Decentralizing Provenance in an Industry 4.0 World | Frontier Talk #3 - Dr. Carsten Stöcker

It says regulatory requirements for provenance, for auditability, for back to birth traceability. If these requirements are there, then these compliance requirements as a business case, because today is a lot of paperwork. It's many work. It's a lot of, let's say quality inspectors. If I can digitize all of this, or if I can avoid fines or penalties, because I'm not compliant.

So this, from our perspective compliance process cost reduction. So that's the business case for short-term implementation. Hello everyone. And welcome to Frontier Talk. The world's first podcast on decentralized identity. I'm Raj Hegde. And in this podcast, we explore the intersection of identity people and technology in his book, skin in the game. And a scene.

Tyler mentioned that society revolves around two types of people, doers, and pontificators my guest on the pod today is someone I've looked up to for a while, a doer who is on a mission to fix the hot things that matter a technologist at heart. He pursued a PhD in physics from RVDA Hawkin, um, to understand how the world works and is leveraging the power of technology for the greater good of society.

He's a highly respected figure in the blockchain space and acts as an advisor to the world economic forum, as part of its global future counsel, you are to share a stake on our provenance as a fundamental technology connect as a force multiplier to bring about positive change in society. Dr. Carsten Stoker, the founder and CEO of austerity. Yeah.

Hi, thanks for having me on your Frontier Talk and I'm glad to be here today. Welcome to the podcast. And I'm speaking to a physicist, uh, to be honest as being always up there on my bucket list. So I'm glad that I could finally scratch it off my list.

Um, so let's get started. Um, you've had an interesting career today. It's spanning across research consulting, a stint at the WEF and now entrepreneurship. So I'm curious to know, how were you introduced to blockchain technology?

We, how I got introduced to blockchain technology basically was a big coincidence. I worked for utility RWE at this time and later it was kind of spun off into energy. I worked at the innovation hub and then there was a Dutch board member and the Dutch partner number basically wants to invent Uber for energy. So at this time, everyone wants to invent Uber for some things they have and be for something to come up as a new digital digital proposition. And basically it was a Dutch board members. The Dutch board member asked one of his friends or freelance and his network.

And the freelancer said, yes, no, I can start working on this and invent Uber for energy. And what's the freelance and residence that he basically wrote a LinkedIn message to his network and asked his network, Hey, anyone in my network can help me to invent Uber for energy.

And then all of the very early Ethereum developer ecosystem, because at this time there was the goal theory team and Amsterdam, and then I think C plus plus theory on team in Berlin and because it was Netherlands and the people from the Netherlands ecosystem said, Hey, yes, we have this fancy new technology, Ethereum, there's all the smart contracts. Why shouldn't we kind of try to not invent Uber for energy, but Uber for energy was out Uber in between, even if it's a disintermediation of Uber.

And that's how I got in touch with the theater production and then be developed as early as 2015, already a peer to peer energy trading prototype, um, for, uh, on, based on smart contracts on the theory. So for households that offer energy because of renewable energy that could do a direct peer to peer energy transaction, other households that would like to consume energy. So with our utility, um, in the, uh, in between, without moving in between, and that is how I got in touch with the blockchain technology. Okay. Right. Brilliant. That's so cool.

Um, there are so many interesting applications of blockchain today, be it, um, decentralized finance or defy, or for computing, I'm curious to know what, uh, got hooked onto decentralized identity and more specifically, why did you choose to specifically tackle the challenge of automating identity verification in end-to-end value chains? It's basically, um, the S mentioned, we did some the Saudis in 2015, some deceptive digitization business model designs and all of them. That was the problem identity.

And I think when you do digitization, I think every digitalization should start with kind of proper identity solution. And, um, that's, that's also another thing from Nobel prize winner, you basically said, okay, if we'd like to solve the identity problem, then we need to solve it end to end.

So, which means, so then, um, let's say as a company, right, and I got a company identifier, there must be someone who says, okay, the companies, the companies that I can start testing the company, and this could be, for example, in Germany would be . So is doing identity verification for company, which means if I get a piece of data from that company signed, I can go back up to the Poulos and saga to find out this is really the company . And that's basically what we call an ends to enter the entire supply chain.

