Ep. 540 Protecting Your Digital Identity

 

— TRANSCRIPT —

 

SPEAKERS

Aaron Malone, Yuan Su

 

Aaron Malone  00:09

All right, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the crypto 101 podcast. It is all your host pizza mind. And I am joined today by Yan Sue, the CTO over at meatus. And nouveau. You’re on. Welcome.

 

Yuan Su  00:22

Thank you for having me here. It’s an honor to be invited to one of the reputable podcasting industry. So very happy to be here.

 

Aaron Malone  00:31

Well, there’s not that many of us so you could throw a rock into a basket, and you’re gonna, you’re gonna pick up pretty much what you what you threw in there. So well, it’s an honor to have you. There’s not many people like you in this industry, either. So let’s get to know you as well. Give us your background of what you were doing before you got into crypto, and why you decided to join this industry?

 

Yuan Su  00:52

Absolutely. So my background is quite pure. So I start from a technical career path starting from age of six. So I start programming age of six, I was invited to a secret room Elementary School, full of Apple computers back then I was like, Oh, what are those things. So they taught us how to draw pictures using programming languages, and there was a programming language called the logo. For people with some age, that will probably know what that is. And then we start to program using basic, and they really can’t get into this world where he can kind of tell computer what to do and do some productivity work for you. So then I start to teach myself as c plus, plus, and get familiar with a lot of different development framework, when the one thing I really proud of during my early childhood was I was able to lock my parents out of my computer. So it gave myself a total privacy. So whatever I stole my computer, my personal home, even though, so it kind of tells you I really value the data privacy and security a lot. So it’s kind of already embedded imagine. So naturally, I went through the computer science programs in the in the universities, and then join IBM, those big enterprises, for a very simple reason, because I need the money to pay off the loans and tuition and get the life. So I was lucky enough to join the database team. So it has a lot of very hardcore programming projects, including the like parallel programming, high performance and storage. And we also got a chance to work with a hyper ledger team. So for people who don’t know what hyper ledger is, it is we’re not the permission network, a lot of enterprises actually use blockchain technology through hyper ledger, IBM was one of the founding members of the hyper ledger fabric foundation. So we got a chance to work with that team. And I was quite fascinated by the technology itself. Mostly because it’s, it’s really a paradigm shift in terms of how the power of control is more decentralized instead of a central entity. For example, if you have only one central entity controlling and all the other business logic, you can have, for example, if you run a lottery station, and you’re the only one that actually come up with numbers, pretty easily I can kind of pick the number so that attacker wing over time, right? But it’s not that possible if the computation is decentralized. So hyper ledger is a little bit different, because it’s permissioned. It has a rose in that. So it’s some words can show them in a centralized. So I look at that it’s I totally like because I Sam seems like there are some limitations, like human made limitations, mostly from the enterprise world to fully realize the potential of a technology, then I know, okay, there’s another world out there, the public public chains that Bitcoins, and a theorems in those are permissionless, open blockchains. And you can do all sorts of things using smart contracts on Aetherium. And recently now, you can do some ERC 20 tokens on Bitcoin, which is also very fascinating. Well, I’ve been looking into the technologies behind ordinals. It’s quite interesting, I will say. So there are a lot of innovations in space and the fact that the technology the way the technology gives people the freedom, give the power to stop participating or decision making and participating in the business logic, and have a full transparency I really fascinates me, it seems like we’re on a verge of a quote unquote, revolution in terms of how the the general community is gonna be participating in the business instead of just being monetized by the business.

 

Aaron Malone  04:42

Yeah. And there’s so many problems that blockchain and the emerging privacy technology can solve, but it’s a lot of problems that people aren’t really aware of. And we talk on this podcast and many other podcast talks about the need for privacy, and controlling your own data. But I don’t think that message is really hammered home to the general public. So today, Elon Musk tweets something of a screenshot of WhatsApp accessing his microphone when he’s not using the app, including when he’s asleep. WhatsApp just wakes up and starts listening, trying to pick up whatever it can in the background. What in the world is going on over there? There’s maybe billions of people at this point that use whatsapp and rely on it for business. And it turns out this thing is little more than spyware, even though it’s supposed to be this encrypted, end to end communication tool. And it turns out, surprise, surprise. It’s been bugged. Yeah. So why is privacy so important? And how do we hammer this home to the general public?

