ConsenSys’ Andrew Keys: Blockchain Standards, Societal Change, & Flip-Flops

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Interview with Andrew Keys of ConsenSys

Andrew Keys is the Head of Business Development for ConsenSys, a global ecosystem of developers and innovators building decentralized applications and infrastructure leveraging the Ethereum protocol. He is also the co-founder of ConsenSys Capital, the organization’s constellation of financial services which include ConsenSys Ventures, Token Foundry, and ConsenSys Capital Asset Management.

Laid-back yet abundantly knowledgeable and highly respected in the community, Andrew is the perfect conduit to unleash blockchain innovation upon humankind. His numerous speaking engagements at the industry’s prominent conferences have solidified his role as a preeminent authority on blockchain and Ethereum. There is little doubt his work with ConsenSys has played an essential role in establishing Ethereum as the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap and the most active blockchain ecosystem on the planet.

ConsenSys enacts a progressive, bottom-up management philosophy put on full display by his relaxed demeanor: unpretentious hierarchies and horizontal operations. This is exemplified by the fact that you will find Andrew at a shared desk working side-by-side with team members of all levels in the exuberant and open ConsenSys office space.

So without further ado, please enjoy this thought-provoking interview on the ConsenSys ecosystem and what our future looks like once blockchain is integrated into every facet of our daily interactions.

This interview was conducted next to the corporate offices in the neighborhood of Bushwick in Brooklyn, NY.

I saw a Medium post that said you’ve been traveling all over the world…while wearing flip-flops. Is this something that’s indicative of the industry’s culture, the ConsenSys way of life, or is this something that’s uniquely Andrew?

I just find flip-flops are comfortable and I’m actually wearing them now. I think that it’s just evolved into a joke because I just think they’re super comfortable. But to that point, we are a “come as you are” shop and there’s no dress code per se. When I don’t have to wear a suit for a central bank type entity, I find flip flops comfortable. We’re just easy breezy. Let the work do the talking, not the clothes.

You’ve met with prominent figures from around the world, often times in countries like China where business is conducted formally. Do you compromise for those encounters?

That’s the name of the game, to be a chameleon. You go to the places where you got to wear a suit and you wear a suit. You go to the places where it should be dressed down and you dress down…its adaptation.

What motivates you to get out of bed every morning? What’s the mission of ConsenSys that motivates you to come to work every day?

I would step back and really look at how Planet Earth is constructed right now, especially with our Gini coefficient where you have the 80 human beings that have the same amount of wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion. 80 and 3.5 billion just seems inefficient and unfair. I’d argue that many of those 80 people represent or own firms that serve as trusted intermediaries. Essentially, that’s what these technologies commoditize: trust and intimidation. I believe that if we do commoditize those add values, we will have a better distribution of wealth and prosperity in the world. I think that we’re on the verge of a golden age. This technology has the potential to fall liquidity in previously illiquid assets that should help Earth evolve. Full stop.

You’re alluding to the fact that if you can tokenize illiquid assets, like a venture capital or real estate, that should suffice to accomplish worldwide wealth redistribution?

Art as well. Or someone’s attention that may not have other assets, rather than imagine a Facebook where you get paid a dollar a day to look at advertising instead of Mark Zuckerberg. That dollar would go pretty far in Kenya.

While traveling in India, I learned to appreciate the fact that you can survive with $2, $3, $4 – you can find a bed and still have enough for a meal or two.

Let’s take a quick step back. What’s one thing you want the outside world to understand about ConsenSys?

ConsenSys is the largest software engineering shop in the world, solely focused on creating blockchain technologies. We are just over 900 people in over 30 countries, and we maintain four pillars of operating business.

The first is full stack engineering. We maintain three of the eight implementations of the Ethereum protocol. Above that, we maintain the most used developer tools in the whole ecosystem. So, in order to build out applications, you need tooling. We’ve open sourced and gifted that tooling to the world. Above that, we create a lot of the open source standards. The intermediaries that we know provide things like reputation, they offer things like wallets and to disintermediate them, we need to provide that type of functionality. The equivalent of five stars in an Uber, you can build that type of functionality in a decentralized application where people who have their own identity can get rated on how they conduct themselves in society, and you can create these types of open source standards. We do a lot of work and thinking about that. Then above that, we have an application layer, and we run the application layer in what’s called a venture studio model. A few of the companies that made that famous were Betaworks, TechStars, and 500 Startups where an entrepreneur can be somewhat of an intrapreneur and have a salary and health benefits and all that good stuff and incubate an idea into a project, a project into a product and then spin that product out into a company. We’ve done a lot of work in that regard. That’s the first pillar of ConsenSys.

The second one is enterprise and government consulting. Our clients include JP Morgan, British Petroleum, Procter and Gamble, Exxon Mobil, the Emirates of Dubai, the Monetary Authority of Singapore. We just won the European Union blockchain Laboratory, so all of the members of the EU go to Brussels in a laboratory setting where we build proofs of concepts and scale them into production environments. It’s a lot of education, which brings us to the third pillar.

That is ConsenSys Academy, which is our educational arm where we educate engineers, lawyers, product managers on what this technology is, what are the implications for their various verticals or subject matter expertise and then give them ways to attest that they’ve learned this formally. You’ve been graduating principles, and someone can be certified in their specific coding language.

