Mischa Tuffield - TokenCard - Ethereum London #ethldn

Transcript

Music. I'm going to talking the talk I'm going to give today it's called living a life on ethereum. And I'm going to go on a journey with you I might be a bit ranty apologies. So I usually end with the slide this is I don't agreeing with American politics normally but an American politician said this I just wanna leave here for a second and makes me happy to think about these things. So hi I'm Mischa, I'm a computer geek, I'm a privacy nerd I'm the reason why bbc.co.uk has no social tracking on it and the NHS in the UK are used to do web standards and web guy really boring.

And yeah I have a PhD in computer science all that boring stuff I done quite a few businesses I've been I've been more than 4 startups I've sold two, one to an evil company which I quit the day they bought, and I fell twice after using the biggest seed round in London. Which is also quite fun and then about a year and a half ago a couple of people the founders of tokencard approach me with a really crazy idea so I'm going to come and take it on this journey. Say hi hello. Hi hi I just most importantly I'm in optimist and I love the future so I want to come just focus on the future of it.

Tokencard is an ethereum project we crowdfunded an early may 2017. Were based in London we were part of the FCA sandbox co-op four so. I'm quoting myself here so this quote and italics doesn't have anyone important TokenCard is the first non-custodial, direct to consumer experience that enables payment in the real world and I can explain what that means throughout the course of this I just want to reinforce, we allow you to hold your assets your ethereum tokens your Eth without having any access to it was giving you a seamless experience to spend that in the real world.

And I think that's pretty cool so we're around 20 people. So we've been around for about 2 years building stuff we haven't been speaking publicly about what we do we have been spending money on marketing you don't like talking about things before delivering things so. I'm registered we're just starting to tell the story now say thanks in London for letting us speak. I guess I believe we're building a viable alternative to consumer banking with no centre entity which holds all of your money. The something was Mel tells me at times which I get kind of excited about this idea that you spend all your life working you make money.

You give it to someone they choose how to invest their money how to spend it and I guess. Yeah why not challenge these things so this is a little aside about decentralisation anyone who tells you that as a company there decentralize is Fobbing you off and you can but don't quote me on that. I think no company is truly decentralized I guess where we have maintained decentralization in a credible way is within our relationship with our users we have no access to our users funds and that's kind of cool. I'm just to be clear that our other crypto cards out there in the market coinbase has released One recently there's a couple other ones all of them have access to your phone's they are all custodians of your fund's be doing money in an unregulated space, anyway we'll get to that I don't know other people good on them.

So what have we achieved so far so we believe that the fundamental problems for making ethereum real and allowing people to use it in the real world is this the usability of security. Nothing just two main issues which need to be solved in tackle by businesses or experiences, what is if your key gets compromise that means of a bad actor getting hold of your key and we think we have some nice Solutions around this and the next one is the loss of key which we don't have a solution in place for the moment but we think about these things. And we hope that someone will have a nice solution for this. We've also made the tokens spendable in the real world which is kind of cool, and were very keen if we're going to be challenging banking I'm personally really keen on building experience which is participatory and I'll diluted this later on.

If you're going to disrupt the system which is incredibly centralised and build an alternative why do it in a way why not challenge where the growth goes or where the uplift goes from a new business model. Service contact the participation of something so touch on later so this is really boring and you guys all know this but we're going to get back Genesis block, so there's a Genesis block and it's mainly gobbledygook when I guess for the kenai or people Noah doing there was all this bits here, people like what were all these bits.

And just bring it home it was a front cover of the times on the 3rd of January birthday which kind of talks about the Chancellor on the brink of second bailout. So banking agency collapse 2008 supreme mortgages whatever it is got duped by auditors. That money can have fell out in society again this is not fact this is opinion by me and you can beat me up about it afterwards. So this technology which brought on in the predecessor to things like aetherium had this concept of challenging the status quo. And this is something which we feel very strongly about as a project.

