IGF 2018 - Day 2 - Salle VII - WS227 Blockchain for Social and Humanitarian Applications

The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Paris, France, from 12 to 14 November 2018. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record. 

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>> MODERATOR: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, we almost ran out of speakers to the limit of the room. But they're almost all here. I'll be guiding you through this conversation with my friend. We have today on the panel, the structure is going to be the following, the panelists are going to bring a couple of examples and initiatives in which Blockchain are being used for social and humanitarian good. A couple of presentations after which, we're going to ask questions and start debate.

    We have to day, Satish Babu. Monica Trochez. We're also expecting cath reinGarcia. So if we need a buzz expression, not Blockchain itself is a buzz expression. But if we think of a summary, I would also remind you of the word revolution in trust. This is one technology that is specifically allows us to outsource trust through the mediation of a technical communication of technical tools.

    And it seems that it's a very strong one in that sense. Now, the first wide scale implementation was a rather controversial one. It started with currency. That's the first one. It did raise a couple of concerns. Should not be the only application for the new technology. And the idea of the panel was to organize and showcase a couple of different implementations that concern social and humanitarian facts.

    I'll give the floor, first, to professor Satish Babu concerning a couple of issues.

   >> SATISH BABU: Thank you very much. And it's sad to see there's a big bunch of people waiting outside unable to come in. I come from India. And I will speak about the initiative, which is underway. The user blockchain, the public donations after a disaster. A natural disaster.

    You have floods and widespread, a lot of people gave a lot of money, depending on how much they had as contributions to the government, the official government site. I would estimate something, like, maybe 50,000 to 60,000 people would have donated the amounts. The amounts ‑‑ a few people have given very large amounts and the distribution has a long tail with many people giving small amounts.

    And the problem the government has had is that the money is given in good faith. But once it is given, the person that give it doesn't seem to have any further rights on it. What happens, where it is used, when it is used, is there anything left? All of this is left to the government's kind of black box.

    This is an important issue because people feel that the government should be accountable. They should be able to, you know, inform the people who gave in good faith. What practically they deserve a problem here. The problem is that the manageability of the individual donations, which are varying sizes. How does one give feedback to each of these donors?

    So the blockchain comes in quite handy. And a little bit ‑‑ so we're talking about platform. And you might have all heard about the standards. The currency also. Does not a lesser known token called 721, which is a nonfungible ‑‑ fundability is a matter of certain things are fungible. For example, cash. If I borrow $100, I can repay in equivalent. If I borrow your card. Exact same card. This is actually ‑‑ now, bitcoin is not really fungible. You can actually track where the coins go.

    You can ‑‑ sorry for that. So there are also situations when you need to handle. Say, paintings or precious stones. They are not donated or interchangeable. Using nonfungible token. And that standard is 721.

    Now, if you give a donation to the government, you can actually write a small contract that we give you back in nonfungible token certificate. With your name, email, all of that and how much the money was. The problem is that there are a large number of 50,000 such tokens. How do you manage this feedback?

    Now, for this, we have a separate type of token called composable token. 998, still a standard, not ‑‑ still a proposal, not a standard yet. What it does is it provides for a container token that can contain other tokens.

    Okay. Now, what you are proposing is that when you have a large number of donations, packaging under a composable token. Say, 1 million local currency. And this 1348 projectionly, assuming. Maybe 1,000, 2,000 donations. That becomes one single token.

    So this is a composable token which contains other tokens. It can contain other. 721 tokens, or it can contain tokens. What you have is tokens which you can move. Then we have admin fees, which only looks at these tokens.

    And it can actually be forward to a department and whole thing goes as one. 2,000 subtokens inside them moves as one. When you use the money, there's a property of the coin. You are burning a coin. Actually selling it to a special interest. And that is basically destroying the token or consuming it.

    Now, with all of the steps, requires contracts and the user who is given this money gets a message saying this is when you first get it, you get a token saying this is what your token is. Then you get a message saying your token is packaged into a larger and that is this one with an address. This is a check on any public ‑‑ site. You can sidestep.

    Any number of sites that are checked with an address. And you can see where it has gone. So there are still some issues to be handled, for example. The department where it is consumed, removed or returned. It requires a little bit of product. If you go directly to the production, you'll see a bunch of data you cannot read. The blockchain data field is typically coded in binary and you may not be able to dedicate. But there are tools to transfer this in whatever format you want.

    So what you're trying to do is to ensure that donor knows what has happened to her money. That she has actually donated through these tokens. And she can look at the public blockchain. And has it been removed, returned or consumed?

    Now, this is not possible without the composable token. That can move at one stroke a bunch of tokens together. Basically, unfortunately, the 998 is not yet a standard. And once a standard, much easier. A land deed. Couple of houses. A assembly, composable token can put the houses in different tokens into this bigger token.

    And move it in one stroke. That is the advantage of the token. I will stop here and take any questions. Thank you.