Lastly, our capital activities. ConsenSys Capital is a constellation of a few different financial service businesses. The first is Token Foundry which I think to be the next generation of investment banking and crowdfunding. Next, we have ConsenSys Ventures, which has been driven by a woman named Cavita Guta, who previously ran Eric Schmidt, the former chairman of Google’s family office. Lastly, we’re in the process of incubating ConsenSys Capital Asset Management which could serve as creating a vetting process for managers that want to accept the risk in this space and manage risk. That’s the gist of how we operate.

Let’s get back to tokenization. Earlier, you mentioned tokenization as an effective means for wealth redistribution. It’s my understanding you’re supporting this movement via a relatively new addition to the ecosystem, Token Foundry. What exactly is Token Foundry? There has been some recent hype.

I believe Token Foundry to be the next generation of investment banking or crowdfunding whereby we can create behavioral economic incentives to induce users to a platform or sell equity in a company more efficiently. I really bifurcate those because one is a game theoretical consumer utility token and the other is actual equity that is a security. There is this world evolving and creating an ontology of tokens because now we can digitize assets. Not all assets are necessarily securities, but to keep it simple, on the consumer utility side, Ethereum is a great example of an event where people contributed money and that created behavioral and economic incentives to improve this protocol. That was one of the ways I got involved. I contributed to the initial token sale and I wanted to use it, I wanted to improve it, I want to make it better. Similarly, you can start to create these economic incentives in networks and Token Foundry does a lot of that.

What’s the biggest difference between a company like Polymath and Token Foundry?

Polymath is solely doing securities to my understanding. We are doing both conserving utilities and securities. They are similar in the sense that it’s an investment banking functionality where they’re bringing securities to market. I think that probably the core difference is our experience and our expertise. We sit pretty centrally to the technology where a lot of the other token launch platforms are just serving the financial aspects of it. We can add value in terms of actually building out the software and adding it to the operating system that we’ve created.

Are there any organizations deploying a similar model?

No, I don’t think so. I think that this type of business model is relatively new because we’re trying to evolve with how we see the architecture of how Earth operates. So, rather than a top-down, commanding control system, we try to operate horizontally, so we don’t really have any hierarchy in the organization. We try to incubate activities ground up. I think that it’s a new model for a new way of doing business that this technology enables.

Do you foresee any copycats in the near future?

I don’t know about copycats, but I think that people are noticing this model.

Correct me if I’m wrong, you’re the co-founder of ConsenSys Capital. You’re also the second employee as well.

I don’t think there was a number two. There was a handful of us came on at the same time. Long story short, I met Joe Lubin at the first ever Ethereum meetup in New York City. Basically, I understood the implications, maybe not as well as him, but I thought I had a pretty decent grasp. Once I went down that rabbit hole, I never went back. I actually told Joe that I would work for a little sliver of equity because he wasn’t ready then to operate on all cylinders. I volunteered for the first six months to help build out the business development. I drove a lot of the global business development activities and then about June of last year, we wanted to get serious about some of the architecture. Basically, we wanted to build out this new pillar of ConsenSys Capital and I said that I would help drive it. So, that was that and it’s been the most interesting part of my life professionally that I’ve ever been part of.

I’m sure that was a massive shift in compensation for your time in the capital markets. It’s my understanding that you also built a revenue cycle management company?

Basically, what that is was when you went to the doctor’s office and you get a physical, for example, you would have the physical and you would hand your insurance card to the secretary and basically that information would get sent through a computer system that we started, built, and sold throughout America to Chennai, India. Basically, the billers in India would fight with Blue Cross Blue Shield that was in India and eventually, the doctor would get paid three to six months later. I was the middleman. I was that intermediary that facilitated that whole revenue cycle management. I got paid a percentage of what we collected. Over that time, I learned everything that didn’t work about databases. And it was at the same time Bitcoin happened, which is essentially a database and a payments system. I thought Bitcoin was this cool, funky experiment in monetary policy, but you couldn’t program business logic which we now know to be smart contracts. I kept an eye on it, but I didn’t get involved professionally because I thought that the technology was too immature until I saw Ethereum where you could actually program this type of business logic, so you can have if, then, else.

The next question revolves around some of the specifics of the ecosystem. What are some of the projects or some of the applications or the departments in ConsenSys that you think about most often?

I would say one enabling factor to all of the applications is the notion of self-sovereign identity. Right now, when we go on the internet, we typically log into something like Facebook or Gmail. We log into our Bank of America account and from that, we either socialize or communicate or send value. But in the future, instead of having to log into those intermediaries, we’re going to have our own browser. I’m going to have the Andrew Browser. The Andrew Browser is going to be the house for my identity. It’s going to be a house for my assets. It’s going to be a house for my reputation, the five stars in the Uber. From that, I’m going to type in a Google search, “I want a car to pick me up from X and take me to Y.” Instead of paying Uber 35% of the ride, if I’m the driver, it’s going to be peer to peer without Uber in the middle. The other side in the Uber example, the driver, they’re going to log into their self-sovereign browser. I think that construct, whatever you’re going to do peer to peer, having that type of construct, this self-sovereign digital identity browser is probably the most fundamental enabling factor in building any kind of decentralized application. I think that is probably the key.

