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In-depth discussions and explorations into the whole new world of web3 and the metaverse with leading thinkers and industry experts. Presented by the NYU Metaverse Collaborative.
NYU The Whole Metaverse - Episode 004
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Pierre: welcome to the whole Metaverse podcast, the NYU podcast about the Metaverse. I'm Pierre and I'm here with Dr. Elizabeth Haas, we are the co-host of the podcast Today we have the pleasure to have Mrs. Lone Fonss Schroder, The CEO of the blockchain company, Concordium Mrs. Schroder, is also vice chair of Volvo Cars and Director at Ikea.
Liz: part of what I love about this interview is she's really been disruptive at big companies like Credit Swiss and Ikea.
and her son said she didn't even know how to spell blockchain. Let's see what she has, what we can learn from her.
Pierre: So you have an amazing and fascinating professional experience, a and we'd love to hear your thoughts about the Metaverse blockchain a and the future of Web three.
how does it feel to go from working for huge? Billion dollar corporate company like Volvo or ikea, and jumping into the future as a C E O of a blockchain, which is completely different from a personal perspective, how do you feel?
Lone: Yeah, I feel great. . Thank you. So I like to challenge myself. Um, I was an athlete when I was young, hurdle runner, and that is, Surely to, um, put different difficult hurdles up to watch yourself, literally speaking at an early age. So I like that. I like to challenge myself and, jumping to blockchain because it's, uh, groundbreaking new technology.
was, um, a given thing for me to really understand what is web three, and how can you apply this in the large corporations. So I feel good about having taken this challenge.
Liz: Tell us what Concordian does and what, how it got started.
Lone: Yeah, so this is a layer one blockchain. So it's a permissionless blockchain. but with ID at the protocol level. So you can't use the blockchain if you are not idd, and that means that everybody, would have, say, a number, a hashtag, um, you, you don't put the ID for, for, um, privacy reasons on the blockchain, but a reference to the id.
So if the regulator wants to see who have done this transaction at a given point in time, you could with, um, ID revocation. You can literally find out who have done. . we have the background from financial institutions when. , con conclusion was founded in 2018. It was founded by Laia Christensen, who is also a founder of Saxo Bank, one of literally a project number a hundred, I think, at the internet at that point in time.
So he saw, here we go again. We have another layer of the internet where we can build. Other type of applications. Just as I was thinking when I, I started Saxo Bank and um, at that point in time there was not so much regulation around effects trading, just to mention something. But we have seen, everything coming to, to financial institution, both in the US and Europe, other places in the world.
And we saw, but the same as. Is also going to, to happen to the crypto world. And, and, the blockchain is, kind of, we are not a crypto company. We are a blockchain company, but we must prepare and assist those who are building, projects at the blockchain to do that in a regulatory, compliant way.
So that is a whole sort, which is very different. Um, being a Crypto com company, we are, we are not in that sense at all and a key store disruptors or anything. We are just building blue chip software with a lot of the features from, the source behind. Um, The blockchain protocols, which are very, very usable because if you get to think about it, what you want as a regulator, in banks, the compliance is very difficult because it is at the end of the day all the way down to human errors.
So, uh, here you can take a smart contract, you can predefine it, you can have that validated even together with a regulator or self-regulated. This smart contract that works, works in accordance with given set of, of things you need to live up to, uh, to comply with the regulation. Then when people use that, you can only use it if.
If you fulfill that, if, if the elements are not there, it simply doesn't work, so you don't need to test it afterwards. And, and then it's, there forever and people can look at it. If it's made at public blockchain, everybody can, can validate and anything. So I think. Blockchain, in essence is the regulator's dream, which is quite funny when Bitcoin was made by anarchist and here you go with an anarchistic project.
It's really the regulator's dream. So I, I think that makes the circle full.
Liz: When did you step in as CEO and why?
Lone: Yeah, so this was back, um, four years ago. I was an advisor to the project, um, and I was then asked to, um, because I asked so many questions and. Apparently had opinion. So I was asked to become the ceo and first I thought, um, well, even my son said, mom, you can't even spell blockchain. You don't know what it is.
You can't say yes. And I thought, but this is really a challenge. It's a good challenge. So I actually took a course at m i t to because, we have some of the best, um, and professors, um, in, in q, computer science, et cetera. So, I'm a lawyer of training and, and I'm an economist, so I, I do have my education, which is quite different from being, closer to computer science.