   >> MODERATOR: Thank you, Satish I apologize for the confusion in the beginning. The line outside shows it raises much more attention that the room you were assigned here. Thanks for that presentation, professor. I would propose we leave the questions, too, after we wrap up with the presentations. But a quick followup. Which degree of implementation if I missed it. Of implementation is your experience so far? .

   >> SATISH BABU: We have the initial design in place. And the mandate.

   >> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. The implementation can have other implications. We can go now to Walid now. Can you share with us? Thank you very much.

   >> WALID AL‑SAQAF: Thank you. Am I coming in clear? First, I'm Walid Al‑Sadaf. So at the university, I'm coauthoring a paper, journal article on the use of blockchain in joint news media, particularly in journalism. Because it's one of these areas that is haunting a lot of us. Disinformation and lack of ability to prove providence of content is one of the major aspects that blockchain might be considered as a solution or participating, helping the solution.

    We are working on a paper to analyze one case study which is civil. If you may have heard of civil. Civil is US‑based project that's been actively enveloping a situation distributed. In the sense that there is really no central authority that would be in charge of getting licenses, et cetera. And so, the notion of blockchain is built on the premise of decentralization. And it means we need to eliminate the intermediary. And many countries, there is very strong focus, concentrated in the hands of either the governments in this case. And so, the government would issue the license. It can revoke the license.

    It can penalize journalists, et cetera. And there's also a somewhat of a subtle influence in some countries, but in maybe not major influence in others by cooperations and advertising agencies, which actually can twist your arm as a journalist.

    They can influence you to writing in certain directions. So there are powers of center that are contributing to the problem of disinformation. So the idea behind it is what if it is possible to use the ‑‑ what is called the cryptoid economics. And the premise is to establish which a news room could be applied for.

    You can apply for a license through the token of ‑‑ which is called civil. Civil tokens supposed to have been distributed through an ICO, which didn't go well, by the way. But nonetheless, the premise is that it ‑‑ once you have tokens and you have worth of 1,000 of tokens, then you would apply for a license.

    And so, once you apply for a license, you have a number of metadata and details about what you are writing for? And what is your objective of this newsroom. And once you have that ready and set, you begin the registration process which requires a voting mechanism by token holders of the committee.

    It means the authority is not only owned by one government but owned by the holders of the civil tokens. And the idea here is that the premise or the assumption is that good doers in the community are more than evil doers. So that's a strong assumption. So the majority of tokens are in the hands of good people.

    Then, it becomes committed to the constitution. And so the constitution starts being monitored by the voters of the community. Make sure that if you spread this information, if you violate the constitution, if you begin to be bias and contribute to damaging the reputation of the whole system, then in that case, you would actually be voted against.

    And so, the report process means that some form of protest saying that this news room has violated the constitution. Which case, it actually allows a vote against the news room by the committee. And if the vote actually succeeds and 50 plus percent, then the license would be revoked. So imagine, like, a situation where you have let's see 1,000 members, so you'd assess this based on the fact that these members are so committed to their (inaudible), they would be able to act based on this.

    And if you actually end up voting for the revoke of this news room, then the fee that you had paid would actually be distributed to the person who started the protest, or started the reporting, 50% would be given to that person and 50% would be given to all of the voters who supported this notion.

    So in this way, you have an incentive to build upon always being on the right side of the vote. Not being against. So this is in brief what we've been working for. Our paper has been coming out early next year. A meeting which will point ‑‑ a meeting which will take place in a few days.

   >> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. That was an interesting topic of news. Going to take some time in the discussion. You were describing something in the more precise domain of clearly something that escalates to democratic participation as a whole. Right. This is going to be one of the participations of the debate. Next, I have Glenn here who is. I think we don't have them here, Glenn. Not the slides.

    Glenn, has also been working ‑‑ would you like this seat here? Working in the blockchain used for power grids. Coming from a couple of experiences in Thailand as well as reports here. Take the seat, Glenn.

   >> Glenn McKnight: Sure. All right. Alluded to one thing about the electrical grid, it's not that anything to do ‑‑ it's the stuff I do with IEEE. Back in ‑‑ five years ago, we had a challenge, the IEEE foundation and the UN foundation. And we were looking at the SDGs. And one of the three things we decided to focus on was reliable electricity.

    And at that time, we also had individual patient records. And, I guess, because of ignorance on our part, we weren't aware of the potential impact of blockchain.

    But obviously, I think we're fully aware of it now. But I'm going to pull up my slideshow. You don't have my slideshow? Okay. I guess I'll improvise. Let me just pull it up so I can see it myself and happy to share with everybody the presentation.  Just give me a second. And I will ‑‑ okay. This is great.

    Not finding it. Okay. Let me talk to you about the use of vouching. Two examples. You alluded to the issue of blockchain and electrical grid. One of the best case examples I've seen is in Bangkok. There is an example of people using electrical grid. And being monitored in the ledger with blockchain. But if you look at the potential of disseminated power, those that are not in the main grid, blockchain is an ideal technology in the ledger for sharing power.

