Shyam Nagarajan: IBM Executive Partner

King Solomon of Genfinity interviews Shyam Nagarajan, executive partner at IBM consulting. Shyam is a leading executive at IBM, renowned for his expertise in blockchain technology.

Transcription

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
Yeah, if you guys aren't aware, today we're interviewing Shyam Nagarajan, who is Executive Partner, Blockchain Web 3, Metaverse, and Sustainability at IBM Consulting. So definitely dealing with IBM blockchain as well as a member of the Board of Directors at Hedera. So, I don't know if we're having issues, co-host stuff, but Sarah, invite me up when you get a chance, and guys, bear with us here. We normally start these a few minutes prior to, just to make sure that we have all our ducks in a row before we get started here. Brandon, feel free if I rug or anything crazy to kind of lead the gamut here because I know that we have issues or Twitter space has issues sometimes, so.‍

Brandon Davenport
It happens. I mean, it's part of the whole experience. It's part of the charm. I think that just as we kind of get things rolling here, I think last night on my show, I was talking about something that grabbed everyone's attention yesterday, which was like there was a little jump in the HBAR price. But also, there was all this buzz around this Chat GPT plugin for Hedera, and it was the result of, I think, he's a developer advocate for Hedera, Ed Marquez. He published an article last week that was like, "Hey, here's how to do a little, you know, Chat GPT plugin so you can ask Chat GPT what the balance of an account is or whatever," and it was this kind of buzzword salad that I think got picked up. So that was like a really, really interesting story to watch unfold, even today like there's another piece about it. So, it's... it's so funny. It's just a simple little experiment, but it's captured people's attention. I don't know if you saw that.‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
Yeah, I did. I saw the Chat GBT plug-in. I know, I know Shyam won't be touching on anything regarding price action, but did you? I was looking up some of the IBM stuff too, and I know he mentioned during kind of the introductory call that he's really interested in a couple of different things to talk about. So, public permission lists versus private permissioned and kind of the hybrid model there. But I just saw today, like, we always kind of ask, we're going to certainly ask about the convergence of tech. IBM just acquired Aptio for 4.6 billion dollars, to kind of extend out the cloud computing and AI aspects. So, I keep seeing more and more about Artificial Intelligence coming down the pike here. It's going to be integrated into a lot of different aspects of, you know, blockchain DLT as a whole. And yeah, so.‍

Brandon Davenport
Marc from HashPack is here. Did you see that? That Chat GPT, Hedera stuff? That was, that was funny to see pop up.‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
We've, we've actually got some. So, I'm gonna give a preface here, Brandon. Shyam, this is the first ever Twitter Space that he's been in, and I'm pretty sure that this is the first. We don't have Marc today, so everybody wished Marc a happy birthday from HashBack. Oh, I'm pretty sure we got Jacob up here today. Jacob, are you up here?‍

HashPack - Jacob D’Rozario - Co-Founder & CPO
Yeah, hello everyone. It's me today. Yeah, Marc's off enjoying his birthday, so happy birthday to Marc. I'm not too sure how old he is, but.‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
Way younger than me. ‍

HashPack - Jacob D’Rozario - Co-Founder & CPO
But the Chat GPT stuff's, yeah, super interesting. I know, one of the things I don't think a lot of people know about IBM is they're actually one of the world's largest research organizations. So they just, you know, they're constantly doing research into all these new tech innovations. I'm sure you'll have some interesting stuff to touch on regarding AI and how that can be leveraged in the crypto space.‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
100%, and Jacob, if you feel like injecting a, you know, a question or something like that in, feel free to do so. I know that we kind of have these all formulated out when we do these types of interviews. And I gotta give Brandon another shout-out and thank you. I mean, we were going to start with the co-hosting for Brandon in July, and I'm like, I messaged him, and I'm like, did we mention the IBM interview? And he's like, no, but I saw HashPack tweeted, and I just ran with it, and I'm like, well, hey dude, if you want to do it, feel free to come in and help out, man. So these are always great. You did such a fantastic job with the Leemon interview, Brandon, and this one's going to go well also, I'm sure.‍

Brandon Davenport
I'm excited. I mean, any opportunity that, you know, I have a chance to bring that hashgraph enthusiast kind of community perspective into the fold and literally doing what you describe all the time, King, is like breaking down these silos and stuff. I think that there are silos to be broken down just inside the Hedera ecosystem in regards to the governing Council and the community and all these different types of things. So, the Leemon conversation was amazing. I think this one's going to be great for those same reasons, that it just brings those two worlds a little closer. So, it's always a blast. I'm more than happy to be a part of it.‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
Well, we're more than happy to have you. I mean, you've done how many hashgraph news and rumor spaces have you done? Because I know you keep a running tally.‍

Brandon Davenport
I just had episode 81 last night, so we're creeping up on 100 episodes. Yeah, it's wild.‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
And that's like what Mark told me, that we've done like 120 Hedera interviews or 125, like a month ago. I was like, oh my God. So, I mean, it's enough, you know. We might move them to weekly again. I know we're doing them bi-weekly right now, but if we can keep knocking out really good guests, like everybody's a really good guest, but if we can get some of the break some of the silos down between the big players, the Enterprises, and do some interviews, I mean, we're going to keep doing it this way. We have Aberdeen, another governing board member on the 24th. Aberdeen's the UK asset manager. They just joined the Hedera governing board as well, so we're going to be interviewing them on July 24th. So, that's exciting too.‍

