Interview with Christoph Jentsch of Slock at DEVCON1 in London

Transcript

so right now I'm with Christophe inch this one is one of the cofounders of slot IT they have a really cool demo which connects the etherium block chain with with the Internet of Things this is the first time I have seen a demo and say I an sought although all of the people talking about a senior peyote and the blockchain had a point so before you see this into perhaps you should see one of their demos if you can otherwise let's have Christoph introduce himself first so my name is Christophe yenc I am working for theriyum sins of Vanya now on the c++ lined and the test framework which outlines use and now i just wanted to do something with it and we started

slow kit which basically helps you to rent out your property by having a smart contract on the theorem block chain connected to a smart lock for example a door lock bike lock padlock and also you're looking into power outlets so basically that you can enforce smart contracts in the wheel world so we connect IOT devices this block chain smart context decision block chain so let's take an example suppose I have a bycicle yes and I want to rent time by cycle yes and I want it to be Z is I want to be I want my by cycle will be 0 headache so I just want to keep it lock it anyone anyone pays money on it can move it around yep and then return it and it gets locked again can you do

something like this with slaw yes in the future like right now we have office thing which is in the home because in the home you have Wi-Fi you have power if you kind of pipe bike locks and padlocks we are working with this because there you need to get the them were in direct connection sewer smartphone but it's doable let's say it like this but the basic smart contract exactly the same its basic means that you as an owner of a bike you can set a deposit and the price per hour for example and you said this in a small contract the anyone could come paid his deposit and he's setting he's done the current user you can then send a message to open it or to unlock it and lock it can use it for a while when he start let's say after two or three hours it

just returns it after yes locked it and then the deficit comes back to him and the costs go to you this completely automatically so and no one no one is needs to be interfering we are not doing any transactions so even if locket but nothing would not be around after one or two years thus the log would still work because this is the one is completely decentralized on the block chain okay so so let's take another example then so the example is you wanting to rent your home as as a stay for one night for me so using locket what you can basically do is you will configure the law on your home to unlock at my command if I pay a certain deposit to a smart contract is

it yes it's the same smart contract so we have bills I'm saying which is working now so in prototype up there it was a little slack home server have you have one athyrium client that should look there so we run a theorem client and also when you use something called set wave which is known in the smart home technology to connect to smart home devices such as a door lock such as the power outlet and other things so what you do there the someone pays the deposit he gains control of it he sends use a whisper whisper message to it if the private key matches which was he finds in the blockchain then he sends an open signal to the lock the lock opens so basically you pay a deficit to gain access control okay so so basically what the block chain is doing is defining who

can controller device and to actually control the device using my smartphone I am using this other protocol developed by the tedium community which is called whisper yes because you do not want to do everything unplug sure you don't need to consensus for a lynx life and I to open my door every time or close it's also about scalability like that if they won't transaction so only when you rent it and then you return it I when you pay the deposit get a bad episode minus the cost back those are the wheel ethereal transactions everything in between are just messages scientist a private key to this lock and then he decides if this matches what he finds on the blockchain and if so then you are allowed to open or closed okay so so so let's imagine for a moment that I am the lock yes so

when I am the lock I need I need to basically know two things which is who is my current owner yes and I need to know whether I need to open or close at the current moment yes so so technically how does the information about the current owner come to me is there an do I have ethir IAM node running on yes that this test is serum client running on this log home server yeah and their checks for data and the blockchain who is the current user and then the same client also receives those whisper messages and then you can just check if this matches and then he sends out a set wave signal to the door log or the power outlet to your smart home devices and then they open more close

but it's all like in this little slug homes over controlling the devices and getting information from the block chain okay so what if what are the physical infrastructure requirements for a certain lock or a certain device to work this yes so for let's take the door lock as an example you could buy an amazon today to check for set wave smart locks you find a lot of different door lock so you need one of them the cheapest one of about hundred dollars hundred thirty dollars you install it and then you just need our slock home server no it needs its Wi-Fi or line internet connection and power that's it then you have to somewhere behind the root router in your office and this end wrench connects to your door that's like all you would need into your home to run the system okay so