So that was why as a provocation to myself. that has paid off very well, I think because. You get very, computer savvy, uh, blockchain savvy, but also, um, computer science savvy. So I think in the world now where most companies, uh, and, number one on, on their strategic map is digitalization.
So what does that really mean and what can we do? So And then on the other hand, most of the, uh, blockchain, um, projects say many are made by say, young people who have great ideas. Um, but just as when we, for example, in our venture funds in, in say, Volvo cars, we take a lot of interesting projects in.
not necessarily to invest in them, but also to assist them in understanding if you want to do procurement with large corporation, how do you do it? So you can add a lot by doing that. People with great ideas, very often what they lack is to understand that the idea is so little compared to the whole world. You need to understand the legal side the, the um, marketing side, the branding side, um, maturing the product. A lot of things, which is a shame if you don't say, have somebody who can assist you in doing it, because then a great idea often get lost just because the world is so complicated. And I think this is what we have also in Concordia and putting into our grant program that is to.
the projects which are building on, on the blockchain with a lot of these elements. And this is also what I have brought to, um, to that part.
I just have the feeling that this is something you need to know and, Know the disruptive software. The statistics. in the late 50's companies, Fortune 500 companies became kind of 60 years plus in average, and now it's down to 18 years. We die as teenagers when we are Fortune 500 companies.
And why is It is simply because you don't understand how to innovate yourself very often. so as thought, being on, on, uh, one of the leading. Directors of of Volvo cars who is now migrating everything from building a car with components to building a car with a chip as, as a central, compute and, and a total new sales model with subscriptions instead of selling and total new technology with electrification and total new platform, everything is new and. Like putting, um, something out in, in space. It's very good to be kind of a full run on, on new technology. So this has given me at what I, wanted was to provoke myself to really understand first of all, how can you apply this technology to, real life use cases, but also how can you improve the technology?
which is In such an infancy, um, as it is right now. And, how can you then, kind of disrupt the disruptors is what we are doing in Concordium.
Liz: You have a definition for block?
Lone: Um, no, I, it funny enough, we were discussing that, earlier today. It's, it's interesting you asking. I would rather say that what we are doing is that we are putting, solid cryptographic protocols together so certain parties can. Internet, you can create trust with our id. So we have also solved that problem of a decentralized, uh, lectures where, um, people normally, would not be able, since you don't have a middle name, um, middle man.
You must be able to create trust because if you can't create trust, then you can't really transact. and that we have also solved. So this is technology, downloadable technology which allows people to interact, uh, and create trust in an immutable and transparent way. , that is a definition of our blockchain.
And then you can add on to say, then we have added protocols, finalization protocols. So ours is a, deterministic blockchain. Um, a serum is, for example, a probabilistic, so it does rollback. we say, why should it roll back? You want to have sinks. So when it's final, it's final instantly. So we have this finalization protocol, it can't roll back.
we have also, cause that's another thing, um, the variation of the transaction fees on, for example, now I'm picking at this year, but it's the same for most that it goes up and down with the value of, of the isa. But ours is picked to, uh, so. because again, coming from financial institutions, you want to have, transaction fees going to walk zero and stable and, uh, predictable.
Otherwise, you simply can't use a product. and then, um, we have another thing because yes, we do have the id. So you, you could eventually, but by court order, find out who have done what at what given point in time. But, uh, we have shielded transactions because that's another thing. you can do anonymous tr transactions, um, on most blockchains, but everybody can see what has been done.
What you really want is the opposite. You want to, make shielded transactions, but, with the, accountability, so we have turned that upside down. So this is basically, um, the, the core functionalities of, our definition of what a blockchain.
Pierre: Do you think there are too many Blockchain We have
Concordia. What do you feel? Do you need as many blockchain as we can possibly have? Do you think there will be consolidations in the future? What are your source.
Lone: so there are too many blockchains today, uh, which are not adequate. So a lot of blockchains are made out of sinking processes. , that means that, they are simply not safe, secure, solid. And this is exactly what you want to have with blockchain. That's immutability. you want to have solid cryptographic protocols.
Now, NYU is a university, you know, all about science and, what we use science for in Concordia is to make sure that, first of all, , the protocols are made, out of science peer review protocols. So we have scientists from ahu University amongst others E T eight. We have published, um, from, copa, concoction Blockchain Research Center and AHU in Denmark, modern 70 Science papers.
