European Initiatives Fostering Blockchain Innovation

Transcript

welcome everybody i hope you can see us all um welcome to the last cva event of 2020 um i think this is going to be a special one for many reasons first of all because this is the 20th virtual event of the cva this year so i'm really excited about that and then also secondly because we're really close to the holidays so all we need is good vibes and then third because of course bitcoin has broke the 20 000 ceiling and it reaches all-time highs so i think we should have nothing but to be happy

about um i am welcoming some amazing guests today thank you so much for attending um we are going to have a 45 minute panel where you guys meet some amazing people who are doing a lot of work to foster blockchain within switzerland and also within the european union um and then we're going to have a 20-minute segment on a special project and program that has been supporting blockchain startups within the eu um this program is called block chairs and we have the two final winner startups who have been announced yesterday um so this is really really exciting so i would like to welcome

all of our speakers and we can kick off i think our panel first of all i would like all of our panelists al-mudena bat and stefan to introduce themselves and i think we should go ladies first um so um then i know you're the superwoman of blockchain in spain can you please tell us a little bit um about yourself and what you do within the blockchain space how you guys very much that's a very very generous presentation um well i'm passionate about it i think it's a very transformative technology as we all know and uh here in

spain there is a great uh ecosystem both in the in the of course business sphere but also in in ngos academia and public sector has also been a very active or not at the beginning but we've done a lot of work to get them into it and create some some good framework for for the businesses to develop so here i am representing alastria illustrates a public permissioned blockchain and ecosystem foster so we built it in 2017 and since then it's been active and members can use it it has more than 540 members of all different nature as i

said in companies but also universities and uh and public sector agencies and and law firms um and that can use and effectively use the blockchain for to to develop their own applications and uh uh and also to build a positive network around the technology and me myself i'm also managing partner of blockchain intelligence which is i think an action tank we've done a lot of work through labs to bring together regulator supervisors uh public sector all together with the industry to get them understand the needs that you know the technology has in order to be used

for actually the good of society and we create alliances and and also um do a lot of work on the governance of of blockchain and then i'm an academic member of inatpa we will have time to maybe refer to other positions but the idea here is that we are willing to to connect with all with the audience as well um to work together in a european and swiss ecosystem you know to do good things with blockchain yes i mean you definitely do a lot and that's why we're so excited to have you next bath would you like to introduce yourself yeah good evening i hope you can all

hear me uh first thanks a lot crypto value association nikki for the invitation uh secondly i'm sorry for the little dark light here from the souq studio so myself since eight years heading the economic affairs department of the canton of zug this is a part of the ministry of economic affairs so we're full part of the soup authorities our main mission as a team is uh not just to look for blockchain but we basically uh you know uh are taking care of the all the companies residing here as a one-stop shop we support them on goingly goingline doing business and secondly we make sure that we foster the networks in this relevant clusters

so you know we will get back you know later into that how we do that but at any rate uh you know on a personal note it's really been fantastic because i just joined by the uh you know year after i joined this uh this spaceship you know i have this book chain spaceship landed on the shores of zug and uh you know i was from the very first moment really luckily to uh to you know follow these guys and the experience that uh that time i didn't even know mathias yet so you know but but so i'm really happy to also share a bit tonight about you know how this happened why we think you know uh he's also successful thank you we're really honored to have you and excited

i mean you're representing the heart of the crypto valley so this is amazing i think mathias needs no introduction to our ecosystem but still matthias please tell us about yourself sure thank you very much for having me a pleasure to be on the panel um i'm wearing two hats today so i think we're going to talk about that a bit later um i am founder and ceo of cvvc which stands for crypto valley venture capital we are a venture capital company with two specialities number one is um we only invest in in in blockchain startups meaning uh companies that build based on blockchain technology

layer two not in protocol layer and the second speciality is we we as a vc operate our own uh operational business unit and that's called cv labs which is an ecosystem player here in crypto valley where we run a co-working space um also in dubai and and fadoots where we have conferences events and also an advisory unit um my second ad that i'm wearing tonight and that is probably a bit more specific to the topic we're discussing is i'm a a founder of the swiss blockchain federation which is an association that is um uh its goal is to improve the attractiveness and competitiveness

of switzerland as a global blockchain hub so a bit on a metal level um actively promoting switzerland uh its framework its regulatory environment how can we make sure that we create and and remain a a haven for blockchain oriented companies and projects also in the future yes i think you're going to tell us a lot of exciting good insights that our startups will be able to take away from this session and then last but not least stefan you are working at one of the main academic blockchain hubs of europe at the frankfurt school of blockchain

center please introduce yourself yeah hi everyone thank you very much for having me thank you to the crypto valley association as you already said i work for the frankfurt school blockchain center which i believe is at least in the german speaking area one of the leading blockchain think tanks and research centers and we do a lot of different things i think the reason why i'm here today would be one of our four pillars research because i've been working on the project chairs that we're going to talk about later for the last one and a half years together with al modena and a lot of other guys and i already said the blockchain center really does

a lot of different things we don't just want to be seen as a research center because actually we're so much more um we help startups we do consulting and this really goes from seed stage idea startups to um ducks companies ducks being the largest german equities or shares index and yeah so we have a pretty good idea um where blockchain stands at least in germany because we get all these questions um from beginners but also from companies that really have put a lot of thought into it and want some advice and so

these are two things and apart from that i think we are mostly famous for all the events and community building we do we have at least two big conferences a year so um the last one was in october and this was really special because it was our first hybrid conference meaning we had some people in germany because this was actually pre-locked down nowadays we are in a lockdown as well here in germany but we had pretty strict health regulations and had to make sure right that we have a safe event where people can meet each other but actually i would say we had maybe 50 60 people in frankfurt while hundreds um tuned in online

