 Great. Well, good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. I know mornings after Rawe can be a bit of a struggle, so appreciate you all all being here So I'll do a bit of an introduction to myself and the Ethereum Foundation next billion program And then I'll pass it on to the brilliant panelists we have up on stage. So my name is my name is Marcus I am a fellow at the Ethereum Foundation where I am currently researching the implementations of last mile DeFi Focusing primarily in Latin America and essentially asking ourselves How can we leverage DeFi to not just you know bring financial gain, but actually empower livelihoods in a very real very tangible way so always happy to talk about these things at a later stage and Context wise into the next billion team really the the essence of next billion is to ask ourselves. How can we? Leverage Ethereum and web 3 not just to onboard the next billion users, but to create tangible very visceral changes in their lives and Do so at a very scalable level. So With that I will pass it on to the three panelists here to my left and allow them to introduce themselves and tell us a little bit About what they're working on. Hi, I'm Abhishek Bhattacharya. I'm one of the co-founders at a project called world What we do is we are a C5 to DeFi bridge. We are We started three years back helping farmers enabling farmers take loan against their crops that they can store Right after harvesting farmers receive very less Price for the crops that for the for per kilogram price for the crops that they grow We enable them we encourage them to store it in a warehouse in a government or a private warehouse and sell it off after three Or four months when the prices are forty percent or even sometimes hundred two hundred percent better We use blockchain to do that to bring banks on the table We'll be discussing about that as well that how we brought banks on to blockchain and that is what we've been doing now We are going on to decentralised finance soon so that the same farmers in a country like India and maybe everywhere else can get access to DeFi lending as well Thank you. So I'm Gabriela. I'm from Mexico. I am working on blueprints be a low INX That's an application decentralized application that manages saving circles. You might know them as standards coutuales cheat funds or many ways around the world That's a way of people to actually let's say get an interest-free loan if you're one of the first From your friends of your family members, and if you're the last you're actually contributing for them to get this this Loan why this is important for us in Mexico and Latin America Asian Africa It's not easy for us to get a loan and if we get one it's super normal to have fifty percent interest rate 100% and people don't read the small letters so we get into very big depth So this is why it's important to give them options to actually have these let's say social credit Options so that's what we're doing Hello everyone. My name is Benson. You're gonna I come from Kenya We've been working with small holder farmers with a Africa Solving the insurance problem So Agri insurance has been a problem where we have very low penetration for years it has been around 3% of the small holders taking up insurance and We feel it's important for them to take up insurance and many other traders who are earning an income because we were able to protect them because lack of insurance has left most of the farmers exposed to Hunger because after a climate effect Then no food then it means they can't sell because it also the food has been affected meaning no income and a whole cycle of Unfavorable things so with that we are doing this Solving the problems that are making them not take up insurance and blockchain has helped us to do some of these things Which will discuss as we go on. Thank you Marcus Awesome. Thank you. So yeah an incredible group of people here doing amazing work Really just changing people's lives in a very real sense using, you know this technology So just before maybe to settle a bit of context we could just go around and Just perhaps lay the scene of you know, we've got India Latin America and Africa up here on stage Across each of your respective regions What have you what is it about the traditional systems and our current incumbent systems that are Set in place that are currently falling short for whether it's for farmers or for local communities and saving circles Where are traditional incumbent institutions falling short and on the other side of the equation there? What is it unique? What is unique about DeFi that enables your proposition to be unlocked? Through leveraging, you know distribute ledgers etc. So maybe I'll be sure kick it off to you Sure currently in India everywhere else also as we are expanding globally. We've seen many other countries The the systems that are in place for example talking about the loans that we give to farmers These are centralized finance loans given by banks since ages. It's not something we brought on but There's a lot of fraud in that and that's of course fraud is the biggest thing that blockchain solves Anyway, that's where blockchain finds most use case in fintech. So as a fintech organization We saw that the government systems the the banking systems the entire platform that is available to the farmers and to the banks is not is not sufficient and Blockchain could help banks were pulling out of this entire ecosystem Leaving farmers into the hands of usurious money lenders with outrageous interest rates. So that's one one you know drawback that systems like in India the government organizations they have and You talked about DeFi DeFi is a very new thing farmers of course have nothing to do with DeFi like to understand the concept But it is at play at the back end where I Personally believe that It's access to so as we say there are more than 1.7 billion unbanked people across the globe with DeFi We do not have to just go wait for a bank to process the loans even though if it's in real time It's still 15 minutes 30 minutes That's as real time as it gets for the farmers at this moment But with DeFi it is access to the global