N2B: Bringing Ethereum to Real Use Cases

Transcript

hello hello everybody well my name is antoni and i am here to present you i'm from polygon hermes and i'm here to present you the next two billion users and all how we can bring all the ethereum technology to real use cases and according to the experience after our trip through africa then why we are interested in this mainly is because as a founder the three of us the three founders jordy was performing some hackathons in indonesia with eduard that he will come with me later also 20 years ago i spent one year in ivory coast

next to burkina and mali and our third founder of hermes david is really supportive on all these aspects then we have been in this research trip through different well situations in in in africa i mean we have been in one of the bigger refugees settlement in the world that is nazi valley we have seen how it works a coffee plantation and how traceability can help here or also we were and we have seen how community tokens can help in the islams of nairobi or the townships of of johannesburg but why i'm today here and which is the difference with 20

years ago when i was already held there it's mainly that we have the technology we have ethereum we have a community and we have something completely new and revolutionary that can help us to bring solutions to these people then we started this project four months ago we decided to fund a research initiative with flyer that is the the company of eduard also afterwards when we merged polygon uh the founders and well they they were really supportive on this and and they encouraged us also to move in this direction then we did a test research

where with different parameters of our economist and and the people of the team they decided to to rank all the different countries after that there was a mapping exercise i mean once the countries are rated there were remote interviews we analyzed infrastructure also they defy use cases uh that that are promoting development not the crypto trading and we decided to see where we can have more impact and after that we decided to start with east africa then there we found two tier one countries that are kenya which is the country with more

mobile payments in the world south africa it's it's a very developed country then there was a second level at year two that was uganda uganda is the bigger producer of coffee in the world is the country with more wildlife biodiversity and there were also some countries that they are they have huge infrastructure problems a lack of investments like zimbabwe or zambia and we were there to analyze what is happening after that we we started our our road trip we can say we had more than 200 interviews i mean it was really intense and from there what we have seen is

basically that there are three pillars that should be addressed the first one is related with education i mean local developers they they need to they don't have enough access to to ethereum tools also when we were in incubators all the entrepreneurs are really focused on web through web 2 almost nobody is in web 3. this was a surprise then we need to create this awareness also what happens is that once an entrepreneur is successful a developer is also brilliant he leaves the country and and he's hired by an international company which means that human capital there is a scarcity of human capital

on regulation we work with ministers with lawyers with local people they are really scared when they listen blockchain they think we are speaking about the scammers in this country the experience is not really good on that then we need to educate them to explain what we are bringing and at the same time journalists are very focused on these on these use cases and then we need to explain them which is the value that ethereum can can add to them finally and and it's clear there are use cases where blockchain technology can fix ongoing problems as related with payment platform with kyc and identity with

nfts to protect wildlife i mean there are a lot of things that can be addressed and we are already working on that nevertheless it's true that all these three pillars they should they should be addressed globally this is this is an ecosystem approach i mean because if for example in kenya it was curious to me that everything seems perfectly aligned but the regulator and the government is totally against blockchain then although the entrepreneurs have very good initiatives they are not going to be able to succeed if the the regulators and the government is is not seeing the value added of of ethereum okay

then we we had all these all these initiatives but also what we have seen and i'm sure that all of you that you are here you want to help is also embedded in our dna as as ethereum believers we can say but also maybe because we are swamped we have hundreds of things to do we don't have the time also we don't know to who we should address there is this lack of trust but meaning to who i should give my money at the same time there are the local players they are brilliant they have a lot of initiative they we they don't need that that we we really we guide them i mean they know the problems that they have and they are

trying to address it but also they don't know to with whom they should speak in fact the only two startups that they had international contacts one by was leaded by a european woman and the other by a north american woman also i mean they they are the ones who know how to play this international game okay then with this in mind we decided to set up an approach with one person that we know that is edward he has more than 20 years of experience in international development then please come and explain how how we address this this common effort thank you tony so

thank you i've i've had the chance and the opportunity to work in places like pakistan afghanistan central america and the last 20 the last 10 years in this hell and different parts of africa and having been in international development for so long i don't think i have ever been excited about my job as i am now what i see here coming from a different angle that you guys come is an opportunity to address international development in a very different way in a way that is quick that is agile that does not have head over costs where you can get things done and we can adapt what's one of the major differences apart from this that i'm seeing you have a technology

