ConsenSys Company Treum; Trace, Trade, Transparency

Tyler Mulvihill, co-founder of Consensys company Treum, discusses the proof-of-location solutions being built at ConsenSys. ConsenSys, founded in 2014 by Joseph Lubin, is the world's largest pure-play blockchain company on the planet.  Treum brings transparency, traceability and tradability to supply chains, agtech, auctions and non-fungable tokens using the permissionless, ethereum blockchain or a permissioned ethereum instance.

Listen as Tyler recounts stories of the World Wildlife Fund's bait to plate trail tracking wild tuna across the world, verifying organic hemp and ensuring the supply chain for personal protective equipment (PPE)  masks during the Covid-19 era.

Find out more at:
website
https://treum.io/
https://consensys.net/
https://entethalliance.org/

Follow and contact Treum at:
twitter: @MulvihillTyler
@treum_io
@Consensys
@EntEthAlliance

email: tyler.mulvihill@consensys.net

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylermulvihill/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/think2win/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dragos-rizescu-9499a987/

Transcript

Tyler:   0:06
logistics, manufacturing supply chains were talking about digitizing and token izing the world. My hope is that in five years, the platforms that built have enabled the next generation of entrepreneurship and business model creation. We're just giving people the tools to let them build their own futures.

Kiersten:   0:25
Hi, My name is Kiersten Jowett It and I'm your host for Lay of the land today. My guest is Tyler Mulvihill of Tree. Um Hello, Tyler. How are you today?

Tyler:   0:33
Great. Great to be here. Hope everyone who's listening is safe and healthy.

Kiersten:   0:37
Thank you. Thank you for that. You're here today to talk about tree. Um can you tell us first about your background and how you came into this space?

Tyler:   0:45
Sure. So my name is Tyler Mulvihill. And I really discovered Blockchain back in 2014. Late two dozen 15 where I was at a Big Four consulting firm and one of my friends there by the name of Mark Dagostino, who is currently the CEO and founder of Grid Plus started disappearing from our little coffee chats. And when I asked him what he was doing, he explained block trying to make it was supposed to be a 15 minute conversation, but it ended up being an hour conversation, and I've told the story of the past, but I think it's a great one. Um, during that conversation, I almost threw up and I started sweating and I realized that this could be potentially world altering. And when I went home, I researched everything that I could on Blockchain everything the metallics ever written. Um, watched every single video. And then I started writing on trying to figure out use cases that I could build the business around. And oddly enough, the only thing I could think of was supply chain, which ended up being where I ended up being. So I think it's a good one, and I have basically my whole block train career to thank Mark Dagostino for.

Kiersten:   1:52
That's amazing. What a good friend. Yeah, it's also interesting that in you straightaway, that supply chain is really gonna be your field, because that's a pretty unique niche area of Blockchain. How did that happen?

Tyler:   2:04
Interestingly enough, so I have an accounting background, so I think of things like a ledger. Um, and when you think about Blockchain in general, it's I mean, it is an impending merger. Um, at least the public functions are. And when you think about that, you think about recording transactions. And when I think about that immediately brought me to the physical world of what do we need? Thio record one after another. And that is how things move around the world and that just ties immediately back to supply chain. So, um, you know, I guess not. So, ironically, now, I would say B flat behind financial service is and decentralized finance. I would say supply chain is probably the biggest use case. So it's not like I was a genius by any means. In fact, I it felt, you know, kind of trapped in this singular mind set that I was in back when I was trying to come up with new use cases.

Kiersten:   2:52
Yeah, that's right. It is a really big use case. Not a lot of people have seen it so far. Well, I think it's becoming more popular. But I guess, for this podcast I talk about proof of location and all that really is is consensus of where something is instead of a single entity telling you where something is. So how does Treum work in a consensus manner to prove or something is in the world?

