imagine if your local bus would not
accept pound coins because the bus
driver thought they were worthless
pieces of metal or imagine if the
ride-sharing app that you used to come
here tonight would not drop you off at
your destination unless you agreed to
share all your mobility history with
their business partners or imagine if in
the most recent London local election
you had to take your birth certificate
down to the polling station to prove
your identity and even then they’d want
to call your mother to verify that you
are who you say you are all of these
transactions rely on one thing trust
trust that the pound coins are backed by
the Bank of England as legal currency
trust that your movements won’t be
unnecessarily tracked and shared and
trust that your digital identity card
actually represents who you are trust is
fundamental to the fluid functioning of
human society it reduces friction and
enables us to have relationships of all
kinds from commerce to governance early
in human history place and locality were
critical to our sense of trust we
trusted those people who live nearby us
and people who we knew if there was a
problem we knew where to find them and
social pressure of Elijah’s them to
change their behavior but as we moved
farther away from home and started
transacting and interacting with
strangers we had to develop institutions
to reduce uncertainty for example in
Renaissance Italy we developed banking
and financial products to facilitate
trade with faraway lands and in the 19th
century redeveloped government issued
passports to verify identity even today
we rely on many forms of intermediary
to validate trust for example auditors
bankers brokers lawyers and real estate
agents but the internet changed how we
trust and communicate and I believe in
the near future new technologies will
automate trust reduce our need for
middlemen and decouple
our sense of trust from our attachment
to place let me explain how I’ve come to
this conclusion eighteen years ago I was
living in London house this very same
building from where I’m speaking to you
now and I was a student of international
relations at the London School of
Economics by day time I was studying
sovereignty and political trust and at
night time I was exploring ecommerce and
digital trust this was the heyday of the
internet and very early stages this is
what we now call web version 1.0
information was easily accessible online
and we knew everything we read online to
be actually true entrepreneurs all
around me we’re building transformative
ecommerce business models that they
thought were sure bets for success
including companies like pets.com now I
too wanted to have an impact for my
immediate community so I created a
website that helped graduating students
find jobs it was called desperate
student com surprisingly or
unsurprisingly the project wasn’t a huge
success possibly because people didn’t
trust my online branding so I put my
head down and it fears later I found
myself deep in another startup this time
an e-commerce company that sold kite
surfing equipment online we had a really
innovative business model we sold
directly to consumers
I passed the middlemen in our supply
chain and passed the cost savings to
consumers in the form of lower prices
and they loved us but everybody else in
the industry
and they banned us from every single
industry event now if you remember the
early days of e-commerce you weren’t
quite sure if it was safe to trust your
credit card information online for
shopping well without digital trust
ecommerce would be impossible whether
for a small kitesurfing company or a
giant like eBay and by the mid 2000s we
gradually learned that not everything we
learned on the internet was true and
that we couldn’t trust every nigerian
prince that we met online
so we gravitated to online platforms
that facilitated trust that streamlined
ecommerce and that encouraged social
interaction
this was web version 2.0 and it allowed
us to trust people and do things that we
would never have historically done
before for example getting into a random
perfect strangers car and asking for an
uber ride instead of using our beloved
London taxis or renting a room in a
stranger’s house on Airbnb instead of
staying at a trusted hotel I think that
we are on the verge of a new era in the
internet and in this new era
transactions will occur directly
peer-to-peer and without the need for
middleman or centralized platforms that
have historically acted as gatekeepers
of trust we are going from an Internet
of information and commerce to an
Internet of trust and value and in this
web version 3.0 online collaboration
will be distributed across the network
and won’t be subject to traditional
hierarchy and this will be done largely
on the backbone of a technology called
blockchain now you may have heard this
buzzword so let me try to explain it as
simply as possible
a blockchain is a distributed database
of information stored in duplicate
across thousands of computers across the
world every time a new piece of
information is added to this database
what we call a block computers around
the world encrypt this data privately
and added securely to all the previous
blocks in the database hence the term
block chain and once a new block is
created it becomes unchangeable because
every subsequent block is built on the
encrypted data of all the previous
blocks just like a giant nesting doll so
you can essentially imagine the
blockchain
to be a permanent database that will
allow you to either store digital
information like earth certificates or
digital value like virtual currencies so
you might ask what does this have to do
with trust
well the blockchain is decentralized
what that means is that there’s no
central authority that manages it and
trust is determined by the entire
community consensus and by virtual
currencies which you may have heard of
like Bitcoin and ether and they’re not
the only two virtual currencies there
are thousands of others being used right
now to develop applications that don’t
rely on intermediaries or even humans
for trust so what happens when we
automate trust well number one we’re
going to piss off a lot of people a lot
of people who right now rely on their
roles as intermediaries middlemen and
gatekeepers of trust and believe me they
will fight tooth and nail not to be