and so that was a pretty great experience and i'm really happy to be here and share more about um how we perceive blockchain in germany what's happening here in this space also maybe share some insights especially on knowledge and education and because i think this is the main point i want to make today is that for a broader blockchain adoption i think it needs education in the right places yeah and so i'm really looking forward to this panel thank you and it's really nice to have you represent the the academic part and as you said and i think we'll hear this from that as well that education is such a crucial part of furthering the blockchain adoption um so this is great to have you

um okay so the first question that i would like to ask and before i do that um for our audience we have the q a open so please feel free to um address any of your questions there and if you would like me to ask it from a specific speaker please include who you want to address the question to um and at the end of the panel maybe we can answer some of those questions so ahmadina when do you think the european union kind of realized that blockchain technology has been has is so crucial um and when do you think they started like actively supporting it how long has it been important too much um well i think it's been many years

already uh that the the all technologies and the digitalization of society and of course the economy is in the brother and it is an objective at the european union level if i have to set a date i would or a year i would say very crucial was 2017 and of course then 2018 because there we had the agreement of building the european blockchain partnership was which was basically a political high-level agreement around the importance of the of the blockchain technology for the eu economy and the eu society as i said both actually it's not only the economy but it's far beyond i think

um and it also set the the the first tone towards the creation of the european blockchain service infrastructure infrastructure fc for those that don't know it yet is kind of the public publicly driven or publicly started blockchain at european level so we have notes from public sector administrations and but also on which we build uh private applications um and we have already many pilots and many applications uh in in the field of notarization uh um real estate uh certification and many others um so i

invite you to check that if you don't know that and i think this was very very crucial and from there we started of course uh you know i think there are two sets of actions that the european institutions are taken one is in the in the framework of uh regulatory action um and is you know the little steps that have been taken a little or a big in in first in the agencies the esma and the ebba the european banking authority and the european uh um securities um and the market authority and uh the the changes in the fifth email directive and ultimately uh this year very recently the market in crypto assets regulation

the proposal um so a set of already steps towards giving uh certainty legal certainty uh in in the in the sphere of crypto assets mainly first but all together blockchain and then there is the second part which is fostering projects that actually make reality out of you know blocked in the technology and transfer it towards the economy the real economy and real business and real applications also in the public sector so there we have all the set of i mean all the whole work done by the european observatory um which is also research and and you know following the markets but it's many programs such as the one we're going to to be

listening and and experiencing today uh mostly the blockchains which we have been working for the last two years which mainly was transferring the blockchain technology towards smes and and building use cases of uh blockchain in in the sphere of the smes and there are many of these uh in horizon 2020 and also now in next generation europe um so it's basically regulation and also fostering ventures and projects that make it real for for the economy all the since 2017 mainly yes and then i think we'll go into the second portion in the next round of questions but i would love to hear from bath

about the same topic but regarding switzerland and soog so when do you think it has become apparent to the content of two against switzerland that crypto and blockchain is going to be something that they need to be focusing on and i know you have a personal story here so i would love for you to share well as i as i said it all started with the the with the spaceship landing in uh you know late 13th january 14th and you know just to i mean i think it's a great example uh you know matthias i went through this uh it's a great example of how sug basically uh you know does conducts economic promotion uh you know in fact

it's not it's not an active industry policy and you know the kind of being so successful the last eight years has never you know the government never thought that they know what would be best or what would be the next best thing to come so uh you know our basic uh strategy is you know we want to provide the best conditions for any type of business to do you know to do business so and it happened you know really and they have to look back a bit uh when they uh when basically uh bitcoin swiss you know nick claus established in 13 in a stealth mode more like nobody really knew at that time you know he's here with two three people and then uh you know it was uh beginning 14 actually when uh

when basically the founders the co-founders around ethereum landed here and uh you know uh around the vitalik uh uh mihai joe lupin and so on young gabers at that time with moletas so there's a bunch of uh like crazy people you know uh landing here knocking at our door and it's i think a perfect example of a public private partnership without having it institutionalized i think you know we ensure we really do that you know and the best level uh with the private you know uh partners like you know matthias and so on that we think what we can provide is you know the the openness the innovative spirit you know uh the accessibility

and and how it happened then exactly you know that we said look what do you guys need they said they came here because the switzerland is a democratic society is open for regulation has this long traditional financial sector has great talent and so on so they said look we just want to you know do here and and win the race for the first protocol and i think that was the moment really within two to three months you know we shared that with our ministers uh we had you know great at that time also great ministers they were open and you can imagine at that time it wasn't so uh you know uh so bold or let's say so uh so a reputation you know that bitcoin had and i think uh we highly appreciate you know this risk faking of our ministers

to say you know guys let's do it oh let's be crazy let's do it it's great so uh and you know just to show a little bit one one story i really remember uh you know when when after two months you know we needed to uh submit the the work permit application for vitalik he needed the work permit he is non-eu and we sent that to bern and you know they they sent us back and said he doesn't get a work permit he doesn't have a university degree because in the law it says you know highly qualified specialists only get work permits from the non-eu so you know this was the first kind of uh challenge to uh convince our federal government that uh you know maybe evita is also highly qualified specialist so at the end you know um

it was the beginning of a blockchain specialist without university degrees you know also specialists and you know it's kind of uh when we really realized that we want this technology to support and we always from the beginning thought we want to support the blockchain technology you know that was our main focus not not you know the cryptocurrencies and so on so i think that that was the initial moment and uh it's a it's a good example of how we call it the spirit of zug like a startup we want to be always open uh you know for new trends and new technologies and just go for it yes that that's a beautiful spirit and that's why you

know switzerland is the crypto nation or the blockchain nation at the moment um so matthias as a vc what initiatives programs do you see in the space that are supporting and fostering blockchain innovation and startups you know initiated by the swiss government or initiated by the swiss ecosystem and i think our startup community is really curious to hear about these yeah i'm still a bit bummed by the fact that the swiss government wouldn't consider vitalik specialist in the beginning i didn't know that story built by the way that is really there's so many stories that we could go

