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).
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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 own all the World’s data. It is Distributed Machine Compute Learning the Outlier Ventures investment strategy. This under these conditions where open blockchains (Fetch) paper was the result of over a year of research and decentralised technologies come in. So we and over three years’ experience investing and started investing. building blockchain-based businesses. Our AI Data Digital Market MARKETPLACES Assets Market insight was that blockchains are not just the Over the last year we have partnered with and (Ocean) (SEED) technological foundations for Bitcoin and other invested in IOTA, a foundation building Internet cryptocurrencies; they aren’t even limited to a new of Things infrastructure with a new type of IoT Data Personal type of trusted recordkeeping for digital assets. decentralised data structure. Botanic and the SEED Market Data Vault foundation it founded, creating a platform (IOTA) Market We asserted that blockchains and the broader set for developers to publish trusted software bots. of distributed ledger technologies represented Evernym, a company using the Sovrin Network Data something more profound and transformative: and Protocol to establish self-sovereign identity. Interoperability TRANSPORT State (Haja Communications the beginning of a new decentralised data Fetch, a startup building an emergent intelligence Networks) infrastructure. Infrastructure that had the potential protocol combining distributed ledgers with to solve technological and market problems machine learning. And most recently, Ocean across a range of emerging technologies like Protocol, who are developing a decentralised data Value Transport Interoperability & Messaging artificial intelligence, autonomous robotics, the exchange protocol to unlock data for AI. Each of Internet of Things, 3D printing and augmented these investments are a complimentary piece of and virtual reality. These technologies all face a decentralised infrastructure. AUTHENTICATE Ledger Consensus common core problem: data centralisation. Data (Sovrin) VALIDATE & SECURE centralisation leads to a host of issues from lack 2017 saw a vast change in the cryptocurrency of robustness, lack of verifiable audit trail, lack of and blockchain markets to arguably the peak of transparency and opportunity for censorship. inflated expectations. The ERC20 smart contract Identity Storage industrialised the token sale crowdfunding model & Reputation & Data (Evernym) Integrity An even more pernicious problem is the market raising over 4 billion dollars in funding. So-called dominance that flows from data ownership in ‘ICOs’ or token sales captured the attention of Internet digital markets. Ownership of data is power. As everyone in the industry and diverted valuable of Things Software (Vision, audio, DATA (Web, VR, software goes on to eat the world - ever more data time and energy away from the real goal of biosensing, COLLECTION AR, etc) etc) is being captured, stored, analysed and used to building decentralised data infrastructure. Price, make decisions about every aspect of our lives. security-tokens, bull runs and scams replaced The Internet of Things will collect ever greater more critical technical questions around scalability, amounts of data allowing artificial intelligence energy efficiency, and smart contract tooling. That DATA FLOW to interpret and automate it. As laggard said, it is now clear, in a way that wasn’t in late industries like healthcare, education and energy 2016, that crypto-tokens are a critical missing Figure 1. The Convergence Ecosystem © OutlierVentures The Convergence Ecosystem 13 Introduction 14
component in decentralised networks - the first ecosystem. New emergent governance models and security layer which uses decentralised digitally-native mass coordination mechanism will have differing levels of decentralisation and infrastructure like distributed ledgers and self- for humans, bots and machines. As the hype falls automation depending on the values of the sovereign identity. The data transportation layer away, we start the slope of enlightenment phase community. Some will value censorship-resistance which defines how data moves across databases, with a transformative digital incentivisation tool. above all else. Others will value self-sovereign networks and systems. The marketplace layer “ In 2018 we need to focus on the job at hand: identity or equalitarian wealth distribution. where data is packaged up and sold. Finally, the The Outlier Ventures building and scaling new networks and protocols Communities can use traditional governance processing, analysis and automation layer where that will underpin a new data infrastructure. structures like corporations or newer structures distributed computation, decentralised machine Convergence strategy like decentralised organisations or decentralised learning, and smart contracts are used to inform provides a clear, Introducing the Convergence autonomous organisations (DAOs). decision-making. Ecosystem cogent and coherent The open-source nature of the technology; The existing centralised data infrastructure is no perspective on the All of our investments, corporate and academic ease of forking; almost zero costs of digital longer fit for purpose. It poses not only technical partnerships, and research over the last four distribution; and interoperability protocols will problems, but more far-reaching economic evolution and impact of years’ has led us to believe that markets are mean projects will struggle to differentiate using and social problems. A new decentralised distributed technology moving into a new era. They are becoming open- technology in the long-term. Successful projects infrastructure must be built. source, distributed, decentralised, automated will differentiate through values and trust. This in general, and on the and importantly tokenised. We call this new era: makes the Convergence Ecosystem structurally We welcome you to the next era of economic emerging field of crypto- the Convergence Ecosystem. This is the Outlier different from other markets in which value capture activity: The Convergence Ecosystem: open- Ventures investment strategy. happens at friction points. With very few friction source, distributed, decentralised, automated, economics in particular. points and lock-in, we are unlikely to see the same and tokenised. Recommended reading In the Convergence Ecosystem, data is the core market consolidation dynamic that has dominated asset. Collected by the Internet of Things and previous digital markets. When technology and for anyone seeking software, data is authenticated, validated and data are open and free, lock-in will come from a deeper insight into secured using distributed ledgers, consensus and brand and values. There will be as many protocols other decentralised technologies. When needed, as there are value-systems and personal priorities. the decentralised token- data is transported and shared before ending up in There will not be one chain to rule them all. In based ecosystems of the marketplaces to be packaged up and sold. Finally, a world of scarcity, competition is the optimal it is processed, analysed and automated using strategy. In a world of abundance, we must change future. a range of technologies including distributed our mental models. The Convergence Ecosystem computation, decentralised machine learning and drives collaboration rather than competition. smart contracts. ” In this paper, we introduce the Convergence Prof William Knottenbelt This entire data flow is coordinated and Ecosystem. We will explore each layer in turn: the Director, Imperial College Centre for incentivised using crypto-assets, crypto-currencies coordination layer of communities, governance Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering and nascent crypto-consumables designed to systems, and tokens. The collection layer which incentivise behaviours for people, machines, brings in data from the Internet of Things devices and agents to the benefit of the overall and software. The authentication, validation 15 16 Tokens, Communities & Governance Networks and ecosystems that make up the Convergence Ecosystem need to be coordinated and governed.
The industry is rapidly experimenting with new (and old) consensus mechanisms and decision-making techniques. This experimentation began with Bitcoin and spawned thousands of tokens each with different rules to encourage or discourage behaviours within the network and allocate resources. Tokens and automated decision- making tools allow for the mass decentralisation of entire industries through a distributed coordination network. These networks are birthing new types of resource allocation structures such as decentralised and autonomous organisations, pushing forward our conception of what an organisation should be.
Tokens
Cryptographically secure and digitally scarce tokens are the key innovation that makes a group of technologies into a living, breathing ecosystem. Tokens are a native digital coordination mechanism for the Convergence Ecosystem. Until now we have been retrofitting a financial infrastructure designed for cash and cheques to the digital, software-defined era. Ever since the emergence of Bitcoin, it has been clear that distributed ledgers with automated consensus held the potential for new forms of asset and value exchange. It was not until the ERC20 smart contract on Ethereum that experimentation around digital and programmable money began at significant scale. There is now a mechanism to fund open-source protocols that would have previously struggled to raise financing because open-source lacked a business model. As Albert Wenger has noted: “Now, however, we have a new way of providing incentives for the creation of protocols and for governing their evolution.”1 In early 2018, we are still at the very beginning of this evolution. The Convergence Ecosystem 17 Tokens, Communities & Governance 18
Over the next year or so, we expect to see a Experimentation is happening at a rapid pace on were distributed to the network in exchange for 1 Albert Wenger. Crypto Tokens and the Coming Age of Protocol Innovation. much clearer delineation between two types both the supply and demand side. We have tokens utility; Bitcoin distributes Bitcoin as a reward http://continuations.com/post/148098927445/ of tokens: crypto-assets and cryptocurrencies. with a deflationary economy, scheduled inflation for the secure clearing and settling of Bitcoin crypto-tokens-and-the-coming-age-of-protocol Cryptocurrencies will be designed to be a and others that let the community vote on how transactions. By giving away the majority of tokens medium of exchange and crypto-assets will be and when new tokens are minted and/or burned. upfront, many 2017 ICO projects are left with few designed to be a store of value and offer utility That is just programmable money supply; we are tokens to reinvigorate demand later down the line. in a digital economy. Despite the fact dominant also experimenting with demand-side economics: token ecosystems have a element of both; variable transaction fees, demurrage charges, Most projects will fail, but the open-source nature design challenges abound when attempting to interoperability, and different consensus rules. of the ecosystem means learnings and code will incentivise usage with digital scarcity. It is unclear Non-fungible tokens such as cryptokitties and be available to all. We can learn and build faster if single-token systems like Bitcoin and Ethereum the new Ethereum ERC 721 NFTs will also impact than ever. Unlike economic modelling or theory, can provide a sustainable balance; instead it is demand by incorporating historical ownership the industry is testing economic theories in real- likely we will see multi-token systems as a more creating a subclass of crypto-assets called crypto- time with real money. It is the greatest experiment effective mechanism. collectables. in socio-economics we have ever seen.