Brandon Davenport
Oh, that's cool. So, real quick, so you've done 120 interviews specifically in the Hedera ecosystem? ‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
That's what I'm... That's what I'm doing.‍

Brandon Davenport
Oh my God, that's crazy.‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
Yeah, it's pretty... I don't know if there's, like, carryover or duplicates, but I think as a whole, that's how many we've done. So, we are coming close to the top of the hour, guys. So, I mean, Sarah, myself, and Brandon, if we see Shyam down there in the audience, Shyam, if you're down there, I know Marc had mentioned to join by phone. Feel free to raise your hand. It is the heart symbol on your phone, and then the very right, you see kind of, the hand symbol. And we will get you up here. Otherwise, we're gonna look for you and send an invite.‍

Brandon Davenport
Yeah, I'm looking for Shyam right now. I'm gonna actually search him up on Twitter and see what his PFP is, so we can find him.‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
I should mention prior, obviously, if you guys haven't signed up, Chain Infinity is this Thursday. Let's get Shyam up here right now, and we've got 34 plus projects from the Hedera ecosystem, XRPL, Alex zero. It should be a pretty cool event. So, I don't know if we... I'll pin something during the spaces at some point, but we do have Shyam up here. So, I'm gonna kick the spaces off, guys. If you guys have not been into a Genfinity spaces that we do for the Hedera corner before we do interviews that were weekly within the Hedera ecosystem for projects and builders, we've moved them to bi-weekly. Recently, interviewing Paulo Tasca at the DLT Science Foundation, Dr. Leemon Baird. Today, we are super excited to say that we have Shyam Nagarajan up here with us. Shyam is Executive Partner Blockchain, Web 3.0, Metaverse, and Sustainability at IBM Consulting. We've got Brandon up here helping co-host as well as Jacob from Hashback, and we do all of these in collaboration with HashPack. So, with that being said, we're gonna kick this off and certainly welcome up to the stage Shyam Nagarajan. And I kind of give the preface there, but I always like to kick these off, Shyam, with a little bit of an introductory aspect from yourself. If you could tell us a little bit about yourself, your experience at IBM, and kind of what brought you into the Hedera ecosystem as well, that'd be fantastic.‍

IBM - Shyam Nagarajan - Executive Partner
Hey, guys. First, thank you very much for having me on this space. It's always lovely to be on these with the community and hear from the community directly. I'm Shyam Nagarajan. I lead Blockchain Consulting at IBM. I'm an Executive Partner, and I've been in this space for the last seven years. My journey started about the time when IBM decided that we need to look at blockchain as a technology for enterprises to start using and adopting it. That's when our journey actually engaged with the Linux Foundation and establishment of the Hyperledger Foundation in order to get started. That was the beginning. Since then, we've come a long way around. We've seen maturity in the technology. We have seen maturity in the market. We've seen maturity in the clients' view of adopting this technology for productive usage as well. So, all of this has been on a journey and continues to evolve, continues to change. So, happy to share my view. My engagement with Hedera actually started in 2018-19. Mance and Leemon were just getting started. We had a lot of conversation. IBM has always believed the biggest value for this technology is around when enterprises use that for everyday business. That's when it's delivering the most value for the consumers as well as the world. And Hedera was always an enterprise-first, appealing, public permission blockchain. And that's what actually attracted IBM and IBM teams to come collaborate with Hedera. So, that's our introduction. IBM has been a governing council member since 2019, and since then, we have come a long way around. We've done a number of numerous projects in the market for several of our customers together and continue to do more in the ecosystem.‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
Fantastic. Brandon, I'll take the next one, and then, Shyam, so you're aware, Brandon and I are going to kind of go back and forth after this one. I'm curious, and you mentioned IBM obviously joined the Hedera governing Council in 2019. I believe it was around nine or ten months ago that you kind of ran for the board of director aspects to join the board of directors within Hedera. As well, what kind of led you to make that decision to kind of want to take more of a role within the board of directors within Hedera? And what's your experience been thus far in that role?‍

IBM - Shyam Nagarajan - Executive Partner
Well, you know, it was, it was not just me. I think it was also the community that spoke to me as well. So, as I said, I've been engaged in the Enterprise blockchain space for the last six years before I became a board member. And, my primary purpose was to help accelerate the Enterprise adoption of this technology with the Enterprises. And, to do that, you needed to, well, I thought I'd be most productive apart from just being a council member, to offer my experience, and for the community to leverage my experience. And that's the reason why I was nominated to be on the board. Of course, there's an auditing process and how it all occurred, but it's been a great journey so far. And, you know what I've seen is more of you know, Hedera as a technology aligning with what Enterprises want to do and use it for their organization. So it's a continual evolving journey. It still is an ongoing thing, but I'm thrilled that I can be part of that journey right now.‍