Self-Sovereign Identity, Courtesy of ETHNews

You mentioned the “Andrew Browser” hosting your five-star rating. Is that a social rating that people earn based on interactions with the outside world?

There will be different types of ratings. You’ll have your credit score. You’ll have your Airbnb life rating. You’ll have your Uber rating. One thing to note is if I’ve been a good passenger in Uber 10,000 times, I’m probably pretty likely to be a decent Airbnb guest. But today, that reputational asset that I’m well-behaved in my 10,000 Ubers isn’t transferable. You can create a more holistic understanding of one self’s reputation in these newer constructs where you could show that information granularly at your choosing. I think that’s an important idea for us to understand.

Self-sovereign identity is definitely intriguing, but you don’t think there will be any issues with the concept of social scoring? Have you seen that dystopian black mirror episode where status in society is based on a social rating?

That’s obviously is a science fiction show, but I think there is merit in discussing how do we behaviorally nudge using things like behavioral economics with people incentivizing them to act appropriately. Little things like the bank accounts that we have now don’t have any type of metric that if your checking account is low, they’d want you to get dinged that $35 fine, rather than having the functionality that knows that your checking account is low and then moving the money from savings to checking, as an example. I think that if we start designing systems that empower people to be healthier or happier, it will be a net positive. I believe that aspects of things like reputation have to be considered within this behavioral economic construct. I think that there has to be thought into what the implications of are having a reputation on everything.

It sounds like an incredible use case for blockchain, implementing behavioral economic concepts to incentivize people to live better, more ethical lives.

If everything goes right and ConsenSys achieves its mission, what would the world look like?

We would have a fully decentralized world wide web. That would probably have implications on our legal, financial and social-political operating systems. You would see bureaucracy float away. You would see an exponential increase in liquidity. You’d probably see a golden age of prosperity. You would see a more even distribution of wealth. You would see less minimum wage workers flipping burgers and more engaged people that choose to opt into a sharing economy whereby rather than a large percentage of that going to the intermediary, it would go into their pockets as a counterparty in a transaction.

Let’s hope ConsenSys achieves its goal. What is either one thing that you want people to understand about blockchain or something that people expound in the blockchain community that is just outright incorrect?

I think that the one thing that I would want people to understand is that right now, the prevailing narrative is indeed that of speculation on one digital token’s value, and that is Bitcoin. I think what I would want people to understand is that Bitcoin was the opening act, the gateway drug of this technology. What we’re talking about is the next generation of the Internet. The next generation of the Internet has three foundational principles. The first we already discussed, which is self-sovereign identity. The second is the digitization of assets, tokenization of assets. Not just Bitcoin, but you’re going to tokenize livestock, barrels of oil, Beyoncé concert tickets, electrons on a solar panel. You’re going to be able to move those as easily as you send an email today. The third foundational principle is the notion of smart contracts where if you and I are in a rock band, today we would pay Apple 35% if someone bought our $10 album on iTunes. We would get the remaining 65%. You and I would have to subsequently, through some manual process, then divide that money. In the future, if we create an asset like a song or an album, we can embed the business logic whereby we wouldn’t need iTunes, and we would have 99.9% percent of the revenue instead of 65%. More importantly, we could create a smart contract where you’re a better-looking singer, so you get 55%, and I’m the bass player, so I get 45%. We could even embed more that if a fan wanted to invest in us and we had a smart contract with them, they could get 10% of every song that was purchased through this agreement. You start to automate and optimize the way that we as humans trust and agree with each other. In doing so, you’re starting to blur the lines of what a fan is or what the band is, and you can extrapolate that out of music and into public policy or finance. You started blurring the lines of what’s an employee versus employer versus just a participant in the network. I think it’s self-sovereign identity, tokenization of assets, and smart contracts.

You’ve mentioned that iTunes and Uber might eventually cease to exist because all transactions will be peer-to-peer.

I want to caveat. I didn’t necessarily say that they would not be in existence because they do provide a great user experience. They already have a network. I think that they would probably have their margins squeezed a lot, but there are ways where they could potentially use this technology as well. I think the overall is that what we’re seeing here is the commoditization of trust and intermediation. If you are a product or a company that’s sole revenue is derived from providing trust and intermediation, I think you’re going to have to think of new value propositions of the staff.

They will evolve, or they will die. That’s the name of the game.

At the Draper University Blockchain Intensive, and then on one of your blog posts earlier this year, you detailed your belief that we’re kind of in the 1994 equivalent of the blockchain era. What are the ’94 equivalents of Bitcoin and Ethereum and then going off that, what will Bitcoin and Ethereum look like when the equivalent of the year 2000 hits the ecosystem?

To clarify, I think that if the Internet began its commercial production great use cases in 1996, I believe we are in the equivalent of 1994. We’re in ’94 of ’96. 2018 in blockchain years is the equivalent of 1994 when the Internet began in 1996. What I mean by that is that certain milestones have to be achieved to enable the world to use this technology in a massive production environment. A few things:

For the technology historians, Java became J2EE, Java 2 Enterprise Edition, and became the most famous and most widely used software language when there were standards around its syntax. There were clean web APIs and clean database APIs. Even though Java was initially just made for televisions, developers started using it because it was clean and there were standards.