DeFi capital and on the other hand It's a good thing for the for the DeFi lenders as well because they get access to really stable assets Not not against speculative crypto. These are crops non-perishable crops may so have been raised anything you name it And that's that's where they would be interested in driving the DeFi capital And we would be interested in replacing those systems that are already there And and the shortcomings with with this new system helped by DeFi blockchain web 3 all together. Hey, so Situation in Mexico right right now with a theorem foundation where I'm going to focusing on women What's the situation there so we have? legally 48 hour work week so imagine Family a single mom that has two kids has to work 48 hours and then has to take transportation Then she has no time. We don't have a good healthcare system. Well a child to Take her system. So it's difficult. So what option do they have? Informality there are two billion people around the world Talking now about next billion. We have two billion people around the world that are Uninformally employed why because of this because they sell informally because they're farmers. So This is the situation. They live day-to-day They either bake cakes or creams to massages or whatever thing they might think of so It's difficult. What happens when they need they have medical emergency with their kids. They need cash, right? They try to get it from centralized financial Institution, but what happens is that they require a proof of income which they don't have So this is a serious issue. They have this option of getting loans from informal lenders, but it's super high interest rates or they have this other option What why these options already exist these options have been there for? 100 years in many countries What you do there is you put in your social credit, right? So why blockchain? Well, it's decentralized. You can join a saving circle Yes, you have the same risks of a common saving circle, but we can exploit their Trustability we know exactly what was deposited and when it was deposited and then to who it was it was paid to So that's super important in our case where we have a lot of corruption and people doing non Let's say legal or correct ethical things So this is important for us and also we can leverage a reputation system that can eventually Serve as a foundation for them to actually get alone from our financial institution for a bigger amount So this is why blockchain is there everything is on chain. So it's permanent immutable and No subject to change by anyone. So that's why Wow, I'll I'll cue what Gabriela said so in DeFi in our context in Africa I'm a kissing point in Kenya. We have mobile money as is a digital technology It's for example in Kenya. It has over 98% adoption meaning almost every adult citizen has a wallet a mobile money wallet But we still find challenges challenges in How how much they paying how much they're paying for the loans? So we have very high interest On the loans in fact, they regarded as predatory In fact, even the central bank has been tracking down. So this access to finance has been a challenge because of high interest rates and When it comes now to DeFi to protect for example income. So a farmer has income How what why are we saying if I can help solve the problem? So for us it was the Transparency in the traditional insurance business. So An agent will go to the field Convince a farmer to buy insurance, but then keep quiet for a whole six months a season would take around six months Next time they see the agent will be next time. They're selling. So no information No, didn't know what policy. They took what was happening about it now with blockchain. We're able to enable the farmer using feature phones the penetrations of feature phones is high To dial a star a number and they were to see so far you your policy has triggered this percentage Which is equivalent to this amount of money and also the triggers that were used to say determine whether they Qualify for a claim or not are tamper evident. So we generate hashes put them on chain So you can to prove you just need to produce the hash and compare it with the data since we don't publish The farmer data on chain, but yeah, that's how we Defy and blockchain is revolutionizing financing Incredible amazing Yeah, I find it really interesting that each of you is sort of working it through different sectors You're working very much. So, you know with governments and large regulators as well and trying to figure out a lot of the real-world asset integration as well and yeah, you're very much so kind of working with local You know women-level cooperatives and and figuring out like how do you download and work with metamask for example? We were talking about that earlier, right? And how you even would you know add polygons here metamask wallet and just thinking about what that user experience is like And then Benson like you're tying in all this technology that already exists out in the world too, right? And you're saying hey, we've got and PESA ussd Transactions as well, and we're tying in you know climate data And so I just appreciate the the breadth to which each of you is is leveraging this and on that point I mean, perhaps I'll be you could paint a little bit of that picture of what it's been like working with Kind of incumbent institutions in your jurisdiction, right? So you mentioned you're speaking with banks you're speaking with your regulators in the space as well You're very much so working with real-world assets, which is just a fascinating concept in and of itself too So I wonder if you could shed a little bit of a light on that because that's been a really sort of hot topic in the space recently How we integrate real-world assets within DeFi. So maybe you can shed some light on that. Yes I mean I understand because the entire blockchain ecosystem has always been wondering that How do banks and governments fit in with the ecosystem how to bring them on board? I have met so many people here people working with the Colombian government. I work with the Indian government He's working with the Kenyan government. So Definitely now banks