Which are peer reviewed. And then we take the science papers, we convert them into what we call blue papers. And from that we do the coding. And then when the coding is done, we do the verification, third party verification that it's actually say, coded in accordance with, uh, whatever proofs we, we need to have coded in from the science papers.
So, When you read and, and this is a hobby of ours to read, um, a coat and, and other people's white paper. it doesn't really often make sense. And when you read the white paper and you then look at the code, that doesn't match either. So there is a lot where, yes, we understand why things are breaking down.
We understand why you see the back doors in bridges, et cetera. Because it's a very, very, immature, uh, well still. So yes, there are too many blockchain switch you can't use. The financial sector or you can't use it, or I would even say most of the blockchains, very few of the blockchains you can use in, as blue chip software.
But that will say, Clean itself
up and I think the industry
last year, already started really say to wash out, and I have seen that in many, many industries before. Semiconductors, biotech, uh, just to mention a few, few. We have had the, uh, it bubble years back. So I think that is very natural when you have something new.
Liz: You're located in Denmark, is that right? Norway. Sorry. but the company's also in Switzerland, is that right?
LONE 1 Up_1: Yeah,
Liz: I'm curious as to why it's in Switzerland. And is the Swiss government doing anything to help you, encourage you, encourage the industry?
Lone: Yeah. So, um, it's in Switzerland because it's a foundation and, uh, the founder is, is also living in Switzerland. But Switzerland have a quite, um, good blockchain and, and crypto environment. Um, first of all, you need to understand what kind of legislation is there. So, in terms of how can you do the funding of the company and, uh, that you can navigate round, what does it mean to be, a foundation in Switzerland, which is making a blockchain?
So this is why Switzerland was, was chosen. So that has a, um, Switzerland have a good, regulation in place. But now Europe and Switzerland is basically building the same kind of regulative framework about everything, not current blockchain, because blockchain as such is not regulated, but the, um, entire crypto space.
So in Europe, um, cryptocurrencies, We are a payment token, and that could be listed at exchanges. Um, the European and the Swiss regulator don't see that as security token, so that's a little different from, the views, um, in, in the us. But I, I think that is all it, it'll go to the same kind of, uh, re.
Framework. I, I can see everything is in that direction, which I think is good. You need simply clarity and you need to have, um, a regulations, which foremost is protecting the users and, and investors. so I, I, I think that is moving in the right direction.
Liz: Earlier you indicated that you really think that this technology will be disrupt. , what do you think it'll disrupt if you kind of look out to the future? Uh, where will this disruptions be and what's important for your foundation to do?
LONE 1 Up_1: what I think it's disrupting is that we can interact, we don't need a certain party. So I think that is very, very interesting I like when things are becoming, self-regulated. Um, as much as you can do, take your identity, you have your identity. When you are born, you are given your identity, but.
In many countries, even in, in our well, uh, functioning Scandinavian countries, you can queue up if you want to have your passport renewed it like six months later, you can get a new passport. So if, if you haven't done that in time and. It didn't have time or was not aware that you had to queue up, then suddenly you don't have a passport for a given point in time.
You can't really, cross borders, et cetera. So a a lot of things, um, I think should move back to yourself as, Individual person, nearly to 3 billion people in the world doesn't even have a an identity. Many women don't have their own identity. The men are carrying their identity. I can't even put my, my, uh, self declaration for tax into, um, uh, Switzerland without my husband signing it.
So there's a lot of things which it's moving back to you. As, as you I can decide, a lot of things is pushed to you. So instead of pushing and, and allowing people to push a lot of things to you, Apps, for example. Um, you need to be able to regulate that and, and, and have tools where you can kind of be your own owner of your own equity and, and be like, who, who do you want that can knock on your door?
Otherwise they should stay away. This is one great thing you can use blockchain for, so I like that. Another thing is to have things validated. There's so, so much fraud in this world. we will come with a really cool, and we should speak again when we come with it. Um, a cool device, which is kind of Elon Musk, go home with your blue stamp and validation of your Twitter account.
again, that should not be up to him or up to the others. We, can do that with our technology so I can decide what I want to validate and how I can validate it. And, that can be validated, my social profiles can be validated right back to my, verified identity. So I think the, these things, I really like that because to move the power back to us as individuals, I think that is very healthy for, the world.