    The second example that, believe it or not, it was in Bangkok, as well, and that's one thing recently came from blockchain, a board meeting, we wanted to meet both the people doing blockchain for the powergrid, unfortunately because we were there two days, as well. But the second group in reference to the ‑‑ using technology for humanity was a group that was doing blockchain for the unbanked.

    And in that case, they were working on ‑‑ and they're still not in full implementation mode. The idea was to provide using blockchain, the ability for those who are not ‑‑ don't have bank accounts that are not connected.

    What I'll do is because I don't have my presentation in front of me and you can't see it. Sort of pointless. I'll make sure I share it with you. I'm going to pass it back to you.

   >> MODERATOR: Thanks, Glenn. Olga. Olga has updates from our region. You take the floor, please.

   >> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much, for the invitation. Sorry, I was outside. I was waiting in the door to get in. Finally, I made it. I would like to share with you some information from my region, which I live in Argentina. And as you may know, it's a challenging region.

    It's the region that has the highest disparity in between the good infrastructure and the lack of infrastructure, the wealth distribution. So that is extremely challenging.

    For example, in one city, areas that have developed and areas out of everything, out of internet access and other public services. So it's a big area, 22 million square kilometers with more than 600 million inhabitants, only 200 million have access to bank services, which is really low. Apart from that, a big portion of those 200 million people that do have access to bank services, they only use them for, perhaps, receiving money from the government once or twice a month. And using that for buying things at the supermarket or buying food.

    So they are not highly involved in the banking system. So that promotes informal economy, market which are not formally legalized. They don't ‑‑ many people involved in those informal economies don't pay taxes, the fact that they can pay taxes, it's a problem for the government in not receiving the money to improve roads, hospitals, education, how this circulates all over the society.

    So I would like to share with you some activities that have been happening in the region. I would like to say that all of the things related with technology are unfortunately in developing economy, not in Latin America, not in the priorities of the government. There's also some urgency to solve. You have poverty, you have hung ere. You have strikes you have inflation.

    So that are the ones that government have to solve. And they have to focus. And with some projects related with technology. We were talking half an hour ago about smart cities. It could benefit the life of citizens, but there are urgent things to solve. That's a real challenge in Latin America. I would like to point out one project. It's public private initiative partners. Thank you, partnership. It's led by the government of Argentina in the name of the national ethnicity AR, which is our national (inaudible). And that it's managed by the presidency.

    The national chamber of ISPs and university networks. So they are building. It's in process. They started last year. Federal blockchain for Argentina. It is not linked in any way to crypto currency. They want to build the platform based on blockchain technology.

    So the idea is from blockchain features of collaborative use and aspects to be used to run vertical applications and system to enhance the organization of the process and efficiency and transparency and those from a public sector and private organizations.

    It will be based on the light blockchain model with low cast and low energy use. For the moment, they are building a 15 distributed service. And they are developing a platform under which applications will run. I think it's interesting. I would like to see how they will use it and how they will implement ‑‑ but I think it's an interesting way of showing the multistake holder approach to problems that may benefit the national economy. And, of course, bring more transparency and that may allow new applications.

    As I said, it has no cryptocurrency. But at the same time, in the region, there are other things that are important to mention. Maybe other from other countries that can add information about that. Mexico has recently issued (inaudible). So that is, I think, it's an important issue when the country like Mexico and Brazil do issue laws or regulations in the region that has an impact in other countries.

    Especially in Brazil, has an impact in Argentina. I don't know if it's the same. But countries in the region are very much linked in between. So this law in Mexico may have an impact. This is the first one in our Latin American region. And it will have an impact on crowd funding and online payment and cryptocurrencies.

    There are crypto currency initiatives in Costa Rica. The main source of income for Latin America is agriculture. So it's perhaps not at the pace our regions are doing that. But there are some initiatives that hopefully will impact positively in the lives of our people. Thank you.

    

   >> MODERATOR: Thank you for that update. One quick followup about the federal initiative and federal structure. Do you already discuss as a government which kind of service you offer as a first prototype in the platform? Or is that no such ‑‑?

   >> OLGA CAVALLI: I have heard the announcement. I know very well the people from the chamber. I think it's a initiative and some implementing face for the moment. I haven't heard, yet. And if there are concrete examples. They want to do vertical projects for different industries.

    So we have to see how it evolves. What I like is the fact it's public/private. I think it's a good thing. And that the university ‑‑ so the university center can have a very strong and very good up to date technology from the technology perspective network. So they may bring them a good base of information and knowledge. We'll see.

   >> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Olga. Andrea Romaoli Garcia. Going to bring us a couple of perspectives on our partnership between NGO and civil society in Zimbabwe. You have the floor. Thank you.

   >> ANDREA ROMAOLI GARCIA: I will talk about blockchain and the digital economy. But I will talk about access on this. Interactions between human and machine means the future of the world. And advances in robot and learn machine.  Change how we work and jobs that we view as safe are increasingly being automated, increasing migration placement.