First and foremost, there needs to be standards built. We’ve seen one standard to be wildly successful: the ERC20 token standard. We’re starting to see ERC721 for non-fungible tokens for collectibles. We’re starting to see identity standards, and we also need standards for particular verticals, so like the FIX standard for finance. You need to have the insurance code standards. CPT and ICD, the procedure codes and diagnosis codes for healthcare. Having all of those ontologies for approving smart contracts is one gating factor. That’s the first one.

Second, throughout history, technology has always bumped up against scalability. When you talk about the first cars went a certain speed, and then the engines got better. Dial-up to modem to fiber optics, net speed increased. Right now, the transactional throughput of these blockchains is relatively weak. Relatively low transactional throughput per second. We’re going to start to see the scalability upgrades come in place.

One of the main scalability upgrades for Ethereum particularly is transitioning from proof-of-work, which is mining, to proof-of-stake. Another one is what we call side channels. If I took you to the bar and put down my credit card, I essentially open a channel, and I buy us all a Shirley Temple, and then I buy us all a salad, and I buy us all an entree and then I buy us all dessert. Each one of those rounds could be done off chain but batched. Then at the end when we paid the bill, I close the channel. Basically, you can open it on chain, have thousands of micro-transactions off chain and you keep a tally of it and then close it back on chain. That’s another scalability solution that’s being created now.

Next one is called sharding. There are shards of the blockchain that have to form consensus and agree rather than the entire blockchain. Then lastly, there’s a technology called plasma or essentially a blockchain on top of blockchain. You can go crazy with these things and frankly, that one at least, is above my pay grade mentally, but your readers can look it up. You’ve got standards that need to be formed, you need to have the scalability upgrades. You’re starting to see a lot of the privacy upgrades as well.

Zooko Wilcox has championed ZCash and the notion of zero-knowledge proofs. We’re starting to see those zero-knowledge proofs implemented in Ethereum. You’re also going to see other types of security and privacy processes. You’re also going to see the improvement in formal verification. Being able to audit this code, because unlike the Internet of today where we’re using it as a means of communication, the Internet of tomorrow where we have this network of value, and you’re moving assets, that creates a whole new attack factor. I think there’s a lot that needs to go around that. Then, if you’ve got standards, you’ve got the scalability, you’ve got this behavioral economic incentive for people to use these networks already, the sky’s the limit.

Many of our readers care about cryptocurrencies as they pertain to investments. Which currently relevant coins will stand the test of time and be around in five to ten years?

86% of companies with a .com at the end of their name, from 1996 to 2006, went to zero. I think that we’ll have at least that similar trajectory, if not more.

I believe we need to bifurcate tokens into protocols, consumer utilities, and securities. I think that there are different aspects to all of those. The other aspect is some of these are just a more efficient way of representing an asset. Just having a parcel of land that now is tokenized, you lose the friction that you typically would have if you had to go through a real estate agent and then a trustee or an escrow account.

With all that said, I think that this is the first time that we’re able to monetize something like HTTP or TCP IP, if you will. If you look at what that stack probably will be, I think it’ll be a combination of decentralized peer to peer business logic. I think the strongest competitor in that space is Ethereum. I think that you’re going to have decentralized file storage. So, invoking the usability of something like Dropbox. I think the strongest player in that field, even though it’s yet to be released, is the Interplanetary File System and the token of that would be FileCoin.

I think you’re going to have decentralized messaging. I don’t necessarily know that we’ll need to be tokenized, but you’re going to need that peer to peer decentralized messaging and then a high group of computing resource. Something like Golem, what they’re trying to achieve. I think that’s the equivalent of HTTP, TCP IP. Whether you have a dog walking application or poker application or accounting application, all of those applications are going to need to use some version of that protocol.

I think that first and foremost regarding tokens, I think that people need to understand the bifurcation of what a protocol is versus what an application is. The addressable market about the entire protocol versus one specific application. On the application layer, I think that we’re in very, very early days and I think that there will probably be a decade worth of experimentation and evolution in how these tokens are used, whether they’re creating game theoretical economic incentives to participate in their network or if they’re used as a representation of equity in a company. I think it’s so early that I haven’t bought a single application layer token this year.

What will ultimately catalyze mass adoption of blockchain technology?

I think the catalyst will be evolving those standards, the scalability. I think that if the infrastructure is there, the implication of decentralization is such a no-brainer that if people have a sandbox plan, they’re going to play and they’re going to build. Creating that infrastructural element, I think will be enough of a match to light the fire.

What about an external event such as an enormous security violation or obvious inefficiency?

To your point, I think it may have already happened. We may have already seen those external issues where we saw the implosion of the capital markets. We’ve seen this inefficient or unequal dispersion of wealth. We’ve seen the thousands of hacks in the Snowden Era, etc. Maybe that’s already happened, and we’re just recognizing that our social political, financial operating systems shouldn’t be owned by one particular entity that operates as a bully. You go onto XYZ’s company’s database, and all of that information is now their’s. It should be on a level playing field. Maybe to your point, those external factors have already happened.