that at the end of the day needs to work with people that's the main objective of blockchain at the end of the day right and on the other hand you have a number of local organizations who have a lot to offer so you have a situation that is really a opportunity for both sides this is not a top-down approach like we sometimes see in international development it's two different groups of partners who have the opportunity to build and work together on the one hand you have international players who can provide finance and expertise obviously but on the other hand and i think this is super important to understand is that the local players the local actors they are bringing a number of things the first one is that nobody

except them understands what the issues at hand are in their country i i talk a lot about social good i don't know what social issues are in kenya that's the kenyans that know right um also they are they have that energy but most importantly what they have is access to a huge huge huge market for this ecosystem so this goes both ways this is where we need to work to get things going both ways through transactions right so this is what they can both provide at the same time these groups also need to receive something in exchange for this to work so international organizations at the end of the day we need transactions

we need the system to work right we need to understand what is happening in these developing markets what are the trends how are they thinking about blockchain what are their thoughts not our thoughts and on this side what can how can they help they can provide this market know-how and these transactions so the the idea is to create the situation where both can win however as tony mentioned before there's that gap how do you create that connection and that trust and this is where we think we can come in by understanding international development and blockchain right what would be our role first of all as a connector that's a basic one connecting sure everybody knows how to connect you go on linkedin etc right but

more importantly for many of these projects we can act as an implementer we can support for example somebody working in environmental issues that sees the possibility using blockchain but they understand environment blockchain and we can support them implementing there or you can see that the local players understand better technology but not the societal problem at hand so we can come in there and work with them to make sure that these projects go somewhere and just as importantly what what you need to do is to understand where is that money going is that money being properly used you need to monitor and track and evaluate projects consistently unless you do that it just goes into a big

black hole it is hard to follow and it's hard to know if this investment is bringing in transactions hence the idea of creating that trust that goes from both sides that goes both ways which is very different from how we've seen many projects in international development until now we've been speaking already to a bunch of potential uh partners on this of um [Music] first and foremost of course the ethereum ecosystem all of you right to be able to be here today we have also worked with the ethereum foundation who's been helping us with this research with our sister organization that we have that has allowed us to come up with these ideas and we've been speaking with a venture capitalist funds to to share potential ideas see where they see the future going with

blockchain et cetera so it's not only about funding it's about sharing knowledge we've been talking uh obviously um with polygonish thanks to them that we are here so mikhail thank you thank you very much tony to understand that link with the blockchain world and international development has been many months working together uh we're in early stages discussions with with maker of how can we start adding transparency through a stable coin potentially when we work on these projects transparency is one of the big problems in the world we'll see it in a second item 3 is doing with tony is doing some very interesting work in in the space also and finally uh coinbase is uh uh sorry um carbon base is one of our partners because we need

to think about carbon neutrality and we need to transmit that carbon neutrality to the players so we've been looking at a bunch of projects and we would like to present to you two or three initiatives because at the end of the day you know what's wrong about our presentation is that we are doing it we should not be presenting africa this presentation should actually be done by the people that understand the issues at hand the best but unfortunately due to kovid uh we couldn't break our african team here because they are the ones that because because of covert obviously right but they are the ones that are designing the projects they are the ones that are thinking how this needs to be made and how this needs to move forward so we

still try to get a peek by sharing with you a couple of videos of what they are what their thoughts are so bear with us and i hope that the sound is good enough hello rio hi i'm rio button a south african conservation biologist covert's knock-on effects have been catastrophic for africa's people and wildlife we're facing a crisis like never before our capacity for wildlife protection and conservation funding has been slashed while throughout africa the loss of income to local people has caused the exponential increase in wildlife poaching for food as conservation biologists

we've scrambled to support our local communities and protect wildlife despite a major funding source wildlife tourism vanishing almost overnight we need new african conservation solutions as part of wildcards i'm working with polygon and flyer to create these solutions we're collaborating with local partners across africa to support them in creating local solutions and alternative income streams for local people and the conservation of wildlife

including gorillas rhinos and giraffes protecting our wildlife is critical for the future of africa and its people so why do why do we think this case is particularly interesting it's not only about getting nfts to support the animals that's very important yes there's a case that is detected where you have a problem because of covid which can be solved potentially through getting more funding because you have no tourism right now in different ecosystems like the ecosystem of the african giraffes in niger or in uganda