on for for hours you can see we've come a long way from [Music] identifying a movement like ethereum as something that you should take care of and you should foster and you should help develop within an ecosystem and the legal framework to the blockchain nation switzerland that we are trying to promote today um uh globally in the sense of that this is where a strong community and a lot of projects and the legal frameworks there you have regulated players and with that potential you can bring boxing technology to the world not of course not only based out of switzerland but um

there's a lot of projects that have their roots here what i'm really excited to talk about today is um we've been working together with the government um and and with we i i mean the whole ecosystem not just us cvvc or the swiss blockchain federation or crypto valley association but the whole uh ecosystem has been contributing to the um to the legal framework um to the to the basic conditions that we have here today in the sense of that as of next year mid mid 2021 we will have a new legal framework and this is really a

progressive framework a very simple one it's just adjusting small aspects of existing laws but that will lay the framework for all blockchain based business models and and i think this is groundbreaking with a few additions i'm happy to talk about that more later but what that means is i think you can expect a boost of the ecosystem especially in switzerland as of next year because that will bring even more projects here that will use the framework and then we'll start to um develop business models digital assets um startups based on that infrastructure and

and legal certainty that we're going to have here now having said that um the swiss blockchain federation has um applied for a so-called inno booster initiative every four years the swiss innovation agency called innosures identifies some 10 to 15 areas where switzerland could take a major step ahead or a leap frog in innovation so that's not at all limited to technology that is open for anything could be pharma it could be health could be

a supply chain could be anything basically and we applied with the project name blockchain nation switzerland um exactly um stating that based on the framework that we're going to have an innovation push is to be expected and we want to accelerate that through a so-called innovation cycle so we've come up with a innovation cycle that we're going to repeat every year so for the next coming coming four years every year we're going to have an innovation cycle that starts with the 90 asian phase which will be followed by hackathons followed by corporate acceleration so we

want to bring the startup space together with the corpus that can implement the ideas and the process that have been developed and even help them develop ideas that are very close to the needs of the corporate sector which will eventually end up in incubation and acceleration programs with with an outlook of getting funded by investors including us but also others now that's a completely open cycle so you can you can pick whatever you like you can enter at ideation if you have already a team that has a certain skill set you can join the hackathon and maybe grab one of the corporate driven ideas that

are out there or even come up with one of your own or you can join the incubation program later in the year and and as i said we are the goal of this initiative is not only to foster or to create ideas but really to create startups and projects that have the potential to survive in the market that really tackle use cases that are that are on the table that you can implement in in corporate infrastructures in corporate uh environments uh so the plan is really to to to to boost the ecosystem with new companies uh new pioneers based on on what we have today

every year for the coming four years and we're really exciting to to to to support that and and to to kick it off in in january that has not yet been communicated so that's really something new we're going to launch it in mid to end january and then you can start to register you can apply for for for this um in a booster call blockchain nation switzerland that sounds amazing and so should people be looking out at cvvc's website where that's when them to go this is very important that's not a cvvc initiative right so that's my second hand we are just supporting uh uh from a service provider perspective these cycles it is completely open for for everybody to join

and not link to any activities that we might be promoting um uh to be honest i don't really know where exactly or what url that is going to run under what name i think it's going to be blockchain nation switzerland or blockchainnation.swiss that has not yet been decided um if you go to the website of the blockchain federation you're surely going to find the the respective information and there's going to be some boss starting uh from next year perfect well we might as well just have a next event in january february to talk about this then that would be great yes happy to join perfect stefan your turn for a question

um so i know the frankfurt school of business has been involved with the blockchains and you know eu commission program and i know you guys are working with a lot of association a lot of companies from the private sector so besides block chairs um what other initiatives is the frankfurt school of blockchain center involved in um or is there any um noteworthy initiatives that you would like to mention from germany um share some information with our startup community where should they where should they be looking out for yeah sure um i can generally share a little bit what we do both on the research academic side and also for

the private sector however i guess i may not be able to mention a lot of names in the private sector so as you said we work on block chairs and i think almodino already described a little uh what's happening there so for me it's building the bridge between blockchain startups and smes which i think is really important because like 99 of the companies are smes um and we are also working on a different uh ryzen 2020 or european commission project which is called block pool which has a pretty uncomparable scope i would say and we're also working with the digital innovation hub of the european commission and also in germany a lot of stuff is

happening so um i would say in general you know germany uh has states and also the government on the federal level i think the states are a little resistant yet so there's not too many projects but on a federal or governmental level um we are involved in i blockchain and cosmos both are projects that run for two three years and mainly want to answer the question how can how can blockchain be used for industrial applications so iot machine to machine stuff like that and this is really not just purely research but um these are consortia where academics like

us or other institutes are involved as well as some of the leading industrial and german companies and they are working on prototypes as well so this is pretty cool um and apart from that as you said we are indeed involved in a lot of associations um we've been founding at least two of them one is the international token sanitization association this is not just based on germany and um this might not be the direct boost for startups as for example what matthias just mentioned but really the goal here is to work towards global market standards when it comes to um

tokens to blockchain in general um could be technical could be for the financial sector because i think right blockchain offers so much potential for various industries and use cases but for example if we talk about the financial industry this is heavily regulated they have a lot of standards and i think um if we want to create something on blockchain um be tokenization or whatever um we need standards that are at least comparable so that these big players can make a move um so this would be the itza and i guess if people are really interested in also um pushing towards these goals of standardization um

feel free to check it out it's it's a dot global um apart from that we also recently launched something called the digital euro association i think the name gives it away my boss philip santa the head of the blockchain center is actually really engaged and involved in this topic of the digital euro also because of the focus of the blockchain center itself is um not crypto but really mostly industrial applications and i think if we want to have industry use blockchain and um cool payment solutions most of them will need um some sort of euro on a blockchain

because i think if you talk to them about be it ripple stellar ethereum whatever a lot of them will hesitate and yeah just observe and not take action which i think we need right now so um with this association we want to make the european commissions and also the german government aware that something like the digital euro needs to be at least thought about and um i mean it's it's not just our efforts but of the community that the ecb is now looking into that and so that's great um and apart from that one thing i want to highlight as well is something that started i would say two or three months ago it's called dlt