 

Yuan Su  05:50

So it’s actually a big topic. So when I when I talk about data privacy with other people, I always use one analogy. For example, your wallet. Let’s see, what’s the most inclusive way to describe this? Let’s say, let’s assume most people have driver’s license. Let’s assume so sorry about the young audience. You may not have, but your future you may have which I’m gonna sizes. So yeah, well, you have a driver’s license with you. So imagine, instead of having this driver’s license in your wallet, you kind of give it to put this way you kind of give it to Elon Musk, let’s say, because we all know Elon Musk, say, hey, Elon Musk, I trust my driver’s license in your position. So you can keep my driver’s license going forward. Ask yourself this question. How comfortable are you? And when you do that? I bet most people won’t feel comfortable because, hey, this is really my identity. How can I entrust my identity with someone else? But I can tell you, it’s happening every day. In a digital world, your digital identity is actually managed cuts, and access all the time by those enterprises, including Amazon, Google. And Facebook, I think what’s matter, so WhatsApp is part of NIDA, right? If I if I remember. So I can tell you ever been in the enterprise will we consider data as a asset, your data as an asset. So we always say, data is new gold, meaning that data is actually a new type of asset, the enterprise will love to mine and monetize. The way to monetize is quite simple. They can do analytics, they can sell your data even give to the other other parties who love to get access to your information. And people may may wonder, Why do you get? Why do they get so many scam cars nowadays, compared to 20 years ago, 30 years ago, I rarely get scam cars. And now I get like, like a dozen every day, I don’t want to pick up the cars anymore because of that. And because the the data has been monetized. And your personal data is no longer your own anymore. And the underlying drive is this drive for a profit for my enterprises, when they have a easy way to access without even your consent of those your personal data of yours. To use it, I guarantee you I use it, because it will drive the profit.

 

Aaron Malone  08:36

Yeah. And in addition to that, they can also use that to manipulate you, when there’s a campaign that set to marginalize a certain group, which happens everywhere. And if it’s not happening currently, where you are, well just wait for another regime to get fraudulently voted in and then they can come after people who are dissenting towards that. They can pull all your history of everything you’ve ever said, even in private, and declare you a terrorist or the enemy of the state and arrest you even though you’ve done nothing wrong. So it’s important to not ever put yourself in that situation if possible. But that possible is becoming increasingly more and more difficult. You know that God has invented WhatsApp. But when he sold that to Mehta, he felt so bad, and like a horrible sell out. And then he went and invented signal. So it’s the same developer who invented both of these privacy communication apps. Well guess what signals bugged also, and can’t be trusted. So you’ve got this guy who is either completely incompetent at his job, or is completely corrupt, with what he’s built and can’t be trusted either way. So now yeah. So now we need other technologies to come in. And that’s where there’s there’s many things In the blockchain space out there trying to solve this digital identity and privacy messaging solution.

 

Yuan Su  10:08

Yeah, I think a lot of problems you’ve just described roots from the underlying design of our existing solutions, the current design rely on central identity to manage and control the data. And they are responsible for keeping the data secure, keep the data private, their intention may be well intended, I was saying, I say, hey, because that’s the root of the business, if they cannot make the data, secure, and private, and no one’s gonna use up, however, many engineering notes and many software engineering hosts out there, there will be bugs in the system. And even governments may force you to open the backdoor for it because you’re the entity that can show the data. So they have a one single point of contact, they can really forced you to open the backdoor. I think Elon Musk already revealed that Twitter has that backdoor to the government already, they can see all your private messages. So the actual way using the first principle, theory is to really solve the rule of thumb were currently the data ownership, unfortunately, is controlled by the entities that speak entities. Like just like how you entrust your driver’s license to Elon Musk, you’re basically in trust your data, digital entity, or to a third party, which is not under your control. The right way to solve that problem, fundamental problem is to reverse the ownership. So basically, at the user itself, us every single user should have the full control of your data profile. And that’s a lot of digital, digital identity, or decentralized identity has been focusing. Now, the challenge as a result of that is like I tell you, what enterprises love to use your data. And they can almost Can, can live without your data. They have whole business logic is based on access of your user data. So they still need it. So if we just completely take away their access to our user data, the adoption of the digital identity, or the adoption of decentralized identity, will be a problem, you can see a lot of pushback. This technology has been around for more than five years, the dodging has been so slow, because the pushback from the different projects and the prices, because they need access to data. But thanks to the government of the UK, zero knowledge technologies, and now we have a way to give access or to give access of certain data attributes of a user data to enterprises, without revealing the the actual data itself. So that’s the most exciting developments in this space right now. And we’re confident they will help the adoption going forward. Yeah,

