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Bringing Use Cases to Capitol Hill: What We Shared, What Comes Next
Recorded: April 18, 2025 Duration: 1:42:00Space Recording
Short Summary
The recent discussion highlighted significant advancements in the Web3 space, including the launch of innovative projects like Telly-Wally and Say Labs, rapid user growth for CES, and the importance of partnerships in driving crypto policy. Panelists expressed cautious optimism about the future of blockchain technology, emphasizing the need for regulatory clarity and collaboration to foster industry growth.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the space. I just wanted to do a quick mic check.
It's Nick. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah, perfectly, Nick. Thank you. Great. Thank you. it's nick can you hear me okay yeah perfectly nick thank you great thank you
paul brigner here how's that well hey paul yeah i hear the birds in the background yeah sounds good beautiful day yep thank you
hey guys paul's background is sounding a lot better than mine, but hopefully you guys
can hear me all right too.
Yeah, I heard you really well, Claire.
I think he wants the best award for the best background for now.
Thank God.
Paul, Jackson?
Yeah, hey, how's it going?
Yeah, you doing well? Great,? Yeah, you're doing well.
Great.
Thank you all.
Everybody sounds good. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, that joined so far. We'll give a few more minutes.
We will start promptly at 10 o'clock.
Thank you. Thank you. . Thank you. . Thank you. Oh, hi, Ron. Thanks for joining. I just want to do a quick mic check.
Hey, guys. Can you hear me?
Yeah, perfectly. Thank you.
Fantastic. quick mic check hey guys can you hear me uh yeah perfectly thank you fantastic
well that's awesome i think everybody all are great speakers on uh on the panel um so let's officially begin uh so uh gmgm everyone uh thank you for taking a valuable time to join us for
today's sess x space uh such an honor to host today's session along with other esteemed
guests and innovative projects today we have with us five esteemed guests from blockchain association
pgp for crypto and electric coin company say labs iotex and of course css
IOTEX, and of course, CESS, CESS.
Our main topic of discussion is bringing use cases to Capitol Hill,
what we shared, what comes next, recapping key takeaways from the recent BA use case, a day in Washington, D.C.
My name is Mark Wang. I will be your host for today.
I'm with the Project Telly-Wally, the first AI-powered Web3-focused decentralized
short video social media platform.
We are solving two major issues that's prevalent
within the current video social media space.
That is the lack of IP or content control
and fair monetization for both the content creators
and the viewers on the platform.
We're building a strong foundation
on top of the SESS decentralized data infrastructure.
By integrating SESS, we offer users better data security,
faster performance, lower cost, and no single point of failure
for users' data.
SESS has low storage and CDN fees
that TeliWalli passes saving onto our community,
where we can fully reward our users
for creating watching sharing
and collecting videos so if you're interested in our project please give us a follow on x
at uh telly t-e-l-l-y uh welly w-e-l-l-y-i-o uh thank you and also just a friendly reminder that
everything shared in this space is for informational and educational
purposes only.
This is not financial advice, so please do your own research and consult with a professional
before making any financial decisions.
Please DYOR.
So moving on, you're forming today's discussion with us.
We have Mr. Nicholas Zaldasani, Chairman and Co-Founder of CES, Mr. Ron Hammond, Senior
Director of Government Relations and Institutional Engagement at Blockchain Association, Mr. Paul
Breiner, Founder of PGP for Crypto, Vice President of Strategic Alliance for Electric Coin Company,
a joint faculty fintech for MBAs, Georgetown University.
We also have Mr. Paul Drexler,
Associate Counsel at Say Labs.
And lastly, we have Ms. Claire Biasco,
Marketing Lead at IoTeX.
So now let's go around and have our esteemed guests
please introduce themselves,
share a little bit about their project, their organization, highlight
its unique role in the Web3 and blockchain space.
So let's go down the list.
Let's start with Mr. Nicholas Daldesani, Chairman and Co-Founder of CES.
Also welcome, Nick, for joining us.
I know it's been a pretty busy day for you over the past few days.
I understand you were part of the live AMA
with Spinez Live yesterday,
discussing deep-hand AI.
So definitely some exciting stuff.
Please let the audience know a little bit more
about yourself and also about CES.