    The development of the economy and creation jobs, it's a global chance. We should be doing these now and fast. And we forget that the primary function of the state is public interest. The profit is secondary. It's streamlined. It can be ‑‑ because it represents the illegal confiscation. And there's three premises that allow us to think about the high taxes and (inaudible) profiting from taxes.

    Prevent the positive advance of global economy and the technological innovation. And also, the opinion of big companies, too. Like Google, facebook, Amazon, and others. And the European Union think about creating different taxes to digital economy.

    They already recognize that you prevent the technological innovation for this reason in October. In the European Union. And this commission. The proposal about to create (inaudible) to companies in individual economy.

    Or outside European union. Governance, the tax administration state activities. It's clear. But they cannot ‑‑ they cannot increase or create new tax every time with money. The governance state is old, doesn't work. And this is jeopardizing humanity.

    It should be create maximize application of taxes. And plan, focused on fundamental necessities. It is democracy. Modernization of democracy. I made that research two years ago and finished now. And the result from my research shows that the technological, especially, intelligence and blockchain is raising the dimension of the human rights from five to six dimension.

    There is social and historical total parts from United Nations and other agencies showing this as evidence. And technology in the sixth dimension of human rights is important because it will ‑‑ allow governments to optimize applications of taxes and the technology in the focal point that you receive investments.

    And we need this now. By doing this adjustments in technology is one of the goals in stable development. And because it will reduce hunger and poverty faster.

    Digital economy is new professional positions, individually. So much this origin. The populations growing fast. We have people added every year.

    But also, the economy invest in laws to create the trust and the money and avoid fraud. These companies needs help. The company to create new jobs. And also, the company establish conditions similar, labors laboring. This company from the economy. Because they have no social function. But to make this, we need laws.

    We need investments and laws. And from my studies. And I saw that a democrat from Iceland is the same talk here, Italy is need this, too. And they are making investments and two (inaudible) and high taxes, too. To create environmental health economy in unsustainable world. But that can help just a little or will be useless if rumors don't affect it.

    I saw between civil society and private sector and government, number over ‑‑ it's a faster way to assess through education in the developing countries. Crypto currencies and (inaudible). I think that is through humanity. Indeed, it is better.

    We should change other children and getting education because we can't compete. I think it would be better if you change education and other children and is getting capacities to communication, partnerships and ‑‑ and makes solutions. We should prepare children to acquire principles.

    It is important in technology with ‑‑ because we are leading with money from other peoples. Further reason I am talking here, establishment in Zimbabwe as example as everything I say. Problem, save the child. Childhood. It's a model from United Nations that change for good. But I made some modifications. My mother is ‑‑ the education step up. And at the same time, we are improving the militias and improving the problem in education.

    And education, people to acquire a technological education and other example about this, it's very clear, it's assessed totally, I am working with company that is making private company, profitable company, but making partnerships with the developing countries, universities, to establish problems and improve research.

    And so ‑‑ finally, I think this together will make our borders very safe. Because it is feeling security. No longer we will want to go out from your country. Get another. Because the borders now is mutual. Not just physical. Just brief. And I was talking that fast because I want to talk a lot about this.

    But I think it's much more softer, much more than ‑‑ blockchain technology and technology and artificial intelligence. It is human rights. And six dimensional. Not fifth. Because fifth is just talking about peace.

    And now, we are thinking about peace and sustainable world. It's different. It's urgent. And thank you so much.

   >> MODERATOR: Thank you very much for this rights‑based approach. And I'm sure you have a couple more minutes to talk about and discuss a bit more complete about the experiences. That was very good connecting line about the private partnerships and how they could foster social good. That's what monitors ‑‑ talk about in a couple of minutes.

    But now, we do have our friend captain Garcia from the academy of sciences. I guess she's online and available for discussion. Catherine is developing works, this one on identifying and identifying victims for tragic. The framework. Catherine. Can you hear us?

   >> Hi.

   >> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. You have the floor.

   >> Perfect. Well, a great pleasure to join. In this case. My colleagues organizing this amazing workshop on blockchain for social and humanitarian issues. When I thought about joining this workshop. Thinking about trafficking persons. And of course ‑‑ and I think with this conversation, I'm trying to hit two of the main goals of this workshop. One is about the examples, concrete examples about synergies that have been developed in this case. I'm going to talk about organizations.

    And agencies. And talking with social ‑‑ and of course, human issue as it is trafficking persons. Also, hitting the goal of the persons may be mitigated through the development of technology. Some kind of lack of clarity about difference between TIP as we call it, trafficking in persons and smuggling.

    It's part to touch on definitions before developing the technologies. There are two different categories, however, they are interrelated. TIP. Trafficking in persons, smuggling. It's a crime involving the procurement for financial or development. For crossing of borders. Arrival at the destination.