 

Aaron Malone  12:56

I’m a big fan of zero knowledge technology, I think it’s a great compromise between total privacy and still allowing for room for compliance in certain cases. The big thing that concerns me at the moment is chat GPT. In order to use this service, you need to put in your phone number. Imagine if you had to authenticate every time you wanted to do a Google search. That’s completely absurd. And it got me thinking, which direction is actually being used here? Is it us using chat GPT? Or is Chad GPT using us to mine how we work? Because that’s what all these free services do. They’re mining you as your data. So while you’re pulling data from their database, they’re learning how you work. They’re recording all your thoughts, and the things that you search for to create patterns and other insights. So keep that in mind. I think chat GPT and open ai ai in general is gonna be one of the most dangerous companies of the next 10 years. You know, looking back, I think it’ll be a little bit more obvious than it is today. But if you go through Sam Altman’s Twitter, you’re gonna realize this guy’s a complete sociopath. Open AI is not open whatsoever. Either its business or its source code. And I mean, if you see some of the other things he’s brought into the world, like World coin, which is mining your biometric data into this huge database in exchange for some literal shit coin. This guy might be the Antichrist. And now he’s going to be basically, you know, entrusted with this new tool that’s supposed to replace 10s of 1000s of jobs. That sounds like the end of the world to me. I mean, something someone should be looking into this guy. This is crazy.

 

Yuan Su  14:50

Yeah, so what are your thoughts on my reading too much

 

Aaron Malone  14:53

into it?

 

Yuan Su  14:55

Yeah, so I’m not gonna comment on the Assam individual as himself. attractivity is a very juicy technology in a way that, first of all to your audience, please be very careful using chat TBD, on the interface. So open AI has very clearly stated, whatever you input on the interface when open like auto Elburn Adi, and he was charged up over there, all the data will be ingested into the model training going forward. So be part of the database. So do not put any sensitive personal information into that. And for example, if I ask, Hey, so mind you on a 40, I graduate from here, please write a bio of me. Yes, they can do it. But someone else can actually query say, Hey, what is the age of yawn and chatty beauty? Well, no. Because I already provide that information. If you if you have your driver’s license, in putting on TPT, your driver’s license, might as well just be open public information now. So be very, very careful. When you start GBT. And and I think opening has been very open regarding user data. So whatever you put there will be used at the bar and banned them. Except if you use API now. Now, no, you have to say, hey, how much do I trust open AI in terms of their claim? That if you use API to, to ask questions, that data supplied will not be part of the future modeling. We can only trust, that’s all I can say that we can only trust them. And it really depends on confidence trust. So it is a technology, I think it will change our life. But it’s very dangerous. You know that in the wrong hands in the wrong hands. It can influence the opinion of the public. It may not be the the positive way. And if if anyone start to rely on chat, BDT chat DBT to make opinions to make decisions, both business and personal decisions. They can be manipulated. And it’s actually one thing that I’ve been looking into how to make a blockchain, a companion to AI models, where we make sure that the the AI models are interacting away in a positive way. So that cannot be manipulated to for example, influence the election. So there are it’s a very dangerous technology. But same time, I also have certain flavor of a mad scientist. So I embrace that technology and say, hey, look, this is actually very exciting, can help a lot of things. We just need to be very responsible. I hope open AI is also a responsible company. They they know they shouldn’t know how dangerous this technology is in their hands right now.

 

Aaron Malone  17:50

Well said. Couldn’t agree more. Let’s talk about some of the things that you’re working on. Give us the high level overview of what is nouveau?