Tyler:   3:18
Yes, so I think, to back up a little bit, I work for a company called ConsenSys. It's the largest pure-play Blockchain company on the planet, founded by Joseph Lubin, who was also one of the instrumental founders of Ethereum.  And so ConsenSys' original business model was eventual production studio. And so what that means is they incubate a bunch of companies in the world changing an industry changing applications. So I was one of the co-founders of Treum along with Kishor or Dragos and Connor,  whom you can look up with Lincoln and that really kind of emerged or bubbled out of the work that we were doing building custom applications for other large companies like BHP Bulletin and some other large health care technology companies tracking everything from oil and gas samples to vaccines. And we realized that what was missing in this space wasn't really the use case or the immediate business case that emerged within supply chain, but lack of developers and lack of ability to go to market. So it was taking us months to build these custom applications, and it required solidity developers and smart contract developers which were, you know, not plentiful at all back in 2016 when I joined ConsenSys.  And so we realized, if we could build a no code platform to allow business users and supply chain experts to build their own supply chains. So that's everything from the finding what the workflow is to defining, what asset they're gonna be tracking down that workflow to creating the attributes that they want to capture that's important to the provenance in the history of those assets and then wrapping role-based access controls around it all with no code. Then we could give this to the supply chain experts, and they could build their own platform. So that's what we embarked on for our first product, which we call Treum  traceability, which is a no code platform to allow business users to build, um, build these no code use cases. And then what happened from, kind of that, emerged from that platform was that people kept on building two other use cases. The 1st 1 is, they would they would build this whole entire digital transformation of a supply chain. And really, what they wanted to do was they wanted to stick a QR code on the box that showed consumers  transparency into certain claims or tests or certifications that they were making. So you could imagine a box of X that claim that they were organic menu could scan, take your coat and see that actual physical or digital certificate, USDA organic certificate behind it. That's a lot less effort than doing it doing the whole digital transformation. So we build the platform to allow manufacturers to invite suppliers to a platform into a network to upload certain testing, inspection and certification informational documentation, those suppliers contended. Then invite through email or something like a very, very easy invite. Function their suppliers or two or two up 2 to 3 to your dear four to your end. What that then creates his supply chain transparency and supply chain ingredient and product mapping. And the second use case, um, that kind of emerged And what tree and helps businesses and organizations uh uh, bring trusted their consumers is our trade ability platform and what people were building on our traceability platform was just, you know, Mitt Token offer token for sale sell token. And that's not really a track and trace use case. It's really an ownership use case, so this is perfectly, um, kind of tailor made for the public. A theory of Maine Net And what it does is allows companies and organizations to build collections and then mint collectibles underneath those collections and add certain provenance information, too. Solve the problems of authenticity, authenticity, ownership certifications, raw materials, tracking you name it. And anything that's going into a product can be kind of showed into the consumer. Won't long not long answer did that that I answer your question.

Kiersten:   7:18
Yes, you did it was perfect. And it just leads to more questions. So that protocol that you built originally is that live now and people using that now, is that something that people can jump on and illiterate with?

Tyler:   7:29
Yeah, it is. So, um, uh, dream is is one of the few. I guess I wouldn't say few, but one of the many Blockchain companies that are in production right now. So we have customers in the oil and gas space, so three out of seven oil and gas super majors are are some of our customers largest consumer packaged goods company on the planet. Um, we built the network with verified organic. So all of these companies, long list of other customers are using trim in production today. So whether we can do the end and supply chain mapping where you put this in the hands of users, um, we have different business models, depending on the use case. So yeah, it's in production. And, uh, call me or email. You tell me if you want to learn more

Kiersten:   8:09
great, we'll put your details in the show notes and go over them again at the end of the show. And also your colleagues and consensus and tree. Um, so if anybody wants to get in touch with you that they could do that easily. Perfect. So you've mentioned a few things you mentioned Providence Supply chain, and you've got sort of the auction component of it. What is the most compelling use case right now? And what do you see? Going forward in the future?

Tyler:   8:36
Really interesting question during a very interesting, an unprecedented time. I would say that supply chain generally and supply chain digitization has become an incredibly hot topic in board rooms around the world. I think these companies and organizations realize that, uh, opaque supply chains are not the way of the future and that we have just, um probably accelerated 5 to 10 years in our thought process of digitization specifically with in the supply chain space. Um, so I would say that, um in a world where consumers are demanding more trust in transparency, businesses are required to be more flexible and responsive than ever before. So that, um, the companies that approach supply chain digitization correctly can command a premium for their products and service is taken, decrease the risks and increase their operational effectiveness, which would result in lower overhead. So I think supply chain generally is the answer supplies into digitization generally is the answer. Now, the way that we think about that is through our trade ability, traceability and transparency platforms. And each of those just kind of got bumped up into the priority list of these these boards. So whether it's a token izing and authenticating a digital ownership token for high value assets, uh, I think it's a tie between that supply chain digitization as faras. Where might stuff is, which would be traceability and then and then what it is, which is our transparency platform so very easily mapping your supply chain. Um, then tracking it once it's mapped and digitizing certain aspects of it that don't really require, like a state machine or, ah, workflow tracking, but really require, like a provenance tracking.

Kiersten:   10:23
I see. And before we get into the technicals kind of on how that actually happens. Can you talk a little bit about how difficult it is for a company, maybe a large company? Maybe the differences between a large company, a small company who want to get on this platform, sort of from their idea, possibly of hearing this podcast into being able to show consumers and other entities where the products are in the supply chain or prove somehow, how long is that process?