and governments and all those institutions have started opening up to you know to Adopting blockchain based systems, but then there are certain boundaries that you always always would have to keep in mind So for example, I we could not have just asked to ask the bank to come and join us on a public blockchain, right? Like Ethereum polygon But on the other hand, so it has to be designed very specifically so that you can take them in confidence one very important thing about banks and I mean, especially big banks, right? And in India there are a handful of big banks big Oaks and Is that their sales cycles are too long because it's just how they are, right and Further crossing the barrier of going onto a blockchain platform internally. They have that bureaucracy as well That is a tough sell already But one thing we have constantly seen in our use cases that not a single bank has ever said that No, this is not something we want because again, this is not a domain This is called warehouse receipt finance you store a crop you take a loan against it It's as simple as that it has been in fact It has been it is one of the oldest lending products known to mankind What we did was we we just made it better, right? But banks knew it and banks have been facing these fraud since decades and they tried solving it with legacy technologies Which they haven't been able to so they were open to at least open to adopting blockchain, right? They knew first-hand, so yeah, there's a very clear this distinction here First hand, they knew we are only talking about blockchain technology and we are not talking about cryptocurrency Blockchain the banks on blockchain will barely ever get involved with Cryptocurrency at least in such use cases not in the ones where we are talking about CBDC or cross-border payments, etc But here they had to be very clear So what we did was to on board then we created a permission blockchain Which Corum which was built by JP Morgan source Came as a perfect use case that JP Morgan is running a 400 bank strong network on the same blockchain So why not we use it use the same thing and then when the banks were on board? We also talked to the governments Of course as much as possible reaching out there are state government governments in India And then they saw that okay. There's an opportunity no cryptocurrency involved The Indian government has been very supportive of blockchain. I mean, you know, we have seen we have heard the Indian honorable Indian prime minister Sheena and the Modi we have seen him speak about blockchain at the Singapore fintech festival last year He was very very, you know praiseworthy for blockchain So the government accepts it accepts it really till the time we do not bring cryptocurrency The challenge here is that bringing defy onto the same platform Which is where things become very complicated, which is something we're trying to navigate even at this moment We are trying to keep them separate banks won't be interacting with the crypto ecosystem The crypto defy lenders won't be interacting with the c5 lenders But the farmer should be benefited to the farmer on the click of a button on a multilingual app would be Having access to whether to take this moment this crop loan against that particular crop in defy or in c5 That's what we are trying to abstract. It's a challenge. It's still a challenge I'm pretty sure that Kenya and Latin America. They would be facing the same problems because It's just how it is. I mean, you know, it's just a decade of blockchain that we've seen Governments are not ready to accept it just at the first go. That's that's what we've seen. Yeah. Yeah, it's true For example in our project, uh, we were dealing with an insurance regulator So you have to prove that you're not using crypto So you don't have you don't need to mention cryptos us We start with efficiency So we're bringing a technology that will do exactly what has been happening But now we can pay claims immediately at the end of the season. You don't have to wait for six months So after a while the kenya government is really good. The regulator has what we call a sandbox So it gives any crazy idea to to apply and say we want to try out this and this and this So part of this, uh, sandbox is where we are now Trying to see how can we introduce risk, uh, crypto based risk pools where now, um That we can pay out from from a certain risk pool that has been funded by the community like the differ community Ab is talking about so the regulator has been yeah start with the technology and then crypto later Yeah, I mean, we've obviously seen a lot of um Regulatory talk and that you know, sorry, what what we'll sort of get bogged down on throughout much of this talk conversation But it is a really important consideration, right? Especially if we want to reach sort of critical mass if we want to do integrations with wider partners as well thinking about how we do that Um, definitely will will take a lot of thought and and you know having even sort of these spaces for all of us to say Hey, these are the benefits of defi here is how and I think being able to align with traditional financial institutions And governments and regulators saying listen, these are the these are the benefits that comes to you I think oftentimes there's obviously this very, um Oppositional position that that comes up when we speak about defi in emerging markets and around the world, right? So and we've seen the likes of uniswap with the defi education fund as well Really push for more education more advocacy at the regulatory level, which is obviously hugely hugely important, but Switching over, you know gears a little bit. I got it. I think one of the really fascinating things and abby was touching on this too was The idea that What you're offering abby for example, isn't necessarily new, right? And and being able to warehouse financing isn't a particularly new innovation The problem is that the traditional financial institutions haven't quite been serving Last mile communities because there isn't enough value for them to engage with as they do these things So Gabriela also with the tandas, you know, there's something really