That's still not solved in the internet and on the other. So we truly believe today's internet is, uh, internet with data and , but now we have to transform the internet into an internet for data encrypted and signed and the signing piece it's still not solved and identity supply chain nature. It's still a challenge. And for all other use cases, defined smart contracts, autonomous agents, machines, the contact value identity problem must be softer.

And you would like to kind of answer is very focused on the identity play kind of enabling technology players to do all the other fancy, fancy use cases and digitization propositions. Okay.

Um, and to add to that, um, tracking the provenance of goods, for example, um, is critical to ensure regulatory compliance. So I'm assuming that severities technology is used to provide the required visibility to track raw material provenance, particularly in highly regulated industries, such as, um, food and pharma.

Um, so what are the industries that you primarily target and why is there a core need for your technology specifically? Yeah. Now I would like to, uh, to, to mention two things as a continuum, from my perspective, when you think about identity decent last sentence, the internet, on the one hand side, we have the cypherpunk manifesto. So there's, everything's encrypted and fully autonomous and anonymous transaction systems for humans.

It's on one side of the continuum, a lot of privacy to protect my data and to make sure it's kind of self-sovereign data and no data will be leaking about myself. And on the other side of the continuum, it's basically, um, yeah, I would say surveillance of an object where I would like to have the full back to burst testability back to birth lifecycle history of an object. So are completely two different, um, the poets of the continuum. So then we had 30 would like, of course, to address both of the poles, but I think the human poll is much more difficult.

GDPR does sends inertia to kind of, to convince people, to use specific technologies, specific wandered, very, very tough questions. And we think that the other side of the continuum where I would live to have this full traceability of an object for compliance reasons, for what reasons, because I would like to protect patient heads. I would like to provide, let's say an auditor for circular economy and for the school to kind of, to protect the safety of food, because I have the provenance, I know where it's coming from, and this is the support.

So where we address our technology, because we think from a doctrine perspective, it's kind of more realistic to push it short term into production. And that's what we actually do in the pharma pharma supply chain area. And that's the reason why I put more focus on enterprise and specifically object identity.

And when we do an API is legacy systems, manufacturing, execution systems, global AtWork databases, ERP systems, then API integration is kind of reasonable to be done, but then you can significantly scale technology because then the scale is number of objects as the number of files to good product that's being produced by, by the company, right? Um, some pertinent points that you raised. I think it's a great time to now, um, segue into the role of enterprise identity in supply chains today.

Um, supply chains, as you might know, are often seen as this complex value chain of sorts, comprising of a wide range of parties. Uh, there's no clear understanding as in who actually is part of this entire value chain, you know, be it vendors, wholesalers, regulators, there are a whole bunch of parties. So to say, so could you perhaps start off this discussion by highlighting, what are the typical identities in a traditional end to end lifecycle in a supply chain?

I think when maybe it's pretty difficult because we all need to go to the GS one to this global standardization of identifiers and to have identifies quality digital global trade identification number. And then they have another identifier called civilized. So a GTIN is basic right, and identify for specific product, but similar Streeton is basically breaking it down to batch level and even to see the number level that's one part of the identifiers. Another part for example, is so-called GL and global location number or party GL and PG lands that are presenting a legal entity or company.

And these are the kind of identifiers that are today supply chain, but we cannot verify anything. So we have no instruments in the tools to find out is really coming from a company , which is one identifier or someone else kind of just using the view and adjust producing data on behalf of Jill and of a company, there are no instruments towards, but for compliance post efficiencies, automations, there's an urgent need in regulated industries to have tools in place to verify the authenticity and integrity of data. Right.

So you're pretty much forced to believe, um, what's in front of you essentially. And is that the fundamental issue with supply chains today?

Um, is there a missing trust layer? Yeah, I think today, um, the couple of tools in place one's called EPC, I S when you have specific messages as a tier two supplier tier one supplier, the customer, and then the messages are being created exchange among each other, but still there's no tools to verify the authenticity.

At first, it starts with authenticity of the product. So how can I pull the authenticity of the product from our perspectives, that kind of two different kind of, let's say key technologies in place. So one is to put an identifier on the product and identify if it's a randomized you the number.

So, which means if I'm a malicious actor, for example, the pharma industry and I'm producing fake pharmaceutical products. Yeah. Then it's almost impossible for me to guess a valid serial number because the manufacturer use this randomized serial numbers for, to get packages, which means I, as a verifier, let's say I have a patient, or I have the policy. If I scan the identifier, I can send the request to the manufacturer and send the manufacturers, basically looking at database and finding out is serial number from us, or is it a serial number for malicious actor?