In addition, a currently underutilized token Tokens are the first native coordination mechanism Most projects model is the crypto-consumable, a token that is for the digital and now machine economy. We programmed to reduce in value over time using a expect tokens to be issued at each layer of the will fail, but the decay or burn function. This could be a continuous stack to incentivise behaviours within each decline in value like a used car or a step decline particular network and to connect with the broader open-source nature like a ticket to a live event. This sort of token design ecosystem through a series of exchanges and would not be a store-of-value and would be be a interoperability protocols. The model would be of the ecosystem powerful way to increase network token velocity. similar to today’s global economy in which each nation issues and uses their own currency within means learnings Today the industry is focused on the initial their own borders and trades foreign currency distribution of these tokens in generation with other countries for products and services that and code will events. But the initial distribution is just one it needs. If Bitcoin is indeed the digital store-of- stage of building a sustainable ecosystem. value in the same way gold is the physical store- be available to Token distribution schedules will become more of-value, it is likely we will see a digital hierarchy sophisticated over time to include staged releases of money emerge with Bitcoin as an apex token, all. We can learn like traditional equity fundraises and mechanisms protocol tokens like Ethereum, NEO and Cardano such as airdrops or token faucets. Continued below Bitcoin, and utility or application tokens and build faster network engagement will separate successful below the protocol tokens. As the Convergence networks from unsuccessful ones. 2018 and economy develops and core infrastructure is than ever. beyond will show that the much of the ICO class developed, tokens will become increasingly liquid of 2017 was prepared for initial distributions but and frictionless leading to extraordinarily complex underprepared for sustainable growth and utility. economic dynamics. It must be remembered that prior to 2017, tokens The Convergence Ecosystem 19 Tokens, Communities & Governance 20
Communities & Governance new attack vector. Other projects like Augur and each co-evolving around the belief-systems of will have unique objectives and priorities that will Gnosis are testing futarchy, a type of voting model the community they serve. Bitcoin will remain require specific design trade-offs. The financial Tokens themselves are simply a type of value in which the community defines a set of values and staunchly libertarian; Ethereum has more of a community requires more and faster transactions instrument. The rules under which these then prediction markets are used to decide which central leadership which appeals to pragmatic and will sacrifice decentralised consensus to instruments are generated, distributed and decisions will maximise those values. developers; and self-sovereign identity underpins achieve that, as can be seen with Ripple and managed are decided by community members the value-system of the Sovrin blockchain. We will it’s XRP token. The healthcare community must through agreed governance rules. These We are also seeing exciting experiments with soon see more projects with social democratic adhere to privacy regulations and so will require governance rules are set and decided by the curation markets and reputation staking from values that prioritise wealth redistribution through more privacy than public blockchains currently community members using different forms of projects like Colony and Ocean. This type ‘network’ (read: State) intervention or pre-agreed afford. The ecosystem will support a variety decision-making. For protocol tokens like Bitcoin, of decentralised and automated model is taxation rules. Others will prioritise ethical and of communities using different governance Ethereum et al., governance includes decision- extended further with decentralised autonomous environmental values with green-friendly policies models with differing levels of decentralisation making on changes to the network. The explosion organisations (DAOs). In these sorts of that use non-consumption based consensus and automation depending on the values of the of tokens and blockchain-based networks has led organisations, all decision-making is offloaded mechanisms (eg Chia) and focus on common- community and the needs of the market. to a renaissance in thinking about governance, to smart contracts and decisions would be ownership and resource sharing. especially decentralised governance. automated based on the rules encoded in the We are in the very early stages of understanding smart contracts. One of the first examples was of The Convergence Ecosystem should support a how to design token economies and the We have the Bitcoin network with a strong course TheDAO, a DAO for venture funding, that diverse range of different governing models that governance models that support them. As an libertarian value-system valuing decentralisation was never able to allocate capital after a bug was support different communities. There is no optimal industry, we must be more supportive of new above all else and therefore there is a separation of exploited. Other live examples include Dash, a model of governance; only a perpetual tension to ideas and implementations. It is not a zero- ‘powers’ between developers, miners and users; privacy-focused cryptocurrency; DigixDAO, a gold maintain alignment amongst stakeholders. We sum game in a growing market. Some tokens, no one stakeholder group can ‘force’ a decision payment system project; and Aragon, a platform have millenia of literature exploring politics and communities and governance experiments will on the others. This results in a very slow-moving hoping to provide the entire governance service governance, everything from Plato’s five regimes fail. Let’s learn quickly from their failures and but stable network. Ethereum, while still aiming to for other token projects. to John Locke’s libertarianism to Jeremy Bentham’s compound learnings. The biggest advantage the be a decentralised network, does not have quite utilitarianism. Philosophers and political scientists decentralisation community has is momentum as strong libertarian streak but does have more The end-point of blockchain-based automation will never settle on an ‘optimal’ governance model and the brightest minds from around the world leadership with Vitalik Buterin who is often able will come through AI DAOs as articulated by Trent because ‘optimal’ can only exist for individuals in are working together to solve tough problems. to push through changes because the community McConaghy. These theoretical organisations limited contexts never for society at large. Communities will co-exist and thrive. Let’s be follows his lead. An example is the 2016 summer will be managed and owned by AI algorithms inclusive and supportive. fork to return funds lost through the DAO bug. enabling AI to interact in the economy by earning As with almost all information and communications and spending tokens. An AI could own a fleet of technologies that have come before, blockchain New projects are experimenting with automated self-driving vehicles, charging fares which it then technology was born decentralised. Bitcoin governance in an attempt to avoid messy human uses to pay for maintenance, tolls, insurance, and with the first blockchain implementation was a decision-making. Tezos is hoping to enable taxes. libertarian movement created as a direct reaction governance to be ‘upgraded’ through community to a centralised financial system. Early adopters voting. DFINITY is doing something similar but Blockchains and tokens will be issued, distributed, shared this value-system. As more and more allowing retroactive changes to the ledger. These governed and owned in increasingly diverse ways. blockchains and tokens are created, the industry types of ‘on-chain’ governance as they are known Governing models will evolve and we are likely to attracts an audience with different belief-systems. are still technically immature and open up a whole see an industry with multi-types of governance As it continues to mature, different communities 21 22
Data Collection Data is the lifeblood of the ecosystem arriving through the IoT (hardware) and software.
