[Music] thank you [Music] hi my name is Ian Khan after meeting with hundreds of professionals experts industry practitioners over the last few years I found a severe need within the industry across the board to help figure out what the fuss was all about with this new technology called blockchain blockchain city is the true story of blockchain and the reality of how it impacts us all as people our cities our workplaces our families and our future [Music] sometime after the year 2008 an entity or a group of people under the synonym of Satoshi Nakamoto came out with the famous white paper that highlighted a new electronic form of currency that would independently change everything about money a new Revolution had begun blockchain was the core technology Foundation of this new currency and this revolution has now culminated into a global phenomenon governments private and public sector firms are embarking on creating more value more change and solving some of the world's biggest problems [Music] foreign [Music] my journey of understanding this Global movement to create more trust secure our transactions and create more value started in the city of Dubai this is where the vision of Tomorrow is driving an aggressive strategy of how technology and argument our capabilities follow me on this journey as I embark on a quest to find the truth from those who know best where we're headed in the middle of the Arabian Peninsula one of the most well-known cities is Dubai a fast growing metropolis and the epicenter of change in the Middle East Dubai has always been synonymous with progress challenging is the status quo and dreaming big the government of Dubai with its vision of Tomorrow powered by technology has embarked on an aggressive plan to enable a blockchain-based government by 2020. the United Arab Emirates also has a national plan to enable blockchain across all seven Emirates in the next decade or so smart and how to deal with these Technologies doesn't matter if there's a blockchain or big data or any type of Technologies even our smart devices as long as we know why we are using it if you don't know how to use them go and educate yourself make sure that you utilize the the best of of these Technologies for your own benefit we need to be wise enough to understand what these technologies will add value to my life and for me personally as long as it will make my life much simpler and much easier I will go for it from manufacturing to Logistics Transportation Healthcare and real estate every sector every industry is set to undergo a radical shift in the next few years potentially because of blockchain yet we do not understand blockchain to an extent where we could really be comfortable with it to date technology has been a domain of computer programmers experts and leaders alone but just like blockchain Promises democratization of Technology we need to break down the barriers to understand blockchain itself we must find out what blockchain really is and more than that how it can be defined by what value it brings a blockchain is essentially a breakthrough in database technology it's a new kind of database system that because of its architecture enables everybody on the system to trust the system it's a tool for decentralizing relationships contracts and decision making so that they aren't mediated by Gatekeepers of various kinds it's a very powerful idea if you use a little example here to make it a bit more illustrative to the viewers you could think of a transaction which we all observe so let's assume all the viewers here which are watching us right now would have a little black notebook on their lap and would kind of take notes of all the transactions they are seeing and they are seeing right now a person here standing which maybe not they are not familiar with and that person is holding twenty dollars in his hands so you have super sharp eyes and you can see the ID and everything and this is a legal token so now you see that I give this twenty dollars to this gentleman over here which you don't know but you have seen the transaction took place now you write this transaction in your little black notebook and calculate a little sum to that and you add all the subsequent transactions to that now let's say in five minutes I'm saying oh wait a minute that went twenty dollars that were hundred dollars and I want my hundred dollars back so all the people who are viewing this transaction I would have now to to convince that their transaction which have been kind of jotted down in their little black notebooks are not actually twenty dollars but hundred dollars now how would I do that right because I don't know how many people actually have a lecture have written down this transaction and on top of that I would have kind of pried my way through I have to persuade them to change the entry why would they do that right because they don't know me there's nothing they can gain here and in in parallel all the other transactions which are ongoing because more people kind of doing payments they have to be jotted down as well so they would be super busy and that would be prohibitively expensive for me to do so so economically it doesn't make sense despite the various explanations that blockchain is defined as it's still hard to sometimes comprehend the actual technology and for that we must understand it Beyond just its architecture one of the most Innovative and forward-thinking countries in the world is also one of the tiniest European nations Estonia over the last two decades or so Estonia has really laid the foundation of a digitally powered nation and is now reaping its Rewards Tonya is also considered to be a leader in blockchain which in some ways is often a less represented fact Estonia kind of had blockchain databases before the term blockchain was coined but I would have to say that Estonia is not a blockchain nation so we don't run fully on blockchain we just happen to be in a position where we created similar databases that are now referred to as blockchain Technologies and we use that in our people's registry and to run our state databases and systems one of