interesting there as well Where as you said, you know, these are traditions that are hundreds of years old So particularly with defi like what what is it about tandas and decentralized finance that unlocks that value and really enables people to be able to do this at scale Yes for So people We're people we like tradition, especially in markets like latin america We do what our parents and grandparents did because it's just How we are we're very familiar Let's say community so What if you for example Someone tells you hey get into crypto because you can pull your funds and then you can Put it in a farm and then you get the yield and then you're a farmer and it's like Right Tell this to a mom who lives day by day And has very few to actually take that risk, right? So What happens there is that this is a way to get them with a known thing, right? They all know saving circles. They already have been in many of these many times So you take this something known Into the blockchain and then you get them. Hey, you can use your wallet You're using your saving circle But they don't know they're using that app So eventually they will be able to get loans to stake to eventually get into a pool and do Hold if I things right then they can that can unlock like that fear of What's this right that yield and it's just too much information from the beginning So these tools that are things that have already been happening in many years Can enable these to go to an audience that may not be that Technologically savvy but has the need for these technologies and they can use it for Something very tangible just like we saw with ubi, right for pay for uniforms for school or for a medical emergency or for something That could really benefit them in day by day, right? So that's why we think these types of tools known could be good for these next billion users We're looking at yeah Casing point in kenya as well. What what are in africa? To actually Have a farmer operator wallet and they can deposit and withdraw it. Yes as gabrella puts it It may not it's quite hard. It's not it's it will take time as to train But we see an additional layer of we see a layer of We call custodians So for example, we have a payment gateway an on ramp off ramp called cotani pay We have bit lipa in kenya doing a good job. So what they do they they store the keys For for the farmer and now translate each wallet into a ussd based wallet So a farmer would dial style 800 hash. They'll see oh access your wallet Oh, yeah with draw to empeza because the empeza is their mobile money They can withdraw but you see they are they they are used to the ussd They're used to empeza the part of wallet connection Somebody else is doing it at another level for them And with time as we get more adoption of smartphones because also smartphone is an issue Uh, we have like a third of the people Uh, have smartphones or two thirds and the third is the one that Still has the feature phones the baton ones So once we see more of smartphones coming in then we feel more people will be able to control them They defy wallets on themselves and uh, yeah, and also we Other strategies that we are introducing The government is really keen on capital flight. So on ramp you're changing your local currency to usdc for example, so if You we start with projects that bring in money into the country for example, there's diva protocol and fortune connect we tapping donations globally and Reaching and pushing through like this off ramp to to the farmer. So the farmer is able to access ussd and withdraw for example a donation, but then This has started introducing them to differ. So they'll see oh with time. So this money was crypto Now I have converted it to my local currency So we can slowly move down from the custodians of keys to actually having them be The holders of their own keys with time. Yeah Yeah, I think so the work Acre Africa by is doing by the way is super fascinating, right? So they're essentially enable like just when I when I learned about your project I was super blown away Right the fact that you can essentially sort of execute these transactions utilizing ussd and integrate that with impesa just speak so much to the composability All these different sort of building blocks and legos But I'd love to and you mentioned as well like mobile phones, right? We've seen an increase in traction with mobile phone use as well and when it comes to crypto, we're still super far off You know, I tried editing an ens record today on my cell phone on my metamask. It was like such a pain And and so mobile phone sort of integration with wallets and generally just like crypto is still Really far off and I think that is a huge huge unlock for you know There are more cell phones in columbia than there are people, right? So when you think about what that means for the development of a technology, that's really powerful So the question is, you know and and maybe starting with you Benson What are you? What do you feel are really the sort of at the use end user experience perspective? What are the big unlocks that are missing for defi here? You know, I'm sure we've got a room here full of people that are really keen to get building And they're already exploring sort of problem spaces and solutions So maybe we can touch a little bit on the current sort of end user Challenges and what you believe are really the underlying underlocks And maybe we can work work our way backwards here to get each of your your thoughts on on those aspects Thank you. Thank you Marcus so the biggest two challenges that we see is capacity building for them to understand that this is as good as Mpesa is just crypto How do you make them understand that it's not? Fraud because then that comes to my second point. We need to deal with the trust If we deal with them knowing how to work with it, then bringing tools Introducing slowly building on the blocks Yeah off-ramp solution Connect to Mpesa then with time you can go directly to there off ramp Directly they can now directly trade. They don't have to really withdraw because you'd ask a farmer. What's your incentive? You have been you've received a donation in usdc Why are you