Brandon Davenport
That's awesome. I love that, and Shyam, it's really great to meet you.I just think this is great. You know, it shows how this ecosystem and community is becoming more and more decentralized. Just the fact that now we've got, like, regular old community members like myself talking with, you know, folks like yourself at Enterprises just on Twitter spaces. Like, this is amazing, and you have been on quite a journey it sounds like. And on that journey, obviously, there are different milestones. And I mean, IBM seems to be one of the, if not the most heavily invested governing council member. I mean, leading the first funding round in February 2018, co-authoring the white paper for the Hedera Consensus Service leading up to its launch in 2020, and now having a voting position on the governing Council board of directors. Through you, many in the community are curious as to what other milestones have been achieved by IBM on your journey through the hashgraph. What are some exciting things that HBAR retail investors may not be aware of on your journey, some of those recent milestones?‍

IBM - Shyam Nagarajan - Executive Partner
Well, I got to be careful. I'm happy to share what organizations are doing in the ecosystem, but this, you know, very clearly, it has, it may have nothing to do with the investor community at all. So I’m, and my peers on the board and the council are primarily focused on adoption, usage, and utility of Hedera as a public permissioned blockchain. So we are are focused on ensuring that organizations are leveraging the right best practices, are a layer organizations are aware of its capability. And, frankly, you know, IBM is a large organization. We do a lot of things. We do software, hardware, as well as consulting. So, as a leader in consulting, I'm focused on ensuring organizations know how to adopt the technology safely, securely, and to leverage it to the maximum advantage that they can gain as a consequence of getting that. So, those are the focused things as, you know, personally for IBM. As a milestone, you know, in 2019, we started hosting the validation validator node and we continue to do that but, as a consulting organization, we have a numerous number of our team members that are certified and are delivering projects on Hedera. So that's a big milestone personally for me as a leader of that organization. And we continue to work with a lot of other council members, but also organizations and governments to work on how to use and embrace this technology.‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
100%. And you know, on that note, when we first met and we did kind of the introductory meeting with Marc, you really seemed interested around the differentiators between public permissionless and private permission. And I was watching The Gospel about Gossip podcast that Zenobia did with you, and you kind of went into detail about the value of a hybrid model. If you could touch base on what some of the clients from Enterprise might be looking for versus a wider scale of something public, and the value of that kind of hybrid model and where it kind of fits in between in ways that make sense.

‍IBM - Shyam Nagarajan - Executive Partner
So, when we started the journey six years ago, we—you know, everyone, everyone in the world—we're like, they were polarizations in the market as to "Oh, the public permissionless is the way of the world," while, you know, the Enterprise organizations and the ones that have been in the Enterprise world preferred more of a private permission. But that was at a point where technology wasn't mature yet, and I think we have come to realize the benefits of each one of these models, and it's really a spectrum. It's not one or the other. And, frankly, there is enough business value when they work together as a hybrid model for organizations and individuals. For that sake, we are seeing real high volume scale adoption when in these Hybrid models. So let me clarify a little bit more, right? Hedera has a hashgraph-based technology built right now as a public, but publishing more than 29 different organizations that are on the governing Council are the validated nodes. I mean, there is definitely a plan and hips in place for more mirror nodes and community nodes that's coming around, but still, it is, in a way, a permission. And that is a reason why it's appealing for a lot of organizations to trust Hedera as a public blockchain. Now, I'll tell you, in my six years of working with a thousand plus clients around the world doing blockchain projects, and their intent is clear, we want to leverage this technology, but we don't want to make all our transactions public for the rest of the world. We operate in a trusted business network, and a trusted business network warrants preserving that trust among all the parties. And if there is any way that there is intelligence leak or my differentiator competitive differentiated leak from these transactions that are going, are visible in the public, uh, public transaction profiles, then the Enterprise will not be interested in using that kind of technology. That's where the private permission really comes in and changes the game, right? So I believe the future is not one or the other, preserving your crown jewels, which is data, which is your transactions, which is your network, while securely handshaking with the public, but still a permission network or maybe even a permissionless, for the sake, where you can safely provide your monetization, your liquidity, your ability to provide public, uh, accountability on public ledgers. So that's where the hybrid models are, I believe, the future of blockchains as we move forward.‍

Brandon Davenport
I love that, and just before I hop into the next topic here, I just wanted to add a follow-up question to that, which was, you know, we've got the main net, right, the main Hedera Network, and then we've got, you know, the possibilities of other hashgraph networks spinning up. And part of that is when you have, you know, that spectrum of private to public and then the hybrid component, you also have a lot of use cases. Interoperability is really critical. And so when we look at that structure, what role potentially does Hedera's state proofs play? And I remember you mentioned on this topic in an interview—I can't remember which one—zero knowledge proofs as well, potentially providing, like, lending itself to that hybrid configuration. I was just curious about those kind of things on this topic.‍

