seeing of 7,000 or so per loan. They talk about the McKinsey report that we covered revealing customer satisfaction scores around the mortgage industry are between 30 to 40% lower than under other industries. And then last summer we talked about the MISMO blockchain lab that's been set up, and they estimate that blockchain could reduce closing times about 30% and overall costs relatively around 25%. And then one of the last statistics they were talking about actually core logic analysts believe that efforts to integrate blockchain are likely to be bumpy and slow moving. Using tools such as digital asset verification, employment verification, income calculators, they've all faced opposition from originators and underwriters in the past. And although blockchain has not developed widespread adoption in the industry as of yet, there are some prime examples of successful integration. So we've talked about figure technologies. They originated more than $6 billion in HELOC loans and recently began partnering with independent mortgage banks on proprietary HELOC products with a 100% digital application process. We also last year talked about Redwood Trust subsidiary Corvest. They securitized $313 million in single family rental loans with blockchain provider liquid mortgage, providing the ability to track daily loan level payment activities. A great article from the Scotsman guide going into a lot of the details of those and other transactions that have been occurring. A lot of them tie up to what our presentations have been over, as I said, probably the last year, year and a half. The next article kind of sticking with that AI theme that we were talking about last year. You know, how does blockchain and AI work together? This is coming from the Blockchain Council and it's actually was published on LinkedIn. It is a very high level article. It starts out with an overview of both blockchain and AI technology. It identifies the common ground between blockchain and AI, so the data quality, security, the decentralized type of architecture, utilization of smart contracts. But then it delves in a little bit more focused on first, how does blockchain enhance AI? So some of those topics include data security and integrity. So if blockchain's immutable ledger ensures data is highly secure, and this security aligns perfectly with AI's need for trustworthy data sources to make accurate predictions. There's the decentralization aspects of it. There's the transparency and accountability aspects of it. Blockchain enhances accountability and AI-driven decisions, providing increased confidence in the AI algorithms. It then also looks at how does AI enhance blockchain through security monitoring and threat detection, through enhanced data analytics, through the use of smart contracts and automation. For instance, efficiencies of interactions between AI and blockchain, AI can analyze data, assess real-world conditions, and trigger specific actions with smart contracts on the blockchain. And then lastly, he touches on real-world use case scenarios of blockchain and AI collaboration in a couple of different industries in the supply chain industry, the healthcare industry. So within the financial industry, they discuss examples of blockchain and AI are in use in a variety of examples, including smart contracts, AI algorithm, utilization, and peer-to-peer lending platform. So again, if you're interested in AI and seeing how AI and blockchain can work together, this is a great article that touches upon it at a high level. And then moving on to the last slide, Marvin, and I see we're getting down to the last five or six minutes. So this last one, this was the Q4 Friends of Providence Blockchain update. It was actually a live presentation on January 24th I was able to attend, but there's a link to the article within the Wiki. In the slides, you can see the operation metrics reported by the Providence Blockchain Network for 2023. The highlights include year-over-year transactions were up 156% to more than 4 million, or yeah, more than 4 million. They ended 2023 with 9.4 billion in total value, all of which is in real-world assets like loans, private company equity, and private funds, which I thought was actually a very interesting observation. This is up 29% year-over-year. In addition, at the end of 2023, there were a number of bonded tokens doubled year-over-year also by roughly about 11%. You know, as we've seen, and as even Karen mentioned in her presentation, currently, there is an uncertainty in the legal, the risk, regulatory environments out there related to blockchain and its utilization. The Blockchain Foundation, one of the things they talked about in their update is they're going to be spinning off Prove Labs from the foundation, with the foundation remaining a nonprofit, which is going to continue to focus on these issues of risk and regulatory and legal, while Prove Labs will become a for-profit working with firms and fintechs that are looking to migrate on to the Providence Blockchain. The biggest news announcement I think they had over the last year was the Monetary Authority of Singapore's Project Guardian. So back in November, we briefly mentioned JP Morgan's ONIX digital asset team, working with Apollo and Wisdom Tree, enabled fund managers to tokenize funds into a private permissioned instance of the Providence Blockchain, with JP Morgan's ONIX platform and Avalanche. Wealth managers were then able to sell, buy, and rebalance thousands of separately managed positions across the three blockchain systems. And this could have a significant impact on an industry that's valued at roughly $5.5 trillion. We've discussed new features that were coming out or that were released in the month of January, the hold modules and the exchange modules. And then at the very end of the article they do touch upon an update on their grant program. They have issued $4.7 million in hash grants to recipients. I highly recommend, this is about a 14 minute read, but they do have the video recording from the hour long webinar that was in there. I highly recommend checking out the hour long webinar, because a good 20 or 30 minutes of it is dedicated to demos from some of these hash grant recipients. On-chain AI demoed Victor Fang, the chairman and CEO. He had an overview of their use of analyzing blockchain with AI. And then in Venium, Pat Omira, the CEO, he's discussing how in Venium facilitates the movement of data with proof of origin and proof of process in order to compute data upon demand. And all these tools are being utilized within the finance industry currently. So definitely take a look at those. They do a fabulous job on the presentation and walking you through their tools. Let me pause there and see if there's any questions or additional comments on those articles. Fantastic. Let's go ahead and move over to the next slide. So this is the Hyperledger Wiki and this is the mortgage industry subgroup page. Over on the right hand side of the page, you'll find information about the LFID and how to join it. Marvin mentioned that at the beginning of the call. On the right hand side, you'll have the articles that I've referenced. All of those are located there along with the last couple of months worth of sessions. And then over on the far left hand side, you'll see a number of submenu options, all of our previous recordings since 2021. So Alan others that are interested in checking that out, you can find those there along with leaks to the presentation. And we have curated roughly by the end of last year over 250 different news articles. This year alone in just two months or really about a month and a half, we've already curated almost three dozen new additional ones, but you can find old articles that we've discussed in our presentations over on the menus on the left. And if you're looking for additional information, again, feel free to any time to reach out to either Marvin or myself. Marvin, that's everything I've got. I'll hand it back over to you. Thanks, James. Awesome timing. I show 959 and it just ticked over to 10 o'clock. We probably have time for one or two questions. So we do still have some people on board. Anyone have any questions or comments before we all sign off. Okay. With that, we'll just go ahead and sign up again. Thank you to Karen for joining us and talking about hyper ledger. Contact information. If you do want to reach out to us and have any questions or comments. And I think that that's it. Our next meeting will be the second Thursday of March. So March 14. I hope you join us there. Thank you, everyone.