Absolutely. Good day, good morning,
good evening, wherever you are.
It's great to be on this call
and very excited about what's happening
uh it has been busy at cess uh we are uh we just launched our 14th test net and we have over 8200
nodes already and it's a it's a very exciting time uh you can follow us on discord you can follow us
on x very excited to continue to expand the community.
This is an exciting time for the whole D-Pin Web3 world.
I started my career in a little company called Oracle when it was 500 people, and I've been involved with data privacy, sovereignty, and security my entire career. You know, my greatest excitement is that data value is now at its highest peak.
At the same time, data security and privacy is now really on the forefront,
thanks to the whole blockchain ecosystem and the companies like SES
that are providing and ensuring data sovereignty.
You know, I, for my entire career, have always led with, you know, it's important to have
your data be secured, but it was always an afterthought.
Today, it's now front and center.
And you mentioned lower cost.
We are getting better security, in fact, extraordinary security for less price.
And this is one of the first times in my technical career that I've seen more for less like it is now.
So very excited to be here on the call.
It was an amazing trip to D.C.
We'll be talking more about that in a minute, but I would say it's very upbeat and very curious.
Thank you. Thank you, Nick. Always great to have you on. And also, congratulations to the CES team for reaching 800k users on the D-Share AirDrop.
I think it was just about 20 days ago, I remember we're still at 600k users.
So that's a lot of people just in 20 days.
And also, if any audience members are interested inING IN THE DCHR AIRDROP,
PLEASE FOLLOW ASSESS ON THE X ACCOUNT TO GET MORE INFORMATION. THANK YOU.
AND MOVING ON, MR. RON HAMMOND, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF GOVERNMENT RELATIONS AND INSTITUTIONAL ENGAGEMENT
OF BOXCHIN ASSOCIATION. THANK YOU AGAIN, RON, ONCE AGAIN, FOR JO for joining us. It's always a pleasure to hear your
valuable insight, especially giving the blockchain associations a pivotal role in advancing crypto
and the Web3 space. You keep continuing leadership and advocacy definitely make a real difference in
shaping the future of this industry. So please go ahead and introduce yourself.
Well, thanks for the kind words. I really appreciate it. Well, hey, everyone.
My name is Ron Hammond, and I am the Senior Director of Government Relations at the Blockchain
Association.
We represent over 150 companies in the crypto ecosystem, ranging from DeFi to DePen to centralized
exchanges, DeFi, as well as venture capital.
So it's been really exciting to see this space grow for me personally because I've worked on Capitol Hill for five years.
And I guess my main point was working on the Token Taxonomy Act, which was the first market structure bill.
It was bipartisan made in 2017. It took me a lot of work to get there.
And early on, no one really cared.
But as the time has moved on, as the industry has grown, it's been really exciting to see market share evolved to what we now know is FIT21 or assume we'll have a draft to talk
about more in detail.
But DC really cares for crypto and I'm really excited to be more on the lobbying side here
given just how many battles we fought in DC and now we're at the precipice of getting
a lot of great things done.
So thanks for having me and looking forward to the conversation. Thank you, Ron I didn't know you're OG 2017. That's like ages in the crypto
world. Yeah, thank you. And also, you know, so also was, I mean, you're definitely right. You
know, there's more clarity and especially with the new administration. I think there's been a
noticeable increase in regular regulatory clarity in the web crypto space.
I think just about a week ago, President Donald Trump
signed the first crypto-specific legislation
into law that nullifies an IRS ruling requiring DeFi platform
to report user transactions.
And also this week, just adding more momentum,
I believe OKEx, a really major global exchange,
officially launched in the US.
Definitely more regulatory clarity like this
will pave the way for greater innovation, adoption,
and confidence across the crypto and Web3 ecosystem.
So thank you for joining us, Ron.
Going down.
So Mr. Paul Breitner, founder of PGP,
pretty good policy for crypto, vice president of strategic alliance for electric coin company,
which I believe is the creator of Zcash protocol, adjunct faculty,
FinTech for MBA, Georgetown University. Thank you.
Thank you for joining us, Paul. And also, I just want to say, I love you. Give me style
profile picture. It's awesome. Yeah, please introduce yourself.