bypassed just like they did in the kite
surfing industry and number two and more
importantly we are going to empower
every citizen to take control of their
digital lives
and own their data on the Internet
so remember the three scenarios I
introduced the beginning of this talk
let’s explore what they look like in the
very near future a bus driver accepts
your pound coins because he trusts that
the Bank of England has deemed this as
legal currency but virtual currencies
don’t rely on the backing or trust of
any central bank and that’s by design
virtual currencies derive their value
from scarcity and limited supply just
like gold which also isn’t regulated by
central bank but our society thinks it
has value a blockchain and virtual
currencies allow us to access new ways
of capital and release new ways of value
so in the future when you write the bus
you may not pay the fare using pound
sterling you may pay it using a digital
currency and you probably earned that
digital currency as a reward for having
done something deemed socially valuable
for example volunteering to take care of
the elderly or reducing your carbon
footprint or water consumption and what
about the ride-sharing app that has all
your mobility data let’s hypothetically
say you live in a country who doesn’t
like your political opinions and the
government wants to track you to better
understand your relationships well in an
authoritarian country the ride-sharing
app probably doesn’t have much choice
but to share that data with the state
and while this is more difficult in
democracies even democracies the
pressure technology firms to get access
to encrypted data behind closed doors
all right if that ride-sharing app was
built on blockchain technology your
mobility data could not be accessed by
those for whom it was not intended
that’s because there’s no central
authority to subpoena for the documents
or to sue so you can trust the
Chane to keep your data private and your
information unsensible and when we go
vote in the future you’ll be able to do
it online securely as opposed to going
down to the polling station and queuing
and showing a piece of paper that could
have been forged we can build blockchain
based identity systems that will allow
you to vote online securely from
anywhere and if you think this is
far-fetched Estonia which is the world’s
most advanced digital nation already has
blockchain based identity systems and
allows all of its citizens to vote
online securely in addition to a whole
host of other government services so in
case you’re jealous you can become an
Estonian ear esident and access the same
kind of services using this block chain
based identity system even if you don’t
live in Estonia or the European Union
which most of you won’t next year in the
future blockchain technology will
radically alter our familiar
relationships with place institutions of
trust and even economic value and when
trust becomes automated and increasingly
transparent I believe that we’ll be able
to express our humanity freely anytime
anywhere and without fear of ownership
censorship or reprisal
ladies and gentlemen that is a true
promise of the Internet
thank you you
accept pound coins because the bus
driver thought they were worthless
pieces of metal or imagine if the
ride-sharing app that you used to come
here tonight would not drop you off at
your destination unless you agreed to
share all your mobility history with
their business partners or imagine if in
the most recent London local election
you had to take your birth certificate
down to the polling station to prove
your identity and even then they’d want
to call your mother to verify that you
are who you say you are all of these
transactions rely on one thing trust
trust that the pound coins are backed by
the Bank of England as legal currency
trust that your movements won’t be
unnecessarily tracked and shared and
trust that your digital identity card
actually represents who you are trust is
fundamental to the fluid functioning of
human society it reduces friction and
enables us to have relationships of all
kinds from commerce to governance early
in human history place and locality were
critical to our sense of trust we
trusted those people who live nearby us
and people who we knew if there was a
problem we knew where to find them and
social pressure of Elijah’s them to
change their behavior but as we moved
farther away from home and started
transacting and interacting with
strangers we had to develop institutions
to reduce uncertainty for example in
Renaissance Italy we developed banking
and financial products to facilitate
trade with faraway lands and in the 19th
century redeveloped government issued
passports to verify identity even today
we rely on many forms of intermediary
to validate trust for example auditors
bankers brokers lawyers and real estate
agents but the internet changed how we
trust and communicate and I believe in
the near future new technologies will
automate trust reduce our need for
middlemen and decouple
our sense of trust from our attachment
to place let me explain how I’ve come to
this conclusion eighteen years ago I was
living in London house this very same
building from where I’m speaking to you
now and I was a student of international
relations at the London School of
Economics by day time I was studying
sovereignty and political trust and at
night time I was exploring ecommerce and
digital trust this was the heyday of the
internet and very early stages this is
what we now call web version 1.0
information was easily accessible online
and we knew everything we read online to
be actually true entrepreneurs all
around me we’re building transformative
ecommerce business models that they
thought were sure bets for success
including companies like pets.com now I
too wanted to have an impact for my
immediate community so I created a
website that helped graduating students
find jobs it was called desperate
student com surprisingly or
unsurprisingly the project wasn’t a huge
success possibly because people didn’t
trust my online branding so I put my
head down and it fears later I found
myself deep in another startup this time
an e-commerce company that sold kite
surfing equipment online we had a really
innovative business model we sold
directly to consumers
I passed the middlemen in our supply
chain and passed the cost savings to