And this is how I can prove the authenticity in addition to what, what, uh, things that maybe that first, the first digital layer in terms of working with randomized to the numbers, um, the, the other, um, technologies can be put on top is security technologies and security features from the money printing industry. And this is very, very see a lot of players that are providing security features that kind of protecting the authenticity of money to make sure we kind of believe in money.

So all these players are also trying to go into supply chain for supply chain integrity for product authenticity use cases. And that's still a big problem, but it doesn't end with product authenticity. It's also about very simple things such as an ear leaflet and electronic leaflets.

Yeah, because if I'm, as a hacker can put a fake leaflet, electronic or digital leaflet can attach it to foster good product, then the patient might get the wrong instructions, how to consume the pharmaceutical product is this could have significant impact on patient health.

But also if we think about machines, if I can sneak in a fake, a leaflet for machine, and then people that are maintaining on starting the machines, they basically, this can be kind of a very bad impact on the health and safety, because if there's a high voltage power line and it doesn't explain how to disable the high, high voltage power line, and that touched the high voltage power line, then it can be very impactful. So it's about authenticity. It's about leaflets. It's about product recalls because how do I know as a manufacturer who is, uh, owning the product who's using it?

Yeah, because I have a product recall, I must need to contact the end consumer. So that that's another as I use case product recall, but also back to birth lifecycle for circular goods. For example, what plastics ingredients are in the casing is this bio soft plastics, is this biodegradable plastics? How do I recycle it is very important information.

And if I, if, if the antisystem is not secure, so then I'm kind of screwing up my, my circular economy, um, or plastic recycling systems and all of this, uh, very, very important use cases up to customs. So we also have a project with the U S the power performance, security, customs, and border protections. So we even thinks this is technology civilization due to training is also last line of defense for circular economy, because let's, let's assume we are here in Germany and getting products from Asia.

And the only in the EU, we only would like to let let in products specifically circular, renewable, sustainable history. And, um, let's say basic usable energy was used to produce them. Bio source plastics was first used kind of to produce them.

So if I would like to do this, then the customs transition must have the tools and the hand to check the serial number, to go to digital twin, to go back to the auditor and find ours is proper circular object, fixed circular object, and to fake the clock objects that we locked out from, for our perspective, it's the enabling technology for the circular economy and all these kinds of let's say features are very fascinating. And we're still only talking about objects, identity objects ends up plenty, plenty of excellent and comprehensive from use case. Right.

Um, you raise an interesting point there about the circle economy. Um, I'm curious to know, um, what is the role of identity in a circular future, according to you?

Um, so fast, it's all about provenance and provenance starts with the company will provide components. So who basically is a company that manufactured components that are then being assembled to produce a product, for example. So I need to know the identity of the companies that are producing the components, and this is where it all stops are can I trust it? The company is a fake company. Is this company who would use the components? Is it coming from, uh, from a country, was export compliance issues as coming from a pop-up proper country.

Do they do the work in a Crohn's to environment, health and safety standards? Do they do the work and the Crohn's to labor rights, anti-bribery tried labor, and then I can check this. I can stop trusting the company, and then I can start testing the origin of the data of a product.

And then I think as I think maybe for, for the audience, for the, particularly as that component of being sample to product, in terms of transformed and circular object, as an end customer, I would like to have the full, the full back to burst traceability, because if some of the players is kind of cheating, then I cannot trust the end product.

And that's still a very, very big problem when I, for digital twin in the end product to how can I trust the data so that describing the end product and how kind of tasks or the supply chain actors that's part, part of the circular economy just sounds like a very big complex problem. And I think the, uh, critical success factor is to start very, very simple. It's very simple use cases that are doable and not to try to solve the entire circular economy problem from the start, but to start with very simple. Okay.

Um, and to add to that, um, in our first episode, on this podcast with, um, Dr. Harry barons, he mentioned that in a B2B setting, um, the trust authority almost always goes to a route, particularly in regulated industries. So how do you ensure that the credentialing authority is who they actually claim to be?