 

Yuan Su  17:58

Absolutely. So nouveau is a decentralized platform that aim to get the next billion people in battery. So we look at the current pain points of the industry. So far, we have a lot of scaling options. That’s what made this was about. So we can make the blockchain easier to use, we can make the blockchain faster and cheaper. So people don’t have to break back when using the blockchain. So I feel sorry for those PRC 20. Folks, they do one transaction may cost 10s of hundreds of dollars. But I think they’re making money right now. So I think they’re willing to pay for that transaction fees. But you can expect such experience to be optimal for general purpose use or mainstream use. NuVal is there to really to bridge that gap, so that everyone and their grandmas can start using Blockchain powered applications without even knowing what blockchain is. But get all the benefits of blockchains. So there are a lot of new types of applications. For example, a defy is one I really liked, defy. Because defy gives the power or the right to participate. So the financial tools that is not accessible for regular people in the traditional finance world. And the transparency and the traceability of defy is also wonderful, and will make their own decisions. Of course, there’s always a risk associated with it, but it’s their own decision. And then also the game fi where you kind of get some entertainment value, I say in time, and same time incentivized by a participation of the game ecosystem, which is rarely happen in the traditional gaming world, but it’s really big in games. I’ve been talking with some of the big game companies and platforms, and they’re really interested in games. sudo space, nouveau is a very natural bridge for them to bring the existing user base they have, without needing to create a new wallet without needing to create new ID system. They can use the existing IT systems through NuVal, to start using those skins, applications. And on top of that, because when the user interact with the application, they actually generate a lot of data in terms of usage patterns, in terms of the history, transaction history, or some information that they have they want to disclose. Private was the application, for example, when the user using a data dating app, they may have some sensitive preferences in this day, what they prefer to date in the application, those can be kept in private, encrypted in private preserving way through NuVal. And like I said earlier, we actually allow enterprises to access data that was user’s consent, and privacy preserving way so that we can we will actually have a private data analytics platform allow enterprise astute utilize that later, because it’s actually very important for enterprise to access the data, but in a responsible way, meaning that a user need to consent and users aware how the data has been used, and be if user choose, and enterprises, okay, we’ll just share the data in a privacy preserving way. So that will mean offering from the platform itself. nouveau does have a lot of arms in terms of a vertical market, we’re targeting that. Currently, we are focusing on the the events and conferences. So so in the future events, you may see new events associated with that. We have this gamification system in place to really reward the engagement of attendees in those conferences. I recently we did a webinar with Tapia, it’s an online Metaverse based conference, I think the reception over there is pretty nice. So love to see more of that coming. And we’re also working with education institutions, so that we can issue digital certificate or issue a kind of a membership of the classroom, where while they track the progress of the learning, and they get badges along the way, for example, if you really get a very high mark and certain assignments, you get a nice batch to show off and stuff like that. And also what was a healthcare business. That’s, that’s gonna take a while. But I think there’s a lot of potential there. And finally, we’re looking at ai, ai as in data engine, as the platform will have a lot of data and a lot of encrypted and private data. So if someone needs to train an AI model, and they can, they can actually pay users to get access to certain attributes with data, so that they can incorporate into their models. So new will be a big data engine for those AI applications. So a lot of talk about, it’s a big platform, but through and through, we really aim to get the next billion people into battery and keep them there, so that we can get the technology into mainstream adoption.

 

Aaron Malone  23:18

Love it. And what’s your approach to get the next billion people there? You know, when I asked so many different developers, they say, well, when to improve the UX UI, the user experience and the user interface over here. I’d say marketing is a really big challenge in this industry, as well as education. There’s just such a huge knowledge gap between what people are used to that maybe only check their email, and you can still use Bing as a search engine. And the rest of us that are web three native, how are you going to build a bridge across that chasm and allow a billion users to come on to the platform?