Tyler:   10:49
Yes. So what's really interesting in the ways that that we've built our platforms is that we have kind of, ah kind of ah, many size fits all eso. We have our transparency platform that literally you just sign on as a user and you can start e mailing your suppliers instantly, requesting certain information for them. Tow, upload to the platform. And then those suppliers can turn around and invite their suppliers through email. So almost like how slack went viral. This is a very similar flow, so as far as did the time to being on public May net, it's you know, it's It's instantaneous a cz long as you get responses from your suppliers, which we also could help you out with. I also think that right now, generally consumers, if we're taking a consumer lens, they're demanding exponential levels of transparency. But really, very few companies are providing this. So if you can even provide a minimal layer of trust or just one step forward, that's, you know exponentially better than a lot of your competitors. So building a custom application that's beautiful, that that aligns with your design language and get getting some of this information that you can start testing out. How consumers will react when you present them with this transparent information is a fairly quick turnaround process. I mean, we're not talking months in Monte. We're talking weeks, depending on level of effort, et cetera. What if we're talking you know supply chain digital transformations. This can take years of change management, but, uh, I would say that we have kind of the small, which is rapidly test and iterated and go to market. And then we have the extra large, which is, you know, let's re imagine your business. And then we kind of have a medium, which is, you know, let's have a phased approach with starting small and snowballing this when we see value depending on the customer and the company. And we can work with the most most folks, which is pretty pretty fun.

Kiersten:   12:42
So their technical ability doesn't have to be through the roof in order to use the platform. And they don't have to have a lot of money to participate either. Exactly. Yeah,

Tyler:   12:50
depending on what they want to accomplish. There's there's something for them. Toe, um, kind of use us as the portal to wed three point. Oh,

Kiersten:   12:57
Okay. Great. Let's jump into the technicals a little bit. Can we talk about both the software and the hardware? I think you guys arm or on the software side. Am I right?

Tyler:   13:06
Yeah. Yeah. We primarily are a software company, but we also offer certain or if I d tagging capabilities.

Kiersten:   13:13
Fantastic. Can you launch into those for us, please?

Tyler:   13:17
Yeah, sure. So the software is exactly what I explained before, it's we have a traceability platform. We have a transparency platform, and we have a trade ability platform that all you know do do different functions in supply train traceability and bringing trust to consumers. This is built, um, both on private and public. Um, may nuts. So depending on your requirements from an enterprise standpoint or from a small organization standpoint, you might go directly to the main net. Or you might take a round about way getting comfortable with the technology before you go to public mean that, um So we could build massive networks on the private permission instance. Or we can build, um, you a direct access portal to maintenance so we can talk about were built on a serial. So whether it's a private permission to instance of the Serie um, or its public may net, it's all ethereum we commit. No, you're C 7 21 tokens 11. 55. We could do a lot of interesting stuff in the back end with with tokens and Ah, um, I guess we used decentralized storage, so we use interplanetary filing system, So I P. F s, um and I would say we could get into the stack, but probably folks aren't interested in that. Maybe we could talk a little bit about what we were thinking about from an r f i. D and image recognition standpoint.

Kiersten:   14:38
Yeah, that's going to that.

Tyler:   14:40
Sure. So the general thesis is that for a lot of use cases, you need a connection to the physical world. So Blockchain is completely digital. And there needs to be some conduit between some physical object that you're tracking or that you want to create an ownership token for on then the digital token that you're venting on the Blockchain. So depending on the use, cases can vary immensely. So if it's a low value, high throughput consumer product goods, you're talking about sub penny, um, requirements for for whatever that solution is that fingerprinting solution is what we call it, Um, Or if you're talking about tracking, get Picasso. You have a lot more money to spend because you're also protecting a much, much more valuable piece of piece of art in this case, there are much more valuable asset. So depending on the on the use case, we provide our clients with either partnerships that we have with some companies that can do some very, very interesting stuff. Or we can create our own R F I D tags with our logo. Your logo Really purpose built for your solution. So most of the companies that we work with its we can provide a solution for them. That's that's pretty ready in the box.

Kiersten:   15:47
Great. So you can either white label a solution for their company or you they can use your solution as it iss.

Tyler:   15:53
Yeah, exactly.

Kiersten:   15:55
And it's just infinite amount of uses that you could have for something like this from you're talking about non fungible tokens a little bit, I think Yes s Oh, that could be for anything, for gaming doesn't have to be real world stuff. It could be fully digital too, right?

Tyler:   16:11
Yeah, absolutely. So I think for most folks that are that are already not Blockchain native and don't understand this web through world yet, I think the way that the majority of folks will get introduced to block chain will be through this you know, physical, the digital tracking. Um, they're just gonna end up purchasing something that comes with a little explanation about what they purchased on how this digital representation is goingto eat in their ownership. I think that's kind of the main way that people are gonna get into, um Blockchain. But certainly you're absolutely right. I mean, we have some interesting things in the works right now with the gaming sphere. I won't go too much into it cause it's not public yet, but yeah, certainly natively digital token. There's a lot easier because you don't have to solve the shipping problem in the fraud problem in the, you know, the myriad of problems that happened with the physical world. But I think the digital world is fast approaching and sports and gaming and fun things will, um, will help perpetuate that. Get people there for a script of wallets.