talents and it's a really niche project i think it's closed for now but i'm pretty sure because it's a great success there will be a second version and the idea of dlt talents really is to coach and mentor women and help them step into blockchain because at least in germany we observe that most of the people working in blockchain actually are men and while we have a pretty diverse panel here which i'm really grateful for i think it's pretty important to include more women um and so this is something we're pushing and apart from that you know philip santner is part of the fintech council of the federal government and we work with the ministry of finance and ministry of education and science so

we are involved in a lot of places try mostly to i would say educate politicians and make them realize that if they don't think about blockchain they might missing out and i think this becomes painfully clear if we look at germany and then for example uh at uh beard and matthias who just talked about switzerland i think switzerland is doing a great job i think here in germany it's not too bad as well um with custody um we made important steps with uh generally the blockchain strategy of the government this is a step into the right direction and so really what we try to be as a multiplicator or a spokesperson to some degree

for um all the contacts that we have to yeah to to drive blockchain adoption forward and make the decision makers realize that this is something they shouldn't miss out on um for the private sector projects as i said this is mostly i would say industrial applications um i cannot give you any names but what we're working on at the moment is with a startup and an sme as well actually and a bank and they want to bring the euro on the blockchain before the ecb does it right there's always these um workaround solutions and um they will do this for a machine to machine payments um which is pretty cool

so stuff like use cases like a flexible leasing we will see that this is a pretty cool idea so this is a proof of concept stage and for example for one of the major german banks we are currently writing studies and about different means of payments be it libra cbdc's um stablecoin stuff like that because um i think this is something that we can say that we observe is i'm growing interest in definitely how will we pay in the future and how can banks and industrial companies be involved so this is why i can say to this topic it's actually a hot topic at cva as well and i think we're gonna have

an event around cbdc's in february so we will see you there um we got a really good question from the q a and um then i think you might be the right person to answer it so uh the question is and i do not know um [Music] the name of the gentleman because i only see or the lady i only see the email address um but thank you for the question so it says looking beyond cryptocurrency use cases do you believe that private permissioned enterprise blockchain networks show more promise for financial services adoption because they are easy to make easier to maintain regularity

compliance if so why you are unmute enough excuse me uh yeah i think so far it's actually the case that uh in the private sector very often either private or or or public permissioned blockchains are are chosen uh because there's more legal certainty around them for for for several sector applications um and that's the main reason and there you have uh maybe identified the nodes uh even the the the responsibility on you know the the services and the running of the of the blockchain um is uh

is is identified so uh also for the application and being compliant with several eu regulations and uh and legislation um like the gdpr for instance it's may it makes it easier um and it also matches better and maybe unfortunately i don't know or fortunately the the previous mindset so it's also a way uh maybe through through the change as well um so yes i think uh they are indeed um you know one more sort of blockchains and we don't need to be i think very dogmatic i think they there is there's a place for every type of blockchain and

every type of blockchain has its use case and the the the important thing is to make the right choice for the right application or for the right use and i i honestly think maybe there will be many use cases that will be maybe will go towards fc and then there will be strictly private networks and then of course public and and public permissions but i do think that there is an aspect there of um you know certainty and and maybe readiness or easy an easier way to be compliant and reassure all the players around a project or an application that they are safe as

to um how they are compliant with with legislation and this is very very important for businesses because you know it's a killer for a business if you're not compliant and then you suffer penalties and and responsibilities and liabilities and all this so that's that's the reason actually why we created alaska in in 2017 uh it comes from actually a set of people that we were sitting together and saying actually you know the current options um we cannot go back to our boards and convince them to use these blockchains um because of their of their settings and infrastructure and nature and the way it's run so we need

something that reassures them that they can use them without without um assuming further liabilities and they wish and that was actually the reason and and from there we started building actually in a cooperative way because illustrious was also built by the members themselves in a cooperative open way um and building it together to give a solution to all these applications and industry use cases that needed to be done and were not finding the right place the right blockchain to do that thank you for that um please audience keep the questions coming i think it's always really nice to hear

from you and what you want to hear about but can we talk a little bit about what approach does the canton sook take in order to foster blockchain innovation like what is your toolkit um you know what do you invest in how does it work yeah i think as i mentioned before i think uh you know from an attractiveness for doing business i mean it starts you know with providing each and every business and startup the you know the best environment to help the specific needs and i think you know a lot of that has to do with that he has

already mentioned you know what happened all in the area of legal uh you know regulatory uh you know over the last years and i think here again you know it did it is our understanding of uh government that we want to be a catalyst we want to be a catalyst together with the private uh partners initiatives you know and uh as uh as this has been in the past you know it was an excellent uh you know partnership when i think back not just at that time was still lakeside partners called not yet cbvc uh you managed you managed you know together with some of it was basically personal you with some of our ministers to get the federal council here you know and then go back the next day and say let's let's

do the crypto nation switzerland i mean uh i think this is an important role uh also we want to continue to do you know to be a catalyst to uh there where we can value uh provide value ads and uh you know that that will uh continue in the in the level of the ecosystem that's the second layer then i mean we want to continually bring the people together and you know i remember for example in uh in 14 15 16 a long way uh i think we uh we had discussions about creating the valley association and you know there were so many players uh you know not everybody had the same ideas and so on i think it was also a bit a bit our catalyst function to uh to make this possible that there were

not three or four or five you know groups but you know one association and when i look now uh our role of really bringing also this uh this this speed and this uh this uh this spirit to the world i mean uh uh we were happy to have this uh these partners like uh cbbc uh when i hear where matthias is you know running around everywhere in the world now i mean you know we as a kansas for example we we ourselves are strongly engaged in the regional corporations like greater zurich heritage area metropolitan area switzerland global enterprise present switzerland swiss next all these things we basically are we have kind of an institutionalized partnership there