This article by Richard Malone was originally published at "CoinCentral.com": https://coincentral.com/consensys-andrew-keys-blockchain-standards-societal-change-flip-flops/

Proxeus CEO Antoine Verdon on Making Blockchain Accessible to All

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Antoine Verdon is the Co-Founder and CEO of Proxeus, a company working to make blockchain compatible with traditional companies and existing enterprise infrastructure. Founded in 2015, Proxeus aims to be “WordPress for the blockchain,” making it easy for organizations of all sizes to run their businesses on the blockchain.

The Proxeus team has already demonstrated some very impressive results with their three-layer technology model–from speeding up the registration process for new businesses to enabling the University of Basel to use blockchain to issue academic credentials secure from fraud.

As a serial entrepreneur and fintech pioneer, Antoine was named among the 100 top Swiss personalities by magazines L’Hebdo and Bilan (2010 and 2013). He founded Legal Technology Switzerland to work on delivering more accessible legal services through digital channels. He’s also a strategic advisor to Swiss banks on fintech topics.

There are many theoretical use cases for blockchain, but in the following interview, we find out how the technology is being applied already–and how it can be rolled out to all businesses.

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Your background is in law and you’re well-known for your passionate stance on politics. So, how did you get into the blockchain space?

I actually never practiced law. During my last year of law school, I co-founded Sandbox, a global network of young entrepreneurs. Later, I moved into venture capital and was leading a fintech fund based in Zurich. In 2012, we started looking at blockchain as a technology that could profoundly disrupt banking. Later, we invested into a US bitcoin exchange and I observed the Ethereum ICO with great interest–that was the point when I understood that blockchain wouldn’t just change banking, but redefine the work processes and business models of every single industry.

What is Proxeus all about and what problem are you trying to solve? How does the XES token work?

Our goal is to make blockchain technology more accessible. We want to make it possible for anyone to create their blockchain applications without requiring specific technical knowledge. The XES token connects our users in a decentralized ecosystem, without the need for us to stand in the middle of every transaction.

You dub yourselves as “WordPress for the blockchain,” – what do you mean by this?

20 years ago, every website had to be coded in HTML manually. WordPress has changed that by allowing anyone to program a website structure in just a few clicks. We are doing the same for blockchain applications: in just a few hours, you can create the skeleton of a blockchain application for your project or company.

Proxeus claims to be blockchain agnostic, how are you able to manage this and why is this important?

In the blockchain development stack, we are positioning ourselves as a middleware, that can connect to any blockchain. When you send out an email with Outlook you do not know if the protocol used is smtp or pop3. The same will be true with blockchains in the future.

Can you tell us about your three-layer technology model? Who is Proxeus for? Who are the types of people that will interact with your product?

Similarly to WordPress, we have a core platform, completed by a series of modules, which combined with a font end allow the creation of decentralized applications. Anyone interested to prototype and eventually build a blockchain application will be able to use Proxeus to create the framework.

Why is it important to allow outside developers to create DApps?

DApps represent a new way to build applications. In a traditional setup, developers must manage big and complex applications with multiple permission layers. In a DApp setup, everyone has their own small DApp, connected by the blockchain. The development and administration costs can be considerably reduced.

In your whitepaper, you liken the crypto-space to when businesses had to adjust to computers in the 70s, internet in the 90s, cloud in the 2000s, and mobile in 2010s. Is this really the next big change?

Blockchain will bring a whole new wave of efficiency and trust. It will transform traditional business models in the same way as Internet has transformed commerce and communication.

How can businesses embrace blockchain faster, especially small-to-medium businesses with lower budgets? What will happen to businesses slow to adapt?

Small business may not be able to implement blockchain-based processes immediately, but those that started their learning curve early will have a clear advantage, and the laggards will eventually disappear. The goal of Proxeus is to provide a sandbox where everyone can come and test how their business can be run in a blockchain context.

How long do you think it will take before we see mass adoption of blockchain tech and what are the barriers to that happening?

We expect first live applications to be started this year, but it will take another 3-5 years before blockchain tech is adopted by the masses.

You recently demoed your product with some amazing results, helping the University of Basel to become the first in Switzerland to use blockchain to issue course certificates and secure academic credentials from fraud. Can you tell us how you did that?

We programmed the course certificate digitally so that the responsible person can enter data and have the document created automatically. The document is hashed and the hashed is registered on the blockchain, allowing future employers to verify the authenticity of the diplomas they receive using a simple drag and drop interface.

What are the impacts of this on higher education?

It will simplify the interaction between employers and universities at first, but it will also create a broader ecosystem of trust around academic credentials – I wouldn’t be surprised if, at some point in Linkedin, you could connect your crypto-identity in order to display “verified diplomas” on your profile.

It will also considerably reduce the administration work for Universities. In the end, isn’t a masters degree the result of a sum of conditions that could be programmed into a smart contract?

You also used Proxeus technology to legally register a company, from start to finish, in under 3 hours (instead of the 4 – 6 weeks it normally takes) at the DigitalSwitzerland challenge. How was this possible?