Yeah, I think this is a very important context. Concept is basically similar. What we know from public key infrastructure. We have past hierarchies in the five or nine words and in the internet is a whoop whoop certificate authorities. And if you would like, and what are basically all these decentralized identity solutions and verify their credentials all about, it's exactly the same context concept as X five or nine, it's more standardized, it's more extensible, it's more flexible.

It allows more or different so-called testaments, but in a given customer, I need to know who the, the, the, um, the authority that are issuing certificates and today in the internet. So we have a couple of tools. One is a so-called well-known to it because I always need to able to verify the identity of the would authority and award authority could be the government authority could be global legal entity identifier foundation that is establishing a global governance and infrastructure for verifying enterprise identity.

And then I need this well known tool, and well-known basically says there's an identifier for a company. And then there's public keys that I have presenting the company, or that are being used by the authority to sign now certificates, for example, enterprise certification certificates. And then I need to check the task. Is this identifier, does it really belong to the authority? For example, the German government does the identifier belong to the German government and the public keys, VDP log belong to the hood identifier. If I can check this, then I can establish a task Tibor key.

And then when I get a very fabric credential or science data payload, I can basic cryptographically verify it. I can also check those. The keys belong to the entity was the entity being verified, for example, by the German government and the keys of the verifiable credentials, verification credential, really drunk government that's Tyreke. I have to do the anti-trust chain and that's by the way, by this. And plus it is still challenging, but that's kind of trust hierarchies and must be solved. And that's where a lot of that momentum is established right now to really get to some place.

Brilliant. Um, the term decentralized identity is almost always associated with blockchain technology.

Um, why is this, so, and, um, could you perhaps, uh, double click on this relationship between blockchain and decentralized identity? Yeah, basically in decent last entity, it all starts that I S identity subtract on identity controller. I would like identifier and adult go, and that's a big difference. I don't go to centralized platform that are creating the identifier and the public private key pair on my behalf, if I will do it. And what all the kinds of existing systems are about today is that an administrator can kind of try to cheat.

So a lot of the tech vectors straight I can kind of manipulate the, the keys can see the private key can manipulate the identifiers. This is problem is all centralized platforms in these set.

Last, the entity is different. So I, as an anti subtract with my identity controller, basically out of randomness or from Abbotsbury no noise, I create seed. And then I create a public private key pair. I fully control it. There's no one else who's controlling it. And when I create a public private key pair, also public key, I create an identifier and now what do I need to do now? And I want to make sure my contact counterpart is nosy decent. Last identifier. Plus saves the tools to look up my public, finding keys for this identifier, and then you need to broadcast them or to inform them.

Yeah. And blockchain is a very handy tool because what I can basically do, I can establish a smart crowd fact. And in the smart contact I had just done my identifier. Plus my signing keys was identifier and a smart contract is making sure. So then I'm changing this, that only I, as an identity controller can change it. So in this is what cryptographers called tapping the entropy. This is basically, uh, the blockchain is providing the instrument so that other people can look up for my identifier.

So what are the other corresponding keys that are being used for signing for signing data on my behalf? And, um, as a blockchain is immutable and publicly accessible. That's a perfect tool to basically, um, communicate the keys to my identifier. And then there's the second use case. If I have an identifier, I also would like to enable people that they can look up service endpoint or URL of a service. So it belongs to my identifier. And there's an analogy with the DNS.

So in the DNS today, we base the it's a lookup, it's a mapping tool between it address I between an IP address and a domain name. That's exactly what we're doing here. So the other perspective on decentralized identity is a decentralization of the DNS because you have an identifier basically, which is kind of, let's say maybe domain name. And then I basically can, can, can look up, identify service endpoint, and then I can go to service end points and interact in a neutral way on the internet with me as an identity subject.

And those are the two very important tools, uh, features of these times, the entities, assigning keys, communicating them and communicating service endpoints. And if I put as an immutable ledger that I only have control about the data, then I can be sure that everyone can read it and kind of find all the keys and interact with my service endpoint.

And, um, I have the tool to communicate that to everyone else, the tools that fully controlled by my own, there's no set party involved that can try to lock me out to manipulate my identity. And that's, that's being avoided by the use of blockchain. Right. So now that we've discussed the current state of play in supply chains, I think, um, it's a good time to deep dive into the future of, um, industry 4.0, um, according to you, what are some of the biggest inefficiencies you see when it comes to supply chain, network design?