but you know we do not we cannot go everywhere and it's fantastic to hear that you know yes you guys are kind of you know from south africa to asia to you know everywhere you know there's things going on uh you try to make sure you know together and you bring this uh this uh this value add out this promotion out and you leverage you know and i think we want to keep this throw you know we wanted to keep this role as a catalyst uh just doing what we we can do and we need to do but uh leave it basically to the private uh partners but the i think the most important last thing i'd like to mention you know uh you know we want to also invest the tax money in a in a reasonable way in the best way

for example you know uh relating to this digitalization of blockchain but four years ago we basically set up a new i.t university in the canton of zoo it's part of this the swiss central university of applied sciences and you know i think they're also the canton sook you know in charge of that project we won you know the race for locating it in our canton because we could convince the other kansas it's the best place uh and you know on a green field basically it was for example renee hussler uh also first on the board of the cba for for the first years who is now the dean of this university and when he started he had the mandate to start his

university on you know on a green field he basically could just build it you know based to the needs you know so there is blockchain there is digital ideation there's itaea all these new this new kind of uh curriculums you know we need the talents for and that's where ken and zuke invest you know a lot of money not in specific startups but in the overall you know infrastructure to make sure we continue to have this talents you know in the area and that's kind of i think what we want to continue focus where we have something you know to share and to provide to contribute and make sure we we always understand the needs and the trends and we kind of can react in the best way

yeah i mean it's nice so it seems like you have the three pillars that you are spending the tax money on which is education sort of mediation between the companies and the different players of the ecosystem and then supporting the regulatory environment right yeah nice approach um okay stefan um i we do have some audience questions i wonder if you want to share your thoughts about the new french regulation um regarding kyc obviously this is very recent um i know i've been putting you on the spot yeah don't worry about it so um

i want to be totally honest here i'm i'm not too deeply familiar with it so my take will be rather weak maybe someone else can step in later on but what i can say initially is that i think two things are important first when it comes to kyc to regulation for exchanges i think this is something that we've seen for quite a while now and we know that exchanges are or most exchanges are not really decentralized but decentralized which somehow goes against the idea of blockchain i guess um the exception being the developments we see in the default market now um about what really happens in france how to tackle it um from the perspective

of the blockchain center we don't really have a stance there um personally i think more regulation or there needs to be a good balance of regulation to not eliminate um growth or the startup spirit that i think we have here in europe but we need some rules because otherwise it won't work and i think the second point i want to make here and then i will open the questions to the others is that i believe while all these initiatives we see in switzerland and lichtenstein and so on and france and estonia and wherever are great but i really hope that we will have a solution and regulation on a european level sooner than later

because i think it gets really really difficult for all the companies um yeah to to be in safe waters when they have a global blockchain usually is it like a global product from inception and if everyone has their own regulation it gets super messy and i think we need a more global or at least european approach for that more unfortunately i cannot say i mean it's uh i think it's hard right because the purpose of the european union should be to to provide overall guidance on all matters and and i think a lot of the countries are looking at the eu to start making these these rules and creating the legal framework but then

also they don't want to be waiting around so um they are starting to create rules like um friends but yeah what are your thoughts well absolutely we need a european framework legal framework um i also think we are in a in an interesting and interesting times all together not only for blockchain but for technology because i think we are experiencing a re our back big back to regional uh way to approach um [Music] technology and the impact that technology has in in our societies and you know we went from globalization through the internet

to now i think being more and more um differentiating ourselves regionally so basically also china maybe the states and europe and i think the european commission and the european institutions have made it also clear that we want to be pioneers and use technology while respecting our european values and building a new society with technology through technology um but respecting this essence privacy is one very easy to understand example um so it is an important moment where regulation is important and building not only the

you know a common framework but a common framework built on a shared understanding of what type of of of society we want to build and we want to create and eventually this will um maybe be a clash in this globalized technology world and there i mean i think we still need to give it a thought and and work together uh maybe businesses and regulators and policymakers and philosophers and sociologists around around these issues um very precisely on on you know on how to regulate uh exchanges

kycs i think there is again you know the the usual clash between innovation and protection of certain values like you know um well anti-fraud in this case or anti-terrorism um but also protecting in the case of securities investors rights and um and and we need to to to set up the balance and of course as you said there is this um difficulty always between national sovereignty and european sovereignty and we had uh we have worked here with regulators in in spain that were saying well we don't want to we first we cannot but to the extent that we can take our own

decisions um because we have scope in the framework of the eu regulation and we're waiting for a common understanding for a common standard that is being built in the agencies mainly um we don't want to work too fast in the little piece that we have at national level because then you know we create confusion and and it also doesn't help businesses so yes i think it is very very important but i also think that it is the way the european institutions are approaching the regulation of blockchain and all the activities around blockchain to be fast and very clear and set up you know a roadmap on around it and at the same time we

have to understand that this is an evolving technology uh where also not everything is very clear so we also need to work as stefan said on on the side of of standards um so it it's a difficult um of elements that we need to consider but mainly i mean basically i do think it is i mean we are in europe always working towards a european single market so at least european businesses should be able to use blockchain within the european um scope um and jurisdictions uh in in a safe way with legal certainty and be able to use the technology to the

extent possible and this again clashes and i want to extend myself too much but linking to stefan's thoughts as well there is always this clash between the bitcoin blockchain crypto mentality which is by nature you know not linked to any jurisdiction because that's the purpose itself and the origin and the mindset um but at the same time we have real life real businesses and the possibility to use this dlt technology for business purposes and a better society and interconnected society more agile not losing or not not having intermediaries that

let us lose power and lose money after all and in you know just intermediaries so maybe we need to compromise as well for a bit of time and understand that there are you know different use cases again and different interests and we need to accommodate to everyone and again maybe not be dogmatic because we can't otherwise progress tough questions well keep in mind the time in mind the time we're five minutes over but i still want to ask matthias one last question because i really want to hear about um and i think all of our startup