the other benefits of blockchain is also Mass collaboration and the ease of sharing information to create value the Netherlands with its Dutch blockchain Coalition is spearheading efforts to create Global awareness and impact it's missing piece to support collaboration between different companies between different governments in a supply chain it can help you to work together and to give you as a person a better user experience and make new things possible and yet where would we be without really addressing the need for us humans to live a life of acknowledgment respect dignity and value maybe blockchain can help us realize our true human potential for me blockchain is going to help me become more me it's going to celebrate my individuality I feel like the IP of who we are and our ideas will have value and meaning and I think that's going to be a huge shift [Music] the idea of blockchain being a radical new technology that can address many different challenges we currently face as people across the world is sometimes hard to accept how can one technology often confused with Bitcoin have so many different applications the answer may be similar to something we faced about 30 years ago with the mass commercialization of personal Computing Skeptics back then probably asked how could computers be used in every profession how can they increase productivity how can microprocessors change the world today we have overcome all of those questions as time has proved the value of computing technology beyond anything we could have imagined what then are some of the possibilities of blockchain and how can we really use it Beyond just Financial there are literally thousands of projects that people are building out identity systems reputation systems governance tools accounting systems for us it was just the kind of financial benefit and the ease of actually accessing Digital Services or public services that you don't have to go to the tax man and stay there for you know two hours and sign a piece of paper that you could do it from your computer it's just comfort and it saves you a lot of time also it saves you financing when we started the smart Dubai initiative in 2014 we continued with this kind of research exercise to see what are the Advanced Technologies emerging technologies that will take Dubai to its next level you know that in Dubai we started digitization of our government in 2000 so we've been into that can now almost two decades AIDS and digitizing our infrastructure we know today whenever anyone talk about blockchain they think about the financial sector but we dig deeper what blockchain is enabling us is doing something like social goods if you for example look into what the United Nations are doing or the World Wildlife Fund using the blockchain technology to prevent overfishing in the South Pacific or to prevent children trafficking by using blockchain technology then you can see that they are really kind of societal problems which can be addressed or are currently addressed in prototypes by blockchain implementations from efficiency to identity management Financial transactions and more there seems to be a vast range of applications for blockchain we started as a Publishers and we saw the print media going down we were trying to find the answers you know where it is going what is the media future so we were thinking that we need to give all the power to the voters those who create the media and we realized very quickly that there are so many inequalities in the world and that without giving the ownership to those who really create the value in the in the economy there will be no possibility to bring back the trust and create something that will disrupt this monopolies that are you know controlling the entire media space now Trust democratization and more they also say that blockchain works as a tool for accountability recording every transaction and immutable unalterable and permanent record of things this in fact helps with tracking information because it's always available on the blockchain can every industry benefit from this perhaps one of the big challenges that creative artists face can be solved with blockchain related Technologies so many examples of how it can change the music industry I mean a very simple example is if you've signed a contract for somebody for say a record deal or a publishing deal it's all about percentages and it's about at this point this happens at this point this happens this person gets paid when this is recouped anytime any artist has ever audited a label they've always found money so I think there's something in being able to digitize your contracts into smart contracts to help you interface with the services of the future everyone [Music] of the biggest bug beds in the music industry that's failed time and time again is to try to create a verified authorized Global database of music of songs a repertoire and it's failed time and time again because there's it's been about ownership it's been about this is mine we're going to try and do this all to ourselves but in opening that up and becoming an open database where people can author that and attribute their Worth to that and potentially be a part of that that payment in future also makes these things possible I feel finally we can we can create a music ecosystem that is worthy of the music that we love content creators can now be compensated for their hard work and finally fight the war against piracy which casts the music industry billions of dollars every year but can you and I as content creators benefit from a technology such as blockchain as well we are putting the contents of Wikipedia plus an extra million articles that we've added to Wikipedia on the blockchain what that means is that if somebody creates a new article and adds it to the database they actually mine by doing that some tokens we call them IQ tokens what that means is that you become a co-owner you have a financial stake in the creation and the quality of knowledge it seems like challenges within government banking finance and even real estate could now have an answer to create a higher rate