Kiersten:   17:14
Yeah, I always think gaming a fun way into kryptos That is a lot more feasible than, um, boring way. So gaming, it seems to me to be the, you know, with crypto kitties and Pokemon Go. That kind of, um, viral. The good kind of iris barrel, huh? spreading is much more in line with how we're gonna get to mainstream adoption. But can we go back to the physical world a little bit for animal tracing and agriculture is absolutely if you guys have a lot of impact and a lot of involvement with tracking products in the real world, that air going from bait to plate or farm to fork.

Tyler:   17:54
Yeah, you set me up perfectly. So if if, uh for those of you who are listening that one a little bit of a reprieve from what's going on around the world, Google bait to plate and trim or consensus and you'll find a mini documentary. It's only a couple minutes long about our journey with the World Wildlife Fund tracking yellow fin tuna from the sustainable beautiful waters of Vanuatu, near Fiji to New York to be made into sushi served to, you know, thousands of people. Um, this is this is ah, use case that kind of put us on the map and really showed the world how we could use traceability and block chained together. Ah, the use case was all the way from, uh, first tagging the fish as it was caught on a boat on these water on these sustainable waters, putting an r f i D tag directly onto the fish. When it was caught, the fisherman had an iPad and could enter in certain information about the weight of the fish and what species it was etcetera. And then all the way through the process, whether it be the fish being landed, it processed it, shipped it in transit in storage and then finally arrived. All that information was captured on the block chain by whatever party was involved. Um, this was really interesting, though, because at the end of this, when we serve this the sushi to thes folks and I went around and asking them what we served, we serve them on the napkins that had a cure coat, and you could scan the Q R code and see the whole history of the fish.

Kiersten:   19:19
That's amazing.

Tyler:   19:20
It was It was pretty fun. And I thought this was gonna be amazing because folks were just interested in in, like, you know, where their fish was coming from. And really, the number one reaction was, Well, you know, it was caught a day and 1/2 ago. Is that fresh, like Is this is this You know what? Um, I had a way. How do we interpret this information? So that was a real big light bulb moment when we did when we completed this pilot about, you know, how do you bring transparency to consumers so that they can digest it in a way that is that actually facilitates trust, not just offers questions. So throughout through that news case and learning, we did a lot more in the in the agricultural, in the food space, and it ended up kind of culminating with a partnership with verified organic, which is a company now that we build the platform with where we're tracking, um, specifically hemp right now. But this is going to be an open platform that any agricultural product can can leverage this technology, um, and built kind of a sustainable agricultural network for the world. And the reason that we built this is because specifically the USDA organic certification customers were looking at that now and saying, Yeah, I mean, but is it organic? And so the good actors want to say yes. Not only is it organic, but we're tracking everything, attracting how much water that we use. We're tracking when we wash off the tractors that air coming in from a fuel that has pesticides on them. We're also tracking the did the yields. And so you know exactly how much are coming off of our fields, which then you can reconcile how much it's being sold. So all of that from Beta Plater, from seed to sale or all of the all of the funny ways that you can you can kind of define. This culminated in a partnership with that verified organic.

Kiersten:   21:03
And they're using sensors on the farm for the humidity in the soil. Or how you tracking that data that specific, precise data on the farm.

Tyler:   21:12
So a lot of this has to do with what the farmers are actually doing on a daily basis. So there's there's two problems with with agricultural in general that are kind of easy tech problems to solve. But certainly if you don't know them ahead of time, you can run into some big issues. The 1st 1 is Internet connectivity, most farms, especially if they're big enough some of these 10,000 acre farms that we're seeing where these remote farms that we're seeing, they don't have any Internet or they're very, very poor Internet. So you have to be ableto design a queuing system that allows for transactions to continue to be kind of created off line and then upload it to the Blockchain. When you have Internet, the 2nd 1 is usability. So, um, farming and agricultural is hard work. And the last thing that former want to do is have another thing to to ah, have to add, um, it has to be easy. It has to be a lot of times visual. And so when we developed this this platform in the user interface, it kind of looks like a video game. It's so easy to use. And it's so, uh, kind of fun that we've seen 100% of data, um, being entered. So we have to go back for anything. That's a pretty pretty big testament to it to use your interface. So thank you. Trim design team on that

Kiersten:   22:25
one. You know, that's amazing. Game ified the farm simulator in real life.

Tyler:   22:29
Yeah. I don't know how this had the scales to the whole world. Is is TBD. There's gonna be a lot a lot more innovations that we have to build to satisfy the, you know, everyone along the supply chain. But I think we've got to go to start.

Kiersten:   22:41
Yeah, and can you talk a little bit about the r f I D tags that use? Would it be for cow or some livestock? And also, I'm interested in how you track the hemp.