Sensors measuring the external environment The Internet of Things the connections. 3 The IoT market intersects with are often bundled together under the umbrella Decentralised the robotics market in the sense that a robot has term the ‘Internet of Things’; and they include The industry lacks a standard definition of the the same features as an IoT device, but with the all sensors in smartphones and wearables such technologies IoT, and in its broadest sense, it will come to addition of actuators and the means to move and as gyroscopes, accelerometers, and proximity include every physical object that has a sensor, respond to the environment. We would consider sensors as well as hundreds of others sensors potentially microcontroller and Internet connection. Today connected vehicles, service robots and other measuring our world. that mainly means connected home devices like types of robotics as data collecting machines. provide a more Amazon Echos, wearables like the Apple Watch, It is estimated that the amount of data created industrial and agricultural connected sensors, and The IoT market is often measured in the number annually will reach 180 zettabytes (one zettabyte secure, shared smart meters measuring home energy usage. But of connections - roughly 30 billion by the end of is equal to one trillion gigabytes) by 2025 up from the range of applications is growing, and it has the decade4 - or the economic impact - 11 trillion 4.4 zettabytes in 2013 and an average person data infrastructure been estimated that by 2024, the automotive dollars over the next decade says McKinsey.5 A anywhere will interact with connected devices industry will account for the almost a third of all IoT less-asked question is: what happens to all the every 18 seconds (nearly 4,800 times a day).2 whereby data connections, followed by consumer electronics data? The same McKinsey study found we may and FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) and the be using as little as 1% of data being generated. use isn’t a utility sector. Other sectors including Smart Cities, As well as under-utilising data, how data is being supply chain, manufacturing, healthcare and used is unclear. In a survey by Ponemon Institute, zero-sum game. others will make up a relatively small proportion of 82% say IoT manufacturers had not provided any The Convergence Ecosystem 23 Data Collection 24
details about how their personal information is overwhelming amount of data to handle, which Previous page 6 handled. they do not have the capabilities to utilise. 2 Amount of Data Created Annually to Reach 180 Zettabytes in 2025. https:// whatsthebigdata.com/2016/03/07/amount-of- The emergence of distributed systems like IPFS, On the consumer side, digitally-created data-created-annually-to-reach-180-zettabytes- Filecoin, and other blockchains offers a new model and digitally-augmented environments with in-2025/. Accessed 17 Jan 2018. for data storage and usage. It has been expected augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) will 3 Cambridge Consultants. Review of latest developments in the Internet of Things - 07 that data would be fought over by devices makers, lead the growth in available personal information. March 2017. software providers, cloud providers and data analytics companies. In fact, the reluctance of car Half the world’s population - 3.82 billion - will have Current page makers to put Android Auto or Apple CarPlay into an Internet connection by the end of 2018 and by 4 IEEE Spectrum. Popular Internet of Things their cars is an awareness that they would lose 2020 it will be 4.17 billion. Mobile data traffic will Forecast of 50 Billion Devices by 2020 Is 7 Outdated https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/ control of valuable data. grow to 49 exabytes per month by 2021, a sevenfold telecom/internet/popular-internet-of-things- increase over 2016.8 We are creating unfathomable forecast-of-50-billion-devices-by-2020-is- outdated Decentralised technologies potentially provide a amounts of data, and the growth shows no sign of 5 The Guardian - Data could be the real draw more secure, shared data infrastructure whereby abating. Adoption of AR and VR will further drive of the internet of things – but for whom? data use isn’t a zero-sum game. IoT data creators the amount and granular detail of data that we can https://www.theguardian.com/ technology/2015/sep/14/data-generation- can retain ownership rights of data and engage collect, enabling deeper insights into individual and insights-internet-of-things. Accessed 17 Jan users of data in marketplaces, a subject we will collective behaviours. Whether it’s from the IoT or 2018. discuss in more depth later. software, we have a massive data problem. 6 Ponemon Institute. Privacy and Security in a Connected Life - https://www.trendmicro.de/ cloud-content/us/pdfs/security-intelligence/ Software We are creating and collecting more data than ever, reports/rt_privacy_and_security_in_a_ connected_life.pdf. Accessed 17 Jan 2018. but we are storing it in insecure private databases Adding to the 50 billion IoT connections, we also with no incentives to share the data. Data breaches 7 The Verge. Why carmakers want to keep Apple and Google at arm’s length - https:// need to add digital media and human-generated and hacks are commonplace, and the data can be www.theverge.com/2017/1/13/14268252/ apple-carplay-google-android-auto-vs- digital data. We are on our way to quantifying and censored or tampered with. Software-generated carmakers. Accessed 17 Jan 2018. digitising our external world, and we are even data is lost, hoarded or latent. There is no reason 8 Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global further along in gathering data on our digital lives. for consumers to do anything other than to give Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2016–2021 We use the term ‘software’ as a producer of data data away for free and for corporations to hoard White Paper - https://www.cisco.com/c/en/ us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/ broadly to capture all personal and business data it. Decentralised infrastructure offers a solution. visual-networking-index-vni/mobile-white- produced through the interaction with databases, paper-c11-520862.html. Accessed 17 Jan 2018. operating systems, applications and APIs. These interactions build up digital dossiers including cookie and web browsing data as well as active traces like social media and messaging.
On the business side, as we continue to digitise and bring online our offline interactions and documents like electronic health records and learning records, key sectors will have an 26 Authenticate, Validate & Secure After data is collected from the Internet of Things and software, it must be authenticated, validated and secured.
This is the layer in which blockchains and distributed ledgers fit into the framework and add value. Without these decentralised technologies, authentication, validation and security would be provided by a third party without the characteristics provided by blockchains such as increased external transparency, provenance, tamper-evidence and censorship-resistance.
Distributed Ledgers & Blockchains
And so onto the wonderful world of blockchains. If you are already familiar with distributed ledgers and blockchains, go ahead and skip to the next section. Often the terms “distributed ledger” and “blockchain” are used interchangeably, but a blockchain is a particular type of a distributed ledger which is simply an asset database that can be shared across a network, structured like a chain of blocks. You can find full definitions and variants of blockchains and distributed ledgers elsewhere. But for clarity when we talk of blockchains, we are referring to a specific type of data structure that is cryptographically linked together in a linear sequence of blocks, each of which contains a record of transactions.
The type of consensus mechanism used to validate the blocks will vary and evolve, and we will explore this in more detail in the next section. There are many types of distributed ledgers that vary across many vectors including the number of participants, and who can view and amend the ledger. Another class of distributed ledgers is structured as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs); IOTA and Byteball are both prominent examples. Broadly speaking though, distributed The Convergence Ecosystem 27 Authenticate, Validate & Secure 28
ledgers and blockchains provide a mechanism Whether public permissionless blockchains, Depending on the nature of the ledger, the 9 Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2016– for transaction, verification and storage of digital public permissioned blockchains, private consensus mechanisms may vary. Bitcoin, for 2021 White Paper - https://www.cisco.com/c/ assets on distributed ledgers. The specific type of distributed ledgers or DAG-based ledgers, instance, uses “proof of work” (POW). To validate en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/ visual-networking-index-vni/mobile-white- distributed ledger that is needed will depend on this class of distributed data structures offers a transactions occurring on its chain, a node paper-c11-520862.html. Accessed 17 Jan 2018. the use case being served and the features that mechanism for multiple entities to transact without has to prove that is has done some amount of are most important. the need for a trusted third party. The removal of a computational work in finding a cryptographic trusted third party provides operational efficiency hash. This is akin to solving a puzzle, except in A public blockchain, for example, is a distributed and cost saving benefits, as well as censorship- this case exceedingly powerful computers around ledger in which every transaction is visible to all resistance and security advantages. Each will the world are committed round the clock towards parties, and which is accessible to anyone to write matter more to different companies and markets. solving these. Miners who dedicate computing a new block to the chain according to its consensus We believe that regardless of the success of any power to the puzzles are incentivised to do so rules. Examples of these include Bitcoin and particular distributed ledger implementation, this through coins that are rewarded for mining Ethereum. Consensus for adding new transactions set of technologies will offer a trusted storage, each block. POW is used to make the ledger to the ledger takes longer as no central authority verification and transaction platform for the byzantine fault tolerant in a public, permissionless has the right or power to force a change. These Convergence Ecosystem. environment where Sybil attacks need to be dealt are chains where anonymity, decentralisation and with. In a permissioned network, Sybil attacks can immutability matter more than efficiency. Public Consensus be prevented, allowing for more efficient Byzantine permissioned ledgers are similar in the sense fault tolerance algorithms. Permissioned networks that they are openly accessible for verification of The distributed, decentralised nature of blockchains can be private, such as in an enterprise blockchain transactions to all parties, but the validators are makes the need for verification and agreement on environment, or public, such as in Sovrin. known parties and admittance of new validators what transactional data on the chain is accurate a requires the approval of the existing group. prerequisite. If every party on a blockchain does not A more energy efficient - but less proven - agree upon the legitimacy of a transaction and attest alternative approach is proof of stake (POS). In The grade of decentralisation depends entirely on to it, different entities within the network would share these chains, nodes do not engage in finding the extent to which validators are independent. databases that vary. Consensus can be defined as hashes. On the contrary, accounts with high For instance, R3 and Hyperledger Fabric can the process through which every system within the enough stakes (token balances), validate revoke a transaction or make changes to their connected network agrees upon an event within the transactions. Since the implicit trust in a network blockchains relatively faster due to the centralised network. The “event” can be a simple transaction, can diminish if bad actors validate illegitimate nature of their consensus formation. These as in the case of a Bitcoin transaction, or a relatively transactions, those with large enough stakes in chains function magnitudes faster than public, sophisticated smart contract function being these networks have an incentive for not engaging permissionless chains as they value efficiency over triggered, as in the case of Ethereum. Blockchains in malpractice. Other mechanisms exist such as decentralisation. Private blockchains are used in provide a reliable solution for solving what is referred proof-of-space (PoSpace), which uses disk space situations where a handful of entities that may to as the Byzantine Generals problem 9 in an open, rather than computation as the resource used for be individuals or enterprises require real-time anonymous network. They allow the majority of mining. For DAG-based ledgers, there are yet settlement of digital assets. The emphasis here the distributed entities within a network to come to other ways in which consensus is reached, many is on trust, storage and speed over being openly an agreement on what information is accurate and based on probability theory. accessible. enforce algorithms that replicate the data across every entity. The Convergence Ecosystem 29 Authenticate, Validate & Secure 30