Thank you. It's great to be here.
Thanks, everyone, for joining.
Thanks, Seth, for hosting this discussion.
It was great to be with Jesse on the Hill and others.
We had a great time.
I know we'll get into talking about that in detail.
And also, it's great to be here with this esteemed panel,
especially my friend Ron Hammond.
Ron, I appreciate his work so much.
He's been leading the government affairs work at the Blockchain Association for a very long time,
and it's hard to emphasize how much of an impact that he has had as a person on the industry as a
whole. So I'm just so thankful that we have champions like Ron who are literally on Capitol
Hill every day. And I'm in DC. I'm actually very close with the Blockchain Association,
but there's different roles in DC. If you follow how the system works here, it's kind of a well-oiled
machine. And Ron is one of those guys who is just really making the difference with direct influence to the policymakers, the legislators.
And that is so important. So thanks for your work, Ron.
Yeah, I personally, I kind of focus on building the crypto policy community here in D.C.
founded the group called PGP for Crypto, which is just a community effort bringing together the
policy professionals here in D.C., as well as academics, nonprofits, think tanks, other
stakeholders together on a monthly basis to talk about crypto policy. We do it every month at the
University of Southern California here. They actually have a campus here in D.C. It's quite nice.
The next one's coming up on April 23rd.
I just posted about it here on X.
So if you want to know the details on that,
you can see that.
If you're in D.C., I'd love for you to come,
but you're also welcome to tune in here live
on X as well on April 23rd.
Also, as mentioned, is my role at Electric Coin Company.
We're the developers of Zcash. We pioneered zero-knowledge proof technology, which is now being quite popular and used throughout the crypto ecosystem.
I'm so glad about that, that we were the pioneers and were the very first to bring it to market and still going strong.
Still going strong. But there was a comment up front about privacy being very important. And I would just say that I think that we're reaching a tipping point. And this is another post I made on X here this morning that I would encourage you to look at about why we're hitting this inflection point for privacy and what that means for all of us.
and what that means for all of us.
So, hey, it's great to be here.
Thanks for the opportunity.
I look forward to talking more about our Hill visits.
So I'll pass along.
Yeah, thank you, Paul.
Thank you for the great introduction.
And everyone, please check out the event on April 23rd.
And so moving forward, we have Paul Drexler.
I guess, you know, what did you say?
Good things coming in too.
So we have two Pauls. Mr. Paul Drexler. I guess, you know what they say, good things come in too. So we have two Pauls.
Mr. Paul Jexler, Associate Counsel at SAE Labs.
Paul, also a huge congratulations to SAE
on the launch of the SAE Development Foundation
in Manhattan, New York.
This is definitely an exciting milestone.
I believe it is disclosed that the foundation
will deliver essential infrastructures
to drive institutional adoption and empowers builders to
push the boundaries of crypto innovation in the U.S. So definitely a lot of exciting times for you
all. Please introduce yourself. Yeah, definitely exciting times. So yeah, I'm Paul Drexler. I'm an
associate counsel at Say Labs. It's a company that's developing a layer one blockchain and is the Say Network.
The Say Network itself is a parallelized EVM with fast time finality and low gas fees.
I do have to give my standard lawyer disclaimer, which is that the views I express here are my own and not reflective of my employer.
But yeah, like I said, you were mentioning, it's very exciting times here, exciting times for the Say Network.
But it's also just exciting where we are at this moment.
I think some of the folks have gotten into this, but I kind of remember when I started
law school that folks were pretty dismissive of crypto.
And so I was always like enamored with the tech and thinking about long and hard about
sort of how policy could enable this industry to grow.
But all of those kind of felt like pie in the sky um i remember writing my law school note on uh enabling
basically coming up with ways where people could issue uh tokens in a compliant manner and everybody
else just kind of you know read it nod and you know look past it um all you know even though
everything then felt like it was pie in the sky, now we're in
congressional offices talking about legislation that's being discussed on the House and Senate
floor. So we'll get into it in this discussion, but I'm just really amazed and proud of the moment
we find ourselves in. So yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks for the opportunity.
Yeah, thank you, Paul. You're definitely right.