Currently, in Switzerland, it takes about 10 days to create a company. This is due to the fact that the actors (entrepreneur, lawyer, bank, notary, company register) work in a sequence. With a smart contract on the Hyperledger blockchain, we could change that and register a company legally from start to finish in just 1 hour 37 minutes.

What other main use cases do you see Proxeus being applied to?

Every business will be able to automatize their processes and connect them to smart contracts to move to the next stage of digitization.

Where did Proxeus get its name?

Proxeus is the Greek god of proxies, building a bridge between the traditional and the blockchain worlds.

What’s a typical day like for you? Do you have any free time at all?

I usually take some time to read in the morning, and whenever I can, I cook in the evenings. But those times, unfortunately, get rarer as we are now into the execution phase of the project – evenings and weekends are busy and I have a heavy travel schedule ahead.

Not a lot of people know this, but you were a saber champion in Switzerland, do you still get to practice at all?

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to practice lately! I live close to the lake in Zurich where I go jogging and sometimes swimming.

You call yourself a serial entrepreneur. So, what are the next steps for Proxeus and the next steps for Antoine?

For now, I am all-in on the current projects – Proxeus and blockchain more generally will still occupy me for a few years!

This article by Christina Comben was originally published at "CoinCentral.com": https://coincentral.com/proxeus-ceo-on-making-blockchain-accessible-to-all/

How Much Does It Cost to Develop An IoT App

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The world around us is the world of the Internet of Things. Different devices communicate among themselves, forming networks, which are combined with each other and with the Internet. IoT is almost in all spheres of our life, and now it’s becoming popular in smart home systems, medicine, and machinery. The fields where we can use it is growing rapidly.

Many companies are interested in this technology and are already seriously engaged in its development. We talk about such giants as Google, Samsung, Apple, LG, Intel, Qualcomm and many others.

According to the research of International Data Corporation (IDC), a market transformation will increase expenses for the IoT segment from 1.9 trillion in 2013 to 7.1 trillion in 2020. And according to the forecast of Gartner analysts, by 2020 the number of connected devices will be almost 10 billion. The growth of the IoT-device market will create a situation when the number of connected Internet of Things devices will exceed the number of connected mobile phones in 2018. These statistics were presented by Ericsson.

Now we have smart cars, houses, appliances, toothbrushes, watches and even forks. Mobile applications for smartphones serve as a link between users and their devices because through them, we can manage the Internet of Things devices. The IoT development, and especially the creation of mobile applications, carries a huge number of opportunities and benefits. That’s why IoT technology has become one of the priority areas of mobile application development in recent years.

Building an application for the Internet of Things is quite a difficult process which requires a lot of time and resources. You have to plan your budget before ordering it.
What things should you keep in mind? What aspects influence the IoT application development costs? Let’s review how much the average app can cost.

What may influence the app development cost

Like any other apps, the IoT app development depends on many factors:

i) What kind of app you need and how complex it is. The simpler the app, the less money it costs.
ii) The amount of time required to develop an app. This point directly depends on the type and complexity.
iii) The number of team members you are cooperating with.
iv) The hourly rates of the programmers involved. It depends on the region they live in.

Now let’s see each factor in details.

The factors influencing the IoT development cost

Kind of application and its complexity

Before starting, the team of developers must attentively analyze the app’s goals and how it will be positioning. Based on the list of features, they will be able to tell the final price. The more features they will have to implement, the higher the cost will be.

The amount of required time

The process of IoT application development consists of three main stages: designing, developing, and post-development. Each step is mandatory, and each team must follow them to achieve the greatest results.
The designing stage in its turn consists of the following substages: information analysis, prototyping, and adding visual components. Each stage requires a certain amount of time:
i) Information analysis — 20-40 hours
ii) Prototyping — 40-80 hours
iii) Adding visual components — 80-300+ hours

Given amounts are average and may vary depending on the app.

On the developing stage, the team creates the app according to the design. The average time reaches 400-1000+ hours.

Post-development includes the testing and bug fixes. This stage may take the development team 35 to 170 hours.

The number of team members
Depending on the app, the development team may include a different amount of members. A simple app will require fewer team members, while complex projects will require a bigger team.

An average team may include:
i) 1 designer
ii) 2 developers
iii) 1 tester
iv) 1 project manager

However, the extended team for a complex IoT development project will include back-end developers, business analysts, panel designers, and administrators. Again, this is an average and may vary project by project.

Hourly rates of the programmers
The hourly rate of programmers depends on the country or region they live in. The most expensive professionals are in Western Europe and the USA, and the cheapest is in South East Asia. Here are some basic rates:

i) Eastern Europe — $30-50 per hour.
ii) North America — $50-150 per hour.
iii) Western Europe — $65-130 per hour.
iv) South East Asia — $20-50 per hour.

Remember that the rate may vary and also depend on the programming language and the experience in IoT development.