    However, trafficking, the criminal act lies in the ‑‑ of label, for instance, to generate flow of traffickers. So there are a few reasons uncovered for why human traffickers are able to smuggle people. Fleeing the country, can be some of the reasons. Borders can be other reasons. But most importantly, the lack of identification credentials is a rising as one of the most important emerging issues of the humanitarian and social crisis around trafficking and person and the smuggling.

    They are interconnected. One lead to the other, smuggling leads to trafficking and persons in most of the cases. There are a lot of overlaps. It is important to understand the definitions and how before developing technology we can tackle mitigation for these persons and smuggling.

    Some facts and figures. Human traffickers ‑‑ this is the main issue, the social issue that arise. In order, of course, to move to pass ‑‑ other destination. For instance, 20 million children do not have birth certificate. And 50% of persons in the region, in the region do not have proof of their own identities.

    And another example, every year, deployment of girls as young as 13 years old are trafficked to Russia, Turkey and United Arab. And other nations, of course. Mainly to work as sex slaves.

    So having (inaudible) facts and figures and definitions, we'll see some ongoing projects. And here where UN comes into an important part of definition of the part of the project. UN system of organizations are using at the moment semi‑private blockchain. For instance, the has developed an identity management system by which they're issuing international and universal identification. Providing secure identification.

    Also, it's important to highlight about the specific project. In 2007, so literally, very, very new. With a centralized system and change that digital ID network. Microsoft had been key partners in the partnership. And of course, subject to assign and create privacy risk.

    Another example I bring to table to your attention is project service. And I see my colleague from the UNOPS there in India and online attenders. And the identity network has been quite involved in the blockchain universe ID. In this case, child trafficking.

    So this is based on identities, you family tree and all of the family members to digitally sign and event on the blockchain. And it's to allow for verification. And still, of course, in a preliminary stage of the project. So something that ‑‑

    We could draw around this use of blockchain for identification in cases of trafficking persons and smuggling are always governments in many emerging markets are enabled to track their citizens through their centralized database or registry of identity. Especially in countries suffering conflict or after the conflict.

    So identities can directly empower high‑risk populations targeted to human trafficking to hold and manage their own identities. And that's the main goal, I think, around these. Empowering agencies, of course. And making it easier for them to cross borders themselves without dependence of false promises coming from traffickers.

    The universal identifications of high race populations, in this case, as I spoke about trafficking, persons and smuggling involved the problem of source, material and technological access.

    With a blockchain power identity, any with internet access could create identity and have the corner on the ledger. Ideally, they could use the phone and identification to verify a course and destinations and alternatively, in countries where adoptions ‑‑ via SMS, they can set to call for information on the blockchain.

    These are some of the potential conclusions of ‑‑ drawing from these short presentation. Thank you very much. And of course, I'm available at any time. And also, my twitter account and email and for any questions. Thank you very much.

   >> MODERATOR: Thank you very much for the valuable presentation. I think ‑‑ I'm not sure you can stay with us a little bit more for the next minutes of the discussion, but I think this is one application that is going to raise, also, some interest here. Sam in the list. If you could send us a text or whatever. Smoke sign so we know that you're around.

    But even if Sam is not there, we'll still have a rep up here with our friend Monica who is also helping to organization the session and will help with other themes. And Monica is giving an overview. There's a thriving scenario for startups with blockchain with profitable interests. Monica is trying to give an idea of how to drive this interest, also, into NGO perspective. Thank you very much for your effort and you have the floor.

   >> MONICA MARIOA TROCHEZ ARBOLEDA: Thank you. I am engineering, in software developing. I'm going to share information about business models. And blockchains. The organization did research on imaging economic specifically in Latin America where the impact of this economic could be very significant. This research includes a mapping of the fellowship that developing the technology of blockchain as a business model.

    Within this, they detect in Latin America more than 100 companies with this characteristics. One of the main discoveries of the analysis is that it is in stage of developing. Its rich innovation are companies. Another interesting discovery in this is the high access to capital. As well as the access to (inaudible) and offerings.

    Of the companies that raise the capitals, 27 and ICO by (inaudible) 23 each. Then, friends and family with 20 while 26. For many years, one of the main ways in which companies raise capital was the initial public offers. Where they offer, the shares to the public for which we are staying. After which, the organization begin to finance themselves and funding in order to collect money.

    Some startups begin to convince people around the world, not necessarily experience. To the rise in project. The initial offer. There are three types of talkings. The property rise of a company. Like any other asset, issued by the company in crisis other time. You can be creating an organization and digital coupons for the service of products that is beginning developing. Which will be the maker in months.

    And to blockchain transactions. The NCO fill in the traditional rate of obtaining research for organizations. Has many rates but is ‑‑ with interesting qualities. This level of blockchains and the organization and this. I'm going to talk to you a little about business model that can be considered for the charity.

    Essentially, they allow people to exchange with anyone in the world. This can be run in the form of an investment donation, the collection of money and so on. And without an intermediary. In the organization. If all is complete in the experience, the control, flexibility and autonomous governance.

    Losing opportunities to raise money in the donors to let know about blockchain. The leaders hope developing the technological solutions to develop the benefits that this can retain. Thank you.