I think before everybody pictures pie in the sky,
but now everybody actually sees the pie,
and everybody wants a piece of pie.
Also, on a personal note, I really
am looking forward to the release of this side giga
upgrade.
So the potential for 50x boost in UVM throughput
through optimization of execution, consensus, and storage,
that will be truly a game changer.
Definitely a very exciting and more exciting time, per se.
So lastly, moving on, we have Ms. Claire Biasco,
marketing lead of IoTeX.
Claire, I want to extend a big thank you to IoTeX
for joining the space once again. It's always a pleasure to speak big thank you to IoTeX for joining the space once again.
It's always a pleasure to speak with members from IoTeX.
Last time, we had an incredible discussion with your teammate, Mariela Tenches, that really resonated with the community.
I think IoTeX continues to play a crucial role in driving innovation and adoption across the DEPEND sector. And we pretty truly appreciate the ongoing contributions,
also the leadership and support to all the other numerous DEPEND
projects in this space.
Go ahead, Claire, please introduce yourself.
Yeah, thanks so much for that introduction.
That was amazing.
Happy to hear Mariella was on this too.
She is awesome.
Whole IoTeX team very much wants to drive, firstly, education, obviously,
also excitement for the space. IoTeX is an infrastructure platform for deep end projects
to build on. So meaning we get to see the coolest ideas come through every day, some projects just
getting started with builders of solo, just a couple team members, all the way up to some web
device companies coming to us saying, hey, how do we start tokenizing? Heard about this thing
happening over here. What does it mean? And how can we actually get involved here? So I would say
super optimistic from that standpoint even. But I absolutely loved what everyone has said so far
about the moment we're in right now.
I think how Paul just touched about the privacy aspect right now, completely agree that we are at this inflection point.
I personally came from a background in cybersecurity and computer science and ultimately came into Web3 back in 2020 when I was still in cyber, learned about a word called blockchain,
immediately started digging into it. And privacy concerns were what got me here,
specifically data privacy for smart devices. So IoTeX, you know, back in 2017 was founded.
We coined MachineFi before Deepin was a thing. We're so happy that now this sector within
crypto is kind of big enough to have a term for it. Deepin may be a little clunky to explain at
first, but I will say I was super optimistically surprised and very thrilled to see the excitement
in DC, but also, you know, the curiosity and willingness to accept that we may not have all the answers, people in D.C. may not, but it's the openness and willingness to learn is how we're going to get those answers.
And I would say, especially just for me coming into a marketing background now, the reason I wanted to do that was for the storytelling, communicating to people why this matters.
You know, we're still a lot of techie people here or at least tech enthusiasts.
And we have our bubble. How do we get beyond it? And how do we tell more people why what we're doing matters not only to the tech infrastructure, but also to their everyday lives. So I would say, us, we want to bring all those builders forward and hopefully create this more permissionless, open, more playful, you know, environment and ecosystem for people to partake in.
Yeah, thank you, Claire.
Thank you for sharing.
And also, thank you for sharing your personal story,
how you got into this space,
how all of us got into this rabbit hole.
But thank you. And also, like I shared before,
I think IOTech, definitely, in terms of events, live events,
you all put on one of the best events ever.
So I always have a good time at your live events.
Yeah, thank you for joining.
Thank you, everyone, for the great informative introduction.
So before we actually officially dive in, Khoai kindly ask the audience for a quick favor.
Please like and reshare this space so we can welcome more guests to join our exciting and engaging discussions ahead.
Thank you and as always really appreciate it.
Now let's move on to our main topic of discussion, bringing use cases to Capitol Hill.
What we share, what comes next.
Everyone welcome to this special recap of Blockchain Association's use case,
Flying in the Capitol Hill, where builders meet policymakers and the future of Web3
took one more step closer toward regulatory clarity and real-world adoption from AI to
DSi and decentralized infrastructure. I think this event gathered some of the most forward-thinking
projects to showcase what blockchain can achieve instead of just pure speculation.
So let's move on to our first official question, which is, what was your biggest takeaway from this visit to Capitol Hill?
What were any moments that really surprised you?
So go ahead. Nick, why don't you lead us off with this question, please?
So go ahead, Nick, why don't you lead us off with this question, please?