consumers in the form of lower prices
and they loved us but everybody else in
the industry
and they banned us from every single
industry event now if you remember the
early days of e-commerce you weren’t
quite sure if it was safe to trust your
credit card information online for
shopping well without digital trust
ecommerce would be impossible whether
for a small kitesurfing company or a
giant like eBay and by the mid 2000s we
gradually learned that not everything we
learned on the internet was true and
that we couldn’t trust every nigerian
prince that we met online
so we gravitated to online platforms
that facilitated trust that streamlined
ecommerce and that encouraged social
interaction
this was web version 2.0 and it allowed
us to trust people and do things that we
would never have historically done
before for example getting into a random
perfect strangers car and asking for an
uber ride instead of using our beloved
London taxis or renting a room in a
stranger’s house on Airbnb instead of
staying at a trusted hotel I think that
we are on the verge of a new era in the
internet and in this new era
transactions will occur directly
peer-to-peer and without the need for
middleman or centralized platforms that
have historically acted as gatekeepers
of trust we are going from an Internet
of information and commerce to an
Internet of trust and value and in this
web version 3.0 online collaboration
will be distributed across the network
and won’t be subject to traditional
hierarchy and this will be done largely
on the backbone of a technology called
blockchain now you may have heard this
buzzword so let me try to explain it as
simply as possible
a blockchain is a distributed database
of information stored in duplicate
across thousands of computers across the
world every time a new piece of
information is added to this database
what we call a block computers around
the world encrypt this data privately
and added securely to all the previous
blocks in the database hence the term
block chain and once a new block is
created it becomes unchangeable because
every subsequent block is built on the
encrypted data of all the previous
blocks just like a giant nesting doll so
you can essentially imagine the
blockchain
to be a permanent database that will
allow you to either store digital
information like earth certificates or
digital value like virtual currencies so
you might ask what does this have to do
with trust
well the blockchain is decentralized
what that means is that there’s no
central authority that manages it and
trust is determined by the entire
community consensus and by virtual
currencies which you may have heard of
like Bitcoin and ether and they’re not
the only two virtual currencies there
are thousands of others being used right
now to develop applications that don’t
rely on intermediaries or even humans
for trust so what happens when we
automate trust well number one we’re
going to piss off a lot of people a lot
of people who right now rely on their
roles as intermediaries middlemen and
gatekeepers of trust and believe me they
will fight tooth and nail not to be
bypassed just like they did in the kite
surfing industry and number two and more
importantly we are going to empower
every citizen to take control of their
digital lives
and own their data on the Internet
so remember the three scenarios I
introduced the beginning of this talk
let’s explore what they look like in the
very near future a bus driver accepts
your pound coins because he trusts that
the Bank of England has deemed this as
legal currency but virtual currencies
don’t rely on the backing or trust of
any central bank and that’s by design
virtual currencies derive their value
from scarcity and limited supply just
like gold which also isn’t regulated by
central bank but our society thinks it
has value a blockchain and virtual
currencies allow us to access new ways
of capital and release new ways of value
so in the future when you write the bus
you may not pay the fare using pound
sterling you may pay it using a digital
currency and you probably earned that
digital currency as a reward for having
done something deemed socially valuable
for example volunteering to take care of
the elderly or reducing your carbon
footprint or water consumption and what
about the ride-sharing app that has all
your mobility data let’s hypothetically
say you live in a country who doesn’t
like your political opinions and the
government wants to track you to better
understand your relationships well in an
authoritarian country the ride-sharing
app probably doesn’t have much choice
but to share that data with the state
and while this is more difficult in
democracies even democracies the
pressure technology firms to get access
to encrypted data behind closed doors
all right if that ride-sharing app was
built on blockchain technology your
mobility data could not be accessed by
those for whom it was not intended
that’s because there’s no central
authority to subpoena for the documents
or to sue so you can trust the
Chane to keep your data private and your
information unsensible and when we go
vote in the future you’ll be able to do
it online securely as opposed to going
down to the polling station and queuing
and showing a piece of paper that could
have been forged we can build blockchain
based identity systems that will allow
you to vote online securely from
anywhere and if you think this is
far-fetched Estonia which is the world’s
most advanced digital nation already has
blockchain based identity systems and
allows all of its citizens to vote
online securely in addition to a whole
host of other government services so in
case you’re jealous you can become an
Estonian ear esident and access the same
kind of services using this block chain
based identity system even if you don’t
live in Estonia or the European Union
which most of you won’t next year in the
future blockchain technology will
radically alter our familiar
relationships with place institutions of
trust and even economic value and when
trust becomes automated and increasingly
transparent I believe that we’ll be able
to express our humanity freely anytime
anywhere and without fear of ownership
censorship or reprisal
ladies and gentlemen that is a true
promise of the Internet
thank you you
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