So again I said this is quite ranty I'm get to the Tech later and I can actually show you all the tech and it's all immutable and publicly auditable on chain which is kind of exciting. So problem with banking for my perspective as a profits for the few and the losses of socialised and this does my head in. That's I'm just a nice stats and again I'm grabbing and this is all conjecture in this is opinion so don't be me up about it but we can talk about this in the pub don't focus on these things but there's more homelessness around London is just full of it. And young people just don't trust anyone anymore.

And why are these yellow why does this exist so we're trying to build a consumer banking experience I can't say they were building a consumer bank because we're not. Search my perspectival from our perspective they look at consumer banking they look after your money they make sure it's safe. They have been making money spendable when you need to spend it they grant you credit leverage from a fraction of your neighbours money for profit and they just gamble your money and. Given that the core use cases which affect users are looking after your money making a spend safe and making money spendable I think this is to use cases which were we're going down in journey where we can give you a credible alternative to. I guess my dream is to build a sack of my bank account and pulled all of my passion in my ethereum wallet but I guess we're not there yet.

So not only do I think that. Consumer banking is in conflict with consumer interests I think the incentive models fundamentally misaligned and it's not only misalign this indirect conflict, any profit made by banks to go to their shareholders a taken away from money and profit with should be going to the consumers were putting up the money. And it just seems fundamentally broken so. Why am I here I'm in East London and we've built something on a ethereum and I guess the reason why I can stand here and say all of the stuff credibly and look you know I look myself in the mirror after anything can I have not died of shame it's because we have something like. I think what I like people calling it the World computer at the trust computer this new distributed decentralized platform of computation which is ethereum.

And some properties of this new computer allows me to say when I'm saying now I think credibly so. Are nature of the relationship between me and my user's and the fact that I can't touch my uses money is immutable and observable and auditable publicly on a chain and that means when I say stuff like you don't have to trust me when I say, I contact your money that's true and that. Conceptually the affordances which ethereum has given to the world and application developers like me is novel and going to get some excited. I'm not sure it's a platform so there's an economy out there are the other people building staff there are dapps there are other things there in this ecosystem is not just a chain for me which I've been for you to trust.

None of these things are interesting and yeah someone put this picture of the world are fine made me smile so. I guess this is what makes me excited what happens if there's a shift how can you bring about that shift how do we make ownership real. I bought it so if you think about the economy in this platform which we talk about it ethereum. So we're on a dawn of this new Economy I think projects like digits and Maker excite us, Maker is a system collateralised loan system which pegs to the dollar with no central entity having to do any management and that's kind of cool, I can do properties which Dai have and Maker DAO has is very exciting digix as a project where they tokenizing gold and putting it on chain has made.

Made a token which is backed by something real and has made God for the first time fungible and divisible by Inna. Cineview in tuna M25 6s which is quite loud divisibility and it's made gold instantly pingable around the world I guess all these things are really cool. So this this new Economy which is built on tech rather than implied Trust so the trust is in the technology and sure with digix he would test because there is a gap, between the digital representation of gold and what's actually living in their faults we state audit there is some trust that just like their some trust in the relationship, with between users and us and I'll talk about where that trust comes in.

Sorry this tokenize future we believe in we hope that this economy will flourish overtime and which one at somebody to it. So Yeah my dad was really into Pink Floyd I think it's called it came up in Google so TokenCard has no access to assets. You don't have to worry what happen if you know leadership changes or Somebody by this business I promise you won't just marketing slogans and their breaks into the blockchain immutable Lee as a smart contract. You don't have to trust everyone be naughty and this is only now possible because of ethereum and that's really cool.

The trust computer in the world computer ring so about a product I just been round to up until now and I'm going to be a bit salesy now. So I'm going to come back to this non-custodial so it's jargon and gibberish for the most part but. And I have no access rights so on the nice side it means kind of. Pro decentralisation people people who love this space don't have to trust me and don't think I'm touching their money on the flip side it means that if someone's laundering money on do something the farriers to my product I can't actually do anything, so I'm with me deploy the visa card and if you come to the pub afterwards I'll buy you drinks with the only non-custodial, card and I'll show you how that works non-alcoholic drinks to water's fine as well.