members want to hear about the incubation batch three how's it going um you know can anybody apply are there still spots left and then i also had another question around you know we seen that in batch one and two you had a lot of um startups outside of switzerland so do you feel like they're coming to switzerland because this is the place where they can grow the best or you know the conditions are best um let me start with the second question um you're right um i would say only 10 maybe 15 of our deal flow is swiss the rest is international

we screen roughly 2 000 startups per year we call that a natural deal flow naturally in the sense that these startups they come to switzerland because of the framework that they find here of course also because of the activities that that we create and and and you know all the ecosystem activists activities all around crypto valley that attracts all these projects um and it depends um in general we see the global blockchain ecosystem or the world of blockchain consisting of three ecosystems one is europe or emea probably the with uh maybe switzerland

or or central europe in the center of it um then there is asia and i think a lot of innovation is being driven by uh by asia i i would say that even mainline mainland china would be a separate ecosystem in and as of itself but then if you look at the uh um southeast asian uh economies and and the innovation that comes from southeast asia is is really impressive a lot of that is also driven by by the trading uh secondary market um exchange um aspects of of blockchain crypto very much cryptocurrency or currency token driven

and then of course america as a whole including latin america but but also if you look at um the innovation side in blockchain a lot of innovation still comes from the us right but it's it's it's a bit more like the major the large projects uh where he can tackle the uh the um you know just for example the regulatory uh environment in in the us is much more complicated uh when it comes to the different entities that are involved if you want to build up a business and everything so you need you basically need a strong backing if you want to start approaching out of the us having said that 10 10 to 15 swiss deal flow um i would say 20 to

20 from germany uh another 20 rest of europe a strong part from eastern europe we have quite a good deal for from the us i have to say i'm quite happy happy about that when it comes to the asian side of things we don't get to see the the really cutting edge leading edge projects because that it's very specific culturally specific they join the incubators uh located in in asia if they come here they have probably already been in one of them that's why we need to tap into that space on location and that's also why we have an international strategy expanding into these areas over the coming

months and and years um coming to your first question so it was really important to see that we are always open for application for both the the incubation side of things and also from for direct investments we have a two pillared approach for the for the early uh projects pre-seed seed you know prototype based we only invest in in in incorporated teams and in teams that's a prerequisite we have our incubation program of course we have been developing that in a sense that it is hybrid currently or could be run digitally and for the direct investments um of course we are screening the the

global market uh anytime and and we will just invest if we see uh opportunities which is a bit later in stage so still seed maybe pre-series a depending on the market during and depending on the opportunities uh bc um of course we've been limited by by the corona pandemic oh interesting hasn't been a topic yet in this panel that is pretty pretty outstanding we haven't we have been affected by the corona pandemic as well uh we've been uh we've been planning um our incubation program for um q1 next year and given this new initiative of the swiss blockchain federation and the whole ino booster thing

we are we are concentrating uh our activities uh in the context of the inno booster so we're going to run a large incubation program in q3 and we can we can host many many participants maybe we're going to have one or two more so please apply now and i also encourage all the projects and startups really look at what the federation the blockchain federation will be publishing early next year it will be starting with ideation it doesn't mean that you have to be in ideation but just see how the funnel is going right you can enter early on and you can bring your idea to the attention of the whole swiss

blockchain ecosystem as of january next year good information well hopefully a lot of our startups will be going your way um then i know you wanted to add one more thing you know you want to talk about next generation europe yeah very very quickly i know we're out of time but i think it is important and indeed i wanted to mention the pandemic which i think we're all tired uh to to talk about but uh it's it's a reality that you know we're suffering the consequences but also that it is a great opportunity for you know digitalization of traditional businesses and and and i think blockchain can do a great deal of and have an important

effect on you know on on how to improve efficiency in in this new economy and that's the direction that the the european institutions have taken with the with the packages that aim to foster european the european economy post pandemic and in this sense uh you know we now have to build all the projects that can apply to this uh european funding and which i mean there is a very very clear pillar and direction which is digitalization digitalization digitalization together with sustainability and inclusion and others but digitalizationism is a key thing so all the projects that are built and these are aimed because of the size

of the projects and the the the money to which one can apply is is meant to be consortia and uh and including smes and including of course technological partners so at in alaska we have built a hub that aims at helping creating these initiatives and so if anyone is interested you can just contact us and we're working with with uh consultancies that have a lot of experience and this and uh and help them build the projects in a way that first have a great impact in actually in the european economy uh so so so covering the the main objective of the funding and

and uh basically including digitalization in the sme sphere and also with corporates and it's quite a big budget it's 1.8 trillion euros that they um allocated for uh next generation europe so if anybody is interested in this definitely go to the european commission's website um i know they have different um like chapters within the digitization of what they allocate funds for but it does seem like blockchain has received quite a significant chunk out of this so um this will run for the next four years or how much how long is it running i think it's four years yes okay well um we're kind of running short of

time so um i thank you for being part of this panel and sharing all the great insights thank you so much for coming now what we'll do is we will talk a little bit about um in specific about one of the program programs that have been supported by the eu commission it's called blockchains so i would like to invite nestor jose and ella to turn on their videos and join us hi guys so um nestor um has been instrumental uh part of the block chairs program to run it and make sure that

um it's a success so he will give us a brief overview of what the program has done why it was important and um we have a little surprise or well it was a surprise as of yesterday um but the winners of the blockchains competition have been announced yesterday and um jose's company vestigial has won first prize and ella's company mindspider won second prize so after nestor they will give us their experience of how it was being part of this competition and talk a little bit about about their programs or products so to say so nestor the floor is yours

thank you nikki can you see my screen yes okay i'm going to be brief thank you very much also for the for the speakers before this was a really interesting debate about the technologies so as nikki said i'm going to talk to you about a specific project that was developed in the with the support of the european commission not the blockchains project so our objective was to facilitate the revolution of the distributed ledger technologies for the europeans means we were participating four partners we were coordinating the project no from tabala we are located in spain we are a consultancy company