the gorillas right but what happens if you take all this money from nfts and you just put it in a big pool in a in a country you don't know where it's going that's one of the big problems in development and this is why i'm so excited is because tools like in that like blockchain allow you to be able to trace that funding so we can support the implementation and make sure we understand where those funds are going and to ensure that these funds are spent on the ranges that are working as a conservation so it's about working with a potential with a stable coin we've been talking to make a bit about this to be able to track that right so we always try to find more than one societal problem environment good governance etc um

this is georgian kenya who works on coffee my name is george maina from kenya kenya is one of the biggest and largest producers of the best coffee globally right now one kg of coffee retails between 15 us dollars to 20 u.s dollars globally but right now back at home the kenyan farmer gets less than one u.s dollars in terms of pay per kg of coffee and the major cost of this is lack of digitization as well as the middlemen involved as chamber record search we do we provide a real-time farm management tool that's able to collect data from the farm level that's the production user from the farm as well as is able to create a digital identity that runs on blockchain technology

through that we're able to trace the origin of the coffee and again we're able to reduce and the number of middlemen in the valley chain and again we're able to increase the value as well as the pay of the farmer by 20 right now we've been impacting over 10 000 farmers through the help of polygon together with flyer and we hope to impact close to 1 million farmers in the next 18 months so it's our call that you join us on this journey so that you can be able to impact more as well as we can be able to use blockchain technology for greater good thank you george is already working with around 10 000 farmers that means transactions transactions transactions right and we we think this case is particularly

interesting because we need to look at it from a push-pull perspective it's very good that on the one hand you have these local ecosystems who want those projects out but there's also an international tendency where there's a demand in the market for products that are responsibly sourced so we see the opportunity there and the solution has to go through blockchain there are many other cases that are very strong with um transactions and tony's going to close these really really quickly thanks edward then what i want to bring here are tangible use cases where we are helping we are providing a solution but at the same time are creating millions of transactions first of all these remittances when we were in zimbabwe

they are paying 20 in fees for a money transfer you can and zimbabwe is one of the poorest countries in the world i mean this shouldn't be allowed then in our case we are providing a solution on blockchain of course if we run that on top of polygon what i can say or a layer two you will pay zero zero zero one cent i mean there is transactions there is a but you are not paying at twenty percent let's be clear on that we are providing a solution also we are speaking with some of you related with the stable coins these were the discussions with maker that we were speaking about and here what i want to highlight is that this should be a win-win situation we have the technology and we can fix a

huge problem we can bring the tools to fix a huge problem that they have another example land rights it happens that the same property is sold more than once and then people because there is a corrupted system is not working properly and people suddenly they they they don't have the ownership of the house then with with this solution we are already working with local lawyers with a consultant company this is already happening and once we have the poc we will present it to the government then i have the last seconds i will try to go really fast but i want to wrap up everything first on education we need hackathons we need bootcamps we are speaking with universities if if you

can help there you are more than welcome we need to to train entrepreneurs journalists in order to build this ecosystem one once this public influence is built we can speak with governments with lawyers we can we can explain the benefits to the mainstream media and the use cases we will succeed if there are successful use cases for this reason we came back almost four weeks ago and as you have seen we are already working on pocs on we signed ndas mous and and and we need to show how well our technology is working and we need to create awareness in conferences like this one in in in blogs online and more important last but not least all this is a

the glue is this monitoring evaluation of the fans and there is a continuous curve of learning this know-how can be implemented in future use cases final remarks this is a community effort i mean we are leading this as of today as polygon but as you can see we are including different partners we need to to jump from a niche technology that we are today for these countries to become mainstream then please feel free to reach out to us we have the knowledge of international development we have this know-how with our partnership we can implement this monitor and an evaluation evaluation approach

this is this has a huge potential for this reason i speak about next two billion users this is only the first trip on east africa we are planning another to west africa another to central america we're already speaking with some of you and another to south america this is a structured we are approaching then please if you have any idea come to us we want to partner with you and finally i'm going to insist about this once more time everybody's welcome i mean i don't pretend to take the credit but you should have in mind that 75 75 percent of the people in africa is below 35 years fifty percent is below 15 i mean is the count the continuing with more potential

in the world the next one is latime and and it's in our roadmap then feel free to reach out to us as you can see this is already happening which projects are moving forward then let's go together for these next two billion users thanks for for your time thank you guys