Excellent. You know, I heard the word curious and upbeat a lot on this call so far, and that is exactly what I felt.
You know, CES has been going to Washington now for three years, really trying to focus on how do we ensure that we have proper regulation, that we have the right
standards in place. We've been pushing the IEEE standard, invite all of those that are in the
decentralized storage arena to explore the IEEE standards. You know, it's regulation,
the proper regulation, the standards. Every single meeting I think we all had,
had something in common. And that was a real desire to make things happen. And for those that
are, and those that maybe had maybe more of a negative thinking about crypto, I think really
one of the most exciting parts was they were very curious. They were curious to find out that,
you know, crypto
was more than a currency. And that's happened on a couple of occasions. So we had meetings that
basically went from people that absolutely loved, loved, loved the entire Web3 infrastructure play,
the crypto and everything. I highlight our representative from Alaska Nick Beggish
he I mean this this is a guy that since 2014 has been involved with the
blockchain with web 3 with currency very very savvy on on understanding all the
things that we are doing we went from there to meetings where people you know
had a an impression of of crypto that oh my gosh, it's going to be used for all the negative things in the planet.
But there was a curiosity even with those folks.
1999, a very similar story where everybody was saying, oh my gosh, this thing called the internet,
this thing called websites, it's going to just bring all sorts of problems. And, you know, today
we all acknowledge that that exists, but it is such a teeny perspective or teeny amount compared
to all the benefits we have. Just being on this Twitter space alone, as an example, or Xspace alone, you know, all the things we're having that are so positive. And all of a sudden, I think,
at least I, in the interactions I had with the Capitol Hill members, that there was a real
curiosity to explore what was beyond just the currency. And that was an exciting part. We start talking about D-PIN and the
understanding of D-PIN. In fact, we in every one of the meetings, CES actually demoed. If
listeners out there go to CES.network.com forward slash D-Share, D-E-S-H-A-R-E, CES.network.dshare, you can actually put an image or put anything and upload it into
the CES system. It immediately deploys into hundreds of nodes, all encrypted, all replicated,
and then that link is the only way to get it back. And so you have a really secure way
of sharing data, and it is a very fast demo.
And when we showed that to the representatives and senators,
they really, their eyes just opened up.
I think there was this belief that everything about the blockchain
with some of these people was just currency,
and it was all financial.
And that was what was the most eye-opening part of this, is that this did exist, this whole part of DeepIn and the other side of Web3 that they didn't know was there, and that curiosity was totally there.
And that was what was the most eye-opening part of this,
is that this did exist,
And that was extremely exciting, because over the past three years, that curiosity has grown.
But I would say it went to an entire new level in December in our latest trip.
And so I'm excited about where this is going in 2025.
Yes, yes, definitely Nick, 100% agree with you.
Everything you said really resonate,
especially where the space is heading right now.
And I agree with you, most interesting concept,
start out as curiosity,
then it's most likely follow up with explanation,
education.
I think that's when all the great project and BA will come along to solve this issue.
So Ron, I'd like to hear your opinion regarding this question.
Yeah, definitely.
You know, at a high level, we are going to targeting offices in Congress on both sides
of the aisle who definitely don't work on crypto policy as much because largely that goes into the House Financial Services Committee and the House Agriculture Committee.
But the truth is, much like the technology, it's going to touch various different sectors and various different elements of business that's going to bring us in front of different members of Congress who have never heard of crypto, who have never heard of D-Pen, who've never heard of many of these concepts that many of us are used
to talking to every day.
And at least through years of education through Everett Slott-Paul and these fly-ins, you
know, the members in certain committees like financial services are pretty well-versed
now, at least in the high levels of crypto.
And that's mostly focusing, again, more on the trading and the tokens that you see on
Coinbase or the centralized exchanges.
But when you get to the use cases that are not really those tokens for trading, those stories really haven't been shared much.
And that's why we're really excited to bring CES and so many other folks in the D-Pen arena to Capitol Hill, because I'll never forget this.
And Claire can attest to this as well in our meetings.
So she was with my squad.
But we would go to offices and say, hey, we're here for a crypto meeting.
And then the first thing they do is they pull out some of the products from Seth that they use for monitoring agriculture and such.