there in spain and with the support the technical support as you have seen before frankfurt school and alaska the the blockchain experts in in your project and also with the support of indominus it's also a consultancy company in hungary so we were the the four partners behind the blockchain project and we are being supporting the different sms our objective was to select a sms startups developing solution with different dlgs for the validation in users miss and new use cases and create the necessary condition for the for the implementation later you are going to see the

the use cases of vestigia and minus spider so they are going to better explain but our objective was to show the application of blockchain in new domains difference from the financial one that usually is the one related to blockchain so we wanted to to show how we can use this technology in other domains for us then when we speak about one use case we are speaking about the relationship between two companies so we were looking for us miss working together we have an end user smith that has a need and we have the technological estimate that is going to give

a solution in this case using a dlt technology so we want to give the end user a high added value solution in this in this case using the blockchain but for the end user the important thing is not to use the blockchain is to to have a solution for the problem or for the for the new business model so as we say we have we say proposals and really interesting ideas related to directed to very different sectors energy food health indus industry and there were really interesting ones we were

you know in a hard competition because they were really really good projects and at the end we have selected different one but if you can see in your website or maybe in any if you have time you can have a look at the all the companies that were participating and the different and good ideas that they have how the the project works so we were selecting companies well from an open call that we opened in in march and we closed it match it was open from january to march so all the companies can apply there so the after the evaluation during between march and may it was a hard

time because of the pandemic it was just in the in the middle of the pandemic when we were evaluating the proposals but at the end we selected 18 sms or or team of sms that were participating in a first pitch competition and we selected the 12 teams that were working during the last four months have been working together with with the partners of blockchain project with innomin and zavala mainly and with the support also of pramford and alastria they're working in the development of these use cases with the validation of different kpis and at the end last week we have the the final pitch competition in the paris blockchain with

summit but all the teams were exposing the use cases in front of the of all the attendance of the of this summit and as as nikki said just yesterday we announced the the two winners that that we have today so later on ella and jose they are going to explain the use cases they are the the two winners of our program here are the some figures no we have started with 220 proposals open in the in the online application system and at the end we have a right to charge use cases and determine and also the geographical distribution

was really really high all over europe was spread with more than 28 different countries uh applying for with their solutions this one was the the two of the 12 teams that were participating with us from from different countries from different sectors and with different ideas and the two winners is basically africans and i'm going to be fast now because we all have a lot of time so so yes uh related and what you were talking before now so the blockchain program is already finished no so we are finishing today um more or less we the project is

finishing in january but there are going to be more opportunities for for the company for the blockchain and for all the vegetation digitalization of europe so as almond i said before the the next generation europe is going to be working the next year there is a lot of money there so this is the objective and europe greener more digital and more resilient so take a look at the transition i'm going to say screenshot this screen because if you're a startup and you are interested in getting some funding because these are very important projects that you can still apply to okay and that's why this is uh then in europe now it's it's open and

also uh don't remember that we have the the uh one of the material financial framework is the new horizon europe so also take a look in the in the next origin europe is the program for the next seven years the 2021 to 2027 and there is going to be a lot of different opportunities there for for startups i wanted to tell you maybe it's easier to participate in programs as blockchains we are like accelerators as programs that we receive the funding from the european commission we are the ones that are competing in this high conversion now with all the the companies or the research centers in europe and we distribute these fundings

to the startups so at this moment from from tavala we have different programs open no so i have include here some of them you can have six examples as you can see they are related to different technologies in the only in the digitalization sector for big data for blockchain with different opportunities but these ones they are already open right now or they are going to open an open call in the beginning of 2021 so take a look and i think it's easiest for for you as a startup to participate in programs like this that being maybe competing in the heigel programs but take a look and there is a

lot of opportunity so so be aware and just try to to find these opportunities from my side it was like short only to speak about that and i will give the floor also for ellen jose i don't know link if you have any doubt um but no that's overall of course thank you so much nestor i think this was really valuable and what i i had the pleasure of being part of the program a little bit during the coaching um and actually i worked with jose so that was nice to have this personal connection to the winner i found it very useful one is because um the requirement was that the the

companies or the blockchain startups blockchain startups work with smes from the field so you know you already have somebody who's using your technology and and implementing it to an industry um that's not necessarily finance so i love that and then i also love seeing the companies go through the process of growing but thank you so much nestor um i let jose and ella talk about their experience um jose since you guys won first prize um the floor is yours go first but okay as you want let's go

okay i want to thank you to blockchair all the partners and also also to you nikki because you help us a lot to to well explain this this speech so um and this is the first time that i have the opportunity to congratulate orsoela so good job and it was a really difficult of the competition so i started i'm jose manuel of vestigial blockchain we we promise when we arrive to the program uh that uh we will help with blockchain to to protect this wonderful ecosystem so but also the and the most important

is the data our solution will help to smes uh european exhibits to to prove and improve so they sustainability practice but um doesn't matter if you do well if you don't inform to the final customer so also we we include it to the customer for to the smes that we will help and to close a global solution to for the water scarcity problem uh give a effective tool to uh to to help companies but also regulator to to arrive to the green commitment a green deal commitment so we are presenting a project that is

really is a project that really we developed from scratch uh the people say okay agriculture blockchain and also um um water is uh is a is old enough it's a it's a you are crazy so i i proud to present the the the world that we made in the in the program with all your support in in a be called your support and it's consisting in a iot device that we developed with aparnet called aggro ir technology here also in spain that can measure

in a real way way the water consumption and also the pollution by fertilizer but uh to prove to prove that uh the the because today uh the industry the the aggro the the agro companies is estimating what is the quantity of the water and even if you want to be more sustainable you have you have no way to prove to your final customer and retailers that you you you are maybe the thing good and you will achieve the the commitment for from the european union so we use our platform blockchain to in order to to give this kind of

visibility and to close we was also our um our anti-counterfeit and anti-priority technology to give all the information to the final customer in the mobile phone so we worked very hard and in a in a very in a very close way with smes agrosm is that is basically in andalusia and he uh and produce berries in in the donjan area and eighty percent of the of the product that they made export to the european union so this was an incredible tool we developed a