conceivably the this thing could be done by like a centralized service as well sure right like conceivably we could imagine that you could have the similar kind of function at that functionality that looks very similar but instead of the TM blockchain for the payment processing there is paypal or I don't know credit card payment and the lock is actually controlled by the signals originating from the server of a particular IOT company and then the IT company has apps that users can install in order to unlock this device right now so what do you think are the major advantages of a decentralized solution versus a centralized architecture like

that so of course that many first you have to sing a point of failure the other thing is also this is block chain of especial currencies you can do micro transactions like grinding your bike out for 10 minutes or so costing 50 Cent's do it is pay for a credit card it's not worth it so that's another thing and the other thing is having enforceability of smart contracts if you do this for the centralized system you they need to do this so if if their system is not working with something it's not there okay just doesn't work but here you have enforce ability of decentralized smart contracts to the physical world I think it's the first time you can see a yeah there's enforceability of something which happens on the blockchain other than just moving currency around it's just pay and then something the physical

world happened like a safe could open you have something very very important in there you can ever it because it's on a blockchain which is a big big open API you can write another smart contract saying okay if five out of this seven people agree to do something in pay something then it sends some money to this smart corner of the lock it opens and therefore you can find something in the safe so you could think about all the things which build upon this technology because we have it on the etherion blockchain and all those smart contests can interact with each other you can think about complete new applications like every time I'm explaining to someone here's another idea to like do a parking slot sing or I when you drink something you'll pay per milliliter and you have tons of ideas what you can do with enforceable smart

contracts and IOT it's just amazing so so I think like one of the big advantages that I see for for something like this is the fact that let's say I have you know ten different IOT devices or I don't know a hundred different IOT devices in my home that I that I want to control or have others control my devices and each if these hundred devices have like 15 different manufacturers I and one of the manufacturers you know tour two of them start to not maintain their systems properly or go out of business then basically in the centralized approach my those two those two devices may not work

as well if the manufacturer goes out of business yes but etherium being like this decentralized trustless platform that has zero downtime i as a device owner and also have some kind of peace of mind that this will system with key functioning any conceivable future I mean I even if slock it would not be around in five years for whatever reason you're the product would still work because it's completely autonomous on the blockchain so we don't need to run any servers to nothing so that's the nice thing about it also it saves us costs actually you just deployed the stuff when you're done have nothing to do it with it anymore it works on the blockchain so what kind of what kind of person is your real customer meaning who is actually going

to use locket technically consumers going to use locket technology but are you trying to serve the developers of IOT devices or companies making IOT devices or what kind of people are you targeting this too so first of all is a developer platform in the basics everyone can use it on the blockchain and contact with the other but the other hand our target is the sharing economy to share your car your bike your home your washing machine the lawn mower and so on and so on like if you're focusing on that everything which you can lock you are able to rent sell or share it could even think about a store which is open twenty-four/seven is out any stuff all the things they are just locked this

slots you can just pay open them and grab it and go like complete ultimate is all autonomous yeah so the use cases are so vast that we just don't focus on one right now just save it you people the basically technology which you can deploy in all of them but yes sharing economy is what we focus on for like what we stand for what you want to push forward no no in your architecture like whatever you'd apply on et liam is is public the large contract logic is public do you have do you have any what what is your way of monetizing such an open architecture yeah this interest in crash will talk about this on thursday

two more in the presentation you will do a really cool stuff i can do right now to because i want to have the bus tomorrow and but yes people add services around those products like on the basics this is open source platform everybody can use but then you need services sounds like you want to paint fiat money maybe you want to maybe have son side where you can find a room you want to rent and there are some services we could build around us to monetize it but also other ways and people present them to most of these stay tuned and see we have something good thing goodness good there yeah that sounds that sounds that sounds really cool building additional services around two to monetize a system like that you already have any customers or use cases lined up so since we have

not released our product so you cannot buy it yet no but on the other hand we get daily emails from hotels a B&B hosts back sharing company we have even a car sharing company from netherlands companies for building very small homes to end up for students idea of writing emails to us and they want to deploy it so we just wait just wait for a couple of months and we hope to give it to you so really I think in a six I hope so in six months time you can show you real world use cases in sense of its used so people are using it to rent out whatever so that's really good and awaken our listeners find out more about slot just go on a web site slot IT so that you can find some more information about it we

keep you updated their that's also mailing list so please sign up then you get the latest news thank you so much yes thank you very much