What does custody means here is the icon twiddle I can't cheat the system I can't the auditor I can't make up numbers. Actually it has other negative effects has what are you you can see how many users we have if you look on the chain you can see how are we doing as a business so comes with flip signs. We don't have many uses right now we lost a couple weeks ago and we're testing it's an alpha so for me when we were chat with the regulator and will tell him about this I just the penny dropped for me that he's got there were talking about when they went, so if you guys fall off the face of the planet nothing happens to your news as funds you pose no risk to reuse as fun thing that very cool, getting a prequel thanks I've never created never thought I'll be crossing the FCA so why is this non-custodial thing important we will know about this.

And today we know about this and if you look at I think this is you guys I don't. 40 million dollars worth of Bitcoin was stolen last night from the exchange 7000 bitcoin decentralized entity, custodial access to funds, again in a regulated world in the old world these funds would a just been written off when it by governments or whoever's issuing the money I don't know if something bad like that happened. I don't know if you're heading nobody thinks I was looking at someone who might know but thank you anyway these are reasons why you shouldn't Trust centralised entities with your money's you shouldn't either money in exchange.

Print more money thank you anyway I don't know this is a numbers I should know I should side weather sources. Maybe if he's ever go online. What if I was ok yeah. Yeah most of its opinion which I think it's fine if you look at the amount of hacks has happened last year of the numbers of big I think the one who stands out his 2.7 million dollars of the day if you average out. And I guess what I'm going to show you and what I hope people who interest in the space when you ask me questions about is this ethereum native apps, we've developed a smart contract with which we believe mimics what a consumer bank looks like your current account looks like as a list of payees as a daily spend limit which you can interact with each other users deploy an instance of the smart contract,

which again governs the relationship between us and this smart contract we have no access rights to. This the experience which we've built which I'm going to show you allows users to go from the smart contract which they own and they govern. To fiat please tell me time when we took my car. And this this relationship with our users is 2500 lines of solidity code mostly comments. Ham and it's all live actually you can share links afterwards you can see the smart contracts and this for me is a software going is kind of weird when I'm building something which is immutable.

And. Iconic if anyone came up to me and went you know let's let's write 2500 lines of code and have 900 unit tests and do static analysis on our play around with formal verification I'll be like you're mad and especially in a small company like us. Yeah this is the code I link you to it. I'll show how that works out that isn't you can't fling ether that or you could fling ether that if you wanted if you have a QR reader that go statute of scan which is my. Can a smart contract and you can see you can see it there.

Erm, I'll leave it. Ill show you theres enough of you I can show all of you one by one afterwards so just conserve the participation is important to know which app on the business, what we've built what people what people bought into this idea that if we build this new type of card and this is having experienced than everyone pays a 1% fee this 1% fee goes into backing our token, a token becomes a back token of the spending of people on online so as people spend their backs on a token, so with this new banking experience is participatory for my point of view if you can get your hands on a computer and you can make an ethereum transaction.

Yeah so don't put your financial destiny and control of other people. So we believe in this concept of self sovereign finance Ben brought this concept of self sovereign identity to me which is really interesting and that work is great for some great projects there I'm really interested in her. We're delivering self sovereign finance and that's kind of cool. I'm just going to demo now and again jumping the gun. After use QuickTime and yeah this is my phone this is all live, how to type in some numbers to get in the user's private key lives on their phone the private key is encrypted using the secure enclave the security element and the private key never leaves his phone.