 

Yuan Su  23:55

Absolutely. So when we designed the user interface for newable, especially for the non veterans, meaning that regular grandma grandpa’s, we design a way that is as close to the regulatory to the experience they had with web application as possible. A lot of user adoption is driven by partnerships. So we actually partner with for example, the big gaming platform, or energy clashing platform exchanges, and, and the the social and guilds and all that. So so we get a lot of users from through those channels. Because the one unique offering that we have compared to other competitors is we allow seamless ID integrations, meaning they don’t they don’t really have to switch the IDs, for example, they can use Google logins. They can use Facebook, I keep saying Facebook, by the way, sorry. But on May the data logging or telegram or Twitter, we support a full range of different logins. They can is, and once they log in depends on and they actually have a choice whether to assign a Metamask account or not for those veterans or for for new people who have no idea where Metamask is they have a choice of a locally managed NPC base, sorry, locally managed wallet, and PC based wallet, or if was for custody focused in Wallet app to users choice. So the full experience will just be like opening a web two application, we do have a very interesting SDK that allows the developers kind of really like to use. So it’s a RESTful API based SDK, where we kind of abstract the whole blockchain operations, including the smart contract interactions. If if the developers deploy a smart contract through a numeral platform, we actually generates a whole set of inputs to interact with the smart contracts through API’s instead of using like web three packages. So Easter Yes, is that something that and we handles or the wallet, wallet, wallets are integrated integrations, through SDK as well. So it really saves a lot of time for a developer to adopt this. And we actually had a demo where I show a, someone just migrate a web two application to s3 using the same SDK within a day. So they’re a lot of opportunities where we can see a lot of users come in a lot of new applications coming in through a new platform.

 

Aaron Malone  26:36

So the platform itself, does it sit on top of Aetherium? layer one? Or does it sit on top of metus? Or is it its own chain,

 

Yuan Su  26:43

so the platform works with all the chains. So far, so far, we support EVM compatible chains, because that’s easier for us to kind of start lists. In the future, we do want to expand into other chains, like a lot of launch, and Polonius changed UI. So there are a lot of nutrients kept popping up. But we’re gonna start with the EVM compatible chair first.

 

Aaron Malone  27:08

That’s fantastic. Well, I’ve really been impressed with what you built over there. I mean, just looking at the website, nouveau sphere.io, a beautiful design, very easy to navigate, just a simple button to log in. And then that’s your portal to web three right there. And I think that’s the optimal user experience. So you go to a website, you log in, and that takes you to everything else that’s built in that ecosystem. I don’t know why the theory hasn’t figured this out five years ago. But hey, it’s an opportunity for somebody else. And it looks like you guys are capitalizing on it. So love to see that. Let’s talk a little bit about metus. Because it’s another Aetherium L two, there’s probably a dozen of them out there right now. But what makes me special and different from some of the others.

 

Yuan Su  27:53

So first off, it is fully community owned, we, we don’t have any VC stick, you know why sometimes its advantages and as a disadvantage. But it’s completely controlled by the community. And we are the one of the pioneers to really push the centralization of LTE, especially for all that’s kind of like I can say, because certain technology choice, we are indeed still the cheapest out to service use out there. Of course, there are trade offs here and there. But But given the the current comparison, I still think I believe Metis is the best analogy out there in terms of user experience, and a good balance with the security. And recently, Avi has a has launched Metis so it is a the last missing piece of our defy foundation. So extremely excited about it, I can see TV start to flow a lot of audio opportunities. So absolutely. For people for the defy DJs this is a good time, good chance to get in early for those protocols to get some nice API’s and rewards. Other than that, like I said, we are very serious about decentralization, we are working on a version of the decentralized sequences so that we are no longer the only operator of the sequencer node anymore gives a lot of opportunities for community participation, large liquidity providers to really participate in running the nodes together. And I wouldn’t start this out I will be proud to I’m pretty proud to announce that to me this is the only URL to that doesn’t have a maintenance window meaning that in the future when we upgrade the network for for whatever new features we’re going to introduce the network with will always run always run so there’ll be no downtime for our to anymore. Um, it is so so I think the if you really ask him what’s different, a meteor is compared to others. is our relentless pursuit for innovations that want to give the user the best user experience, and cheapest way to work on blockchain. So they can focus on innovations on the application itself. So they don’t have to worry about all the different user experience or whether they need to optimize the smart contract in a way that it can be cheaper in the gas fees for users, they should focus on the actual application with Blockchain itself, and what kind of other than defy game phi, social phi, what other things they can do other things, they can really take advantage of the uniqueness of blockchain technology, to give some utilities to give some business values back to the user, I think that’s what we want our developers to focus on,

 