Depending on the use-case and varying needs for data becoming digitised. The rise of seemingly people would share their passports or driving speed, efficiency, security and cost of transactions, reliable, centralised players such as Equifax has license with every third party they deal with and consensus mechanisms on a blockchain will vary. not solved identity-related issues in the Internet risk leaking it to unreliable entities, Civic enables Completely decentralised systems that are public era; instead, it has aggravated them. This stems, individuals to have their identity attested through and permissionless rely upon proof of work as it in part, from the fact that centralised repositories known, reputed central authorities such as banks. hypothetically gives every node within the network are a honeypot for hackers. Even a minor failure Once these attest an individual’s documents, the an equal opportunity to validate transactions as in the authentication systems of these centralised individual can use those attestations to comply long as the hash rate is equal. Relatively private, authorities can lead to a loss of what is most crucial with AML and KYC on services that integrate with permissioned chains use PoS as a mechanism to any individual - their identity. Civic. “ to come to a consensus as it endows trust on an Sovrin provides a entity with the highest stake in the chain. These The coming of General Data Protection Regulation The second generation of identity solutions based mechanisms bring scale for “trustlessness” into (GDPR) will also introduce a richer, more nuanced on decentralised identifiers (DIDs) are emerging, decentralised platform ecosystems that would otherwise have no means landscape between anonymity and attested giving individuals the ability to control their own for creating, sharing, and to interact in the absence of a middleman. identifiability. There are many applications for identity without a registration authority having which anonymity is not suitable there are also the ability to access, revoke or edit the verifiable verifying a wide range By providing a framework for ensuring the many for which identifiability is not suitable or claims they have received. The Sovrin network of identity credentials— legitimacy of shared interactions within a network, necessary. Self-sovereign identity is a core piece and uPort are the most advanced of these self- these approaches disrupt businesses that were of this new landscape. Through self-sovereign sovereign networks. Anonymity or at least pseudo- well beyond the fixed traditionally playing the role of “validators” and identity, an individual will be able to authenticate anonymity is a feature of the Bitcoin network, but authentication schemes rent-seeking without substantial value addition. or verify themselves without having to pass on their for most applications, anonymity is not suitable. Consensus mechanisms can, therefore, be referred documents. Instead of having siloed repositories In industries like financial services, healthcare and of traditional identity to as validators to shared facts within a network. of documents, blockchains make it possible for education, identity is a core part of any solution. systems. Sovrin does We do not expect one consensus mechanism to individuals and institutions to attest each other ‘rule-them-all’. We expect proof-of-work, proof-of- through a peer-to-peer mechanism. Blockchains Once self-sovereign identity becomes the norm, for trust transactions stake, proof-of-space, and many others to evolve offer a building block for better identity systems, individuals will have the ability to track instances what the Internet did for and new ones to emerge. We believe that different but decentralised identity solutions need to evolve where a third party sells personal information consensus mechanisms will be chosen depending far beyond what Bitcoin and similar blockchains and services will enable payment for sharing packet communications. on application requirements. have offered regarding privacy and scale. their details without losing control of the data. Evernym which uses the Sovrin network goes Identity & Reputation The first generation of blockchain-based identity even further by incorporating zero-knowledge ” Dr Phillip J. Windley solutions relied on centralised players to verify an proofs and pairwise identifiers to further protect Chairman, Sovrin While Bitcoin is pseudonymous by nature, it individual’s identity-related data. Civic, for example, individual identity when sharing data. Blockchain- spurred innovation in decentralised identity by uses email and phone number as a primary source based identity empowers the individual while introducing a system where transactions from of verifying an individual’s identity. These can then removing the need to trust third parties with individuals could be validated publicly in a be used to log in to websites through a QR-based personal documents through verifiable claims decentralised manner. Identity on a blockchain authentication system. The project further relies and tokenisation. A new era of “fragmented” is an area of increasing focus due to a surge in upon banking entities to verify an individual’s authentication based solutions compatible with fraud, identity theft, and increasingly sensitive AML/KYC related documents. Where in the past authentication protocols like OpenID Connect, The Convergence Ecosystem 31 Authenticate, Validate & Secure 32
OAuth, FIDO and UMA will protect the privacy consistency guarantees due to the inherent and Tierion have partnered with both governments of the individual while increasing the trust in consensus requirement, but as coordination is and enterprises to facilitate digitisation of physical interactions on a network. required to reach consensus, it is not network documents with timestamps to provide an audit partition tolerant. As with life, everything is a trade- trail for sensitive documents. DeepMind with Storage & Data Integrity off. their new Verifiable Data Audit product is using “ the append-only and tamper-evidence features of Once self-sovereign identities The most common challenge we received on our The combination of blockchains for publically- distributed ledgers to let hospitals check in real- are established we will see Convergence strategy is that blockchains cannot accessible immutable storage of records and time how they are processing data. Regardless of automated systems such as store much data; so how will they be able to support decentralised and distributed data storage will the ledger or consensus particulars, storage and chatbots, companions, and the new data economy? They won’t. Blockchains be core to the Convergence Ecosystem data data integrity benefit hugely from decentralised are not designed to store a lot of data. They will infrastructure. Storing data in a decentralised tools. AI advisors used to increase be used as on-chain pointers to off-chain data and database has the potential for greater redundancy, authentication and even, implement an access control lists to control and speed, and censorship-resistance but as with As data sets for AI and sensory data for IoT in some cases, verification. monitor data access. Today’s implementations are everything it comes with trade-offs. The main one increase in size, decentralised and distributed These bots will need utilising decentralised databases and distributed involves incentives. Why would anyone give access storage networks with variable authentication file storage to store data “off-chain” in a way that to their hard drives? The answer is as we surely levels will allow entities to share information that reputation just as individuals ensures data integrity. The link between the know by now: tokens and cryptoeconomics. File can be stored and verified. build their own reputation blockchains (on-chain) and decentralised storage sharing in the token era incentivises individuals to and the issuing entity, the (off-chain) is still to be defined. We see a world in share resources that would otherwise go to waste. owner of the bot, will also which the minimum amount of data to ensure the This will not only create more secure, censorship- required levels of data integrity will be stored on resistant methods of data storage but also have to take responsibility for the chain, and decentralised and distributed data improve the efficiency of storage marketplaces the recommendations that storages and databases store the bulk of the data while creating economic opportunities. One such bots make to users. A new in a fast, accessible and indexable way. project is Storj. The system incentivises individuals era of transparency will be that provide storage with tokens while keeping the There are numerous requirements for decentralised files themselves encrypted and distributed across required as bots take on ever databases including speed, latency, throughput, multiple nodes. Protocol Labs, the developers of more important tasks in our resilience, consistency guarantees, ability to IPFS, have taken a similar approach with Filecoin. lives. structure and index data, ability to delete data IPFS enables the network to store and exchange and so on. As per the CAP theorem, every real files in a distributed fashion. distributed system must make a design choice ” between consistency and availability during Just as important as the storage of data is ensuring Mark Stephen Meadows network failures. No database or data storage is its integrity. Using blockchain timestamping, CEO, Botanic Technologies & SEED going to be ideal for every use case. BigchainDB cryptographic hashing and signatures for example, is fast and can store a lot of data, together with data structures like Merkle DAGs, but is currently not Byzantine fault tolerant so is decentralised systems can in most cases provide more suitable for private instances. A blockchain- a higher level of data integrity than other types of as-a-database like Ethereum can have strong ledgers and databases. Projects such as Factom 34
Transport After data has been authenticated, validated, secured and stored it will need to be transported for use.