withdrawing it to Mpesa? You can go to that merchant and whatever you wanted to buy or still buy And it will avoid the transactional fees that are in between here. So dealing with With trust dealing with knowledge And also, yeah trying to reduce as much as possible the transaction fees transaction fees are a big issue And the interests that come in between these transactions We think those are the building blocks that can really bring a lot of adoption Yeah, and also smartphone The more smartphones people have then more control of their own DeFi gateways Right, so smartphones I think are key In in Mexico. It's the same Thing people have phones they access internet through their phones, but have no computers or anything, right? So we we see that Uh, I think One thing that I've come up with Is that there are many people That with this uh, FOMO or with our situation desperation. I don't know how to call it They want to get rich right away, right? So, uh, we see a lot of people that actually got scammed And getting one person that got scammed Like let's say the at the beginning in their journey Uh, it's super hard for them To get them back in again. So we see that happening We see them we see there are people that have not good intentions And that are making it very very hard for people like, uh, all of these people here That are trying to make something good. So that's why you're you're not mentioning crypto at all, right? So, uh, yeah, so that's that's some that's a real challenge One person that got scammed once Is going to convince 50 people But one person that uses it how many people you think is going to actually convert let's say So let's say in a word two or three people So that's a challenge also, um UX, uh, fortunately many tools have been translated to Spanish And to different languages around the world, but we still need that community failing because In latin america, we are like very Close we like being community doing things in community. So, uh, community. I think is key. So we have a lot of, uh, Let's say people Building these communities Now we need to reach that next billion, right? So we need to reach out not just communities to Keep to themselves, but how can we make that scalable? Let's say Not just convert once and then you get your crypto friends and then you have your 50 crypto friends and that's it How can you get that? sense of community, uh Scalable in a trustworthy way. So I think that's an interesting question And uh, ux I think is super important Having applications We now see more and more crypto applications mobile first, which is great having just enough information in the screen that you need I think that's super important to research and to actually Not just research with crypto people research with the next billion, right? Because we're used to having your balance here your wallet here, but What do new users actually need right? So that's a good question. I believe Yeah For us, it has been a very interesting case study. Um, what we did was we created a multilingual app It's available in English first Hindi then and then Marathi, which is another regional language in India Um, so what happened was we we thought that okay. We multilingual app is going to be very good when we launched it We were uh, we we saw that okay. The adoption is definitely not What happened was so what what basically happened we redesigned the entire system two years back again Right after launching and we put all those same functionalities which is available to the farmer from their phone we put that on the The custodians end because they we have given we have given products to everyone to use Web based on mobile based so so that the farmer can just walk in which is the easiest thing to do And just request the the custodian that uh, please help me take a loan against it Six months eight months down the line or one year down the line gradually we were surprised again We saw that farmers have actually started liking the app. I don't know. We did not Roll out any major upgrade. We did not add any more languages. It was there. What was there? But then I think somewhere The custodians started making the farmers believe that it is a very simple app to use just try it once Let me guide you use the app and then see how it looks and then they found that yes It's a one click process one click loan application. They are not accustomed to like like everyone else us They are not accustomed to getting uh getting food delivered on phone Getting insurance booked on the click of a button for them This was the first ever such application that they were seeing in their lives And now they have become very confident using it and as you said that you know one person How many people would they say would would they you know speak to regarding the benefits that they've received In our case word of mouth has really worked Because farmers are very close, right? It's a very small community. They have been there in that area since Generations they know which warehouse is nearby which is nearby where they have to go They just with that word of mouth and they just started telling everyone that hey, do you know? I mean I just got loan in 15 minutes. I mean in my life. My father has never seen it I have never seen it And and whenever it happened it was like 13 to 15 days running post to pillar advance And then then you know getting the loan and whenever you are running there You are not basically not farming and you're not earning So so this was very very revolutionary for them And now we can see that that adoption gap has really bridged because now they're they're comfortable as we move to other states So india has a lot of regional languages right hundreds or thousands I think so we would be just onboarding new languages Which is not a difficult thing for our developers to do once we do that We have cracked that okay with the support of technology and with on-ground support And which is already there from the government. We don't have to deploy our boots on the ground So I think I think that is something that is is working really well for for farmers in india And I believe another thing that that comes to my mind is in india