And, um, more importantly, is there any room for ecosystem innovation perspective? Yeah. So when we think about common topics, problem here, because when everything can connect with everything else, then I need a technology. And it's a trust layer that provides the instruments to establish trust among parties that have never met before. If I would like to do it with classical systems, with what people call identity Federation, then I have some centralized systems. I have to connect all of them to make sure they are properly federated and connected.

But if I'm in a, in a, in a supply chain is impossible. I cannot, I cannot predict all the possible common topics, how things are being connected and how do we federate them and combinatorics it's so, so impossible to enable the cyber-physical value chains, um, that you need to find other ways and the decent last, the entity of all the Federation. So it's basically, it's kind of self controlled. I can request some credentials published class. I can go throw up a route of trust, a trust chain to find out if the credentials are correct, just establishing completely new means.

And when I can basically verify where's the data coming from, from which company which Agros in which object, I can also put what we call this scoring in place. Yeah. And then I can give in the future data of this score, especially in the more crop, kind of, let's say in a typical cyber-physical value chain, just so many data that blended processed and merge to establish, for example, digital twin of a manufacturer product.

But, um, I can, I can be is an Eve, uh, trust all the data and digital twin or establish some tools to test scoring on the data. And then I can have some special decisions and can make up my own mind whether I trust the data, um, or not. But this is very important, especially when, um, machine learning comes into play as well. So when I feed machine learning algorithms, I get machine learning labels out of the algorithms. Then it's even more important to find out, can I task the machine learning algorithm is a benchmark. What has the training data? Was it biased?

And even if I trust the word best machine learning algorithm, what is the input data? Was it fake cars or was it real BMWs?

Yeah, if I can check the input rate as an egg wasn't, um, but when I get the output machine labeled, so then I can establish a risk scores. I can trust them and I can use them for decisions for autonomous driving back and forth, uh, driver assistance systems for risk propositions, for traffic control systems for mapping systems. I need to trust the data as a provenance of data being processed. And that's, that's the can from, from our perspective, the, um, the big, um, as a big opportunity with specific technology, right?

I think you raise a very important point there, uh, um, with regard to the verification of trust. And I think that is a concept that we can definitely touch upon later in this podcast, um, for now, and again, like a shift back, um, the focus on to industry 4.0, um, you've seen the industry evolve for some time now.

And, um, in your opinion, what are the four or five, um, ingredients that organizations need to consider to successfully bring any new technology to domain? And from, from my perspective, first, it starts with simplicity to find this really, really simple use cases, few supply chain, actors, few data sets, um, and few systems, um, that I can basically connect to have to have a proper business value already. Yeah. So which means I would like to have precise integration of few systems and not to have this very complex Boise OSHA report in it. So it's simplicity, it's also education.

So for us as a start ups, we prefer to engage with people, people, and businesses. So they're already, yeah, that's a very important ingredient because otherwise we have to do one or two years additional education, and then we bring nothing to the market. So it's implicit, it's simplicity, it's education, it's a business case. So if there's not a business case, and it's difficult, what we see the best business case guide now, because this is an ecosystem technology is the business case can be dilutive. It's more systemic business case where everyone kind of benefit, but how do I benefit?

What's my business case. What's in, for me, it's unclear. But if there's regulatory requirements for provenance, for auditability, for back to birth traceability, if these requirements as they are, then these compliance requirements as a business case, because today is a lot of paperwork. It's many work. It's a lot of, let's say quality inspectors. If I can digitize all of this, or if I can avoid fines or penalties, because I'm not compliant.

So this, from our perspective compliance process cost reduction. So that's the business case for short term implementation. So I mentioned simplicity. I mentioned, uh, as the education and the post compliance, I would like to mention two more. So one is that as an ecosystem, the full ecosystem, because this technology doesn't make sense if just one company introduce it.

So it's very important to have, let's say, consistent ecosystem for everyone shares the same common goal, for example, to reduce compliance costs and last but not least very important, because we mentioned this past domains and some need to do some enterprise identity verification. That's where I'd start.

This is, this is normally not in place. It's still a big question. So who says at Porsche Porsche, Siemens, Siemens or EDF, CDF, or talus the status, someone has to say this, and this is still a tough question. There's a global legal entity identified foundations working on veggie as one is working on, but if we'd like to bring something to production today, you cannot wait. And this is something what we figured out in, uh, in us versus the us drug supply chain security act. We could bootstrap in existing, um, yeah, digital identity.

