We start off speaking about what blockchain applications are currently live in the region and where enterprise utilizes blockchain for the betterment of business. Saqr and Akbar both share their views on the current state of blockchain use in the Middle East and general region.

We go on to discuss the challenges of raising funding for Proof of Concept projects. Both our guests walk us through their experiences in each of their domains and advise companies on how best to approach funding for a POC.

Finally we discuss what adoption of blockchain technology will look like, specifically for enterprises.

We want to give a special shoutout to our sponsor Blockfinex. Blockfinex offers one of the most competitive trading fees compared to industry leading competitors as well as a quick onboarding process for its users. You can find them at blockfinex.com

Special Guests: Akbar Farook and Saqr Ereiqat.

Mariam who is the Head of the Center for the 4th Industrial Revolution led the report's formation, paritcularly from a policy standpoint. In this episode, we discuss:

1. Mariam's insights from Davos
2. Key takeaways from the report
3. How particular challenges such as regulation and stakeholder engagement will be overcome?
4. A brief look into the 7 Case Studies included in the report
5. C4IR's stance on cryptocurrencies
6. Top down vs bottom up approach to deploying innovative opportunities

This was an extremely insightful podcast where we see the Dubai Blockchain Strategy and the Federal Blockchain Strategy achieving higher levels of success!

If you liked what you heard, please do leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and the other platforms. Don’t forget to support us by spreading the word and hitting that subscribe button!

Special Guest: Mariam Al Muhairi .

Ahmed reminisces the first time he and David first met, remembering a quote he would never forget; ‘Everything that can be decentralized will be decentralized’. This was jokingly described as Johnston’s law when David first introduced this at the Coin Summit in 2014. Great, things will be decentralised but when and to what extent? David does a good job showcasing how and when certain processes and use cases should be decentralised.

The two dig deeper to explore what use cases we are seeing today that is both decentralised and has some credible adoption behind it. Other than Bitcoin, of course, David goes onto explain how Factom, a decentralised blockchain that anchors into bitcoin and ethereum, has secured hundreds of millions of business records and cites a couple of uses by real companies using Factom as a way to record business documents. This is where the amazing TikTok Baidu case was revealed by David. You definitely don’t want to miss this interesting court case story, oh and the supreme court of China was involved too.
David goes into what Factom is and why it exists claiming that it solves as many problems as bitcoin does as its core focus is on record keeping which allows for strong transparency and accountability.

Ahmed shifts the conversation to see David’s opinion on which jurisdiction is the best for blockchain and crypto. In his words - ‘Switzerland. Hands down’. Ahmed, a bit shell shocked dove in to understand why David thinks Switzerland is the hotspot for blockchain and David urges blockchain projects should consider moving to Zug, which is dubbed as Crypto Valley.

David further shocks Ahmed when Ahmed asks him Bitcoin or Ethereum. David chooses Ethereum for a number of reasons - Do make sure to listen to hear why!

Before the end of the show, the pair go off on a completely random topic - Homeschooling. As David mentioned he was homeschooled, Ahmed was intrigued to find out what is homeschooling about, hows it different from public schooling and why parents make the decision to homeschool their children.

All of the above and more will be on this week’s episode of Encrypted!

If you liked what you heard, please do leave us a review on iTunes and the other platforms. Don’t forget to support us by spreading the word!

Special Guest: David Johnston.

Fredrik is focusing on making data on the blockchain more accessible to project founders, investors, and individuals by analysing and aggregating public blockchain data. The two talk about the right types of metrics needed to measure the right levels of adoptions and how to measure the success of a product and its market fit.

Extraordinary data they showcased in Berlin shows that there is 1 Ethereum address for every 110 people. Only 1 in every 110 people! But is this the right metric to measure for success?
Fredrik argues that they’re creating a platform not just to state what the right metrics are but to allow their users to have a say in what success looks like and what are the right metrics to measure.

Of course, retention rates are top in priority and Fredrik explains a certain case they’ve been seeing within the context of the MakerDAO project. He argues that although the macro data for MakerDAO are positive but when you dig into the data, there are many surprises in store. Surprise surprise, retention rates in crypto-related products such as MakerDAO are still super low!

Fredrik also goes into his enterprise experience, working for one of the largest Norwegian media companies which looked to implement blockchain in their operations. Going into the infrastructure of trust, particularly in a jurisdiction like Norway where people trust their government, the pair really explore if blockchain, privacy by design and all the things this industry stands for matters for these types of institutions and countries.