The average price of developing the IoT app

We discussed the factors which may influence the IoT application development cost. Here are some average prices depending on the app type.
i) Simple app — $1,000-$4,000 — you will have to provide all the necessary content, clear instructions, and similar apps. If you are good with Photoshop, you may also provide the graphic design. Any additional components will cost more.
ii) Native app — $8,000-$50,000 — again, you will have to provide absolutely all the content. The development includes architecting and usability creation. Such IoT solutions will require a lot of front-end work.
iii) Game — $10,000-$250,000 — the hardest projects. Most modern games are far more than $100,000 dollars as they require a lot of effort of highly professional specialists. The more tricky elements, the higher the efforts.
iv) Additional features may include the following:
A) In-app payments — $1,000-$3,000 — the user may get other elements or even buy the whole app. The price depends on the payment system, location in the app or on the server, as well as complexity.
B) Web services — $1,000-$3,000 — the ability to create the remote access point and update the app content with XML instead of the code changing. Before developing, contact the engineer to discuss how deep you would like to implement it — it will save a lot of your effort.
C) API integration — $500-$1,500 — with APIs, you will be able to integrate a lot of third party services like social networks, email, photo stocks, and other platforms and apps.

IoT application development is a very serious process and very often requires a lot of efforts.

Now you know the average budget, and it will really help you to create a really useful IoT solution.

Good luck!

Common App Store Optimization pitfalls and how to avoid them

betanews.com

Making an app is hard, but getting it noticed on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store can be an even more difficult task. Optimizing your metadata is the biggest hurdle to getting noticed and finding users.

There are many "tips and tricks" articles out there that promise to help, but very few talk about what to avoid. Fortunately, with a strong App Store Optimization (ASO) strategy, you can stand out from the crowd while keeping an eye out for ASO pitfalls. By maneuvering around these pitfalls, you’ll be one step closer to improving your app’s visibility.

1. Keyword Fumbles

Keywords are incredibly important for getting your app noticed. After all, they’re what users input into their search query, so it’s vital that they’re incorporated into the metadata properly.

On the iOS App Store, you’re given a 100-character keyword bank to work with. From there, you can also incorporate keywords into your title and subtitle. This means that each word must count, but if you use low-volume or irrelevant words, they don’t.

Repetition, for instance, is redundant. Words used in the title and subtitle are already counted among the keywords and should not be used in your keyword bank. Using them again adds nothing and takes space that could otherwise be given to important keywords.

You’ll want to make sure to include these keywords in the description as well, however, overusing them leads to another common pitfall: keyword stuffing. Cramming the same keyword into a description too many times will get the app flagged, so use each in moderation.

On the Google Play Store, keywords work a little differently. Google’s algorithm crawls the descriptions for relevant keywords so users can find relevant apps that match the particular words or phrases used in their search query. You’ll want to include a good mix of single keywords and long-tail keywords (phrases) that address your app’s mechanics and benefits. However, if these keywords are misused, developers hit another stumbling block and fail to make coherent sentences that use the keywords correctly.

2. Small Fish Going After Big Fish

It might be an understatement to say there are a lot of apps on the market. Nearly any given app will be competing with others for clicks and installs. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make an app that would compete with them, but it does mean that you should be careful about targeting.

For instance, video streaming apps may find themselves competing with YouTube, Netflix, Hulu or Crunchyroll, to name a few. While leveraging searches for those apps via similar keywords is a good way to show up in some frequently-searched terms, the goal is to show up alongside them and differentiate from them, not to copy them completely.

If users have a choice between YouTube and a nearly-identical video app called "UsTube,"  they have no reason to go for the knockoff. However, if a second app shows up while searching for "YouTube" that offers different features, then curious users may download that app as well. Competitors should also have some variations in their keywords so they don’t always show up behind the larger, more popular apps.

In short, too many apps linger in obscurity when they try to simply copy the success of their competition. Those that succeed tend to find a way to differentiate themselves and offer something new and valuable while leveraging the success of their competitors.

3. Poor Descriptions

Once the app gets noticed, a good description is vital to sealing the deal and getting users to click "Get." Unfortunately, the description tends to be the greatest pitfall of them all.

A good app store description must be many things. It needs to:

• Properly entice potential users
• Demonstrate the app’s value
• Utilize keywords to ensure the app appears in user searches

While the list of things a description should be, some developers fail to achieve any of the above points. Sometimes descriptions are too long and turn users away with blocks of text. Having such a large description means developers are failing at a key point: explaining to its audience what they have to gain from the app. If users don’t understand the purpose of the app, they then feel no incentive to install, and go with another app.

It’s important to remember that the App Store description is the creator’s direct pitch to potential users. This is where they encourage them to install the app; falling short here could be a crippling stumbling block.

Fortunately, there are tricks to writing a great App Store description. Learn them well, and you can avoid these mistakes.

4. Unimpressive Creatives

On both the iOS and Google Play stores, creatives are a key component to catching a potential user’s eye. The app icon, screenshots and preview video should demonstrate exactly how an app works, what it can offer and all the features therein.

Creating unique, engaging screenshots is vital. If the screenshot is unappealing, doesn’t demonstrate the value of the app, or doesn’t catch the user’s eye, it could be useless at best and detrimental at worst.

Similarly, the preview video must be engaging enough for the user to watch. Catchy music and in-app images that showcase the importance of its features are key to a successful video. If they don’t want the app by the time the video is over, it didn’t do its job.

Strong visuals are key, so to avoid this stumbling block, make sure each image and video demonstrates the app’s value and isn’t too cluttered. Also, make sure to follow any specific guidelines laid out by Apple or Google to avoid rejection.

