well. Enterprise Blockchain provider Block apps recently raised 41
million and a new funding round led by Liberty City
Ventures. Block apps builds products and applications for other
businesses on its own Blockchain platform? It says,
its Blockchain technology can help businesses increase the value of
their assets, streamline their supply chains and help them
meet their sustainability goals. Well, joining me now
is the president and ceo of block apps. Karen
and James, lubin Kiernan, thanks so much for
coming on the show. Give me some more details
. Give me some more details about what your company
. Block apps does. Thank you. Um,
so block ups were an enterprise Blockchain company as you
noted, that means we're working really mostly the legacy
businesses and some Blockchain startups less. So uh dealing
with cryptocurrencies themselves and are focused on bringing real world
or legacy assets to Blockchain technology. So, you
see in the public Blockchain world, lots of innovation
that couldn't really exist without a digital ledger infrastructure that
was as programmable as secure, shareable across different parties
. But what you're not seeing so much is the
impact on day to day on more sort of boring
use cases if you will, or in just legacy
transactions that could use the same level of innovation That
you see with the new assets that Blockchain technology is
created. And that's the problem we're here to solve
. So here's a question for you, you just
raised$41 million. Congratulations. I want you to
tell me some of the companies that are using your
service is tapping into your own technology, know how
and what's the use case of how they would apply
that one Great example is Bayer crop science. So
we've been working with the folks at Bayer for some
time and the the aim is to understand and automate
their downstream supply chain. So we've been quite public
about this use case basically um they as a producer
of seeds and other products, you need to know
a lot more about what's happening to them, how
their products are being used um as they go through
distribution onto the farmers, the growers that produce the
products all the way down to the consumer so that
they can support claims for products of theirs that our
premiums or non commodity products, consumers are starting to
ask, okay, you're asking me for a price
premium for certified organic for um telling me that,
you know, it's sustainably sourced, what does that
mean? And so that needs to be verified all
the way back to the input genetics. E starting
with companies like Bayer, so supply chain traceability is
a big use case bars and that is actually dovetailed
into sustainability in a way that maybe if you follow
up, I'll describe, well we can talk about
sustainability. Um I would be interested to know about
that because a lot of people have, I'm really
kind of pushed back against the crypto industry for not
being sustainable that it takes. I mean tens of
thousands of times more energy to make one crypto transaction
that it does for instance to make a traditional bank
transaction on your Visa card. How are you trying
to make this more climate friendly? It's a great
question and we get it all the time. So
one of the things we did very early on as
a company is to think about the core technology powering
public block chains and reimagine it for the enterprise.
So by and large, everything is the same.
So the transactions confirmed in a similar manner. The
data structures look similar, but we innovated at the
consensus algorithm layer so that you do not need one
as many computers confirming transactions and two, it's not
energy intensive. So um I think your viewers may
be familiar at the high level with Bitcoin mining,
but in short, Bitcoin mining takes many many computers
uh and they are in essence burning um compute to
prove that they have the right to confirm the next
batch of transactions. Um we have a similar model
but given that we operate in a business to business
context, it's actually very important that everyone knows who
the other parties are that allows you to relax some
of the restrictions that lead it lead the original um
design of Bitcoin so that you don't need quite as
much compute power powering it and you're not intentionally burning
it. It looks more like a voting model if
you will where you know, let's call it 100
companies are working together and you know, 70 of
them say thumbs up on the next block of transactions
that confirms and so it's Probably six or 7 orders
of magnitude more energy efficient. So we're not the
only player to make this observation for a few others
, but block chains are not intrinsically really energy intensive
. Our system is comparable with web server infrastructure in
terms of the energy intensity. Quickly let me jump
in here. We don't have a lot of time
left. But of course I want to ask about
the presence of the ethereum Blockchain, of course,
that's what your company. Block apps runs on the
ethereum Blockchain, that Blockchain, ethereum founded by your
father, joseph lubin, what is it about ethereum
that makes it the desired Blockchain for what you're trying
to do. Okay, quick point of clarification.
So we use the ethereum technology, we run on
the same protocol, were completely compatible with it.
We don't actually use the network, the network is
making big strides and its energy and you know,
inattentiveness, um but we're actually a standalone network um
if you will, so again, everything that runs
there will run on us um but it's actually a
distinct layer if you will. Um So the great
thing about ethereum is that it's really got the developer
mindshare so, and this is from the sort of
the public Blockchain developers to really crypto focused people,
but also the enterprise by and large, I would
say, you know, 50 60 70% of enterprise
use cases of Blockchain technology are on some ethereum variant
as well. It's almost like java was years ago
. It's become sort of the lingua franca of programmable
block chains. And so really that's why we've we've
focused on it where a founding board member of the
enterprise ethereum alliance along with consensus my dad's company,
um and the goal of that organization is really to
standardize the use of the technology within uh the enterprise
as well. So it's, it's got the mind
share, it's a very usable system and and so
we use it for its best purposes, but we've
added to it too. So things like privacy or
it's a big question for enterprises, how do they
use this open public ledger but not reveal proprietary business
details too their competitors. That's the problem that we
solved is sort of a layer onto the ethereum standard
and we've got to leave it there. I hope
you come back and join us that scared and James
liu been president and ceo at block apps after a
recent raise of its own