incredible tool with them in order to for one side you can check in real time what is your water irrigation or your water consumption in order to to to to improve the this consumption and you see when this is uh you see in the screen when you see this this is uh a little little advice in red you you have to talk to to to irrigate but by the other side and the most important is the use of of um of blockchain that register the real consume of the water and the fertilizer so we very huge a huge uh traction even if the

if we are developing the the project in the inside the pro the blockchain program so today three corporate two corporate and one distributor is interested to to have this solution in the portfolio and also we have three consumer pre-orders so we arrive or we achieve the objective that blockchain uh that we commit with with bloodshed and finally the product the commercial product we will be available in december 22 in a very easy way to install so um we are impacting the market we using blockchain and using also out of the after the after the um

that we are used to hear about blockchain so we were also houred by id food for the solution and for the for the world travel organization one of the things that i want to highlight is that is the the the high impact in in the success of the blockchain program because we increase you can see the the the data but we increase our present in in the social media meeting with his better meeting with with other companies thanks to to the program er but bestie here is much more i'm going to finish because

we have no enough time but uh vestitia is much more our technology is is basic in the in the product identity we develop a patent a way to to to to to to fight again against country fight and also piracy and we have a universal connector that you can pro connect data directly for the for for the id devices we are presenting footage also we present a different solution for tourists for co2 and the industry a good uh only in the first one of uh first year of operator we

we are achieve a a huge trans attraction in the market so so we are very glad we are not alone we have a strategy partnered with corporate that provide us a huge support to distribution of our solution i want to thank to the to the incredible team but there is nothing of this is is possible without them and david and jose that is heading you may be guy so in the time that i'm teaching if you were using that aware solution blockchain solution

you will say you you you had saved 350 meter cubic in ingolia and small town thank you very much be green impact and we will help to sell more thank you very much message close to my heart being green thank you jose for creating this product and you know trying to save water with it uh congratulations again for your win um amazing success and i love your slide about the impact that the block chairs program have had you know on your social media and your visibility um this really shows that these programs have

a lot of benefits to them um considering the time i would like to give the floor to ella so she can also tell us about her if you still have time for me then i'll i'll be very brief here we go congratulations for being a female winner you know in the blockchain's world thank you happy to see diversity uh yeah i'm also very happy to be part of the dlt program with frankfurt business school as a mentor so we're getting more women there eventually um and a huge congrats to jose as well really impressive solution and i think you guys really deserve to win so yeah sorry everyone i'm co-founder

and cmo of minespider and we entered our textile initiative threadcounts into the blockchain program um and basically our aim with this was bringing traceability to the turkish textile sector and we wanted to start narrowly with the story of a single sustainable towel let me see how i can move this on oh there we go um i mean you're probably all familiar with the idea that consumers and regulators are demanding that fashion brands have or all brands have full supply chain transparency and this means that they need to know where their materials come from and whether their garments are produced sustainably and in this blockchain program we also wanted to communicate that to the end consumer basically to benefit the sme directly by

making their you know sustainability claims verified and our sme partner in this case was a company called a teacher collective so they're from berlin and they produce a range of sustainable organic towels that are produced with 100 organic turkish cotton now we're lucky oh sorry we're lucky because actually um we were able to build on top of mind spiders blockchain it's a second layer protocol on ethereum so we built essentially a thread counts traceability app on top of our blockchain which allows people to not only track shipments but to also enter in information at every stage of the blockchain from what certificates they work with

and what standards they can also push out queries and templates to all of their supply chain members and of course the the big one is is basically communicating this to the end consumer so in this case we created something called a product passport which allows an end consumer to scan their towel in this case and see have a history of their town understand where it came from and know that all this information is coming from a secure place and that it hasn't been tampered with and that's not green washing so we really wanted to give our sme a competitive advantage for being sustainable now we did the wildest thing and went to turkey in the middle of a pandemic

so i was there last month for three weeks and we had an incredible time meeting with a lot of the supply chain partners now traceability is no small task and this is obviously amazing that we got additional funding now to continue mapping the supply chain and basically setting up this tray stability project in real life and beyond just the supply chain partners that we talked to we also had the the opportunity to speak with a lot of industry leaders in turkey and i think as a country and as a region they understand the importance of transparency and traceability and many of them thankfully are starting to understand that blockchain is perhaps a great tool to deliver that so we look forward to incorporating a lot of these

entities into our work as we move forward so how was the blockchain's experience well i got to see this tour on a bi-weekly basis no we had amazing coaching from all four of the partners and they really kept us on track i think jose had far better slides than i do about the kind of kpis that we had to achieve but i know that we um for instance added 800 social media followers and i think i spoke at four conferences and we had sales goals and obviously tech goals and so so forth so it definitely kept us on target but i think probably the most valuable part of this was the fact that i mean as a company mind spider we generally work with

far bigger companies like volkswagen and it was really great to actually work with smes and to understand their issues and to give them the advantages that we that we're aiming to prove with you know with our blockchain use cases so i hope that we can continue to do that well i know that we continue to do that with the teacher collective with our partner and there we are brief as promised if you have any additional questions feel free to shoot them over to me at any time thank you ella and congratulations again thank you i'm so glad to hear um that you guys have grown so much you know throughout this competition so it served its purpose absolutely should have all the panelists back

i know we're almost well two minutes away from 7 30 so i just want to say goodbye and thank everyone for attending our 20th and last cv virtual series of 2020 a lot of 20s um and 20 000 for bitcoin today so this is a coincidence or i don't know um anyway thank you so much for coming and sharing um your thoughts with us i want to wish you happy holidays and a prosperous new year hopefully we can have an in-person crypto valley uh event next year um and you know it would be nice to see where everybody is um in like a year's time so i'm sure we'll have you

back soon on one of our events again thank you we hope so too thank you very much very much thank you bye thank you bye bye thank you very much you