Tyler:   22:50
Yeah, sure. So, um, specifically with an r f i d. Tags depends again. It depends on the use case. So we've, um We've piloted this with beef, so this is actually an interesting one for your podcast. So not only do we track the entire life cycle of the cattle from the birth to all the certifications that come along with raising it to the processing to the tracking to shipping, but we also had sensors embedded into trucks and trailer leases. So, um, you knew what temperature that your beef was being shipped. That so you know that nobody had ah had left the back open too long. Um, so or if I d tags are are pretty, um, they're pretty inexpensive now, so it's not know a prohibitive technology as long as the value of your product is is, you know, high enough to warrant toe warn it. Um, the interesting part with the farmers, though a lot of this information was taken using iPhones and Android phones. Um, and what we did was we embedded kind of like an automatic geo location on time stamping, um, mechanism. So that when a farmer was saying that they were planting seeds on this field, it would also say that you know, the geo location of that of theirselves was on this field to verify the fact that they weren't just doing this at home. You know, when they're watching TV said they had forgotten about it.

Kiersten:   24:09
Yeah. Okay, cool. So and I have to ask you the question that everybody asks, and the listeners might be thinking, Why Blockchain Can you explain where the elements of consensus comes in the solution and why that's important to treat him?

Tyler:   24:23
Sure. So there's there's really when you you you ball it down. There's really three ways that you can use released from my mental model that you can use Blockchain. One of them is a proof of a claim. Um uh, and there are there, you know, the other three. We can talk about just this one immediately, because this is more applicable to the current situation. Um, verified Organic isn't your integrated CBD is a vertically integrated hemp farm, meaning that you're absolutely right. And not only do they not need, um, really a farming system that could do this with an Excel spreadsheet. And so when you ask, you know the white Blockchain question the answer is actually a vertically integrated supply chain company can use Blockchain justus effectively, although differently than a, um, a multi variant or multi participant batory Blockchain. And one of the reasons for that is verifications of claims. So these farmers are making claims or in putting dad data at various points of these thes agricultural products supply chains, a lot of fraud actually happens retroactively. So almost like cooking the books, saying whoops like, we want to sell more of this because we're behind. So we're gonna add a little bit of sawdust or we're gonna we're gonna do something nefarious, and that really happens down the line. But if you add all of this information along the line, then it's I mean, it's impossible to go back and retroactively change this. The second thing is that it's a lie is a permanent lie in the Blockchain, and so it really prevents where at least provides a little, a little help on people not wanting to be proven a liar forever in the last part of this is that although your integrate, even if you're in it and integrated vertically integrated supply chain um, what you still want to do is that you still want to make claims to the public Blockchain to enable anybody to check on what you're doing. So, um, the Y Blockchain part is it's pretty easy to answer in this situation and specifically for verified organic. I mean, this network becomes more and more powerful as more and more users join the network so you can start building out and leveraging each other and each other's capabilities along with trade. Ah, and as as everybody knows when, when there is a network, there is value, and so you realize that value as the network continues to grow. So, yeah, the answer is kind of to fold. It's it's blocked. Chains provide the ability for people that join them very easily, and Dr Value and also that the claims of the proof, the proof of the claims

Kiersten:   26:53
perfect. Thank you, and we have a lot of issues. Known issues right now with permission. Lis block chains, Privacy Mutability is actually an issue sometimes if there's, uh, a lot of different situations where you wouldn't want that information public later down the track. And so using permission block chains, you know a permission to instance of Miriam is a great solution. So it doesn't have to be that I just want to make sure the listeners know it doesn't it could be one of the other, and you can integrate them.

Tyler:   27:27
Yeah, I think that it's a great point

Kiersten:   27:29
at this point. It's either one or the other. It's fully permission or fully permission. Less correct. I think that's correct, yes, but eventually you'll probably be able to If you're on a permission network, you're probably really able to release some of that data that is safe to release to a permission lists locked chain this my understanding. Is that right?

Tyler:   27:49
Yeah, yeah, actually, you can. We kind of do that today. So there's there's kind of there's different ways to accomplish different goals, and there are different scheme is that you can build for different business use cases. So ah, lot of our large enterprise customers go directly toe permission block chains because right now there's still a lot of, uh, there's still a lot of uncertainty about how to use this technology and and what is going to be legal. And there's a whole myriad myriad of challenges. So, um, the first thing that they want to do is they want to experiment on a permission to block train, so just getting people's feet wet. I think, um, that the purists will say, Why bother? But I think a lot of other people will say, Well, you know, you got to start somewhere Crawl before you run And this is, I think, a great solution for the medium term to get comfortable and familiar with this technology, kind of a hybrid version of public and private is what you can do is that you can take a hash of all the data for the database in the private Blockchain and publish it to the main net. So what this is really doing is creating an immutable record of the database. So even if you change one period in any of the information from the private database that the hash will be different. And so it won't reconcile later on. So at least what you're getting is a mutability with pretty low cost and low effort solution. Yeah. And clearly with with permission, block chains, their permission, this box chains, there really is no, uh, privacy. That word's kind of that word's bastardize a lot these days, but there is no privacy. But what you're seeing now is, um And for those for those of you who don't know, I initiated and founded the Enterprise Ethereum Alliances, Supply Chain Working Group. And so we talk about this a lot we talk about how do supply chains and how do permission systems or how to other systems coordinate using the main net? And so there's There's interesting ways that are emerging and interesting protocols that emerging to kind of help this I think we saw this with you mentioned cryptic kitty's earlier, and we saw this when crypto kiddies clogged the maintenance and the throughput just really wasn't there s So how do you do that on a much bigger scale? Well, I think a lot of a lot of this, this information and a lot of these transactions will happen on side chains or state channels or ah, whole different bunch of other solutions. And there will be, you know, things that aren't exactly as we see them today. And that's just going to debate. That's just gonna be like the nature of the technology will. Um, well, um, how do I say this will be like Plato and we'll mold into the use cases as the requirements become a lot more clear. But for now, I think get involved with the E A. Get involved the E A supply chain working group where we're talking about a lot of these problems and solutions today.