IBM - Shyam Nagarajan - Executive Partner
So, when hybrid is a broad categorization and broad word, and when you talk about interoperability, there are multiple levels within that. It starts probably with interconnectivity. You know, when I have information in one network and it needs to be accessible from another network, that's interconnectivity. And there are protocols, there's technologies that are available today. IBM has contributed a lot into the open-source forums, as well as the Hyperledger Cactus, yeah, cacti project right now, into doing that. There's the next level, which is around interoperability, which is truly, "Okay, I do something here, which should be locked, and, you know, the same transaction be transferred over to another network, so there is a good handshake and a time lock in doing that." Again, there are technologies that are available here: state proof, hashtag, you know, hash time lock technologies that help you do that. And the last level is true inter-ledger interoperability, which still is a little bit out there, but that's again another possibility as well. What we are seeing, especially in the world of real-world applications, you know, I've seen where real-world assets being brought in and assessed and validated in private permission networks, but the proof of all of this being kept and used to open up NFTs and tokenized assets in a public network. Again, that's a great example where the handshake between a private permission and a public permission or a public permissionless makes it viable for taking these real estate assets or real-world assets into a digital exchange without disclosing the trade secrets and as well as the private information about these kind of assets to the public. So, there's a lot of possibility. The world of hybrid is, again, highly spectrumed, but technologies are there, and our clients are realizing value in this hybrid model.‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
I think one of the interesting things as well is, you know, tokenization. We always talk about tokenization, and there are certainly tangible things that can be tokenized, but there are intangibles as well. You get into things like patents and mortgages. Can you maybe touch base on, you know, even data? You know, what is your viewpoint around tokenization, where you see it going, and how you think Hedera, as a technology in the hashgraph, could potentially be leveraged in tokenization moving forward?‍

IBM - Shyam Nagarajan - Executive Partner
Well, look, I think the tokenization is an interesting capability, and it actually allows bundling of different kinds of sets. If you think about it, organizations and individuals today generate a lot of data. I think I read somewhere the number is anywhere from, you know, a thousand five hundred to two thousand data points that Google actually has on every individual that's using or aligned with the Google ecosystem. Right? That's a lot of data about me. I mean, they know pretty much my life in and out. But that's my data. And similarly, if you take it up a level, at an Enterprise level, Enterprise in a similar way generates a lot of data that, you know, in the course of them doing business, but also they have data that's built as their competitive differentiator as well. The organization as a technology is very powerful when you're able to align that data, especially employing State proofs of zero knowledge proofs, and to be able to monetize and commercialize these in a very safe and secure way, share this with other parties. You know, reality is that the future, all of our lives are running on machines and machines understand data. And the issue today is that the data is freely stolen, and the stolen data is used for profit by other parties than the one that actually owns and generates it. So, tokenization as a technology allows prevention of such a situation, and it essentially overall goes control back to the one that generated it, created it, and owns it. So, I think there's a big opportunity yet to be monetized. The percentage of tokenization that's happening right now is only a fraction of what it should be in the future. I do think you have to be careful. When I say careful, there are fungible tokens and non-fungible tokens. They have to be aligned to assets, data assets, real-world assets, assets that actually are of value. Sometimes, you know, I struggle there. There's a lot of hype and trends in the market where assets are just perceived value, and sometimes supposedly value leads to a lot of speculation and the value of those assets. But tokenization is a technology that can help address a lot of those issues. So, coming back to your question, I hope that kind of gives you an idea of where our thinking is.‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
100%. Brandon, you got the next question, but I just want to make an assumption here. My assumption is I'm guessing that IBM's viewpoint on blockchain and DLT isn't that, you know, a unicorn riding on a skateboard riding on a rainbow, and a picture of that is going to represent the mass adoption of distributed Ledger technology moving forward. Brandon, I'll let you run with the next question. Thank you, Shyam. I really appreciate the answer. ‍

Brandon Davenport
Wow, a unicorn riding a skateboard? This is tough to follow. Let me steer this in a completely different direction just because, you know, Shyam, you got me thinking about tokenization. Recently, of course, the concept of TVR, which I think Scott Thiel at DLA Piper, one of your colleagues, coined, ties into that nicely. But when we look at that space and the tokenization of these real-world assets and the concept of TVR, we're talking about tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars in aggregate of assets potentially being tokenized over the coming years and decades. The question is, what network are a lot of these enterprises and investors going to choose to tokenize these assets on and also build all these use cases and things we're talking about?
So, when it comes to the mass adoption of DLT for both the retail and enterprise space, how important is the sustainability and ESG aspects of a network when it comes to the decision-making for these potential use cases? Based on the various published studies on Hedera specifically, do you see Hedera having a major edge long-term when compared to other networks when it comes to general mass adoption?‍

IBM - Shyam Nagarajan - Executive Partner
I'm going to approach this question from a different angle. Look, when you're talking about all these different real-world assets and you want to monetize them, you are naturally gravitated towards where the big liquidity pools reside. That's natural, that's the capitalist mentality, that's how the world works. That said, I do think the sustainability angle really factors in because if you're attracting different forms of liquidity, which investors today are very sensitive to, and ESG investment is a pretty big deal, they want to make sure that what they are putting their investment into aligns with their principles. ESG is a pretty big deal. When Bitcoin came out, I don't think Satoshi really thought through the impact of proof of work with respect to the computational power that it would require to handle as the network grew. Today, we have alternate technologies that allow organizations to achieve similar outcomes by using more efficient algorithms, and Hedera is one of them. It definitely is a big differentiator among all its peers, and the ability to transact at high speed makes it very attractive for organizations that want to build mission-critical systems that warrant a level of performance, that level of mission-critical performance as well. So, all in all, sustainability is a huge angle. Every organization that has a public face has to first adhere to the shareholding requirements of a public organization, but more so, consciously, they need to select technologies that support their outcomes. I do think Hedera is truly attractive for organizations along those lines.‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
I think one of the things, also Shyam, that you touched on throughout the entire conversation thus far, and I know that when you did an interview with Cenobia, you touched on it as well. Maybe talk about what you're seeing right now, maybe from the Hedera viewpoint, with growth and adoption, as well as the wider Web 3 space. Because if you look back, you know, the last cycle that all of this whole market went through, there's been a ton of real-world use cases that have launched. And you know, maybe that journey, if you could describe from your viewpoint, what that journey has been like from the enterprise standpoint, some of the use cases that have come out, and you know, looking previously and then looking forward, both as the wider spectrum as well as Hedera, you know, Hedera proper as far as the network is concerned.‍