It will need to be ‘transported’. The technologies the promise of security quickly becomes one that of this layer are less mature than the layers below cannot be kept. This reality has been unravelling but will become ever more critical as blockchains since the start of 2016, when the Central Bank of and DLTs proliferate if we are to avoid the same Bangladesh lost approximately $81 million to a data silos that exist today in the Web 2.0 era. It is malware attack which acquired their SWIFT login at this layer where interoperability protocols are details and removed their holdings from the developing for messaging, value, data and state. New York Federal Reserve. It is estimated that throughout 2016 Ukraine and Russia similarly lost Messaging hundreds of millions of dollars in SWIFT-related hacks. If a single centralised system offers access Messaging refers to networks which aim to to international transactions, a breach of that quickly, accurately and securely send and receive system’s security would similarly put global cash information such as instructions, signals, and flows at risk. authentication. This technology is fundamental to many services, including money transfers, In fact, a report by Credit Suisse, ‘Bitcoin: The communication between applications, and Trust Disruptor’,11 warned SWIFT that blockchain data transferral in booming data markets. For technology could soon be encroaching upon international bank transfers, this is a global their raison d’être. This principle goes not just monopoly controlled by a single entity, SWIFT for financial messaging networks, but for all (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial traditional messaging networks. While xCurrent Telecommunication). SWIFT10 is currently used by Ripple allows banks to message each other to connect over 11,000 banking and securities with greater speed, transparency and efficiency organisations, market infrastructures and than SWIFT, communication protocols like corporate customers in more than 200 countries Mercury can achieve both decentralisation and and territories. Why is this a problem? Well, as the tamper-evidence, ultimately removing the need internet continues to develop, so do those using for a centralised validator. By decentralising it and the tools they are using. Because of this, data, blockchains provide a more robust security The Convergence Ecosystem 35 Transport 36
architecture than what was traditionally available There are multiple approaches to obtaining Atomic cross chain swaps will be crucial in creating Previous page to users. For applications building upon them, this interoperability, each with a focus on a specific a new generation of decentralised exchanges. 10 'Discover SWIFT | SWIFT' https://www. significantly reduces the threat of compromise. function. One of the simplest forms is through a Cosmos, Polkadot and Komodo are a handful swift.com/about-us/discover-swift. Accessed 9 Feb 2018. relayer. These utilities check for transactions in of projects with an explicit focus on the space. 11 The Credit Suisse report can be found Many of these networks, however, are yet to be one chain and “relay” that information to another. Interoperability protocols also often enhance here http://www.the-blockchain.com/docs/ tested under the pressure of thousands of users BTC Relay, for instance, allows Ethereum smart privacy through zero-knowledge proofs. They Credit-Suisse-Blockchain-Trust-Disrupter.pdf per second (a capacity easily handled by current contracts to verify a Bitcoin transaction without any enable verifying the accuracy of a computation messaging systems). Nevertheless, there are a intermediary. This enables Ethereum DApps and without knowing the variables involved. Through Current page plethora of competing products improving at a smart contracts to accept Bitcoin payments. A new sending a transaction across multiple ledgers, 12 These are the Githubs and websites 12 https://ripple.com/solutions/process- rapid rate. Projects like TeleHash and Whisper generation of cross-chain transaction enablers tracking the source and recipient of a transaction payments/, as well as https://www. are working to enable more secure, trustless allows exchanges to occur without a centralised can be made drastically more difficult. One could mercuryprotocol.com, Telehash and https:// github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Whisper peer-to-peer messaging systems. Ultimately, it is party. Atomic cross chain swaps use hash time also consider decentralised exchanges such the refined versions of these products and their locked contracts to enable two parties to interact as EtherDelta13 as an interoperability enabler. 13 "EtherDelta." https://etherdelta.com/#PPT- ETH. Accessed 9 Feb 2018. competitors which will provide the throughput with tokens from different ledgers with each other Although restricted to ERC20 tokens, they allow and security required in automated data and value without the need for an intermediary. individuals to trade their tokens for another one markets. without relying on a central authority. One could trade their Storj tokens received as payments Value Interoperability Value for leasing their computer’s storage space out (On-chain) and buy INS tokens to receive discounts at a interoperability retail outlet without having to move coins from Value interoperability across multiple blockchains their wallet with the help of the likes of 0x and refers to the ability of digital assets in one will allow value Kyber. While decentralised exchanges come blockchain to interact with assets in another. The with new challenges - especially liquidity - they most straightforward example for an interoperable that is stored offer the promise of delivering significant security transaction would be one in which an individual improvements over centralised exchanges. transfers a cryptocurrency on one blockchain in siloed in exchange for cryptocurrency on another, for Value interoperability will allow value that is stored example, Bitcoin exchanged for Litecoin or XRP. blockchains in siloed blockchains to break free. This applies Interoperability matters as it enables multiple equally to value stored in both public and private ledgers to compound the benefits offered by to break free. blockchains. NEO is already enabling cross-chain each. Through limiting the flow of value in a asset agreements with NeoX. Users do not need blockchain to a single ledger, one risks creating to set up wallets for every blockchain they want to new “decentralised” DLT-based siloes that cannot use and rely on third parties every time they have interact with each other at scale. By enabling to interact on a different chain. Interoperability ledgers to interact with one another with a protocols further add value to the Convergence communication protocol layer, improvements Ecosystem by allowing multiple industry-oriented in security, speed, cost of transactions can be tokens to communicate with each other. For attained. instance, one could make payments in MIOTAs The Convergence Ecosystem 37 Transport 38
for leasing IoT based sensors that pass on data being made towards increased data accessibility, 14 Client-server architecture refers to networks where computers act as either a client using the Ocean Protocol OCN token. Similarly such as open Application Programming Interfaces But what we must or server. Clients use personal computers, while protocols would be used in connecting and (APIs)16 and open-data regulations like PSD2,17 the servers have superior computers which allows them to hoard data. incentivising functions in mobility and robotics. benefits are one-sided. Indeed, users can now avoid is a world 15 For examples of such laws, look at A machine can pay for access to a resource in benefit from open data, but there is still no market, section 264 of the https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/ the native token of one ledger and receive the and data contributors remain largely unpaid. So, in which value health-insurance-portability-and-accountability- act-1996 https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/health- resource itself through another ledger. As projects are blockchains the solution? insurance-portability-and-accountability- and protocols start delivering real-world utility at act-1996 and part II of the https://www. is interoperable, legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/29/contents scale, the need for exchange infrastructure will Blockchains are not databases; they are ledgers. 16 increase. One could compare these protocols to It sounds almost flippant to say that, but the Open APIs provide services or data to but the third-party developers free-of-charge. For more hubs that route value without an intermediary. distinction is essential in understanding why information read Qiu, Y., 2015. How Open is ‘Open API’? A Critique of the Political Economy data interoperability is just as important as underlying data of Openness in Programming . Pages 1-5. In a world of seamless value interoperability one value interoperability. Value interoperability Link available https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/ bitstream/2123/14384/1/Qiu_Y._Thesis.pdf. can expect a complex interplay between users means tokens can be moved across chains; is not; leading 17 https://transferwise.com/gb/blog/what- holding tokens for particular service utility and data interoperability allows data to move across is-psd2 provides a good, brief description of others for store-of-value; the wallet or ‘portfolio’ databases. Blockchains must be lightweight to the same PSD2. balance likely optimised by a personal AI. This AI with limited on-chain storage so that “anyone” will be personalised by risk appetite, values and can download a full history of the blockchain. monopolistic services; the weighting of which will lead to a If blockchains become too large, fewer people new field of TPO (token portfolio optimisation) an will be able to participate in the network, thus market dynamic extension of search engine optimisation (SEO) and reducing the decentralisation of the network social media optimisation (SMO). If purchasing and overall security. When it is said: “blockchains as we have today. and holding tokens is a reflection of one’s values, will enable large datasets to be shared or stored” it’s interesting to think that token portfolios could actually it is not blockchains where the data itself But what we must avoid is a world in which become a new sort of social or political badge. will be stored. We are talking about decentralised value is interoperable, but the underlying data and distributed data storages like IPFS and Swarm. is not; leading to the same monopolistic market Data Interoperability Each blockchain implementation uses different dynamic as we have today. Projects like OrbitDB (Off-chain) data storage for “off-chain” data, and the balance are vital in enabling data sharing throughout the between “on-chain” and “off-chain” data depends ecosystem. We need protocols that permit data Today, incredible amounts of data are stored on on the use case requirements. Just like the design to be shared seamlessly across both centralised the private servers of a relatively small amount of the Internet and the internet protocol suites, we and decentralised databases. Innovations of organisations. The internet’s client-server expect blockchains to remain as light as possible in cryptography such as zero-knowledge architecture14 makes data-sharing inconvenient, to ensure speed and reliability; it will be the “off- proofs, differential privacy, Fully Homomorphic while privacy and data protection laws15 limit chain” storage that will hold the majority of the Encryption (FHE), and Secure Multi-party the cases where it can be done legally. Even if data. Computation (MPC) will enable data to remain this were not to be the case, there is no rational private and secure but still move through economic incentive for individuals to do anything public networks. Without data interoperability, other than give away their data. While strides are the Convergence Ecosystem does not work. The Convergence Ecosystem 39 Transport 40
Only when both value and data can be shared solely between the individuals involved and can 18 'Loveable Digital Kittens Are Clogging Ethereum's ... - CoinDesk.' https://www. securely, can marketplaces be built that will be customised as per the requirement at hand. coindesk.com/loveable-digital-kittens-clogging- drive the Convergence Ecosystem. The fundamental idea behind state channel ethereums-blockchain/. Accessed 9 Feb 2018.