   >> MODERATOR: Thank you, once again, for the effort in putting this discussion together. And for offering, now, a path for the rest of the discussion. I'm not sure that we have Sam on the line. So if we don't, that leaves us with about half an hour for the interventions and discussions. So if anyone wants to, please. Thank you very much.

   >> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. I'm a society member and I'm also a member of the internet society blockchain special interest group. First of all, I want to thank everyone who joined us online or on‑site or onboard waiting to join us because we have a capacity. And there's still full room outside of people watching us.

    And we're very grateful. I would like to say that we have another lightning session. That is a block chain team. And the human rights main session. It will be an open town hall. So it's on the big room, the room for the main sessions, it's hundreds of seats. And everyone can speak. We'll have a chair on the stage for people who want to go to the stage and speak.

    Most of all, we have a strong aligned presence as a blockchain. In several hacker funds on blockchain for good. So you can also find projects there online and that can complement on what the speakers have brought.

   >> MODERATOR: Thank you. Thank you for the group for the amazing work that has been done and the mission it's been carrying. If any of the speakers would like to develop and explain a little bit on their experiences, please.

   >> I actually, when I described the cryptoeconomics model of civic, I had to cut short because this model is still very much in progress. And one aspect of it was the very key question, what if the groups or, let's say, the token holders turn up to be evil. And that's one idea behind the 51 attack. What is interesting is, in our research, we realize that maybe blockchain is not necessarily the best model for some areas.

    I'm not saying journalism might be one of them. But I'm putting up a critical question. That would be open. But because if we were to be totally democratic. What if the majority ends up working in a direction against a professional ethics of the constitution of civic. And if it's a majority pushing for one direction, what if that direction is built on the same interest that we try to escape? So that's where we've developed. And in civic, they have opera house, similar to the Supreme Court appeal process where even if you did win a vote and the vote was in a direction that's against a constitution, there's what is called the council, the civic council ends up being petitioned, let's say, appeal to the council. And the council is, actually, people like me and you. So they're not smart contracts.

    And there, they begin to look into their voting process. And if it turns out to be against interest of the system, then it can down vote it or reject the vote results in which case there's another appeal process to ‑‑ by the voters in which case, if they end up having a super majority, which is two‑thirds of the whole base, they end up even overcoming the power of the council. So that's where the cryptoeconomics model is playing up.

    The interesting thing, in our research, we saw this is very risky. If you consider the fact that tokens will be traded over time. They will change hands. What if the scenario would end up being let's say 90% in the hands of a certain group. That may end up doing a lot of effort. In which case, the civil and interviews with the civil and the said ‑‑ this is a risk we are willing to take. Journalism cannot afford to wait.

    And so, we'll see how it plays out. And it's an interesting right.

   >> MODERATOR: Anyone else? It's hard to keep track of all of the initiatives in this area. Right? I guess everyone here has the same problem. I do know of other couple of initiatives. Democracy. The implementing democracy, representative democracy or direct democracy models. It's the first time I've seen that you've implemented current content. That's pretty much we're ‑‑ content analysis through a blockchain tool.

    It's definitely very interesting. Anyone else that could presence? Presentation?

   >> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you very much. I'd also like to briefly mention another initiative in the transferring kind of mode. One of the things that everybody uses as a double entry bookkeeping modelling. Catastrophic failures of the system. And we have large number of examples and people are being asking this question, how do we make the accounting system more transparent? Organizations like NGOs and government organizations. Not for profits. Currently, there is no way that that it can be opened up just to public with that because it is normally within the four walls of organization. And of course, many commercial organizations do not. To take the copy ‑‑ at the level of the building blocks, receipts. And it takes it to the ‑‑ so IPFS is one possibility of storing this data. But the hash of these things go on the block chain. The ideas is given through the internal stakeholders. It could be much broader. And this enables them to ‑‑ they talk about keeping as dancing under the strobe lights. What it means is you have one ‑‑ have do not know how you got there from here. This is how organizations throughout their ‑‑ you know statements of account. You don't know how this has happened. But they're there and now they're here and the department is unknown. But they have whereby opens up the much more clear and anybody, even the general public ask not figure out what is happening. So this, again, this has been half done and we're continuing with it. And, again, organizations but want to be explicitly transparent. Thank you.

   >> MODERATOR: Thank you. Anyone else want to share a government or private or startup initiative? Other views or any questions to speakers? Please.

   >> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think some questions if possible. Thank you so much. I'm from Romania. I coordinate the think tank digital policies. It's very active and consistent over there. And the top that appear among entrepreneurs is really is it a cost effective thing in blockchains compared to other existing technologies? And I think because of the two examples, complete ones we have here, it's worth asking this, as well. Is there really not a technology that is readily available? And also, why would we know about blockchains very much out of theories and principles. We should know that blockchain technologies are not all open and 100% decentralized and empowered to the people. And especially the news application and the use case, it's very much controlled and monitored and moderated.

