The Convergence Ecosystem
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The Convergence Ecosystem Convergence 2.0 Building the Decentralised Future This document (the “Document”) has been prepared by Outlier Ventures Operations Disclaimer Limited (“Outlier Ventures”). Outlier Ventures Operations Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company registration number 10722638. Outlier Ventures Operations Ltd is an appointed representative of Sapia Partners LLP (“Sapia”) which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (Firm Reference Number 550103). No undertaking, warranty or other assurance is given, and none should be implied, as to, and no reliance should be placed on, the accuracy, completeness or fairness of the information or opinions contained in this Document. The information contained in the Document is not subject to completion, alteration and verification nor should it be assumed that the information in the Document will be updated. 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Foreword by Jamie Burke CEO Since we released our first 1.0 white-paper This will likely become the greatest period of on the subject in late 2016 we continue to see socio-economic experimentation humanity has ‘convergence’ evidenced all around us. As ever seen, bringing about leaps in technology, predicted, deep tech communities are beginning economics and governance models. However it to adopt distributed ledgers to scale securely and is important we are both cautious and critical to more recently utilise innovations in cryptoassets avoid building utopias. as a digital commodities layer to power the mass coordination of decentralised networks. This also makes convergence perhaps the most challenging investment strategy to execute upon Ultimately this means a more open source, precisely because of the range of increasingly resilient and less fragile Web as we shift away complex and interdependent technologies and from the closed proprietary systems and data innovations. Each a life-time’s area of specialism silos of the past. From where 90% would fail in its own right. As great as our growing team at and disappear forever to something that is more Outlier Ventures is how can any one group of biological in nature. Something that evolves in people possibly predict it's future? That’s why multiple, potentially parallel, iterations. This is an we continue to open up our thinking so it can infinitely more efficient, effective and sustainable be shared, discussed and improved upon, with way to finance innovation and for the first time your help. offers a highly profitable, but also potentially more equitable, business model for open source. So we invite you to join us in a number of initiatives. Starting with an open slack community Furthermore, cryptoassets allow us to hardcode that can be found at https://outlierventures.io/ fiscal and monetary policies, as well as behavioural community and culminating into an ambitious economics and game theory, to govern these new annual conference to bring together convergence digital economies. In theory they can become startups (including those from our own portfolio), more rational and orderly however we only developers, academic and corporate partners. need to look at existing financial markets and I look forward to seeing you there! the impacts of algorithms to understand there are many risks and challenges to overcome. Jamie Burke Founder and CEO Contributors Special Thanks Proffessor 04 Disclaimer William Knottenbelt Contents Jamie Burke Dele Atanda Director, Imperial 06 Foreword by Jamie Burke, CEO CEO & Founder, CEO, Metâme Labs College Centre for Outlier Ventures Cryptocurrency 10 About Outlier Ventures Chris Burniske Research and Aron van Ammers Partner, Placeholder. Engineering 11 Introduction CTO & vc & Author of Founding Partner, Cryptoassets Dr Robert M. Learney 15 Tokens, Communities & Governance Outlier Ventures Lead Technologist 15 Tokens Lawrence Lundy [email protected] Dr Rose Chan Blockchain & DLT, 19 Communities & Governance Eden Dhaliwal Founder, Ladyboss. Digital Catapult Head of world & Founder Head 21 Data Collection Authors Cryptoeconomics, of Blockchain Working Trent McConaghy 22 The Internet of Things Outlier Ventures Group, World Bank Co-founder, 23 Software Lawrence Lundy BigChainDB & Ocean Lead Author Matt Law Professor Protocol 26 Authenticate, Validate & Secure & Head of Research Head of Marketing, David Lee Kuo Chuen 26 Distributed Ledgers & Blockchains Outlier Ventures Professor, FinTech & Mark Stephen 27 Consensus Joel John Blockchain, Singapore Meadows 29 Identity & Reputation Analyst Anesu Machoko University of Social CEO & Founder, 31 Storage & Data Integrity Associate, Science Botanic Technologies Harry McLaverty Outlier Ventures & SEED 34 Transport Analyst Matt Chwierut 34 Messaging Geoff LeFevre Director of Research, Teemu Paivinen 35 Value Interoperability (On-chain) Shaquile Noor Analyst, Smith + Crown Founder, Equilibrium 37 Data Interoperability (Off-chain) Research Intern Outlier Ventures Labs & Author of Thin 38 State Communication Dr Anne Hsu Protocols Assistant Professor, 41 Marketplaces Department of Samuli Poyhtari 41 IoT Data Marketplaces Computer Science, Founder, OrbitDB & 43 AI Data Marketplaces Queen Mary University Haja Networks 45 Personal Data Marketplaces 47 Digital Assets Marketplaces Dr Stylianos Kampakis Drummond Reed Research Fellow, UCL Chief Trust Officer, 50 Process, Analyse & Automate Centre for Blockchain Evernym 50 Distributed Computation Technology 51 Smart Contracts Toby Simpson 53 Decentralised Machine Learning Samuel Klein Co-founder, Fetch.AI Fellow, Berkman Centre 55 Conclusion for Internet & Society at Dr Phillip J. Windley Harvard University Chairman, Sovrin 59 Further Reading 10 About Outlier Ventures Founded in 2014, Outlier Ventures is a venture Venture platform focused on building the infrastructure for the next phase of the Internet. Our investment Capital for the philosophy is based around the idea of the Convergence Ecosystem. We view blockchains and decentralised other decentralised tools like tokens as a new data layer enabling other technologies like AI and IoT to future combine and converge. We partner with remarkable teams to seed and grow tokenised open source communities that will We invest and become the digital economies of tomorrow. Our team of experts build momentum in the projects, partner with the and ensure these economies are sustainable and equitable for all their stakeholders for a better communities Internet. that will create the new decentralised economy 11 12 Introduction The Convergence Ecosystem COMMUNITIES & GOVERNANCE The Convergence Ecosystem: Open-source. Distributed. Decentralised. Automated. Tokenised. CRYPTO ASSETS & CRYPTO PROCESS CURRENCIES Smart ANALYSE & come online - the existing centralised digital Contracts Our Journey AUTOMATE infrastructure will no longer do. From a societal Back in late 2016, we published a paper titled: and competitive perspective, we cannot let a few Decentralized ‘Blockchain-enabled Convergence’ outlining select companies