IBM - Shyam Nagarajan - Executive Partner
As a public permission network Hedera’s got some very key applications that it has going for it. For example, one that we talked a lot already is around tokenization. It's got liquidity, it's got a huge alignment with a lot of digital exchanges, reach, and as well as the right capability in terms of the protocol technology to launch tokens. Tokenization is a huge impact. One that's not been talked about as much and is very relevant is about the usage of Hedera for decentralized IDs (identity) and especially when we're talking about a public permission protocol. When you apply it and use it to share the verifiable credentials of identities and certifications, it can prove to be incredibly powerful because of access, reach, availability, and frankly, when designed right, using the right zero knowledge proofs and state proofs to not store PII information, it's immensely adoptable right away by a lot of organizations. That's something that I'm starting to see. IBM personally is working and has an offering around this where we can work with governments, we can work with enterprises, we can work with organizations that are doing educational organizations, licensing organizations, governments issuing IDs and the likes, to offer wallet-based, mobile wallet-based solutions. And I do think that's a huge underused part of Hedera right now, and it's starting to come to the surface. We are in the forefront, leading that and engaged in a number of organizations that are very keen to adopt it. We see that as a huge aspect of the growth. The other angle, blockchain and sustainability, has been very popular among the Hedera community. Hedera has done a great job in really analyzing all different protocols and identifying what percentage of sustainable resources Hedera uses compared to the others. Sustainability is a huge application. My peer Pradeep Iyer from Avery Dennison and Max Bin Ungrad from Avery Dennison, who are the founders or co-founders for atma.io, have been doing a phenomenal job in leveraging its capabilities, which is also driving a lot of the 12 billion transaction volume that you're seeing in the market. So, sustainability is a huge application all the way from the supply side to the demand side. We are seeing a lot of traction in that area. But lastly, traditional blockchain applications like supply chain and provenance, that's always going to be there. I mean, that's the bread and butter of every blockchain – the intent to be able to track and trace the transfer of assets and the progression of assets in a transaction in the ecosystem. So again, that will continue to be there. At IBM, we call it the TIPS (Tokenization, Identity, Provenance, and Sustainability). Hedera, as a public permission system, has been engineered right to take advantage of all these different use cases as enterprises start to think about their internal usages.‍

Brandon Davenport
Right, on yeah, and I think that it's this is a really interesting space. I kind of want to linger on this a little bit because you're talking about all these different use cases, some of which the community is aware of. But I think that a topic that's interesting for everybody is kind of exploring that world of these under the radar use cases. Like, are there any other use cases either currently running or upcoming that you can talk about that maybe wouldn't normally see the right light for regular retail users? That they may not understand that they're running but are very interesting and maybe are great examples of usage of the network. I'm curious if there are any kind of under the radar use cases that you might be able to highlight for us, just going a little more into that on that thread. But I gotta be careful not, you know, to share enough but not give away those.‍

IBM - Shyam Nagarajan - Executive Partner
Yeah, like I do think at the end of the day when you remove all the, you know, the fancy accessories off of all these different protocols, blockchain is a technology that's designed to protect data, manage data, share data, and monetize data, all right. And I do think that layer is evolving. Now, especially with gen AI and the amount of data that's necessary in order to produce and predict these outcomes using these algorithms. So, I believe you will see a huge impact as a consequence of organizations starting to adopt gen AI technologies, especially in the area of governance, data governance, decision governance, explainability. All angles are on these. It also comes back to, okay, so the data is all being used to train these generated AI models, foundational models, and large language models, but where did the data come from and is the origin actually built without any bias in them? So, I believe the next under the radar use cases are going to be all lined around these, and that's where you will see the new world of innovation occur. ‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
100%, I mean, that's amazing that you just mentioned that. I have a question, but I kind of want to preface what you just stated here, and it's something that I've thought about consistently, where it's like, what's weighted? Like, okay, it's great that we can leverage AI and things like ChatGPT and all these other things, but what's going into what's defining out the way that AI is spitting out what AI is spitting out? And I had a long conversation a couple of months ago about Federated AI and kind of weighting different voting models and stuff to make it decentralized in a way where AI is kind of very non-biased, which is really interesting. I don't, yeah, and I would love to hear your thoughts on that, maybe if you could give them. But I kind of wanted to ask you, well, let me preface it this way. So, IBM just acquired aptio, and that press release just came out today, which is, you know, a 4.6 billion dollar acquisition, to kind of really extend out the capabilities of cloud computing and artificial intelligence within IBM's ecosystem. When we think about the convergence of technology, whether it be cryptocurrency, digital assets, DLT, blockchain, AI, internet of things, all of these different aspects coming together, what is your kind of viewpoint on that convergence of technology and how disruptive, maybe not disruptive, but there's a guy that always says Cambrian explosion? All these technologies coming together at once are going to create a Cambrian explosion for humanity. That's Death Ranger. He does great spaces. Like, what are your thoughts around the convergence of technology? Maybe there are some fears there as well if it's not done properly. I would just love to hear your thoughts on that.‍