Aaron Malone  30:49

I definitely need to find a layer two that I can rely on. As the next bull market comes, there’s no way in hell, I’m gonna be paying $400 Aetherium gas fees again. And maybe even worse, now that, you know, we’re already seeing $100 Gas fees, and we’re still in the depths of a bear market. Yes. So I need to find a home that I can trust, but I have some fears. And maybe you can help give me some knowledge to alleviate these fears. I’m concerned that if I bridge my USDC, or my eath on to an L two, and the bridge gets hacked, somehow, those bridge tokens that I’ve received are going to be worthless. Is this still a concern in this day and age? Or has that been specifically solved with metus? And other l tos? What are your thoughts on this?

 

Yuan Su  31:37

So I think making this up to the arbitrage, we have been in the industry for a long while we have our TV is in different stages. Medus even was close to Wimbledon TV at one point before before the TV start to switch to other Chase. Right. They’re coming back. So so the bridge that we use is well tested, has been tested at time has been tested by a whole bunch of why hackers? So they’re so I think optimal has 1 million bounty methods also has 1 million bounty. So the the it’s actually quite lucrative for hackers to try to find problems in those bridges. So far, there has been no exploration and there’s no no hacking or whatsoever, or possible hacking whatsoever whatsoever during the for those bridge contracts. So I’m quite confident and quite confident that those bridges are pretty safe. I think. I think the key here especially for options roll up is it has a seven day finalization window. So even if something is, is something is wrong, we actually have seven day to kind of find a way to remedy. So in stuff like indeed immediate issue. For example, if something in the layer two got hacked and layer two site, and a bridge happened unexpectedly. As operators as a community, we can actually vote to freeze the bridge and to remedy the bridge so that the the actual assets of the users can be well protected. So in a way that it is reasonable idea, so many so much TV is being locked in the optics roll up right now, because it’s actually relatively safer from the in terms of like risk mitigation point of view, but still saying that I am very, very confident about safety, the bridge contract trainer, after two years of like usage with a billion LTVs in total, across all different protocols. I have a very high confidence. Well, I

 

Aaron Malone  33:57

appreciate your your candor for all that and I do feel better after hearing it. After everything we saw in 2022. Everything getting attacked under the sun, it seemed like everything that could fail did and meet us wasn’t on the Grim Reapers list. Oh, at that point. So that’s good to know. And I also liked that there’s, you know, some kind of rollback period before complete finalization. So there is some way to correct a really, really major issue.

 

Yuan Su  34:28

Yeah, sure. It’s almost like a lawsuit. Yeah, it’s almost like a last resort. We’ll definitely do not want to use that. But it is there just to in case something gets messed up. Our code is something got exploited. We still have a last line of defense.

 

Aaron Malone  34:44

That’s good to know. I know there’s a lot of people out there that really feel like blockchain should be all about immutability and finality. But maybe that doesn’t have to occur in just a couple of seconds and having a window of time to try and do You know, really save your entire system? Yeah. Because if it’s not there who’s going to trust it? Yeah, that’s how I feel about a theory of metal one right now. You know, ever since, you know they forked into Aetherium, classic. You know, we’ve all been wondering, you know, is this the right thing to do to rollback the chain? And if there’s a giant hack? Well, you can’t do that every day. But it seems like there’s a giant hack every day on Aetherium. So there’s got to be a better way. And it should. More eyes should be looking at what you’ve done over there at meet us. So, really appreciate everything you’ve built over there. And we want to keep tabs on it. Well, we got to let you go for the moment. But looking forward to having you back on to learn some more about privacy and hear your thoughts. But in the meantime, where can people follow you to get some more of your ideas and follow what you’re doing?

 

Yuan Su  35:52

Oh, absolutely. You can. People can follow me on Twitter. My Twitter handle handle is I think it’s a good boss too. So it should be quite easily rememberable. And actually follow me there a Twitter I sometimes share some random thoughts on that. Sometimes it’s garbage sometimes kepi Kabhi Kabhi wisdom. So it sounds a lot like

 

Aaron Malone  36:20

cool. And check out new vo sphere.io and meet us.io and check out those ecosystems. There’s a lot to like over there. And we’ll be back later on this week with another great podcast here at crypto one on one. Beckett