again Same thing as you said more more phones than people in columbia India huge population 1.4 billion people But one thing is that with with a lot of changes in fintech in in technology Almost every other person is having a phone now not feature phone a smart phone, right? There are very cheap phones if I talk about indian rupees. It's about what? 6,000 5,000 indian rupees um, maybe maybe 70 dollars 80 dollars, so People are buying people are buying these smartphones and now they are onboarded onto the technology every single Every single you know the cart roadside cart or vendor or or or you know the auto wallahs, right the the The local auto wallahs. Everyone has a qr code. You can just scan it and pay it It's not just us paying via qr code anymore It's almost Everyone paying by qr has started paying by qr code that helps us that acts as a tailwind for us because they already have been using the phones We just say that okay Let me let me open an app in your phone and that's it Now start using this app for this part of your life and and you it'll all be solved And then they're very looking forward to that so that has helped us a lot in a country like india When we are going outside, we'll see you know what what other countries use so we'll have to adapt to that Yeah, maybe to contribute to the user interface to onboard more farmers So it's a combination of the user interface and user experience casing point in one of the example in Selling insurance initially selling insurance The agent would work with a Folder with forms you would fill in the phone would fill in fill in my sign etc. So Bring in a user interface that that is almost similar. So we started with scratch cards. So a scratch card that They would scratch reveal a certain number and then now use the phone The ussd to send that number and automatically that's how they were onboarded into insurance We'd collect now information in that way technologically wise using triangulation with you leave them behind with a card And they will say oh, this is my insurance the card, but actually the insurance is something cannot touch but if Such people now over time are able to dial the ussd code without having to Scratch a card or remain with something since they've trusted the process So that journey has to start somewhere slowly bring them in and build that so we see the the need for User experience that is well thought out. Yeah, just to add to that. I mean you're solving the insurance problem Honestly, so I have tried selling insurance before so before starting this organization I was with with a company called policy bazaar which says which is an Indian unicorn sells insurance Even selling insurance in an automated way to urban people to educated people is a difficult task So with farmers, I'm pretty sure it's it's a daunting task But if it's getting sold, then I think the farmers are really getting a good service I I just uh One question to all of you like you mentioned how much time do they actually Like spend to get a loan How much time is it earlier? It was 13 to 15 days now. It's 10 to 15 minutes. Which is like real time for perfect So what about Guatemala? Yeah, so I was uh, I mean Some we held a side event the other day and I mentioned this anecdote earlier But I was sitting at the dinner table with my dad and we were talking about, you know I think he's yet to become a full on sort of crypto convert. Um, we're working on it But you he was we were sitting at the dinner table. I was like, hey Let's both sit down on our phones and try and get a let's try and get a loan So he went on his like mobile banking app had to fill out like a 20 minute survey Input all these different things and he's like, oh, they'll get back to me in two weeks um I went on ave Put up, uh, you know over collateralized loan Done in five seconds, right and I was like check it out. Here's my here's my money And and so I think you know literally in Guatemala could take a number of weeks to get a loan And that's the magic of this right and that's sort of a little bit of what the anecdote shows is, you know A matter of seconds right same in Mexico and I'm in In Kenya because of the mobile money wallet, you can get alone instantly But now you pay heavily by the time you calculate is over 120 interest. So yeah That's that's really common by the way for those of you that are surprised in in emerging economies For us it's a normal, uh, interest rate. Yes Yeah, I mean you can pay like you know, it's bad when the interest rate is posted daily and it's like 2% daily Um, so yeah, this this is the reality of the countries that you know, we're in and this is what Defi is here to disrupt and promise right when you think about the fact that you can take out a loan On defi for you know, three five percent Obviously, there's a lot of questions here around the collateral, etc, etc And but the reality is it's you know, there's there's a lot to be said for how can we bring down You know interest rates that are hundreds of percentage points thousands at times Down to you know single single percentage points So just we will do just like one last question And this will be just a bit of a go around and then we'd love to open it up to the audience for for a bit of Q&A in the last 10 minutes so The we've got a room here obviously of people that are all largely probably very familiar with the space and the ecosystem And the question would be and we spoke previously about What are the challenges on the other side? Right, so what are the challenges for the end users in Africa and Asia and in Latin America as well But I guess I'd like to flip the question on the other side of that is like What's coming back to you to the ethereum ecosystem by deploying these solutions, right? We're we're no longer becoming a self-referential system We're actually able to draw in a lot of feedback and a lot of input around user experience Around mobile phone adoption, you know all these other things So if maybe we can just spend like a few minutes on on that and then we'll turn it over to the audience for a quick Q&A So yeah, just feel free to take it away on what can you know? What can the ethereum community learn