Before the pair sign off, Fredrik goes into his takeaways from Berlin Blockchain Week. He sees usability and real use cases are coming to front and center instead of fancy tech stuff taking the limelight.

All of the above and more will be on this week’s episode of Encrypted!

If you liked what you heard, please do leave us a review on iTunes and the other platforms. Don’t forget to support us by spreading the word!

Special Guest: Fredrik Haga.

In this episode, Ahmed and Nic speak to Richard to understand what on earth Quantstamp do and why their smart contract auditing solution is so crucial to the development of this space.

Richard starts off with his background and how the idea of Quantstamp evolved. Using industrial techniques he picked up as an also trader, he and his co-founder wanted to apply those techniques to provide smart contract auditing services to the up and coming projects which are all based on smart contracts.

Nic dives straight intp addressing key concerns associated with smart contracts such as coding a simple mistake and how would a reissue be implemented. Would it be done through contract modularisation or would a fork have to be implemented?
Richard goes into his experiences back in 2016 where the general consensus is code is law but that narrative changed with the introduction and uptake of blockchains such as Hyperledger and Corda. In term of permissionless chains, he goes into the concept of upgradeable contracts which can be implemented on Ethereum and draws upon an example and takes us through this use case along with the challenges it represents.

We also go on to the topic of enterprise and how Quantstamp interacts with different levels of enterprise clients. One colossal client of theirs is Kakao’s Ground X project (Kakao is Korea’s largest messaging platform) and shares how he has interacted with them and the processes involved.
Richard shares how they approach different projects according to their security valuations and how different they have become over time, particularly the big shift from 2017 to 2019.

Ahmed shifts the topic to why Quantsamp is in cohort 6 of the Dubai Future Accelerators program, which is a 12-week program dedicated to bringing in start-ups from around the world to bring innovation to certain government departments. They were paired up with the Road and Transport Authority (RTA) in order to help them build a secure system to sync up the different data silos that exist in the various agencies of the RTA to bring the coordination of data from days to seconds. Richard shares his current experiences with the RTA explaining how welcoming and open-minded they are in trialing these projects, in particular how the government departments emphasize the business applications and benefits these solutions would bring rather than focusing on the hype that blockchain.

Richard touches upon their global expansion, such as their new set up in Japan and Noumura’s recent investment in Quantstamp. Nic changes the conversation to trust and data standardization and given Quantstamp’s global footprint and diverse clientele, what this means for them introducing standards in the industry and becoming the trust anchor. Richard dives deep into the 3 verticals of standards they are working on, one of which is the Smart Contract Security Alliance (which Nomura and Fujitsu are current stakeholders).

When Richard started the company there were 300,000 smart contracts on Ethereum and now on there are 12 million contracts deployed on Ethereum! This led them to think that security audits should be automated with future anticipated demand and theoretically a token can be used as a security and utility feature to secure the system and verify the smart contract audits. The QSP token of Quantstamp is the token that powers this protocol and Richard further explains the viability of why the token economics could work in the future.

Nic further questions Richard if they would implement AI and machine learning into their business! Make sure to listen and find out what he had to say!

All this and more was discussed on this week’s episode of Encrypted!

Also, the legal bits for the soundtrack used in the podcast:
Music Credit: LAKEY INSPIRED

Track Name: Warm Nights

Music By: LAKEY INSPIRED @ https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired

Original upload HERE – https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired/warm-nights

License for commercial use: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported “Share Alike” (CC BY-SA 3.0) License.

Full License HERE – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

Special Guest: Richard Ma.

Today's episode has both Nic and Ahmed interacting with Educhain CEO Mark Balovnev on how to build scalable academic passporting systems. Focusing on interfaces to access documents and wallets for sharing with other gateways and portals.

Mark talks about how sentiment has changed over the last 3 years, why industry is adopting the technology and increasing mobility of these documents.

Key learnings:
-The starting process and how the industry can get involved
-What values can blockchain provide in education and the industries impacted by it
-Finding your blockchain hobbyist and enabling them
-How UAE University put transcripts, certificates, and other metadata on chain for over 70,000 students
-Plus a quick overview as to how the amazing Blockchain report recently launched with Smart Dubai came together.