IBM - Shyam Nagarajan - Executive Partner
So, one thing I've realized is, you know, this is my 25 years of being in this business. No one technology is going to change the human evolution. It is going to be a combination of all. And frankly, I'll tell you, after a thousand-plus engagements with our clients, it's... you know, blockchain as a technology is only 20 percent of the project. The other 80 percent is all other stuff that's to do with it. That's called Cloud. That's got AI. That's got analytics, IoT. I mean, biometrics, digital int, all kinds of things are part of it, right? Enterprises and individuals, for their sake, don't get... get spun up just for a technology layer. They really care about the outcomes. And I will also tell you, the early days of blockchain were a lot of... let's say, POCs. Every side you turn around, my neighbor was doing a POC, my office guy was doing a POC. In blockchain, and the reality is, nine out of ten really failed because they really didn't understand what it took to... to take something from just a technology POC to a real-life adoption, which includes things like governance and business value design and commercial model and, eventually, you know, long-term management of this technology and evolution of this technology as well, right? So I believe right now we are seeing a convergence of a lot of these technologies. Gen AI is only possible because of the evolution and the speed of data processing that has been made possible in the recent years, right? That really is what made gen AI a relevant... IBM actually was in the model in 2019. We started on this journey and put out what we call as the IBM Debater, where we went to college students and... and high school students and said, "Anyone can debate a machine. The machine will come up with a counter-argument for your debate." And it was hugely powerful. That's great. But then everything started accelerating after that. We saw... come out in 2022. And now, um, Amazon, Azure, every one of these organizations has their own version of it, and it continues to evolve. It's not just text-based. It's... visual, it's... audio, it's video, it's all forms of generative AI. What you also are starting to realize is that, you know, the consequence of this is that there's a lot of hallucination and there's a lot of unexplainable outcomes and predictions that occur as a concept as... as these models and data get co-mingled, and an inability to actually prove the provenance of it. So, the future is using right governance of these technologies and applying them to real-world problems that exist, including climate actions, sustainable business enterprises, governments, you know, using this technology for real citizen value or value addition to their life. That's where I think Fischer is going to go. And, in terms of your question about aptio, you know, I'm thrilled personally about aptio's acquisition because they're in the business of finops, and, you know, that's, as you know, when you can sift through a lot of data and make operational intelligence out of it, it's going to be huge value, valuable for organizations. So, that's what really excites me about aptio, and I hope, at some point, I can leverage all these different technologies to bring the best to outlines.‍

Brandon Davenport
That's amazing! I wanna, I wanna, um, touch on something you said there and just bring it into a new context, which was, um, using all these different technologies and the fact that most of these, at least enterprise use cases that leverage DLT and blockchain, within those use cases, as you've said, that specific technology makes up about 20% of the use cases, all these different things that have to come together. And in that same way, when you look at the Hedera Governing Council, you have all these different governing council members. It's not just one that can run the show. You got to have a bunch. And when we look at you guys working together, we hear about collaboration amongst governing council members to develop use cases, which are very cool and like tooling all these different things. Are there any examples you can give that highlight this collaboration amongst members, maybe for past use cases or if you're able to share future use cases coming soon? And is collaboration in this way amongst enterprises of this scale common? Or is the Hedera Governing Council kind of a little more of a new thing just in the scope of collaboration?‍

IBM - Shyam Nagarajan - Executive Partner
Look, the Governing Council, it’s a.. The Hedera Governing Council is made up of the top organizations around the world. It's got universities. It's got large enterprise organizations, let's say banks, financial institutions, telcos. So, it's a range of all these different kinds of organizations, right? IBM is a large organization. A lot of these organizations also collaborate, independent of the Governing Council,  with IBM anyways. That said, there are collaborations that occur among the council which I can't explicitly talk about. Those, you know, I can tell you, for example, ServiceNow and Toko have collaborated and worked a lot in a couple of projects. And I can, in a similar way, IBM has collaborated with some of these organizations as well, which, unfortunately, I can't publicly talk about without their permission. But it is a regular occurrence. There's nothing new about it. We exchange best practices, we talk about how leveraging each other's strengths to build and figure out better ways of doing business together, as well as new offerings in the market.‍

Brandon Davenport
Okay, so that's interesting. So it's not the case of necessarily a bunch of strangers coming together in this governing Council and starting to work together. It's really folks that maybe already know each other and peers coming together in a new kind of journey, a new initiative. So that's really interesting to know. I appreciate that.‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
Well, I mean, kind of in that regard as well, and I know Sean how busy you are, we're wrapping it down here. We've got maybe two or three more questions. You know, talking about collaboration between governing members, you know, we also do know how long-standing IBM has kind of been in the blockchain space, and you can think of things like Hyperledger, and you can think of other DLTs and ecosystems such as Stellar or StrongBlock, and even more recently, Casper, talking about the public permissionless versus private permission, and there's some relationships there with a lot of different ecosystems. Is it something where, like, you guys have proof of concepts with these other ecosystems? And is that, do you feel that, in the future, like, similar to what's going on with the governing Council, that, like, if IBM is working with X ecosystem, that if they feel like there's synergy with Y or Z ecosystems, those connections, you know, you guys can kind of bridge the gap with those connections in ways that make sense for the broader adoption of the space? Or, you know, what are your thoughts on kind of that?‍