of return on efforts work and productivity in general one of our projects is to add efficiency in our reconciliation system between bank accounts normally the the this kind of transaction take almost 45 days and we thought by implementing blockchain it will add 30 to 40 percent efficiency give us 100 percent it dropped that time from 45 days to zero so why not transferring this experience to the rest transactions and the government whether it be internally and our for instance HR transactions procurement transaction but also the transaction for the users why I should wait like for days or months to buy a house whites not only like a matter of pressing a button just imagine how complicated bureaucracies are right and translating that into code which is what's required by putting those operations on the blockchain sounds like a very tall order there is a natural tension actually between government operations in general and the blockchain because what the blockchain is is disintermediating relationships between individuals thank you distributed disintermediated relationships a distributed ledger so many ways in which blockchain is defined today however at the epicenter of every industry service product and profession is a pivotal need something that forms the foundation of everything that we all inadvertently have a desire for trust and when it comes to the complex workings of governments across the world the need for consensus first you have to find the trust in your citizens that they trust the government with their data it's a psychological thing to to actually earn the trust and then you have to have a very rigid system of infrastructure with these databases that we can actually access different data pull it together I think these are the first steps it's definitely not an easy Journey but to stay competitive I do think it's necessary in Dubai we didn't take a sector individual variance perspective so when we launched this strategy we focus on three elements the first element is to transfer the applicable government services to be 100 percent to be run on top of a blockchain the second component to support building the blockchain industry in Dubai by attracting startups and entrepreneurs in this industry and the third component to to be a global thought leader on scrum to again the blockchain industry once come to transferring the government services we managed to bring almost 60 different bodies whether it be government or non-government and we came up with a 20 use cases that by 2020 will be transferred to to be run on top of blockchain one of them is the real estate but other is having a health health records on top of blockchain educational records and of blockchain and so forth and by bringing all these government agencies and non-government agencies in the same room this by itself was a huge success because the main challenge between in any government not only in Dubai but even globally as the silos happen between government entities they don't talk to each other at the European blockchain Center we do workshops with politicians where we discuss what needs to be done and where to start one very important building block is how you deal with responsibility and accountability how do you regulate blockchain startups as they are virtual and decentralized and distributed in these autonomous organizations so it's really difficult to say how to regulate them and how where they are creating value so it's important for these governments and for this political political decision makers to understand how this system work and how they can how they can contribute to growth and value Creation in those countries [Music] from some of the largest cities to the smallest of towns everyone seems to be driven with this new Need for Change and the story of one such small town on the outskirts of Zurich Switzerland was to become an outlier and to go against the status quo the municipality of zuk is the first in the world to experiment with cryptocurrency payments for governments and also to enable voting over blockchain while this may mean nothing for established democracies in the modern world this could have a deep impact on countries where equality transparency and true democracy is just a notion how did this small town start with an idea so profound that it could have a worldwide impact the city council of Suk five persons from five different parties we wanted to know what's the difference for example between blockchain and and so we invited a young student who explained us this difference we didn't understand everything we decided we accept Bitcoin for payments of certain fees of our city at Administration not tax paying this would have been a little bit too risky and we didn't ask any experts about this he said just do it let's try it and it was really the first time I think in world history that the city Administration that public administration accepted a cryptocurrency and I think it's a good and an easy story to explain people who have that watch blockchain could be and what use cases exist about the blockchain collaboration working together and creating an ecosystem all seem to be the right approach from creating think tanks to councils that help Drive the mission we've seen already many cities and even private sector approaching us to Take Lessons Learned but sometimes also taking the same implementation to be implemented in their cities working very closely with the Estonian government working very closely with the Indian government The Maltese government to share these experiences actually having the the largest blockchain Summit run here in Dubai and attracting more than 100 speakers and more than 6 000 attendees this by itself is a success story by how we shared our experiences here in Dubai and transforming it to the to the World by having this kind of a platform [Music] a lot of cities are working on Smart cities well you can use blockchain to build real smart cities instead of only talking about it so focus on the on the topics which are already important in your city for example street lights with a sensor in it and then the sensor or the street