Pierre: A, according to you, what are the three industries that will be the most impacted by blockchain? Can you give us three industries?
LONE 1 Up_1: I think, um, all industries first because take what you can do. Um, you can build in Metaverse, What we can build is now you can order a car, you can subscribe to a car. You could give, uh, N f t a digital twin of that car already when you ordered the car. I would love to have my digital twin. Then I can go home to the family.
We could in Metaverse, we could play with the car. We could, we could drive the car. We could, start trading. We could raise it. We could put it up for, um, for example, for training. If I want to learn how to, uh, run my carmo economically or more safe or, so, that is one thing to create for that industry.
A total new engagement. I wouldn't even call it with your customers. I. Also say, it allows us to turn customers into our ecosystem. So we would have a totally different, rapport with, Our ecosystem, our, our customers and, and that you could put into all industries. I could also use Metaverse for, for, for marketing, and if t for marketing, I could wrap things in, I could give that away.
Uh, a nice content which, which you really would, would like to have the first drawings of something or sketches of something or, a lot of things, uh, you could, you could wrap in. So I think these things you can. For all industries. But then there's the other thing to kind of have validation of things. Um, so I think for the whole pharma industry, for, for, validating, um, medicine is, is that original?
I think that whole validation part is, is, is there, so why don't people use it much more? But also again, for all industries. Spot meetings. When you do the the minutes of meetings, you really want to have that immutable because later you don't want anybody to be able to control. Was this really the minute or was it that contracts immutability there?
Again, nobody can use pdf. I mean, it take a split second. It's nearly, um, ridiculous to use PDF cause, uh, everybody just opening them, converting them into a, a Word document and start, say, redrafting them. But here you can have immutability, but that's again, for, for all industries. so I think very much on, on these kind of things.
I see it as. Pan Indu in industrial. So I think it, this will be a technology which would impact everything.
Pierre: And what about government and the democratic process? How can we use the blockchain, for example, in the voting process?
Lone: We have a very interesting, um, science project. It's a science project. We don't even know whether eventually it'll be built at. Concoction, but we also like to allocate funds to do science projects. Um, we have it, um, together with people looking into Greenland as a part of, of Denmark, and, Greenland have, um, the possibility to do.
digital rotation and blockchain would be, we think, very suited for, for this. And now you want science-wise to test whether you can do something with this software agnostic, meaning that, the software itself would not have an impact on the results. So this is a sign project and I think that is very exciting and, and I think, uh, it's excellent to do blockchain, uh, rotations.
We have another group in Japan. Political party in Japan have built a use case in our blockchain, so they use it. this is something governments can also use it to, um, issue your identity. Blockchain based identity. We all had our, our, um, uh, covid, uh, certificates. But when you show it, nobody knows is that original and who issued it.
And those who issued could they at all issue it. So all that you can do on blockchain, so you can not only validate this is you who have that certificate, but also that those who did issue it actually had the right to. You for nyu, you can put all your, examinations on, on blockchain or all, your proof that I took this education, et cetera, put it on blockchain because this is another nightmares, you know, as a university to have people and people come from all over the world and you have to validate, do that or have that education, et cetera.
So that, that is also something we are working with certifications, for example, for Seafer. , that's another thing. People come with their certification. I can run a container vessel and can you really? And do you have that certification? blockchain based, um, er also here for, for CFAs education is what we are working on.
So, a lot of things, um, could be so easy also for your, your health files. I have, for example, the keys to my mo mother's health file to, to assist her. But I think it's intimidating that if she wants to go to a dentist, that dentist could really look at what happened when she was having her pregnancies, uh, like, 60 or 70 years ago.
So I, I think you can shield off a lot of things. You can really give privacy back to people, but still share the elements, which really needs to be. but I think most of all, that turn away from the big mainframe data centers where you don't know who's controlling your information.
Liz: there's a philosophy sort of in everything you're saying about privacy and sharing and, and, um, are your biggest challenges here in trying to kind of create the right mindset in what you're doing and the right kind of protection, because it's so critically important and not clear to me how we align all the pieces in the right way.
Lone: So there are a lot of challenges. The first challenge is, to do the, the, the right say, um, technology to have that in place. And I, I think we have literally, some of the best, um, science based coders in the world. So that is one thing. It it really needs to be solid, um, because it, most of the things are meant to be immutable.