communication is to make the main network as 19 'Status ICO Highlights Inherent Flaws of Ethereum's Blockchain and...' 21 Jun 2017, State Communication lean as possible whilst using off-chain settlements https://themerkle.com/status-ico-highlights- to attain speed, cost efficiency and scale. inherent-flaws-of-ethereums-blockchain-and- myetherwallet/. Accessed 9 Feb 2018. Another barrier to mainstream adoption of blockchains is the lack of speed and increasing Bitcoin’s Lightning Network,21 Ethereum’s 20 'Payment channels - Bitcoin Wiki' 26 Nov 2017, https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Payment_ 22 23 cost of transactions. State communication Raiden Network and IOTA’s Flash Channels channels. Accessed 9 Feb 2018. protocols provide a mechanism to limit the are examples of scaling solutions that rely on 21 'Lightning Network' https://lightning. number of settlements a blockchain must perform state communication for efficiency and speed. network/. Accessed 9 Feb 2018. by enabling off-blockchain communication Raiden achieves this through digitally-signed, 22 "Raiden Network." https://raiden. channels. These ‘state channels’ are basically a hash-locked proofs called balance proofs that network/. Accessed 9 Feb. 2018. two-way discussion channel between users, or are collateralised through previous on-chain 23 "Instant & Feeless — Flash Channels – IOTA - IOTA blog." 24 Sep. 2017, https:// between a user and a service (a machine), and transactions. Where earlier an individual would blog.iota.org/instant-feeless-flash-channels- because the blockchain doesn’t need to settle the make multiple transactions on the main chain, 88572d9a4385. Accessed 9 Feb 2018. transactions they can be cheap and fast. they can create a balance proof and create micro- transactions as needed. Raiden balance proofs Consider for instance the case of CryptoKitties are acquiring post individuals “signing” on the becoming popular overnight, clogging the chain. This makes sure neither party can back out Ethereum network,18 or popular token sales having of the transaction as long as one of them relays the same effect.19 Blockchains like Ethereum information to the mainnet. These channels can have very low capacity limitations beyond which also be defined to be expired between two parties they become clogged, slowing down future on basis of time that has passed or number of transactions. State channels fundamentally take transactions conducted. the process of settlement and computation out of a main network, do the necessary function State channels are core to the Convergence and relay the final state of each individual within Ecosystem to enable the sort speed and scale the channel to the main network after a preset needed for a global data infrastructure. For the period of time. The state can consist of payment sort of decentralised data infrastructure of the balances, such as in a Bitcoin payment channel,20 future we are anticipating, state channels as well or more elaborate smart contract data, such as as messaging and communication, value and in a generalised Ethereum state channel. This data interoperability protocols are a prerequisite. reduces the burden on the blockchain in terms Without building these transport and messaging of number of transactions while ensuring that tools we will squander the opportunity fix the Web the trust, immutability and decentralisation of 2.0 problem of centralised data infrastructure. the blockchain itself are not compromised. State channel transactions occur entirely off a chain and 41 Marketplaces Data has been collected, validated and transported; now it needs to be used. Before it is processed, analysed and automated, marketplaces are emerging to allow the trading, buying and selling of data and digital assets.
These marketplaces are made possible because of the distributed ledgers, consensus mechanisms and interoperability protocols at the lower levels. It is only because data has been unlocked lower down that it can be traded further up the stack. We will see the emergence of a whole host of new types of marketplaces beyond just today’s cryptocurrency exchanges. New marketplaces will enable the sharing of IoT data, AI data, personal data as well as other digital assets like crypto-collectables (pioneered by CryptoKitties)24 and bots.
IoT Data Marketplaces
IoT data is already being collected in vast quantities, but the sprawl of devices has created a fragmented ecosystem. On the consumer side, operating system providers like Apple, Google and Amazon are attempting to leverage their dominant positions in smartphones and retail to sell more devices to collect more data. The Apple Watch and CarPlay, Google Home and Next, Amazon Echo and Dot; these are all attempts to grow their walled gardens of data. Smaller consumer IoT device makers like Fitbit, Wink, or GreenIQ struggle to collect enough data to make do meaningful machine learning to improve their products as quickly as the tech giants.
On the enterprise side, the same dynamics are at work. The internet of things (IoT) and industrial internet in the United States, Industrie 4.0 in Germany, and 物 联 网 (wù lián wăng) in China all promise to use low-cost sensors and big data analytics to dramatically improve productivity and usher in a new age of data-driven manufacturing. The Convergence Ecosystem 43 Marketplaces 44
But the promise has not been realized for a everywhere for more and more data to feed Previous page number of reasons. Core to the failure has been their algorithms: Facebook buying WhatsApp 24 'CryptoKitties, Explained ... Mostly - The the lack of data sharing. This lack of data sharing and Instagram, Google with self-driving cars and New York Times' 28 Dec 2017, https://www. “ nytimes.com/2017/12/28/style/cryptokitties- has been the case across all industries that Google Home, and Amazon with Alexa Echos and want-a-blockchain-snuggle.html. Accessed 9 are trying to utilise IoT technologies including Traditionally proprietary Dots. Feb 2018. aviation, agriculture, and utilities.25 The problem, data and technology Current page as we have already highlighted, is that there is Decentralised AI data marketplaces will reduce, no incentive to share data because it is seen have been significant and eventually remove, the competitive 25 HBR. The Biggest Challenges of Data- Driven Manufacturing https://hbr.org/2016/05/ as the competitive advantage to be protected. defensibility mechanisms advantage of hoarding private data by enabling the-biggest-challenges-of-data-driven- Current data infrastructure is coarse: data is either anybody to monetise data. Again in value chain manufacturing. Accessed 19 Jan 2018. hoarded and valuable, or shared with limited for companies. In the terms, these marketplaces increase supply. An commercial viability. IoT marketplaces begin to blockchain industry AI data marketplace will make it easy for people offer new business models for the monetisation and increasingly agents and bots to recommend, of machine data. The IOTA data marketplace is a this is all open source, price and therefore find value in different types of good example of the new types of marketplace leading to an incredibly data. A market for data will lead to more efficient that are emerging to enable the sharing of sensor allocation of data, rather than giving it away for free and machine data. rapid innovation or not using it at all. As more and more machines, cycle, but also shifting individuals and organisations upload data to sell AI Data Marketplaces on a data marketplace, it becomes more attractive defensibility more to data buyers. As this data commons grows with Just like IoT data, or any data for that matter, data towards the sheer size of more datasets, it will attract more data buyers, for AI algorithms tend to be accumulated by the creating powerful network effects. More than largest companies. Society is becoming reliant the community and thus anything, decentralised AI data marketplaces are on data, and as it applied to AI algorithms, we the distribution power. a bulwark to the rapacious AI data monopolies are facing a situation in which a select group of that have the potential to become the most organisations are amassing vast datasets and This is an industry where powerful organisations ever built (if they aren’t building unassailable AI capabilities. With the increasingly users decide already), controlling ever-increasing numbers emergence of deep learning as the most useful of industries and markets with their superior AI machine learning technique for a range of AI what technologies they capabilities. It is, for this reason, we invested in the applications like computer vision and natural want to use. Ocean Protocol, whose mission is “to unlock data, language processing, data has become like digital for more equitable outcomes for users of data, oil. Digital monopolies like Facebook, Google using a thoughtful application of both technology and Amazon, today get data from users for free. ” and governance.” Every like, search and purchase feeds the learning Teemu Paivinen system to further improve the algorithms; in turn Founder, Equilibrium Labs & Author We also expect to see these marketplaces become bringing more customers and engagement. In of Thin Protocols ever more automated and efficient. Another of value chain terms, data is supply, and AI algorithms our portfolio companies, Fetch.AI, is building are demand. Digital monopolies are searching a solution that uses decentralised machine The Convergence Ecosystem 45 Marketplaces 46
learning to enable marketplaces to self-evolve the Financial Times, general information such 26 FT - How much is your personal data worth? https://ig.ft.com/how-much-is-your- around popular or valuable datasets, improving as age, gender or location is worth just 0.0005 personal-data-worth/. Accessed 19 Jan 2018. discoverability. And, as natural language and dollars per person. Buyers will have to fork out 26 conversational interfaces continue to mature, cents per person for lists of people with specific “ there is value in dialogue couplets – and associated health conditions. Genomic data would likely fetch The aim of Ocean Protocol dialogue markets – which may be used to train and much more. The challenge is that at an individual to to equalize the opportunity normalise conversations and chatbot content into level, there is very little economic value. Value to access data, so that a increasingly relevant systems across a range of comes in aggregate. This is where blockchains, much broader range of languages. self-sovereign identity, and personal data wallets combine. AI practitioners can create Personal Data Marketplaces value from it, and in turn The key to making the economics work is pulling spread the power of data. After peer-to-peer payments, control of personal as much as data as possible into an individual To respect privacy needs, data has been one of the most talked about personal wallet. Federico Zannier sold data applications for blockchains. This is related to but including keystrokes, mouse movements and we must include privacy- separate from self-sovereign identity, in the sense activity screenshots for two dollars per day on preserving compute. Our that once an individual controls their own identity, Kickstarter. An Italian university found university practical goal is deploy a they can choose who can have access to it. The students would auction off their smartphone tokenised ecosystem that same principle can be applied to other personal activity data for two euros. Add in other types of data. This choice puts the individual in the position data such as voice, driving, health, learning, virtual incentivizes for making AI of the seller and the party who wants access to the reality and