Kiersten:   30:35
Yeah, we'll put a link to the E A in the show notes as well.

Tyler:   30:39
That'd be great.

Kiersten:   30:39
So if a small business wants to learn about how they could do this or be part of the conversation, is it hard for them to join the E A or do they just reach out to you privately? How would that work? You can

Tyler:   30:52
certainly reach out to may. I know that the IAI has staff members at the ready Tow walk people through what a membership is like. I don't actually know off the top of my head with the membership. Tears are these days, but I'm happy to look that up and walk you through it. I know that. That least in the beginning there was certain, like, startup extent exemptions. And I'm sure that's still the case to be encouraged. It's one of I think it is the largest consortium on the planet right now and certainly certainly body of ah Blockchain enthusiasts. So, um, call me. Oh, I'm sure I'm happy to help.

Kiersten:   31:24
Great. I want to move into some other use cases that are also really interesting. But before we d'oh in the agriculture working group that you have at the E A what is the most pressing problem that you're trying to

Tyler:   31:35
solve? I think this is an incredibly good question. I think the data now is clear that consumers will pay a premium for providence in foreign products. We're products with that level of transparency. Um, this is actually a pretty good data point. Um, I couldn't believe it when I saw it, but it's estimated that $995 billion is left on the table from consumer product goods companies that do not or cannot bring transparency to the consumers. Wow, just that That fact, when I when I read that statistic, it was mind blowing, and I tried to do the reverse math and it worked. But when you can charge 300% premium for no exit, that are, ah, are cage free. I mean, that's a significant premium. Not not not all premature like that, but that that specifically is one of the highest. So I think that the challenges are one understanding what that means for their individual product and creating a real our ally based out of a project. The second part is general understanding of Blockchain. Most people don't understand it, nor especially like small farmers. Um, the third thing is, you know what's in it for me? This seems like an extra step in something that I'm currently doing. No. Why should I participate? Um, and the third thing is like, what else can I do with this? Because as we sit here today, um, the technology is being built. And so there are huge consortium's in, um, in, uh, kind of the cash crops. So calm go is doing this at a really, really large scale with many banks and many of the top tiger producers, um and Kvant iss, which also just launched. Coincidentally, consensus is the technology partner for both of these ventures, so I know a little bit about them, But, um, for the smallest scale farmers, I think that's where the kind of the need for Providence tracking is. And then what? Again, what? Like what? Calm go and prevent this air doing, um, in their specific crops is more trade finance related, but they're still needs to be, you know, the provenance chains that are created. So right now, there isn't a very frictionless way to just automatically start using the Blockchain and so treatment trying to solve that problem.

Kiersten:   33:53
Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head there. It's the story that you're selling to The consumer is a story of the history of where that product has been and how it got there and whether or not it will go in their hands. One, you know, one egg carton as opposed to another, a carton. Probably the most compelling, honest, truthful story behind each product. Probably the most compelling, truthful one is the one that's gonna be sold. So in the end, it's story for product and the money that the manufacturer can charge for that or gain from that. Is that right?

Tyler:   34:31
I think that's beautifully said, Yeah, this is about, you know, helping people understand exactly where their food is coming from and telling the story about the fish and the fishermen and the families and the crew and the path from beta plate. Um, and how do you do that? And then once you know the story, then ups No, we're missing half the information. So then it's getting that information, which is the exciting part.

Kiersten:   34:52
Yeah. Great. And can we just shift across a little bit to the sporting, the auction products and things that you're doing?