And this is a bit where people get annoyed at me because I don't do Justice to this experience here is a smart contract. And the user's have some tokens within this my contract. And they have an owner address if you lose this address of the moment your funds are gone, bye-bye. You can send and receive like a normal one it this isn't a normal one at this is a smart contract these are the security features of the bottom, someone we can prompt you and make sure that you back up your seed with this is this is this needs to be fixed as user experience you have a set of whitelisted addresses which you can send infinite forms to. You have a daily spend limit which we calculate using an oracle I'm using crippler comparison apis together prices for,

I'm so if in the case where someone compromises your private key all they can do is spend your daily spend limit or send funds to a one of your whitelisted addresses and we think what we've done is, kind of limited the damage of someone compromising your key, and we're trying to get my head around what we can do to limit to help people recover from the situation whereby they've had their private key they've lost their private key so if you haven't backed up, your private key your mnemonic phrase. It in this app and you lose your phone you're screwed now that's a technical term what's the technical tap.

And then we have the card aspect of it and. And it's really boring and it's non-branded but the Brandon wants a coming soon. Allows you to top up your card so here I have some Eth in this is beer money so if I go to top up my card I can select a token will let you use DAI, our token and eth. Our token means you don't pay any fees, eth you pay a fee I'm just playing for his now. I'm going to top up 1 eth now I don't have much eth very very welcome to accept eth.

I confirm with face ID so this is going to the security element using operating system level security so this is the os level security, and now what's happened if I bought an ethereum transaction to send an address which we have on chain which is off float and 1 eth. We wait for some sort of finality so I'm going to go to this transaction screen. And I'm going to go there's a pending card applicant top up so if I go look at this on etherscan hopefully this will be in a pending state. And at some point this all night be confirmed and once has confirmed based on some problems in model depending on how much your topping up we will put fiat within your car and you can spend that so.

When I say we're not custodian at the moment we're piggybacking off someone's called E Money licence with an issuing bank in the UK and we can, move where to sending out cards in the UK and in the EEA at the moment, we sent out around about 150 wallets at the moment we're just laying people in Nice and Slow will show you how you can get your hands on one of these if you want one just to learning to test and to protect our or happy experience really. So when this goes through I will put money like they'll be money in my accounts. Since this isn't my app this is ethereum being slow so I think I was like 89 not in there, some point I'll come back to this and we'll have some cash in there.

So that that is the the us we have at the moment so in order to have a non-custodial relationship or inability to move to fear in this current instance in this like a prepaid card model you have to send us, what's the happy that we've got it and the probability of the real happening is low enough will give you a base on the amount of money will give you that fear and you can spend it, so basically as a business what we doing is managing floats the uploads crypto floats and we're just moving money's around in order to build an experience, it is worth noting that to get Visa over the hump, and to get the regulator over the hump that we run on custodian of users files which allow them to spend in fear we have to be super hot thanks Steve super hot on all of the and all of the,

anti money laundering all the provisions all the checks and balances which we put in place to say the weekend confidently know or, can I check where the source of funds are coming from so we don't sell crypto right now you have to bring her up for to us the story which we went to the regulator was regulator. Because it's a blockchain in this immutable we know the provenance of all money is, and as long as we're we're interacting with all the best service providers which label this graph with who the bad actors or you can always see him back propagation of this information on the graph and where the bad money is so we built a risk model, reminder to people, we have a kyc and aml bar higher than any kind of Challenger bank out there we had need to know who you are you need to know where you live we need to we have entire visibility of where you bringing your funds from,

and again this is a story with a regulator, got the head round, so it's 3 blocks confirmation I think for one if so theoretically now if I refresh there still be some pounds yet so we can spend beer, and I guess for me that's quite cool so I'm going to leave this so there's a like the really boring stuff when it does you can see your transactions. You can see that I just buy food and coffee because I live in East London expensive coffee. £2.70 is not that expensive anyway races all the normal stuff hygiene staff.

I think in short we built on ethereum projects and a Challenger bank in two years and I think there's pretty bloody awesome and to be honest. And the change of bank was actually challenges the status Quo but it anyway so thank you all that's it for me I some caveats so as much underbank idea and sum summaries. We've delivered on the white paper with no compromise we have strong legal position within the UK and EU about building as participatory bank I can talk to you about why and how this works offline I think. At the moment just to be clear your Fiat balance is.