    So that contains ethical implications that we should be concerned. You should be mentioning some sort of constitution because it's the question who is creating it? Who is contributing and changing it afterwards? Who is saying who has access to the platform and not?

   >> Thank you. My name is (inaudible). I was working for a UN agency. Vacate my position to join (audio cut out) working on topics I should just mention. Very briefly. Blockchain assistance. It is not the topic. But just to let you know that there is so many different areas that the blockchain can be applied on.

    I/O and on the market of blockchain based. This is in making process to help the marginalized community, populations, especially, indigenous populations. And especially in the context of extracting industries. To be ‑‑ to let them know when to give them some tools to raise concerns with the voting system mechanism. As some of you already mentioned before by blockchain.

    Just one or two observation from what I've heard. Thank you for speakers and analysts and your observation. I had attended a conference of blockchain and the alternative instead of blockchain and the speaker said, if centralized database can address you or your needs, you don't need a decentralized system very complex.

    The overall point I'd like to mention and we heard about that. And sometimes, it's not clear to people when we're talking about blockchain system. But the possibility to reward and to incentivize people to be involved in the process. A mechanism and something we try to explore how to ‑‑ to keep people, especially the most marginalized people, to get access to a new form of revenue.

    So this is something that we try to explore more actively. Thank you.

   >> MODERATOR: Thanks for the iterations. I'll try to summarize the question in some way. I don't know if ‑‑ please.

   >> Thank you. Sorry for being late. I'm the chair of the international blockchain special interest group. Just to riff off that point. And thank you, again, to everyone for organizing this. This is a lot of ‑‑ there's a lot of enthusiasm in the space, which is really wonderful. Maybe ‑‑ let's just leave it at that. Let's just sort of clarify two contributions.

    First of all, I use this as a visual aid. Why? Because these are ultimately cryptographic technologies. Right? Whoever has, you know, the lock ‑‑ if they don't have the combination, it's useless. I like to say in this space, no one is above the law, but no nation is below mathematics. People who are marginalized who don't have access to legal identity.

    Migrants or refugees or just people who have a temporary next ‑‑ like myself. I travel the world with a bag and a smartphone, right? But I have a legal identity and many people don't. Whereas now, what we do have, we have the possibility for the very first time to have mathematics or identity outside of legal systems per se, but actually a different route of soundness and trust and legitimacy. In other words, if, again, you have the combination, you have the asset.

    It's great, there's a lot of enthusiasm about using ICOs and utility tokens. But I think far ahead of where the technology is. So my only involvement with scaling bitcoin, the bitcoin protocol, tomorrow evening in Paris is these protocols are really hard. They're really slow to scale.

    So the technical issues, which remain to be solved, I think they will be solved, let's not try and get ahead of ourselves. If you do have the combination through, you know, cryptoography or break, many things can become unwound. I'm very cautious of two areas in particular.

    One, which is identity on the blockchain, and I'm involved in the space. And unravels, again, I may do so very ungracefully. Second, I hear a lot but I'm fearful of is basically land rights. Registering land rights and treating sort of land titles. All you need to know is internally consistent within the software itself. 21 bitcoin.

    The minute you have to touch something outside, like the container for logistics? Then, what happens if we have fake data? Data in itself is incorrect? Then you've got incorrect data forever. It's transparent. Transparency might not help you. The data is wrong.

    So what then? So I think there's a great opportunity for this group, again, to think very thoughtfully, not so much about the technical details, but to think about the qualities of transparency or radical transparency. Thinking about the realtime accounting and auditing, which is what the technology enables and ultimately, the new forms of accountability and governance. What I think the technology might actually be and accounting is an example, but so is law. Now the smart contracts like open law I/O that simulate the law online, I'm not quite sure, this may be a governance technology. That's why the internet governance, this conversation is very important. I think we're beginning to know the properties of these systems that as currently exist are not necessarily as how we ‑‑ how they should be.

    And that takes a much broader audience than just a technologist to define if these are going to be platforms on which society is going to be built. Thank you.

   >> MODERATOR: A couple of more days of discussion, definitely. But still, coming back to the question, I would like to see if I could summarize this. Catherine, in terms of implementation. Professor in the position of that. The question was, like, not only if it is economically feasible, but if it's from a computational perspective, how much more does it take? Other ordinary means? Could you help us?

   >> Sure. Professor, the blockchain is not a solution for our issues that we have. That is a very limited set of situations that you can use in the blockchain. Even the new ‑‑ from a very basic business kind of sense, sometimes, doesn't make much sense to use adoption. The community. Refugees in Bangladesh and Myanmar in that region. There was an initiative that tried to argue that should have virtual identities that will help them limit where they are. And there's a project launched.

    But there was a ‑‑ from privacy activists who said once you put information on the blockchain, it becomes permanent. GDPR has a direct conflict with the blockchain. Once you put something online, you can't remember it. Not to put any personal information on the blockchain. To be basic business level.