IBM - Shyam Nagarajan - Executive Partner
This happens today. It's not a future statement. It's happening, done-now statement. I don't know if many people actually know. I think Hedera is part of the Hyperledger Foundation ecosystem as well, as one of the members, and there are many public projects out in the market that talk about hybrid networks between Hyperledger Fabric and Hedera. Right, and IBM personally has done many, and we have been involved in helping to build the adapter between Hyperledger Fabric and the HCS, the data consensus service, as a hybrid model that we just talked about before in this podcast. I think it's a natural evolution. It's the way how organizations are going to see the future. You may start with one and naturally gravitate to the other, not migrating your whole ecosystem, but bridging and that bridge is going to occur. I'm not talking about just a technology bridge, I'm talking about a business branch, a handshake that occurs in order to bring business value to both parties. I definitely see collaboration with the Ethereum. Actually, the Hyperledger Foundation has got numerous projects. Besu is one of them, especially that's really popular among Ethereum developers because it's a private function but Ethereum EVM implementation. And I see a lot of that alignment, especially with Solidity and EVM capabilities in Hedera. So there is alignment there. There's Fabric, which we have already proven in a number of projects in the market. There's more that's in the works that will slowly come out by itself.‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
So not necessarily a, and this is personally a viewpoint that I've had for quite some time, where it's not necessarily one ecosystem or one network to rule them all, but it's going to be an interaction and then down the line an interoperability aspect of like a patchwork framework where these different ecosystems can leverage other aspects of different ecosystems to bolster up the whole ecosystem as a whole. Is that kind of the way that you potentially see it coming down the pike as time passes?‍

IBM - Shyam Nagarajan - Executive Partner
That is correct. I see it as a fit for purpose. You have to start with what fits your purpose today. Now, when your purpose and your intention change in the future, you expand and you collaborate and you co-opt so that's the way I see it evolving as it grows.‍

Brandon Davenport
Okay, that's amazing. And as we talk about growth and some of these technologies coming together and really kind of standing up this whole new kind of web3 industry and how it impacts the broader market, if we expand even further and look at the regulatory environments in various parts of the world, there's lots of progress being made for crypto or web3 in general to at least not stifle that innovation. And I think in the US, that's been really the headlines at least I've been reading, and kind of the regulatory strangeness that's happening in confusion from an enterprise perspective. As we stand right now, what are your thoughts on where things are from a regulation perspective and US competitiveness? I mean, the United States being able to be competitive in this space in this kind of new industrial revolution. I'm curious about your thoughts on that and kind of how much thinking you're doing in that aspect.‍

IBM - Shyam Nagarajan - Executive Partner
You know, Brandon, great question. I will start out by saying I'm not a regulatory expert, so I may have opinions, but it doesn't mean it's actually relevant. I believe any kind of monetary interaction needs adult supervision. Without adult supervision, you have a very untenable model, especially when people make decisions that they are not really aware of the consequences. So I do believe there is a role the regulators play in all of this. Now, talking about innovation and stifling innovation, I think if you're innovating with technology, America still is the place. I mean, look at the quality of the people that we're all working with. It's still the place where technology innovation occurs. If you're trying to innovate in creative ways of monetary angle, then probably America is not the best place. But from a technology perspective, I think it still is very relevant, and I work with enterprises. Enterprises want to do business with other organizations within the regulatory fold. So that's important for all of us.‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
Thank you so much, Sean. Probably the last question here, and then I think Brandon's going to ask you about forward-looking statements. But one of the things that is certainly coming down the pike across the board globally is Central Bank digital currencies and having the opportunity to interview people like Paulo and Lehman and everybody else. One of the things Paulo, you know, I asked him, do you feel like, which was kind of a loaded question because I knew the answer already, do I, does he think that Central Bank digital currencies are going to launch on public ledgers? And he kind of giggled and was like, there's no way. But when you talk about interoperability between some of these ledgers and ecosystems with Central Bank digital currencies when they start going live, would just love to maybe hear your thoughts, maybe from, and I know you're not, you know, you can't talk from IBM standpoint as a whole, but your thoughts around Central Bank digital currency and individual cryptocurrencies or digital assets or networks. We know that bankers aren't bankers, don't have Dev shops of 200 devs building out infrastructure for DLT, but they're going to interoperate or they're going to launch things on DLTs in a private matter or however they do it. What's your vision of the future with, you know, when Central Bank digital currencies go live, not necessarily in exotic corridors, but maybe some tier one nations? Do you feel like there's going to be interactions or interoperability with crypto or ecosystems? And yeah, I would love to hear your thoughts.‍