When we look into pharma supply chains, there's a drug enforcement agency and the track enforcement agency started around 15 years ago to provide so-called X five or nine signing certificates to all the supply chain actors. Um, because if I it's called controlled substance, it's kind of narcotic drugs, uh, drugs.

Um, and then does this fully regulated and because compliance da provided in a good process, I'm six, five or nine signing certificates, and we basically boot steps. So there's a solution to implementing that is bootstrapping the DEA trust domain.

Um, this is fantastic for us because we don't need to verify anyone so we can do combination of DVDs and five or nine signing certificates. And then we can establish digital identities and we can establish so-called also has trading partner, um, credentials. And this is how we can bring it to production is outside need to solve the problem of enterprise identity verification because in principle that's solvable, but in practice in practice, it's not being solved because there's no infrastructure in place and no consistent credentials as this. This is fantastic.

And that's the reason why we are, we live lives as also as trading partners use case in, uh, in us very much. That's the sixth ingredient I would like to mention this because when you have all the wallets city centers, the wallets, you need to go to every supply chain and gives the wallet. You have to sell it to them. You have to integrate it to all the pharma companies and wholesalers. Then you have to validate and test it.

So it's a lot of work, even from a commercial perspective, this is almost an unbelievable amount of work, but in this use case in us, uh, so-called men in the middle and in this also has tiny partner use case. Um, it's regulated by FDA. It's a us stock supply chain security act, everyone, every supply chain participant wants to use compliance cost. They don't have, let's say a more principle discussion. I compose a wallet is the custody wallet or noncustodial wallet.

So it doesn't matter what matters is to reduce the compliance cost and to establish a secure system and SMN in the middle of the, for us, it's very interesting. Um, they're called so-called verification, defaulting service providers, and to provide a lookup service, there are a few of them. If we integrate our solution of what business verification holding service providers with the maintenance emitter, it's fast, uh, fantastic how to market, because they are connected to all supply chain actors.

And we all need to go to the very few VMs providers, for example, SAP, F X a TraceLink just to name three of them. You basically need to go to three of them and say, basically, uh, yeah, I have outsource the whole set as a pharma companies outside as opposed to them. And then by integrating with CVS providers, we can basically kind of switch the entire industry to use our technology. And it's fantastic because otherwise we have to go to every pharma company and kind of to, in a very many work to somehow integrate our wallet.

And by integrating our API APIs to few men in the middle, that's fantastic from a go to market and how to doctrine. Right.

Um, great insights there. Costin, I think that's a great playbook. You've put out there for anyone looking to move a supply chain 2.0 or upgrade the supply chain systems.

Um, I think one thing that's clear from our conversation so far is that we are living in, in narrative driven society. I mean, if you look at all the institutions around us, the media, the politicians, and, and whoever, you know, almost always are told to believe in a certain kind of truth without being able to verify it. And then all of a sudden comes this incredible piece of technology called blockchain.

That gives us the ability to not just verify the truth, but also be sure that what's in front of you is actually what it means, you know, being in the case of provenance of raw materials or in the case of NFTs where we can now track and verify the authenticity of non-financial assets that are scars and, and, and unique being a piece of physical art or digital art, you name it. I'm curious to know how do you see this move playing out in society, um, by this move?

I mean, the intersection of decentralized identifiers, DIDs and NFTs. Mm. I think so the verification of tools, that's about the trustworthiness and that, I think it's all coming back again to the risk scoring. Yeah. Because tools is not something binary. It is a tool or not tool. It kind of convolution. Yeah. Because I have so many different data, for example, in the pandemic. So what's the tools it's a tool set with that says more infections or less infections.

Uh, what is the tools when I make a specific policy? So how, what is the impact on the infections?

Um, what is, what is the, what is the lesson for me personally for my age, this just a lot of possibilities. Yeah.

And in, in supply chains, in art, in, um, in e-commerce there's always a lot of data, data are blended together. Um, I get a lot of data. I think also think tools is not binary, I think in the end, and this is even unexplored. There must be tools kind of to, um, to assess the risks of using the data of testings of data. And that's something that's still unexplored because even in the debts and verifiable credential, um, domain, people think bit, a bit binary, uh, or the have a driver license, or I have not a driver license, or I have a COVID vaccination test certificate.