Has there are some custody involved there there is a UK bank regulated UK bank which holds that and then ultimately. The government was under right that I think. Five minutes. I'll be done before that we. People attending a Sunday don't like this flat exposure we had this thing called a zero balance card which we have a prototype for we have to get the regulator and visa comfortable with this so this would mean that we will have a side ledger. Which we look at and we were tired using like a cursor which you would two blocks and state of the blockchain, and we if you put your back into a cash machine would always say 0 but when you spent it we'll be able to know whether you had enough funds, I will kind of work like an escrow so you have a smart contract which you deposit some Eth in you put some eth in it and both tokencard and the user,

be able to pull from it with the time lock and we will be able to give you a Swipy experience so you wouldn't even have to have their fiat exposure we're working on that now the next thing which we need to work on, and I just to be clear and like I'm picking up ethereum hear that wouldn't be possible without the ethereum and it's kind of cool I'm sure there's other chains are they work and you can do it now but this is where we at, so we are custodians of your kyc data, and we're looking at how we can do the self sovereign identity the following the space I do see a vision where we can not put it for a pii data, and the key is getting law enforcement in the regulator on board but the stuff which we can do and we're thinking about a two-pronged approach where we make these attestations.

And give a key to the decryption key for this pii data to the regulator and to the police essentially the cyber security team let them prove that they can use it when they need to use it so over time maybe we can start deleting the data which we hold but. PII personally identifiable information on personal data think PIA is the wrong time we're GDPR now I like this stuff as well sad really sad, and finally how can I use zero knowledge text to bring up credible privacy to non-custodial world so apple makes claims that without Apple card they can't see your transactions Goldman Sachs can see your transactions and which is fine, I think I think there is a solution with your knowledge proofs in whereby.

The use of the acts of a user like topping up there zero-knowledge, can of monies on ethereum will be a public I'm transaction on chain and then everything under there would be private only to the user and to us because we need to appease the the regulator, Anderson nice projects in London the Aztec guys are really interesting Aztec protocol really interesting it's not as really interesting I love that. It would just be a Premium service and just to be clear in this cos I can't make money from your money you need to get paid, everything we do we need to get paid and what what we like is transparency ultimately I like to build a service in this is something which one of the Mail says in the same way as over claims that are the biggest cab company in the world let any carbs.

The airbnb of the biggest hotelier in the world without anything on inventory if we could build something which could be the biggest. Consumer banking experience with no consumer files that'll be really cool, and in the same way as people pay a subscription for Spotify to have music if we can give you banking services on a subscription then in the same way as me ranting about, I'm business models of centralised entities withhold money being in Direct conflict with other users if users are paying us a fee-for-service were aligned do we have to build and deliver value to the uses for them to pay to us, all of the stuff just blows my mind so.

Yeah she want to build this stuff with us where we're hiring and Misha does tokencard we have a discord channel which people talk yeah, and then if you want to sign up and you can live and sign off now on the alpha channel and it's not it's as I know sorry. When Android is the forever question so, it is yeah this evening about 60% of our market when we looked at it people starting next week so all of the infrastructures react native, the only bits of the infrastructure which we built using native code other things with touch the security element and we'll do the signing so most of the app experiences already there and I'm having two people do just coming in Bliss through the Android stuff so I'm.

I'm not going to give you a timeline any other questions, I don't know actually we don't have investors contributor as I think it, we have a physical card now I'm going to buy you beer afterwards with a physical card. I mean so, because on the web you have to go into ledgers and we have have to go into this space of hardware wallets what we doing is we're trying to build a credible solution where your private key lives on your phone and.

It's just yeah it doesn't seem right I don't want to walk around dangling with some kind of hardware wallet around my neck trying to do that in software on iPhone pardon. Yeah I'm 21 drive if there is a physical card yeah that's the whole point that's why I record tokencard. I mean when your boyfriend's iPhone doesn't matter here where were inclusive like that. Yeah I think that's.