light is broken the sensor triggers a smart contract and the smart contract sends out a micro job and then a certified repair man has fixed the street lights then he gets paid immediately you can't only read about blockchain you must also start these small experiments and the technology is good enough to to run those experiments to understand better what will be the opportunities and also the challenges of blockchain for your own City blockchain technology is often called an enabler for trust but what does this really mean does it mean that everything stored on blockchain is accurate does it mean that blockchain will correct inaccuracies in information or does it just mean that blockchain has a way to account for every piece of information every single time in my understanding technology is a big factor for creating trust if it's not trust that technology enables then what is it how does blockchain create trust in applications that are both critical or at a large scale how would the distributed computing of things such as voting rights enable trust there are many questions to be answered it's really kind of something which is interesting because the discussion around trust is something which is kind of rooted deep in human beings and maybe you trust institutions but essentially they are also human beings now with the promise of blockchain kind of many people argue that there is no need for trusting anymore because there is certainty well of course there's still a need for trust because now you have to trust the technology but the piece which the technology takes care of namely the visibility of the transactions which are now transparent in the open daylight that is something which creates trust that that transaction is secure right but still kind of the the trust element is still here but it's kind of improving the certainty in a transaction there are these fundamental kind of psychological boundaries in older societies I would say people who don't trust their governments at all because they've just had a very bad history of of data breaches and and the government using their data in in an unefficient way in Estonia I can say that we have very tough data privacy laws and once your data is given to the state they can't really use your data if they don't have a ground right so this is this is a very serious offense if someone looks at your data and they don't have a reason to look at their data and we also try to ask the data only once if you have given your data to the government there's no reason why you should do it again blockchain technology will profoundly transform economic social and political systems it is a new trust architecture and we're going to be able to take essentially thousands of years of technology that we've built up to this point and place it on top of a more sound Foundation a more Equitable Foundation also that said it's going to take time for this brand new technology to ramify it requires greater scalability on the public side of things you don't have a lot of scalability and you don't have a lot of privacy and confidentiality you you can do that in some ways but we need more robust mechanisms for privacy and confidentiality we made an app for the transportation of toxic waste and when you transport toxic waste there's a lot of administrative burden almost every truck with waste will cross a border but if the the truck can only use this application until the Border it doesn't make sense at all you must work together with the other countries the truck is passing so it was immediately clear for us we must work together with the mid Belgium with Germany so we must collaborate with governments worldwide to share prototype to share knowledge and to make decisions you can also learn faster working together usually in Switzerland trust in government is high that's a good place for making tests with social system I think it's a better system than for example the e-voting systems we already have but they are on a centralized computer the best Advantage this system has is you can always check is my vote my ballot this could be also a measure against corrupt States Maybe uh okay the dictator would have to accept this is amazing that that could be a problem you also can be a little bit critical that that's I think that's necessary it's not to be not to be enthusiastic you must do you must be open for this new technology and yeah I think so you get Trust with daily experience with simple use cases with good stories to tell to the people thanks storytelling is the most important thing yeah as of 2019 the global expansion of blockchain is seen as an unavoidable fact many analysts predict that 2019 will be the year of blockchain when it could break through and become a larger Revolution than it is and primarily driven by expansion of use cases that prove its benefits moreover how would blockchain work with other emerging Technologies including artificial intelligence self-learning robots and machines that can make decisions on our behalf take the Internet of Things the technology behind autonomous cars connected homes and Beyond [Music] the next few years will be a very short time to to tell but when we talk about five plus ten plus years the internet of things will definitely have an effect in the next five years connected by some kind of identity so I do believe that there has to be a global form of identity uh people are in different societies and they want to be connected with each other and blockchain Technology will play a major role there to connect these different databases if you look at the convergence of different Technologies right now as blockchain Ai and internet of things right then it's interesting to see that exactly there you see topics like industry 4.0 or autonomous vehicles autonomous cars and if you think about those kind of machines the smart machines kind of packed with sensors driving over the street with the need to coordinate with other vehicles on the street then you have sensors you have the internet of things you have kind of decision making which is kind of based on probabilistic and probably some AI elements and