from deploying last mile d5 solutions? Let me maybe let me start with what the the community has done when It realizes you're doing something so for us when we said, okay, we need to solve this problem goods We immediately got support from the community. The ethereum community is Passionate the the people who are here. I believe most of the people are here are passionate so the first help we got was from Ether risk is They were they had built a generic insurance framework and they said okay You can build your application on top We'll give you technical support and we'll give you time and we will always spend and ensure that you're able to run it We received support from the foundation the theorem foundation They helped in the networking And we also chained link hard about it because we are using weather data to determine whether to pay a claim or not They say how can we help to ensure that your source of truth is actually a source of truth? And not only that more over financially. They got a lot of financial support got a lot of human People spending time with you people experts who are very busy spending time with you to help you And also now with that. I think we can say the the community Um, and what people should do if you hear of a good project. I think Uh, we couldn't have been here if we people didn't just come and jump in and helped in the in the in the journey So we could say let's be Lights on the paths of starting projects and uh, you will see great great impact because of that. So I could say that's a On the support the community Has helped and now Now what what are we seeing the community learning? You see like lessons learned for us the community is able to understand You can't just directly bring in Uh crypto and you expect the format to use so these research lessons Uh, other people now are able to apply on their different projects if they need to reach the last mile customers. Thank you Well first, um, I would like to say that well If we are onboarding people from our countries that let's say as I said live day by day We're bringing in people that can use these to benefit in their real life and we can bring actually Uh, these examples and get the community and in Give it let's say more empathy, right because sometimes we are yeah, I mean we're here. We have a roof We have uh air conditioning and we're not if it rains. There's no problem We can go out and get uh water and drinks and go to a bathroom and we have everything, right? So, uh getting these people Into the the space could be very interesting because that way we could maybe Be sensible to the realities of others and how can they benefit? So I think empathy is an interesting part and also we're bringing in people that actually need financing need things So we can actually also balance the offer and demand. So that could also be interesting for community Yeah, so uh talking about giving back to the ethereum community, right or bringing the ethereum community on board Um ethereum has reached millions, right? And that's what the purpose of the next objective is to reach the next billion Um with with all these projects. So these are these are a few handful of the projects in kenya, india, latin america There are so many more projects that are already on ethereum Or on one of the l2s and trying to trying to get a larger share of the ecosystem So I believe that uh that by by bringing by the support first of all with the foundation with the community It's a huge community, right? The largest of all the chains that we know Altogether, I think I think we are at such a right spot to to like be in a very synergistic relationship where where the projects need Communities no project works without community you name any right and and then once that is done More and more projects can come on the chain come into the ecosystem Help each other reach more masses if we are reaching maybe a small holder marginal farmers in india Someone else could be reaching blue collar workers in in in Australia or anywhere else, right? There are still so many projects and things that can that can still come on the on the chain And then I think now is the right spot right time to do that. So that's what we are looking for to it Incredible. Thank you. I'm uh, yeah, just incredibly honored to be sharing the stage here with you all and we've got a few minutes left here So, um, maybe we'll just take a few questions. Uh, and then we'll we'll call it a day. So Gentleman with a blue shirt, uh, you put your hand up first. Yeah Yeah, and sorry if you could maybe we'll we'll just pass a mic over to you Hello, um fellow latin american here. It's good to hear that it's this is doing a this is doing some good I want to know if Well, as I understand you are all using the blockchain more to register people or the or the hashes of the information So are you planning to use? Uh To use that information and that identity you being a verifier so that for example We they can use a protocol similar to the proof of humanity that was here around an hour ago So that for example, you can prove that that person exists More than just that person Being able to receive alone Yeah, I definitely see as contributing to proof of humanity for example What represents a person for us is a transaction which is hushed So if the details of the person as the same way we do the passwords can't be hushed because we don't do that We just do the entire thing then we can contribute in some way because that hash is a combination of their location of their Names their phone number registered in government and many other details. So we feel Looking at how What we're using how can we use this hash to prove it's a truth. Yeah, the zk roll-up atc. I think it's a part of The thing that can work. So, yeah, I just want to add to that Likewise, we also do not put the direct details. It's it's not right, you know Because you have a right to you need to give a right to forget, right? And once you put all your all their PII's onto the blockchain, you cannot forget them So, uh, there are these are the challenges, but yeah somewhere if we can, you know You know taking more solutions and bringing some sort of identity