genomics, and the value of individual data & services available. data as the buyer. Personal data is an economic datasets will rise considerably. This network can be used as asset that we currently give up in return for services. a foundational substrate to Some data is handed over consciously, like In today’s Web 2.0 paradigm, Google, Facebook entering an email address or a telephone number; and other data monopolists capture the profit. In power a new ecosystem of other data is captured without us knowing about the future, blockchain infrastructure, self-sovereign data marketplaces, and more it: likes, tweets, our online behaviour and other identity and personal data marketplaces will broadly, data sharing for the forms of digital data exhaust. The value comes empower individuals. They can choose to allow public good. (albeit it is much less understood by individuals) Google and Facebook to use their data, or they when different datasets are aggregated, and an can auction it off to get the best price. They might individual psycho-demographic profile is created decide to only sell general information, but not their ” and sold to all sorts of organisations like insurers, genomic data. Others will rent access to genomic Trent McConaghy market researchers, and political organisations. A data to cancer research charities but not insurers. Co-Founder, BigChainDB multi-billion dollar data industry exists just to trade New business models will emerge as buyers give & Ocean Protocol personal data.26 sellers discounts based on aggregating family data for instance and new startups will emerge Individual pieces of personal data are not differentiating on consumer trust. Metâme is a UK- particularly valuable on their own. According to based startup working on creating a universal unit The Convergence Ecosystem 47 Marketplaces 48
of trade enabling bundles of personal data to be become more evident which tokens are designed packaged and exchanged. A data marketplace is to be a medium of exchange and which are not necessarily about making the most money. designed to be a store of value. It is challenging It is about giving individuals choice and control to be both. Ether, for example, is intended to of how they want to invest their most valuable be used as a medium of exchange to redeem “ economic asset. decentralised services from applications. But as “Self-sovereign personal its price rises, it becomes more of a store of value data marketplaces need Digital Assets Marketplaces and less of a medium of exchange as holders to address two key refrain from redeeming Ether in anticipation of hurdles before they can The final category of marketplace we expect value appreciation. This non-fungible subclass of to evolve are digital asset marketplaces. crypto-assets will be designed to be collectables take off: 1) the need for a Unlike traditional physical assets or money, and derive value through exclusivity and proof- universal unit of trade that distributed ledger-based crypto-tokens can be of-ownership. Tooling for this is already emerging transforms personal data programmable. This gives them more flexibility with the ERC 721 NFTs. into assets which people and variety than their physical counterparts. Cryptocurrencies, or tokens designed to be a We expect to see a whole new ecosystem of can tangibly trade and medium of exchange, are already reasonably well- digital assets like in-game weapons or costumes own, 2) ensuring anonymity defined and projects are innovating around how for gaming. AI bots and virtual avatar templates, and then incentivising to create the optimal token for this use in mind such as those provided by SEED. Virtual reality consented identifiability as with rules around supply, distribution, privacy, and land such as Decentraland; objects with real- other attributes being tweaked. Cryptocurrencies world counterparts like digital twins; and even new legislation like GDPR confer the fact that the crypto-token is a medium digital to physical assets like 3D printed items, effectively calls for anonymity of exchange. Most tokens are incorrectly referred many of which will be collaboratively made and by default. Without solutions to as cryptocurrencies. This is probably because collectively owned. With digital scarcity comes the to these problems personal Bitcoin began life as a cryptocurrency and has ability to artificially limit supply which has up until over the last ten years become more of a crypto- now been almost impossible with existing digital data marketplaces cannot asset, predominantly because of the programmed and Internet technologies. The possibilities are scale sustainably.” deflationary economics. However, currencies endless and we are at the very beginning of a and assets require different economic designs. whole new age of digital assets created, bought, Currencies need to have a high velocity, whereas licensed, rented and sold in decentralised peer- ” assets need to retain and ideally increase value to-peer marketplaces. resulting in low velocity. Dele Atanda CEO, Metâme Labs Broader than cryptocurrencies, digital assets will come to include all digitals assets that use distributed ledgers to create scarcity. Today there isn’t a clear distinction between cryptocurrencies and crypto-assets, but as the market matures, it will 50 Process, Analyse & Automate Now we get to the top layer of the stack: the process, analyse and automate layer.
This is where data is transformed into actions Distributed computing refers to computing and insight using traditional and distributed whereby a complex problem is broken down into computing techniques, as well as newer types of more simple tasks. These simple problems are computing such as quantum computing. It is at this distributed out to a network of trusted computers layer where blockchains and artificial intelligence to be solved in parallel, and then the solutions blur and it becomes clear they are intertwined and to these simple problems are combined in such interconnected. Both smart contracts and machine a way to solve the main problem at hand. This is learning offer differing levels of automation and quite similar to how processors (CPUs and GPUs) decentralisation depending on the type of input developed from single-core to multi-core on data and level of trust the use case demands. the same circuit, and multiple cores were used to solve a problem more quickly than one core Distributed Computation by itself. Although a simple premise, the other computers need to be trusted for the system to Computation can be described as ‘the action of work. Conversely, blockchains and ledgers may mathematical calculation’. Modern methods trace be used to create networks of computers through their roots back to 1936 where at Cambridge a ‘trust framework’ and to incentivise these nodes University, Alan Turing described an abstract to work together, rewarding those who solve these digital computing machine consisting of a simple problems with tokens that have a financial limitless memory and a scanner that moves back value no matter how small. Blockchain projects and forth through the memory, symbol by symbol, including Golem and iExec are actively solving this reading what it finds and writing further symbols. problem. Other projects like Truebit are working In the Convergence Ecosystem, we expect to see towards off-chain computation in a trustless way computation just like storage and ledgers become using a prover-verifier game. Verifiable and non- distributed and decentralised. Over the last few verifiable distributed processing will both be years, there have been two types of computing that needed again, depending on the level of trust are regularly referred to: distributed computing between participants in the network. and quantum computing. The Convergence Ecosystem 51 Process, Analyse & Automate 52
Interestingly, we could finally could see the centralised entities. From an incentivisation Mattereum, a UK-based startup, is working realisation of the National Science Foundation perspective, blockchains enable these networks on legally-enforceable smart contracts. The Network (NSFNET) project from the 1980s, a to work efficiently and ‘trustlessly’ with a token process of buying a house could become more supercomputer on-demand for any computing powering a marketplace of nodes with computing efficient with no banks, lawyers, or estate agents. task. Other distributed computing projects like power. Quantum computers could also form part Countless hours, expenses and middle-men can “ Nyriad are looking to achieve hyper-scale storage of these networks, solving the specific problems be condensed into a few dozen lines of code and Data and services are processing but without tokens using a concept that the classical computers could not. an automated product. This automation principle costly to use and can’t sell called ‘liquid data’. in blockchain-based smart contracts applies to Smart Contracts any industry which requires trusted third parties to themselves. It’s staggering Quantum computing is different to distributed oversee agreements. Contracts are only as good to consider all that gets lost computing in that it looks to solve problems that There are currently a handful of smart contracts as their enforcement, so decentralised dispute without its value ever being cannot be solved by existing computers (read: blockchain platforms that have successfully resolution services are necessary to make smart realised — especially when Turing Machines). By using quantum particles, captured the market. Ethereum dominates contracts useful. Early efforts in this direction are the nascent technology has the potential to test with over 7000 tokens launched on the ERC- utilising prediction markets and reputation staking it comes to intelligence all potential solutions to problems in one go 20 protocol standard. Waves, NEO and Stellar, tools as with Kleros. constructed about markets in a single machine, rather than a network of are all developing rapidly; NEO already has 30 and data. We simply can’t machines. These machines pose a potential threat sales scheduled to use the platform. In a nutshell, With the rapid development and convergence of let all that value be captured to blockchain technology because they are reliant smart contracts are programmable “if this, then AI and decentralised networks, we will begin to on public key cryptography (also commonly used that” conditions attached to transactions on the see more complex smart contracts develop, such by a select few. Fetch has a in banking for credit card security) which is made blockchain. If situation ‘A’ occurs, the contract is as contracts which are connected to expansive mission to build an open, secure based on the difficulty of finding prime coded to have an automated response ‘B’. This neural networks. The development of these decentralised, tokenised factors for huge numbers. These problems would idea isn’t new, and we can find examples all around systems could see inconsistencies being found network that self-organises typically take many hundreds or even several us, such as in vending machines: if button ‘A’ is in legal frameworks, resulting in a more robust thousands of years to solve, but with quantum pressed, then ‘X’ amount is required; if ‘X’ amount legal system. Smart contracts would be built upon and learns how to connect computers, this timeframe could be reduced to is paid, then snack ‘B’ is dispensed. By adding this those legal models, within which AI must comply. those with value to those who hours or minutes. Companies like IBM, Microsoft simple concept to blockchains, contracts cannot need it, or indeed may need and D-Wave, are driving progress in the field. be forged, changed, or destroyed without an It is still early in the development cycle of smart it; creating a more equitable audit trail. This is because the ledger distributes contracts and progress with require collaboration Parallelisation is the core characteristic of both identical copies of that contract across a vast from the legal industry as well as lawmakers in future for all. distributed computing and quantum computing. network of nodes, for verification by anyone at Governments; smart contracts should be seen as On the one hand, distributed computing involves any time. When transparency can be guaranteed, the legal rails for the digital world. If tokens are the networks of computers that look to solve a these contracts now become possible in industries beginnings of digitally-native money and financial “ problem by solving smaller problems in parallel, which would have previously deemed them too assets; smart contracts are the beginning of a Toby Simpson while in quantum computing one computer is risky. digitally-native legal system. Smart contracts as Co-founder, Fetch solving many complex problems simultaneously. with distributed computation and decentralised In both cases, we can start to rely on networks With correctly embedded legal frameworks, machine learning will automate data in the of incentivised machines to solve computational smart contracts will have the potential to Convergence Ecosystem creating unprecedented challenges, rather than servers owned by replace and automate existing paper contracts. levels of automation within auditable parameters. The Convergence Ecosystem 53 Process, Analyse & Automate 54