on top of that you need to have a communication layer an inter-organizational or in this regard a system an operating system across the different Vehicles which makes the transaction secure and certain so that you can know with certainty how those cars communicate in order to kind of bring over through the traffic but it's still very immature and the more projects I run with blockchain technology the more aware you are of imperfections at these moments and the more we study on the security part or the legal Parts the more I understand how much work there is to do to understand better and to regulate I think it's very promising that a lot of governments are taking the leads goes much faster than with the rise of the internet and I don't think that's uh that's a bad thing I think it's it's normal because we've learned so much from the internet Revolution it's normal that that it goes faster this time a future driven by a technology that's relatively new but has matured rather quickly sounds far-fetched is this all a high risk value proposition that can be potentially fatal do we need to be able to stress certain maturity Milestones before we can truly adopt technology at a mass scale perhaps the way we have traditionally adopted technology is also under disruption what should we as regular people expect from the future and how should we accept a tomorrow driven by an era of convergence of blockchain AI internet of things and more of my other city managers colleagues globally asking me don't you fear that blockchain will disrupt your role as a government when talking about government we have main two elements or roles to authenticate transactions and make sure that this transaction is secure blockchain will allow us to even take these two roles to its next level to make sure when there is an authentication component it's it's happened faster and even safer for normal people I don't think they should worry about blockchain or AI or iot they're never going to use a blockchain they may use cryptocurrencies they may use applications that software developers build on blockchains but they don't really use the World Wide Web protocols right now they just use applications that that software developers have hopefully configured into compelling elegant user interfaces where you can essentially have greater agency in your professional life a greater agency in your social political interactions so you will be more in control of what you're doing and in greater ownership if you think about kind of having in the future control over your digital traces for now we know Facebook and the like they have all the data and we have no control over them even though this data belongs to me if you think about using your mobile phone or your credit card or your Facebook account we grew up with this notion of in order to be part of the digital world we have to pay and we pay with our data and we sort of bought into this argument that is not a given we can think of systems which are designed in a way that you stay in control of your digital traces that is important for people to understand that this is potential the Paradigm Shift there could be something like a Facebook on blockchain where you're always kind of in control of your data that also means that you have to have a digital mindset which allows you actually to be able to manage your digital Persona your digital representation and that is something we also have to learn as we accept and know that we are responsible for our body that we are also responsible and in and accountable for our digital person in the digital sphere this technology is really working and it's really easy to to to use this technology you only need a cell phone and not much more and that's something even people in Africa they have it they can't do it it's a chance for people to to have more democracy in the world and their real goal is to make the world better it's not making money first maybe after that but the first step is to improve this world and here technology can help I feel like the things that you want to do in life the things that you're passionate about what helps you to be good for yourself to your friends and to the planet that combination is where I feel this blockchain is beginning to help us be there combination of that Ai and internet of things that combination of intersection of those things and the people being able to follow their dreams ultimately we want to live in harmony with our planet we want to live in harmony with each other [Music] [Music] tomorrow isn't here yet and despite that fact we're actively building the future right now with our actions whether it's blockchain or perhaps something that has not even been invented yet what is the path for us as a species as humans on this planet to make this world a better place but our ability to question things and create paths to do things differently has always led us to changing the Status Quo whether you are someone who is working within an industry or studying to be a professional whether you are a bystander to this revolution of a technology driven world or perhaps an active participant in creating this change you cannot avoid being part of this phase through which humanity is currently going through credible times we have ever seen because the amount of change that has happened over the last 30 years and the change that will potentially happen in the next two decades will redefine us as change makers and dreamers for now the dream of changing the world one town and one city at a time is slowly becoming a reality through the trailblazing efforts of early adopters who question convention and break stereotypes this is the right time to join the race no matter what your pace is this is the best possible environment to start learning about how the world is changing this is a unique opportunity to be part of something where all of us can create value together and turn the dream off happiness fulfillment and positive change into reality so say yes to positive change and accept that change is the only constant [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music]
2023-10-24