    When you come up the ‑‑ and you have issues of scalabilities and major problem, all solutions, none of them compare with the scalability of traditional systems. So the number of transactions, it goes up. Globally kind of one single global computer. You also can have private blockchains or products there. Now, there are also situations where the costs can be contained by communities, supposedly cooperative of fishermen who want to do financial inclusion software. Actually, they can run private blockchain. Don't have to go to ‑‑ now, this is a huge debate issue that some people say it is not a blockchain.

    Others, pretty much. Launched a network. Only safety. They are providing the solution for any blockchain for these kind of issues. At this point, there are very serious limitations and very good projects that tell you, we will check whether your project requires a blockchain. Go online and ask a question. And you don't need the blockchain.

    So blockchain is fundamentally required when there are parties, first to trust and the blockchain takes out the trust angle. You have sheets of fur paper. It is still ‑‑ cryptography. By no means, would I recommend blockchain for everything. Thank you.

   >> MODERATOR: We have slightly more than ten minutes and maybe time for one or two more questions from the audience.

   >> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Bitcoin's proof of work and the energy that is consumed is used as the poster child for how bad the technology is. I'm a bitcoin maximumist in a sense. Bitcoin is coming up to the tenth year anniversary and we have a mechanism by which ‑‑ we can add value over the network. For the very first time. And many clones. Where we are with the technology now is we recognize these, or speaking personally, the internet was a stupid network. We took up the intelligent and we put sort of all the devices, the intelligence outside of the network in the devices which we've changed from desk tops, to laptops to mobile phone. I look at the blockchain networks as slow networks.

    Slow and stupid as a recipe for success. But this is a kind of interesting technology where once you have something that is internally consistent, it can change. Estimates that if you took the total energy of the sun and you tried to break some of the (inaudible) it would be half the age of the universe.

    In terms of energy consumption. Number two, the protocols right now at scale bitcoin, there was a proposal which managed to layer the bitcoin protocol. And there's a protocol called lightning. And now, sort of the elements of a standard called the basis of lightning technology.

    These networks are very slow, three to seven transactions per second to something like 7 to 14 transactions per second, almost double, right? These are on a good day, 70,000.

    Unchanged transactions are very, very costly. Now, in level two. Layer two, I think the current estimates are that we can go on layer two to about 6 million transactions per second. I'll repeat that. Layer two, not unchain but off chain. You can go to 6 million transactions per second. Total number of transactions per channel, you have the channels, you get throughput, which you actually cannot do with centralized systems.

    And so, the reason why breakthrough technology, there are things you can't do, crossing borders, anyone on the network would enable us to do. We're beginning to, again, address the scalability issues. We're beginning to ‑‑ I don't think we'll necessarily address the energy issues. The energy is a lot. But it's to everyone, because it's outside ‑‑ it's so great right now in how many ‑‑ beyond any individual active to break. And it's something we've not seen before. So I question the challenge of energy because it's not compared to what. Thank you.

   >> MODERATOR: I looked up the current rate. It's 50 million terahatches per second. So that's quite a lot. But to come back to the question about the constitution, I kept that in mind and not to forget. Civil is eventually human built system. It relies on humans to add rules and regulations. So like the bitcoin itself was built by humans, even, initially. So the idea was we built the system.

    Like, this first bitcoin core group built the initial rules and the 20 million limit, for example. And once it's self‑sustaining, then we should not alter it except for the same rules that apply in the case of the vetting or challenging, which would be changing the constitution.

    That brings us, again, to the concept of assumption that people will be good. People will be ‑‑ we always have the opportunistic view that no danger will come after the network. But, again, some people would see that as a naive form of belief. And it's up to the community to, you know, prove us wrong and prove everything wrong.

   >> MODERATOR: All right. Anyone else. Any comment? Any speaker want to wrap up? Anything? Any other example? Please. Is there a participation?

   >> Actually, I just wanted to bring up internet freedom, first of all. The blockchain special interest group received some of the questions that were here. We had a report published. Specifically, on the idea of minimization and the identity in blockchain. As just like many other technologists aligned, there are those who believe it's important that for some transactions you need to have safe haven.

    But, of course, the idea of identity in organization blockchain goes beyond the infrastructure of the technology itself as it was said here so many times. There are many vulnerable groups that are having projects developed like indigenous refugees. And so, there are a number of factors that go beyond the technology.

   >> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. With that, I would like to wrap up the session. Thanking you all very much. The speakers. The idea here in the ‑‑ in this ‑‑ for as much as it's hard for everyone to fight over and attend the session on something that arises the amount of interest I imagine has been arising in your places. Five or six minutes of every presentation might not be enough. But the idea here was to bring specifically, as I said, uses and applications of blockchain and potential of blockchain technologies that are a little bit apart from the scenarios and I think we managed to showcase a couple of those scenarios.

    The one specifically using identity ‑‑ universal identification, social applications and all of this even if the high concern of the externality factor, I think it's something for us to keep an eye on. And thank you very much. This meeting is adjourned.