That's a risk to a business which is a very big risk and what we're trying to do is mitigate that by having as many relationships as possible something which I do another talks which I've given is where crowdfunded company no UK bank has given us a bank account. Just be clear so we have European banking partners, risk appetite is different I think like none of the big guys HSBC or RBS none of them give us a bank account they just look at us actually, none of the big auditors the top 4 auditors would ordered us which is just ridiculous to be honest on, no we wanted to do it so I can look at off funds or in a look at our compliance dogs do we even audit compliance regime on how we do kyc because we're crowdfund identity, the regulator knows this with a pressure on them we tell the FCA come on guys come on guys what's going on.

We have to do it so that we can be a credible company and then we can deliver value in a way which yeah isn't kind of. I don't have using users Trust basically. That's your question please. And then only have like £100 £1,000. I guess the question is what does it do to our product yet.

I mean it's not great for us all we have to do is build relationships prove that we can be good actors, prove that we are systems and Depeche which we've given them about how, but basically you're an idiot to do fraud on the system because of the provenance of the data on chain is actually a credible argument and you know this is what we believe we're going to try and show this over time, I'm here then there was one of the back. Ok so I'm the wrong person to answer this but he's a hardware Guy which histology guide on giannis.

Yeah there's another speaker talking about this actually that's the specialism at the moment I trust and iOS, but I trust live crypto which ships with the SDK so I have no third-party libraries by having implicit Trust on Apple, and the Architecture of the inter architectural research providing which they call the secure enclave, entire SG something you've guys will know this I have some trust there but I'm outsourcing to basically apple right now when I move the Android this is where we just got Apple first, Android doesn't have unified experience without iOS you can go back a few Generations probably iPhone 6s, the last two or three generations and they have some assurances around the trust me you can speak about this better than me so there is implicit rustler.

Yeah know that guy. Did you have a question ok yeah. That's a great question so, images DPI point of view when you apply for the card you become there with joint we're going to argue about this a bit were both joint data controllers of your data you are creating an account with an issuing bank in the UK. Am I you do open banking stuff so the kyc requirement is both on us and on them so because they are users in with facilitating there goes to going to fear we have to hold this kyc information for 6 years after you leave a product,

but they showing bank underneath gets updated to so on both us and the issuing bank and that depends on jurisdiction, that makes sense crypto to Fiat. So yeah with our product that's a good question so I'll product there is a wallet there with all of this my contract stuff which you can use and deploy and give you a self-assurance around whether or not, if someone compromises your key what could you get some protection to all of that stuff, you can have in use without ever going to the card crypto to crypto behaviour which is facilitated throughout application, is from our point of view we don't want to it we don't ask you for pii we don't ask you to identify who you you are we don't know those customers soon as you want to go from crypto into Fiat,

we have to know how you are and we ask you lots of information. And the only insurance is we can give the people is an illegal level and a terms of service level saying that we're not going to profit from that and then the other way and I can't do anything on chain about that right now that's why we're looking at the source of an identity Solutions. I'm does question want behind I think then then. I mean so we don't put any information about you on chain so lots of people ask about your neff support.

And yeah like why can't I add my ens to this I don't want to force users to put their t&s but if someone wants to identify themselves on the chain to say that this is them. That's fine, different sample you use the app to send your friends for me because they bought dinner or whatever they can socially engineer that that's who you are because the chain is immutable and the date Alyssa forever. I mean that's that. So I mean if you have lots of money you probably not gonna put all of it in the one place you're probably gonna put it in different places will put some of their and cold storage of some of it on a ledger.

Or you just ology, but yeah this is why I'm interested in the zero-knowledge side of things I think there is a world and I'm happy to talk about this offline where, you can be more private on ethereum is just costly, and it's all new tech at the moment that said even with my imagines your knowledge implementation account done the fact how much money you have on how much input into the the dark wood of a thermal always be public. And yeah.