I don't have it, but what can go wrong? So then I go to a test center. Okay. The test center can basically screw up my name. Yeah. And screw up, my sample to test center could be tested, was very poor quality management. Yeah. Which ruins lab equipment is not maintained correctly. So the outcomes public has also some, some probability and then they basically can, uh, then they have to, to give me a certificate about the test. Yeah.

Uh, how does the insurers, as they give it to the right person and that person authenticated there? So what I would like to say, it's all about a lot of this risk matrix and to understand and have proper scoring. I think that that's tooth.

Um, but you mentioned the NFCS and the debts. So a lot of people are putting art as an NFT, a non-functional talking. And first of all, uh, what do I know about the artists? What is the artists, what do you know about the ad it's set as one piece existing, obviously art also serious of 1 million pieces of art. There's only tiny differences. Yeah. So if it says one millions and it's less about, it was much less combat compared to scarcity. If the art is just one of the piece of sad. Yeah.

So again, need to, to, to know that the provenance and I think even from a legal perspective, so if someone puts an NFT Ethereum, so how can I make sure the same, person's not setting NFT on Bitcoin polka dots, uh, on a cadaver or any, any other chain. Yeah. So how do we ensure it? And then it's kind of at the physical digital intersection and with, with some legal perspectives, how do I do this? But anyway, I think that's, that's kind of the broader perspectives here in terms of tools.

And you mentioned the NFTs and debts from a tank perspective, there are a lot of similarities because an NFT is controlled by an owner, and then I can do ownership transactions. I can give it to him to new owner. I can also establish, uh, uh, fractional ownership, um, to, yeah, for example, there's an expensive bottle of wine. I can give it to one person that's controlling the NFTs, presenting the bottle of fine, and they have to show the NFT before I get it, or there can be multiple owners.

See, I don't have a concept of faction ownership. And in addition, if ownership is changing in the NFT and might be able to see the chain of custody, and that's also for some supply chain use case, um, for luxury goods, it can be connected to authenticity. I can do similar things with the debts debts. I also control it.

Um, I can base even change the ownership by kind of giving control about that to you. Um, then I have the service endpoint. I can find a duty between the two. It can be digital and to add, I can describe the prevalence of the art and see the heritage of the artist was very fiber credentials. So we feel a lot of intersection between this and NFTs, but, um, and especially for the question of provenance of NFTs, and this is pretty much unexplored yet. I think it's unchartered territory. And my prediction is that there will be a lot of, um, yeah.

Work going on in combining NFTs did spare fiber credentials and a not so far future. Right. And finally, I now want to explore the cultural revolution of sorts that is unfolding in front of our eyes.

Um, you recently wrote an article on the principle of duality in science and art, uh, that is changing the course of tech and marketing. I personally think it's a fascinating read and for our I'll post the link to the article in the description box below, um, I personally would like to add onto it and call it a trifecta of sorts because we're announcing athletes jump on the bandwagon and get associated with emerging technologies.

You're seeing the newly crowned quarterback of tags, um, Trevor Lawrence signing with blocky fi you also have silica now partnering with nine top football stars to endorse their product. So my question to you is why is this a recipe for success?

Um, when it comes to marketing in today's world, that perfectly thing from a technology perspective, there's a concept called crossing the chasm. Yeah.

So, and you have to kind of react cantaloupe best technology. Um, but you need to have early adopters. Yeah.

And, but it's even not enough. So you have crossed the champion when there's an early majority. Huh. And you're, and if you don't reach an early majority, then no one really uses the technology outside the lab or outside a few test. Yeah. But as a technology technologist and entrepreneur, you're only successful when you can reach the early majority.

And I think when you think about the athletes and the artists, so they have quite some reach and that can help you bootstrap, um, uh, to the crossing, to the costings of Chisholm, big cross, if they're interested in technology can leverage this for, for their benefit or for the greater good of society. And that can help to establish an ecosystems that can help kind of to transport things, the message, the narrative to the early majority.

I think this, this is a fast festinating duality of, um, of kind of combining technology because the reach of, of athletes and artists and that's, what's, what's, what's pretty fascinating. Brilliant.