on blockchain light from the foundation I was having a very good discussion regarding so in India We have adhar which is like with 1.4 billion people if we on board that onto the blockchain Just imagine what kind of identification can that be right and then you can subsequently use it possibly across other chains You know cross chain as well. But yeah, it will always have some challenges. It will have, you know Barriers to entry as well. Uh, but at this moment I don't think that a lot of people are putting identity directly on blockchain or maybe Combining it with some sort of DID decentralized identity and making it work, but not not in 100% of it Yeah, in my opinion, I think it could be interesting combining reputation with proof of humanity Because that makes uh, if someone, uh, for example, didn't pay a saving circle They get a bad reputation in their wallet and it's permanent, right? Um, then they can just change wallets, right? But linking that to, uh, proof of humanity. I think that's interesting Uh, for the moment, we're not putting any personal information on chain It's your wallet if you paid or you didn't pay it's stored with the event of the smart contract and that's how it's tracked Thank you. Um, yeah, sure right right there Second row Hi, Sion The principal the capital comes from DeFi or C-Fi and The interest rate the initial worried Approximately, uh, how much pay of interest the The taker. Thank you. I think that the question is to me anyway. So, uh, so, uh, yeah So that's that's a that's a beautiful part of the entire platform Since two and a half years banks have already been giving loans on the platform seven million till now That's completely centralized finance loan as you can see Now Once we go live on the main net it would be, uh, DeFi loans as well They would be disjointed Amongst themselves right the C-Fi and DeFi part But the farmer would have access to both from the click of a button. So you see It's a bridge. It's not we are stopping one and starting another. It's just that we're bridging in fact Yeah, so that's that's what it's the need of the are at this moment And whenever the farmer would see that okay one C-Fi has a lower interest rate or DeFi has a lower interest rate They can just go ahead and and choose that option farmer has nothing to do with which i'm specifically choosing Right one point here is that for the DeFi solution We would also need an off-ramp solution because you can imagine I can just go ahead and give usdc to a farmer and say that okay I you know buy your next crops, uh, you know next season cycle for the with that usdc So that is a challenge. You asked about interest rate. It is Currently 9% per annum. So it's very low. It's one of the lowest in India And we have seen across other countries as well that this interest rate is very very low In the market and once we go on DeFi, we're expecting somewhere around 7 to 11 percent again Which is a very stable interest rate in in terms of DeFi I'm personally really excited for when a farmer in india can buy their crops with crypto That's right. Something to be excited about. Yeah So, um, yeah deeper there and this will be the the last question And then we'll just yeah, I just wanted to say that ethereum foundation has done a great job by uniting Four, I don't know how many fellows are there in altogether? There's seven seven in the second cohort And now you're all talking to each other and you're all collaborating and learning from each other But there are many other projects in the ethereum ecosystem and They're doing reaching to the next billion people like there's good dollar. There's proof of humanity. There is Human now human thou is actually bringing work to people providing economic opportunities So I think it's very important that Maybe we need to form like a next billion thou or something where everybody can be in one group and then On top of your like your services you can provide their services and stuff like that and learn from each other because For instance good dollars in over 200 countries and as part of my study because I'm writing a book on impact That was a human down good dollar for part of my studies and they got to learn about each other and now they're working together You know in in a lot of countries that they're going to so I think it's very important that we Start like a next billion thou or something like that I think that's like a really really fascinating idea And I mean I think that's a lot of the the work that I'm doing is is basically ecosystem research And what will come out of that is basically a whole ecosystem map of different folks Working on these specific solutions sort of focusing on defy So I think that's a great proposition. I don't know if there's anything else you guys. Yeah No, it's just similar to where we were talking about yesterday like how to gather This project in an organized trustworthy way. So interesting question Yeah, I think those are pretty early still because you know so many more use cases are coming on though But I think that's a good idea next you know now for the next billion. It's it's going to be Yeah Yeah Yeah, so I think that's a good thing to explore and congratulations on your book. Yeah Awesome. So just last minute. Maybe just a quick go around Where can people find your work? Where can they find you and yeah, we'll wrap it up Yeah, you can find us at be Blowing's be l o like uh block with the sound of a peak where you put your piggyback savings. That's it You can find me on twitter at ben juguna on in Instagram. No, no, Twitter is uh ben son underscore juguna On telegram. It's at ben juguna and email ben be in juguna at acafrica and website acafrica.com Yeah, so for me, it's uh, it's the the product name is world wh r r l comes from warehouse receipt lending with an extra r in between Or just search for abhishek badacharya. Twitter is that abhishek badacharya at the rate. Yeah, that's all So I think you should be able to find this online from the agenda. Anyway, it's there incredible. Thank you Yeah, uh marcus.am as my website and my twitter as well and um, yeah, thank you so much big round of applause for these incredible panelists