IBM - Shyam Nagarajan - Executive Partner
Well, there are 90 central banks around the world that are exploring something to do with CBDC, so it's gaining a lot of attention. It's important for IBM because IBM, for the longest time, has been the player behind real transaction processing, and CBDC is going to be the most high-volume transaction processing capacity or capability that it needs in order to be operational. So it's very relevant. But the other angle is Central Bank digital currency, so when organization when we call Central Bank central banks want to be in control of the digital currency, not another organization. I still think expecting a central bank to issue their digital currency and updating the currency to run on a different public protocol or even a crypto protocol is going to be very difficult and hard to convince. But I can see instances where a private form of such technology is adopted by the country's central bank and made available for its population at a regional and jurisdictional level. That can become a reality. The other angle that could be relevant is this notion of hybrid networks, where at a wholesale CBDC level, you need more of an account-based transactional exchange or bond networks that can be necessary and at a retail CBDC level, there is anonymity of the transaction itself that needs to be preserved. I mean, when we do a cash transaction today, you know, we exchange a 20 dollar note to someone else. The central bank doesn't know about it, and they don't need to know about it. That's why cash is an anonymous form of asset. And, in order to preserve that capability, it needs some form of permissionless model that needs to operate at the jurisdiction level. So, a hybrid network, I do think, is going to be very relevant for the CBDC world. And, frankly, there are a number of organizations, including the Federal Reserve and US organizations, that are exploring CBDC initiatives. So is the European Central Bank, and in India, the RBI. There is a Bank of India that is actually running a very successful pilot. So, this definitely is going to be an area to watch. ‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
And, I think, and I'll let Brandon ask the last question here. Well, let me give a quick precursor to the last question. I think, from an educational purview, too, if you think, a lot of citizens globally are just like, "Oh, CBDC is a bad thing," but they don't realize, and you just mentioned it perfectly, there's a differentiator between a wholesale Central Bank digital currency and a retail Central Bank digital currency. And, if you look at what some of these central banks are doing, there's a lot of overhead and all sorts of other things between payments and settlements. That, to me, seems like wholesale might be tackled first, and then retail comes down the line later, especially in some of these tier one nations where you don't have to deal with the last mile of payments or settlements like the retail aspects in the United States. Most of the transactions are already digital, so it's like, yeah, of course, at some point, maybe we bridge that gap. But, you know, how important do you think it is, from an educational standpoint, that people know the difference between what wholesale represents and retail represents?‍

IBM - Shyam Nagarajan - Executive Partner
I don't think regular people really need to know the difference. The banks do. And, you know, the retail individuals, they trust PayPal and Apple Pay and all these different organizations to preserve and manage their PII and transaction information. I believe the future is going to be just another form of a digital wallet where your information is going to be used to transact. If you ever go to India, 90% of the retail interaction is now occurring digitally, and it's a little phone QR code that beeps between two people, and it's done. And it's at a volume level that's unthinkable in other countries, so that's already in play. And I believe the future CBDC is going to be just another flavor of similar interaction and nothing else. So the distinction that we make is for financial institutions. This is important. I think at a retail level, as long as they're assured that their privacy is preserved, I think they'll take to it and adopt it in mass.‍

Brandon Davenport
That's a really great perspective. My brain is just going numb. So sad that we have to wind down this interview. Okay, I want to just wrap things up on forward-looking statements. And I mean, Shyam, like last fall in an interview, you said something within the context of Enterprise and the rate of adoption of DLT, and just I want to quote here. You said, "Hedera brings something that is necessary as an accelerator for the market to move." Can you expand on your thoughts regarding Hedera's place in the market and maybe continue this forward-looking statement further? Like, what is the something that Hedera brings, and how do you think the Hedera ecosystem will look in the coming years?‍

IBM - Shyam Nagarajan - Executive Partner
Well, look, when I say something, it starts with trust, right? The 29, likely to be 30 organizations that we're talking about here are some of the big organizations. You know, we have the capacity to go to more than 39, and that's just, you know, we can keep expanding that. So the permission and the trust aspect of it is very key, and that's typically lacking in a lot of public protocols, so that's a pretty big deal. The second aspect of it is about liquidity and the ability to convene ecosystems on the permissioned network. I think Hedera offers a very unique way how this is possible and the ecosystems to convene compared to other public protocols. So, I think that those still remain very attractive, and that's the reason why I still continue to be enthusiastic about Hedera and its capabilities.‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
Well, I have to say thank you so much to everybody up here. Shyam, we know how busy you are on a daily basis. I got to give a gigantic shout out to Mark from HashPack for helping us to kind of facilitate these moving forward, as well as Jacob for standing up here today from HashPack. Brandon, who runs his HashGraph News spaces every Sunday, Genfinity, who does these bi-weekly. Again, I mentioned at the beginning of this, we're going to be interviewing Aberdeen on the 24th of July, which is another Hedera Governing Council member. To the whole team at Genfinity, and again today, we had Shyam Nagarajan, Executive Partner Blockchain Web3 Metaverse and Sustainability at IBM Consulting. Shyam, thank you so much for your time. Really, really appreciate it, and hope this isn't the last time that we get to talk. It'll be really exciting to revisit this six months, nine months down the line and see where we're at.‍

IBM - Shyam Nagarajan - Executive Partner
Well, Brandon, Jacob, thank you very much for having me. That was a pretty cool conversation.‍

Genfinity - King Solomon - Founder & CEO
All right, guys, we will see you guys next time. Thank you to everybody, and again, this Thursday we have Chain Infinity between Aleph Zero, HBAR, and XRPO. It'll be really interesting. And, yeah, great spaces, guys. Thank you so much, Brandon. Thank you so much, Shyam. We'll talk to you guys next time. Thank you. Bye-bye, guys.