Tyler:   35:01
Yeah, yeah, of course. So, for those of you who are listening, you might have seen the news that, um, Atrium has partnered with the Sacramento Kings, which is ah, professional basketball team in the U. S. And we built them a game live auction platform, all in the Blockchain. And so this allows fans that are watching the game. Um, that t to be able to bid on the jerseys that the players are wearing. And I know that the unfortunately all live events are, you know, on pause right now. But assuming that when they resume the season, this all of this will resume. And so maybe you'll get an ability to, ah, to bid on some jerseys that you wouldn't you wouldn't have known about before. But, um, yeah, this this allows fans to on their iPhone or their desktop to bid on, um uh, Jersey that players are wearing this is gonna be massively expanded into different industries. But it tells the story of the digital ownership of the physical item. And so each of these jerseys has unique identifies on them, and this is only gonna get stronger through image recognition technology or embedded r f I. D. S in a whole myriad of other fingerprinting an ology. But at the end of this journey, what the fan does is the van wins the auction and gets a digital, um, gets a digital token that represents the ownership of that jersey along with the jersey, and then what the fan could do, which is really interesting and this is kind of a differentiator of what we're building is can enhance the provenance of that jersey. So when they take that and they get it to get a framed and they put another wall, they can take a picture of that on the date, the location, a little description of what's happening. And then a couple weeks later, they go to an event to get the player to sign it. That's also a picture that's also Ah, note and then, you know, five years later, 10 years later, they have this entire history of the jersey or no through the tree. I'm credibility platform, whatever collectible that they're creating. And that becomes a lot more of a legitimate secondary market sale than just, you know, a random eBay post.

Kiersten:   36:57
Yeah. So it against a story that adds value to the product.

Tyler:   37:01
Certainly. Yeah, I think that's the theme of this conversation.

Kiersten:   37:04
Yeah, isn't it? And can you talk a little bit about fraud? How you prevent fraud in a situation like this?

Tyler:   37:11
Yeah. Um, so specifically, within the collectibles market, I mean, it's a bill. It's 1,000,000,000 plus dollar problem. There is. You know, it's estimated that over 50 or up to 50% of collectibles are fake, and that that number is is astronomical. Um, it's it's almost unfathomable. So yet fraud is an extremely, uh, an extremely huge issue for collectors, for sellers, for auction houses, for the whole, for the whole lot. So one of the things that blocking does better than anything else is solved. Double spend problem. And so what? Bitcoin solved like the real problem. Vic points. All that was there is only one Bitcoin, and everybody knows who owns it or whose wallet it's in. So if you if you translate that into an ownership token, then I can't sell something that I don't have the digital ownership for, and that is that is kind of like the the um that's always half the problem, but it doesn't solve is that I'm going to sell you a fake jersey along with my real digital certificate, and I'm gonna keep the real jersey. So how do you prevent against that one? You need to educate a consumer to check for it. Um, and two you need to develop a scheme that prevents the taking. So one of the things that I think is gonna get a take off in a very, very near future. Um, is image recognition technology So when you when? When the manufacturer creates the unique item or luxury item, they could take a picture of it. Um, that algorithm will then shoot back. Ah, digital kind of identify wre, which will be put on the block chain. And then at any time a secondary owner buyer can then take the same picture of, you know the same. We're a different jersey, and it will. It will. It will go through the same algorithm and spit back either a green check mark for a red Red X, and depending on which one get get brought back no, they will either choose to buy the jersey or, you know, report them to the FBI. Um, I think that's what's gonna happen.

Kiersten:   39:03
So if someone had a fake designer handbag like coach bag or something like that, and they may try to make it as exact replica as possible and someone was gonna buy it, they took a photo of it and that would somehow protects them to know whether it was a fake or not.

Tyler:   39:23
Yes, so the whole point of the image recognition technology would be so that the algorithm is so good that, um, they know the, you know that the signs of the coach stitching or the leather that they're using. And so when somebody goes and tries to fake it, the algorithm will come back and say that this is not a correct or an authentic coach handbag. And that provides really a secondary market for this, um, for the buyers. And it also provides brands a really interesting opportunity because now brands kind of know they might not know the individual who's purchased this, but they've no, they'll know when the digital token transfers hands and also so they'll get business insight into how their products are being used. And, um, what's what's I mean, this is This is really, really powerful is you can start having a message. Plus that poor connect the brand with consumers so they can reach out to whoever is owning a little token at a certain point. And, um, by back that inventory or prevent certain people from selling this so certain known wallets they're certain known companies won't be able to have the ability to sell or re sell their products so you can set it. Set this all up. So it it really lets the brand control the brand experience for the consumer, for the secondary market, really, for the whole the whole world and how they perceive the brands. So this goes all the way from suppliers and manufacturers and logistics to the brand, to the customer, to the secondary customers, insurance companies, finance companies, the whole nine yards.

Kiersten:   40:54
That's incredible value. Add for the consumer and the business who's investing in it. And even, I guess insurance companies who want to track this kind of information and the FBI and stuff like that. Fraud police.

Tyler:   41:06
Exactly. Yep. All the above.

Kiersten:   41:08
Great. And what is the most exciting thing in the coming year for tram?