Uh, I think now it's time for the best part of the podcast. It's time for frontier fire, where pause a series of rapid fire questions to our guests on the pod. So Karsten, I ready for the challenge. Yes. Brilliant. Let's get started.

Um, I'm curious to know what's the best application of physics in everyday life? Well, from my perspective, I liked statistical physics pretty much because if you apply statistics, statistical physics for machine learnings, for predictions for everyday life, for social, for economic, for technical questions.

Um, so that's, that's, that's from my perspective, the best application to forecast the future, to predict the future, to make better decisions for now, for all of us. And what is the best business advice you've ever received? It's the best piece of advice. So from my perspective is really, um, uh, humility because you, sometimes people think they can control something. They own some things I have found, see the big insight, and now they can change the world. And usually it's not so easy. I think humility is very important to have a little bit .

They would like to solve something, but you need to be realistic how to achieve, but still you can grow aggressive, but humidity it's. Um, uh, what would I really like? Tom's stuff. Advice to apply the principle of humidity in terms of conversation of the, uh, of the species of life of human beings. That's also very important, um, in, from my perspective in decision-making, um, if a movie was made on your life, what genre would it be? So I like movies about scientists. So there's a science movie about, um, John Nash, um, the mathematic and some Nobel prize for now.

It's quite a beautiful mindset and there's as a movie about, um, uh, and tooling. And it's so fascinating, what kind of personal fights I have with them setups with inner being is kind of trying to open themselves to innovate, to bring new mathematics, to bring new encryption, and, but then to struggling in everyday lives. So this is very fascinating because this is Michael micro system. So people have some tools and the capabilities to do something great.

As, as traveling, it's a tiny things. And if you, if you, if you can have, let's say, um, transforming to a macro level, it's a planet earth. It's still, it's still for us humans. I think we all, we all have all the knowledge and all the tools and science to understand that separate is twice a planet, but we are traveling and cannot really change our costs. And that's so that's, that's what I like to connect to science and started of people with, um, the greater climate change problems we're in today.

And speaking about struggles, um, what is the one thing people don't know about entrepreneurship? I think from my perspective, so as a consultant, it was super easy as a consultant to set stuff to enterprise as, yeah, incredibly easy to sell as a consulting project system integration, project strategy project, super easy, and tend to sell even more clients and doing transformation implementation as an entrepreneur, especially which would do be to focus on B2B.

It's, it's just the opposite. It's sore, it's sore spot, super difficult to sell emerging technology. There's a business case. It's not clear to sell it to companies because especially, let's say in Europe, in Germany, people would like to have a crystal clear business case center start investing. They don't invest in hypothesis that they need to build the capabilities to kind of, to work for technology. And I think that the second tech tech and one big thing it's that decisions and implementation Ultimax exchanging because a lot of technologists are ecosystem technologies.

And this requires a different approach because you cannot just sell it to one company who's successful. You have to kind of to sell it to an ecosystem is dependencies because it's fusion of technologies that dependencies the main technologies and that's set sets. That's kind of tough challenges, but, um, yeah, if you kind of have that same ecosystem innovation approach in mind, um, Down's has probably prerequisite finally, what's your advice to anyone listening to this podcast? Cool.

My, my advice is basically so, so never give, give up, um, and be very flexible because when all of you is kind of pushing forward, decent, less identity bent vegan, uh, you have to be very flexible. You cannot kind of focus on not just one domain and one copy, please fall off. That's what venture capitalist wants to see. So it's unclear where to start. And I think to be able to pivot my different domains propositions, I think this, this, this flexibility is very important and also the ability to execute, to learn fast then going into another business domain. That's very important Carsten.

It was an absolute pleasure speaking with you today. Thank you so much for shedding light on the increasingly important role of provenance in the world tomorrow. I hope to have you again on this podcast and wish you and your team as Verity the very best of luck going forward. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you for having me. And it was a fantastic experience being on your frontier show. That was Dr. Carson Stoker cost. And we'll be speaking at the European identity and cloud conference EIC, and you can get your tickets to the event. Why the link in the description box below.

I hope you enjoyed this conversation that dabbled around NFTs provenance and the cultural revolution. Um, if you think anyone would benefit from this information, please go on and share this with them.

Um, until next time, this is me Raj Hegde day, and I hope to see you all again on this incredible journey to really find the eye in identity, stay safe, stay happy.