So that is one piece, and it takes time just to have a decentralized governance, um, system in place. Um, is not a trivial thing. It is assigned skills in itself to develop a decentralized system. So there are a lot of things, as you say, Does take time. And that's the other thing, you need time to develop and you need time to make things right.
And I see a lack of interest. I, it's amazing what people have invested in this space where, like, without any due diligence on anything because a lot of our institutional investors, et cetera, have been so kind of, ah, it must sound, um, young and it must sound smart. All the kind of, passwords and, and wave scratch a little bit in the surface, you see?
But this is not really solid. So I think that is a challenge in itself. The other challenge is to, um, explain it because it's difficult. is a car? Car Is blockchain. Just blockchain really to, to kind of end up having something which is easy, which is blue stamped, which is like, I come from the country of Lego, which is like Lego boxes.
So you can just use it very easily and you can have some standard elements you put together because it's a kind of fine SMI industry. Everybody seems to want to, um, develop their own language, for example, and what all these languages are called. And, it's so fragmented what people are building.
That is a challenge, and I think it'll end up kind of, we are, we are building in rust because rust is, is a quality language. It's, it's, um, a language which is also taking little energy. So it's also a green language, but it's also a language where, you can cook things without having too many, uh, floors in the coding.
So there are a lot of these elements. It's difficult, but at the end of the day, this is just another software. And this is also where many people probably are a little mistaking that it is so special because it's crypto and blockchain. It is not, it is all the same. It's the same rules which supplies, it's the same, et cetera.
The only thing which is different is literally that you're engaging with a community. So that is very different and that you need the decentralization and you need to, attractive for a sufficient amount of people to run the notes, which is also in the industry in itself. So to balance between running notes and, and encouraging people to do it to.
By the token also, in order to be a part of the security of the blockchain and, and not just wanting a high, uh, uh, procedure from staking, um, and then gravitating to something, which again would make a very. Decentralized blockchain not being decentralized anymore because you have a lot of staking pools where people are gravitating too.
So all the time, what we are looking at is not to be the most popular in the class, but to do things with, uh, literally science proved, which can some time be a challenge because this might not be what interests people short term, but I think long term, this is so interesting because you can really do things.
Liz: So I have two more questions. One is, um, if, if you were going to come to NYU's Collaborative to get information, what would be of most value to you that we could provide?
Lone: I think, um, we never stop, say, um, asking questions about, um, how should it work. There are still a lot of things like I, I said about. Decentralization that goes both into computer science and law because what can you actually decentralize and who is then accountable? And is it just that you provide something and throw away the software keys?
So once you have done it, nobody can touch it. So I think these, um, things where actually there are a lot of things. Kind of comes from one area, but quickly moves into another. I think that's the most interesting thing, uh, we could discuss with nyu that is all these kind of, of borders to other areas where these needs to meet in order to make something which, is sustainable, which is decentralized.
and which can also scale. That's another. and to the design, it needs to be attractive for people. It needs to be easy, it needs to, to have that kind of newness. Otherwise it won't be used. So I, I think it's the right thing you have done taking that in a university where you mentioned some of the areas we can, we can add to that.
So I, I think blockchain is extremely interesting projects, like holistic projects for a university and for those who are making a blockchain, simply can't do it without the intention with universities,
Liz: Why did you choose to be a foundation
LONE 1 Up_1: it is simply because then everybody can use the blockchain and just download it. And I think for me, who have been in a commercial business all my life, it is so nice to do something where take it, take it, take a copy, download it. So this is available for everybody.
This is, this is our presence to the.
Liz: Uh, so it's to make sure that the mindset is one of open.
LONE 1 Up_1: Yes,
Liz: it needs to be a foundation.
LONE 1 Up_1: yes.
Pierre: Well, thank you so much. Uh, uh, Lone Schroder. We're definitely going to keep an eye on Concordia application. I started to, to check out the, the application you're building and I'm going to do a deep dive in, into this projects. It's was really, really interesting. So, uh, Dr. Haas and I would like to thank you very much.
For your time and your firsthand explanation and thoughts, uh, about, uh, this blockchain. So on behalf of nyu, thank you very much for being on the whole Metaverse podcast and we wish you a lot of success for Concordium and all your other, uh, uh, professional, uh, venture. So thank you very much. Have a great day.
LONE 1 Up_1: Thank you for having me. Have a great day.