Decentralised Machine Learning by a few leading companies. But it is becoming The Convergence Ecosystem provides global data increasingly apparent that this paradigm is not sharing and marketplace infrastructure at the lower Machine learning is a field within computer sustainable. levels to enable AIs to collaborate and coordinate science and more specifically artificial intelligence processing in a decentralised way. This removes that focuses on enabling computers to learn rather centralised bottlenecks for heavy computational than be explicitly programmed by humans. More The Convergence workloads and helps address latency issues traditional AI approaches based on rules and reducing the time needed to train models. On- symbols are not capable of capturing the complex Ecosystem device training like Google’s Federated Learning statistical patterns present in natural environments model is a technical improvement but lacks the such as visual and auditory scenes, and our provides global ability for mass coordination using marketplaces everyday modes of interaction such as movement and tokens. and language. A relatively recent breakthrough in data sharing machine learning called deep learning is driving Decentralised machine learning not only provides progress in the field. Deep learning techniques and marketplace a coordination mechanism for the more efficient are ‘deep’ because they use multiple layers of allocation of resources, it increases access to information processing stages to identify patterns infrastructure at machine learning capabilities but allowing anyone in data. The different layers train the system to to submit models and algorithms and get paid understand structures within data. In fact, deep the lower levels based on quality and utility. SingularityNET, doc. learning as a technique is not new but combined ai and Fetch are examples of companies already with big data, more computing power, and parallel to enable AIs building the type of decentralised artificial computing it has become increasingly accurate intelligence described. Decentralised machine in previously challenging tasks such as computer to collaborate learning will be the result but would not be vision and natural language processing. The possible without the development of distributed most recent breakthroughs in transfer learning and coordinate ledgers, consensus, identity, reputation, and strategic play comes from the combination interoperability protocols and data marketplaces. of deep learning and reinforcement learning as processing in a This is why a holistic framework is needed to see with DeepMind’s AlphaGo. the connectedness of all of these seemingly decentralised way. disparate innovations. Machine and deep learning techniques can transform raw data into actionable knowledge; As per the theme of this paper, centralised converting voice input into text output in voice- systems suffer from a few fundamental to-text programs or turning LIDAR input into a problems: inability to coordinate globally, limits driving decision. In diverse fields including image on collaboration and interoperability, and the and speech recognition, medical diagnosis, and tendency toward monopoly and censorship. fraud detection, machine learning is equipping With machine learning becoming integral to us with the ability to learn from large amounts of our lives, centralised machine learning is a data. The current machine learning paradigm is threat to economic competition and freedom of where solutions are delivered as cloud-based APIs knowledge and speech. 55 56 The Convergence Ecosystem Conclusion COMMUNITIES & GOVERNANCE Blockchains and distributed ledgers are a core pieces of the new emerging CRYPTO ASSETS & CRYPTO decentralised data infrastructure. PROCESS CURRENCIES Smart ANALYSE & Contracts AUTOMATE
Decentralized Distributed Machine Compute Learning (Fetch)
AI Data Digital Market MARKETPLACES Assets Market (Ocean) (SEED)
The mistake commentators and analysts are making is approaching ‘blockchain’ as a new IoT Data Personal The Convergence Market Data distinct market and compartmentalising: “We (IOTA) Market will make blockchain investments.” Or “What is Ecosystem is our blockchain strategy?” This way of thinking Data is built on old assumptions: computing takes Interoperability TRANSPORT State the next era of (Haja Communications place in an object called a ‘computer’; tech Networks) companies develop products for the technology economic and market, and industries are fixed markets with familiar competitors. The game has changed, and Value Transport social activity. Interoperability & Messaging computing and data are everywhere. Technology firms have moved into healthcare, automotive and It will be open- retail. Technologies and industries are converging. AUTHENTICATE Ledger Consensus We need a new framework through which to (Sovrin) VALIDATE source, distributed, & SECURE understand this rapid change. decentralised, Blockchains are not just the technological innovation Identity Storage for cryptocurrencies or a new way to store digital & Reputation & Data automated, (Evernym) Integrity assets; they are a foundational technology. They are a new decentralised digital infrastructure that solves and tokenised. Internet technical, societal and economic problems that of Things Software (Vision, audio, DATA (Web, VR, come from data centralisation in digital economies. biosensing, COLLECTION AR, etc) etc) As ever more data is collected by the Internet of Things and used to make decisions with artificial intelligence; data centralisation is becoming a threat to the successful functioning of markets. We cannot DATA FLOW allow a handful of companies to have monopoly control of global data infrastructure. Figure 1. The Convergence Ecosystem © OutlierVentures The Convergence Ecosystem 57 Conclusion 58
A decentralised data infrastructure is emerging to We expect the Convergence Ecosystem to support solve this problem. Blockchains and distributed hundreds if not thousands of communities that will Successful projects will ledgers combined with other tools like over time outcompete their Web 2.0 competitors decentralised storage, consensus, and identity will for developers and users. This shift will not occur differentiate through values authenticate, validate, secure, transport and share overnight. People will continue to focus on the data collected from the physical and digital worlds. price of crypto-assets and worry about the and trust. There will not be one Data will then be packaged up in marketplaces to regulatory implications of public token sales. be processed, analysed and automated. chain to rule them all. We must But behind the scenes, a new decentralised Different token designs including crypto-assets, infrastructure is being built. change our mental models. cryptocurrencies and crypto-consumables will form an incentivisation system to allocate resources Network by network. Protocol by protocol. more efficiently. The entire ecosystem will be guided by governance models -- with differing The Convergence Ecosystem is the next era of The Convergence Ecosystem levels of decentralisation and automation -- based economic and social activity. The revolution on the values of the community. In much the same will not be televised - at least not over a private drives collaboration rather way that national governments all have their own telecommunication network by a centralised cultural and historical nuance, token networks television network - it will be open-source, than competition will develop similar subtleties. Paradoxically, the distributed, decentralised, automated, and fact that the Convergence Ecosystem is driven tokenised. by increasingly automated technologies means that people and communities will come to matter more than ever.
The Convergence Ecosystem is Outlier Ventures’ vision of the future. The most successful networks, projects, and organisations within the Convergence Ecosystem will be those that have inclusive and aligned communities. Communities will develop around shared values and belief-systems such as censorship-resistance or self-sovereign identity. Successful projects will differentiate through values and trust. There will not be one chain to rule them all. We must change our mental models. The Convergence Ecosystem drives collaboration rather than competition. 59 60 Further Reading
01. Life 3.0: Being Human 10. Fundamental challenges 18. The AI Hierarchy in the Age of Artificial with public blockchains of Needs Intelligence - Preethi Kasireddy - Monica Rogati - Max Telemark 11. Disrupting Tech 19. The Bitcoin Paradox 02. The Stack: On Software Monopolies & AI Tycoons - Simin Dedeo and Sovereignty — Part 1 - Benjamin H. Bratton - Lawrence Lundy 20. Blockchain Governance: Programming 03. The Zero Marginal Cost 12. Disrupting Tech Our Future Society Monopolies & AI - Fred Ersham - Jeremy Rifkin Tycoons — Part 2 - Lawrence Lundy 21. Byzantine political 04. The Fourth Industrial economy Revolution 13. AI DAOs, and Three - Chris Berg, Sinclair - Klaus Schwab Paths to Get There Davidson & Jason Pott - Trent McConaghy 05. The Great Convergence 22. Identity and Digital Self- - Richard Baldwin 14. Wild, Wooly Sovereignty AI DAOs - Natalie Smolenski 06. The Second Machine Age - Trent McConaghy - Andrew McAfee and Erik 23. AI Software Juggles Brynjolfsson 15. The AI Existential Threat: Probabilities Reflections to Learn from 07. The Master Algorithm: of a Recovering Less Data How the Quest for the Bio-Narcissist - Will Knight Ultimate Learning Machine - Trent McConaghy Will Remake Our World 24. Is Quantum Computing - Pedro Domingos 16. Blockchains for Artificial an Existential Threat to Intelligence Blockchain Technology? 08. Money, blockchains, and - Trent McConaghy - Nathana Sharma social scalability - Nick Szabo 17. The AI Economy 25. Quantum Technologies & Bitcoin Flagship Final Report 09. Blockchain-enabled - Jonathan Frei - EU Commission Directive Convergence - Outlier Ventures For more information about the Convergence Ecosystem, or if you would like to contact us about speaking or an investment opportunity, please contact
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