Tyler:   41:13
Oh, um, I think easily just production. Um, getting blocked train out there is at the DNA of of tree, um, and at our company From day one, we chose to build in no code platform because we wanted a block going to be easy because we wanted to solve real use cases. And we've been in production since 2000 and I guess the late 2017 really doesn't 18 and we're just continuing to release new products, new products for customers, new partnerships, new platforms and so easily. It's just seeing Blockchain in the hands of more users and enabling more brands and organizations to build trust with their consumers, using our products. So getting getting blocking in the hands of people that are the experts that know howto had a leverage their brands and giving them the tools to do so. That's by far the most exciting part of 2020 and beyond.

Kiersten:   42:04
Cool. And what are the hurdles that you're looking at right now that you want to overcome?

Tyler:   42:08
So I guess I wouldn't consider this necessarily a hurdle. But, um, obviously, you can't ignore that cove. It has changed the way that supply chains are being looked at. You can ignore that supply chain digitization is at the, you know, the forefront of every single CEO stock it, um, and you can't really ignore the effect that this digital transformation is gonna have about the business models that used to the way is the companies operate. And, um, I think the challenging part is I thought this was coming in five years, and so now it's here today and, um, it's it's it's made us really rethink the way that we're focusing. Um, and the good thing is we're in an amazing kind of space to help the world. And one of the things I guess this is this is happening. We're tree and built. They act together using a Nokko platform with some other consensus members over a weekend atrium covert supply chain. And so we're already tracking, you know, tens of thousands of masks, the distribution centers and hospitals in the US So I think that the challenges are moving faster with the amount of resources that we have and also satisfying our customer demand. So it's it's a really good problem to have, but it's ah, it keeps me up every morning and every night. But I'm energized. So

Kiersten:   43:23
yeah, it is a good problem to have. Are you getting any interest or talk or pushback about track and trace in all this cove it 19 era? Because how you know the leap between tracking cows and tracking masks isn't too big to tracking humans is when we talk about that amongst your clients or people in the field,

Tyler:   43:44
there's, I think I think my answer would be to really understand the difference between privacy and identity. And you can have a Blockchain identity. That is, um that is just a random strength, and nobody would know it was you. And so you can show someone that you have got a certificate If you can sign a transaction that this random account that nobody knows where it's coming from is yours. Yeah, I think that's that's the easy way to do this. But again, the implications. I mean, people don't even password protect their bank accounts. So how you gonna do that with?

Kiersten:   44:19
So we're not even there? Yeah. Yeah, we're so far from there. So you've You've moved ahead five years faster than you thought you'd have to be. Let's just imagine, I was gonna ask you what what trim would look like in five years from now. But maybe that's more like what would try and look like in 10 years from now, but in the real time frame, five years from now.

Tyler:   44:37
Yeah. Um, So I think this, uh, this pandemic has really refocused folks. So I love that for the reason that I mean really, entrepreneurship comes from love and creation, not from anger or disrupting the world. Or like what I'm going to attack or or how I'm gonna beat something it truly comes from from love and passion. And now, more than ever, we need that love. We need that passionate. We need that leadership. And I think that the companies and organizations that can show that, um, and can condemn it straight that will will no advance those five years in a year. So I'm really excited, because now that's kind of re shifted a lot of people's mindsets to, um, to help innovation. And so we're gonna see that you know, that explosion now, um, and we be hoped to ride that wave very, very quickly. What tree, um is I think it's gonna look like in five years? I think it is. Um, the amount of domain space that we're occupying right now because Blockchain is nascent is incredibly vast. I mean, we're talking about logistics, manufacturing, supply chains were talking about digitizing and token eyes in the world, and, um, just doing one of those things is insane. But I think right now we're at we're at a point where we can build platforms to help other people do that. And so my hope is that in five years, the platforms built have enabled the next generation of entrepreneurship and business model creation. And we're just creating people that we're giving people the tools to let them build their own futures. But yeah, I think I think much like much like the mate the mainframes back in the sixties and seventies put paper, um, into computers really digitized the world. I think right now we're gonna be token izing the world, and, um, we've got the platforms and kind of technology to do it. So it's a interesting time now, And I think in five years, you know, we'll we'll have a similar conversation about the next five years.

Kiersten:   46:37
Thank you, Tyler. That's brilliant. Where can people go to follow your work and stay in touch?

Tyler:   46:42
No, thank you. Thank you. This is a fantastic, fantastic podcast. Thank you for having me again. Stay safe. For those of you who are listening, hopefully listening at home, you can go to tree, um dot i o t r e u m dot io. Or you can email me at Tyler T y l e r dot Mulvihill m u l The isn't victor i h i l l consensus dot net You can also follow me on Twitter at multiple Tyler,

Kiersten:   47:06
right. Thank you so much for sharing all the information, your insight and the future of training with us today.

Tyler:   47:11
Great questions. Thank you. We'll be on any time you did a

Kiersten:   47:13
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