Now You Know

Despite there being some common stumbling blocks on the way to developing a strong App Store Optimization strategy, there are many ways to avoid them. Strong keywords, well-written descriptions, marketing and creatives all go hand-in-hand and lends to improving an app’s visibility in the app stores. Each link in the chain is important, so make sure you don’t kink one or it could hurt your app’s discoverability in the long run.

Why Blockchain Technology Will Be Essential to the Trust Economy

coincentral.com

Blockchain technology provides us with the ability to operate a decentralized economic sector that utilizes a Peer-to-Peer protocol that is both more secure and efficient than the current global economic structure.  The immutable and unalterable nature of this revolutionary technology makes it perfectly suited for economic use in these digital times.

The world’s economic stage is shifting dramatically.  People are tired of the inefficiency of the current banking system that has become so powerful and centralized that these organizations are no longer beholden to any laws.  These organizations continue to expand unchecked and with the blessings of the government.

A Brief Look at the Blockchain

Luckily, blockchain technology provides a viable economic solution to these concerns.  Blockchain networks utilize a vast array of computers to store data in redundancy.  This data is called “blocks” and when they are connected together they form a “blockchain”.  Each block has a code from the previous block to ensure that all blocks are in their exact order and no data can be changed on the network until a predetermined amount of nodes approves the transaction as valid.

A Closer look at A Block Via Blockgeeks

The Trust Economy

The future of blockchain technology looks bright.  Industries from all over the world are starting to utilize this innovative technology to advance their current business models with impressive results.  Removing the need for third-party verification systems is critical to achieving a higher level of efficiency in the global economy and only blockchain technology can provide this solution to the market.

Immutable and Unalterable

At the core of blockchain technology is its immutable characteristics.  Nobody can alter your blockchain records without simultaneously hacking thousands of computers at the same time.  Blockchain technology provides you with an unalterable digital ledger system that is both faster and cheaper than the current solutions.

These ledgers could revolutionize the way in which we transfer ownership of our property.  Imagine if your home ownership records were stored on a blockchain and you never had to worry about a dispute in the future.  This seems like the future but it is already here as multiple blockchain real estate platforms already exist.

Blockchain technology is perfect for protecting both physical and digital assets.  For example, imagine an artist or a photographer’s work being recorded on a blockchain.  This would allow the owner of the content to easily prove that they are indeed the true owner and that the item is the original piece.

The 100-year old camera company Kodak launched their KodakCoin ICO earlier this year to create a platform that utilizes this exact technology to protect photographers from unauthorized use of their content.  Content theft has been a huge problem for photographers in this digital era and Kodak hopes to bring some closure to the issue with their project.

The platform scours the internet and places the data against user’s content to ensure that no unauthorized use of said content has occurred.  If one is detected, the platform will automatically notify the content creator of the infraction and send the offender an offer to purchase rights to the content if the creator so desires.

Transparency

It is safe to say that there is little to no trust in the current economy’s structure.  A single transaction must go through thirty or more third-party verification systems before it is processed.  On top of that, there are major credit institutions that are making billions off of providing this information to interested parties.

The transparent nature of Blockchain technology would allow for these institutions to be tossed aside for a more transparent and open business model where anyone could prove their creditworthiness without concern of paying ridicules fees.

Considering the centralized role that these credit companies have assumed in the market, it would be a huge upgrade to the current economic system to eliminate these wasteful organizations in order to institute an automated blockchain-based system.

Supply Chain Blockchains

The day is quickly approaching when you will be able to see the development stages of your product to ensure the quality.  Imagine that you could scan a single orange and get such information as the day it was planted, harvested, what it was fed, and how long it was shipped.  All of this could easily be encoded in a supply chain blockchain.

Supply chain blockchains are essential in allowing high-quality products to shine in the marketplace.  The ability to prove a products authenticity and craftsmanship is important and only blockchain technology will allow us to do this in a manner that is efficient and automated.

Smart Contracts

Smart contracts are one of the biggest additions to blockchain technology to come about.  Fabian Vogelsteller is credited with both developing the technology and coining the phrase “Smart Contracts”.  These handy protocols allow you to embed action specific parameters into the blockchain which is essential to having a thriving trust economy.

Smart Contracts Offer Unmatched Efficiency

Smart contracts allow for multiple individuals to invest in a single asset with confidence.  A smart contract could be programmed to monitor the investment until a certain action has been completed.  Once the trigger action is activated the contract will automatically fulfill its preprogrammed duties including calculating and distributing funds to all of the investment parties.

Smart contracts are getting even smarter with more functionality being developed daily.  Today’s third generation smart contracts are able to complete very complex procedures.  This flexibility is further fueling the growth of the decentralized economy and is essential to building trust in this technology.

The Trust Economy Runs on Blockchain

The technology exists today to develop an economy that is both more secure and efficient than its predecessor.  Blockchain technology is quickly becoming the smart choice for the most important tasks in our economic sectors and as integration continues, there is no doubt that this amazing technology is sure to see further implementation in the marketplace.

This article by David Hamilton was originally published at CoinCentral.com": https://coincentral.com/why-blockchain-technology-will-be-essential-to-the-trust-economy/