All this and more on this week's episode of Encrypted.

Also, the legal bits for the soundtrack used in the podcast:
Music Credit: LAKEY INSPIRED

Track Name: Warm Nights

Music By: LAKEY INSPIRED @ https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired

Original upload HERE – https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired/warm-nights

License for commercial use: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported “Share Alike” (CC BY-SA 3.0) License.

Full License HERE – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

Special Guest: Mark Balovnev.

Fatma, in charge of driving Du’s blockchain programs, walks us through why Du are focusing their time and efforts on using blockchain technology and what they are actually building for their diverse customer base.

One of their main products is the Blockchain Platform as a Service (BPaas) which helps enterprises and SME’s alike easily deploy blockchain network and applications in a simple and secure environment. Fatma shares why the BPaaS is a game changer for the region and how they are aiming to lead the enterprise space for blockchain adoption.

With all the focus on their end customer, we also learn about Du’s other ventures in this nascent space such as the Smart Contract Repository and the Dapp marketplace they are building.

All of the above and more will be on this week’s episode of Encrypted!

If you liked what you heard, please do leave us a review on iTunes and the other platforms. Don’t forget to support us by spreading the word!

Special Guest: Fatma Elsafty.

Hubertus, who was part of the Tezos Foundation board transformation and is currently very active on Tezos operations, speaks to us about how he became involved in the project and gives a rundown on the early days of Tezos, its present status and also the future outlook.

He shares why Tezos was initially created, how they completed a mega crowdsale and the key features that distinguish Tezos from the rest. We also touch on the issues that the Tezos Foundation faced following the fundraise and how the team acted accordingly.

We also talk about the verticals in enterprise that Tezos will initially tackle which are: Digital Assets, Mobility and Gaming. And yes, Tezos are creating their own token security standard under the Digital Assets vertical, so do make sure to watch this space!

Hubertus being an investor himself at Enabling Future, shares his investment experience in both the start-up sphere and blockchain/crypto sphere and what he typically looks out for in projects.

All this and more on this episode of Encrypted. Please subscribe if you still haven’t and remember to rate and review the show!

Special Guest: Hubertus Thonhauser .

We find out what Ginco Investments is, their role in the entrepreneurship ecosystem and their enterprise-focused investment thesis. Being the first Emirati family to operate a pure play early-stage VC, they have also ventured into the blockchain space.
We dig deep into the different investments they have made, in particular, their blockchain investments, which revolve heavily around the verticals of financial services, developer toolsets, and broad enterprise use cases.

We also talk about what crypto related services will pave the way in the short term to medium term future, such as crypto asset management and custody solutions that hedge funds and professional investors inherently need.

Gary also shares his views and insights on how start-ups should approach this region and how they should set their expectations when starting in this new market.

Finally, we also talk about the regional banking system, how they should improve and change and why on earth we are still using paper to change small details in our bank accounts!

If you enjoyed this episode, do not forget to hit that subscribe button and do remember to rate and review the show. Every little helps!

Special Guest: Gary Sheynkman.

We cover examples of winning, implementing and managing digitization of sukuks (Islamic bonds) and fiat. We also take some time to answer the question...What does Enterprise really mean? as well as looking at how to tackle the Middle Eastern enteprise space, especially when it comes to blockchain!

We hope you enjoy!!!

If you liked what you heard, please do leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and the other platforms. Don’t forget to support us by spreading the word!

Special Guests: Nicholas Watson and Talal Tabbaa.

The show kicks off with Chris explaining his background and the history of Block Gemini and its growth trajectory.
They go into speak about one of the major projects Block Gemini are working on, a supply chain solution that tracks the movement of goods in trucks across the UAE that is already in use and close to production stage.

Chris explains their enterprise blockchain solution approach when it comes to B2B relationships and B2G (business to government) relationships. He the discusses the trends in enterprise blockchain and his outlook for 2019.

The three then discuss what is needed for smart contracts and blockchain technology to fully realise its potential in enterprise level applications. The IP issue is also debated as it is seen as an impediment to adoption for when enterprises are collaborating on blockchain projects.

All of the above and more will be on this week’s episode of Encrypted!

If you liked what you heard, please do leave us a review on iTunes and the other platforms. Don’t forget to support us by spreading the word!

Special Guest: Chris Fernandez.