And Claire can go further.
But it was the genuine shock of the staffers being, oh, wait, this is like a physical product.
I thought we were here for crypto.
And that's just education alone to have them understand it's more than just
the trading tokens, it's gaming,
it's serving real people, it's already live and deployed.
Which one that got a lot of folks really excited
and wanting to learn more.
And the follow up from those meetings
on my end have been astronomical, it's been a lot.
And it's all positive.
So it's been really exciting to see
that level of engagement because down the road, just as we saw the banks are trying to push back on stablecoin issuers in these recent bill drafts, likely down the road, big tech is going to we can do things better. We don't have to listen to these centralized platforms that have really eroded the
trust of the American public, especially in Congress. So this was a great setup. But Claire,
I'm not sure if you wanted to weigh in on your experience, but Claire did all the talking. She
was fantastic for our group. No, thanks, Ron. I love that you brought it up, too, because that was exactly what I wanted to talk about today with the devices.
Same exact thing that the optimism from seeing the devices, but also the shock.
My favorite thing with that, too, was the staffers starting with like, hey, sorry, like I really know nothing.
But then they would go on to ask these awesome questions.
So people also know a lot more than they think they do.
You know, we met with all these staffers who also were so familiar with so many policies,
right?
They meet with so many people on a weekly, monthly, daily basis.
How can we tell them what they need to know and how we can help them?
And I think that took away some of the scariness of it and
demystifying the technology. I always like to say to myself in my head, how can I get through
a conversation without using any crypto acronyms, anything that someone like my mom or my friends
may not know? It's silly, but it is 100% still true. It's really easy for us to kind of look on the day-to-day. We're
building all these nuanced technologies. That is really cool. It is like the internet in the 90s.
And with that being said, it's amazing to even get foot in the door in DC. But not only that,
like Ron said, they were picking up the device. We had a weather station and we had a fitness
wearable health ring pulling up the app. Same thing a weather station and we had a fitness wearable health ring pulling
up the app. Same thing where it was that aha moment that Nick was talking about as well.
Keeping it simple, showing them the benefits and also realizing that it's not some scary thing
and they know way more than they think they do. And that's really beneficial and also encouraging to hear and kind of let them not only get curious, but start to engage a little more and just say, hey, we're here for any support, any guidance.
But most importantly, it's here. It's happening now. There's people all over the world that it's benefiting.
And here's why we want to bring it home to people in the U.S. as well.
Thank you. Thank you for sharing, Claire.
I agree with you.
I think it was a lot of the intricate new innovations we need to formulate it so it's
easier for more people to understand.
And I'm glad that you're doing that.
And I think, you know, absolutely right.
I think a lot of people, when they think of crypto, they don't think about blockchain
complicated tasks.
But I'm glad you're able to explain it and relate it to all everybody on the personal level yeah thank you for sharing
paul our biner would you like to follow up on this question sure i would say my biggest takeaway was
a little bit related to what ron said in that we have all now we're looking at all of the different offices where in the past we haven't
had to focus on all the offices outside of those committees of jurisdiction because the chances of
those offices ever dealing with this topic were pretty far away. It was like it wasn't something
that they were actually going to be working on. If you would have gone in to talk to them, they
would have, you know, of course taken the meetings probably, but it wouldn't have been so relevant
to them. But these meetings, everyone was just really interested in understanding what's going
on in our industry because they all know that their boss is going to be, or, you know, sometimes
we were actually speaking with a member, that they're going to be voting on these issues very near term. All of them are.
So they all are engaged. They're all wanting to learn. And that is just such a huge game changer.
I can't tell you how long we've been working on this in D.C. I've been in D.C. working on tech
policy generally for over 25 years and for a very long time on crypto too. So just to see us get over
that hump to say that we're not in this fight anymore to just survive, we're actually going to
get legislation, we're going to begin to thrive. I think that was my biggest takeaway and that
it's really happening. And I would just say that one thing
you do have to understand, it's not just the fact that we're hitting all these offices that
we haven't necessarily needed to talk to before, but it's also that there's this constant turnover
of people in D.C. that work on the Hill. There's new members that come in, there's new staffers that come in. This is just a grind here in D.C. where
you have to educate again and again and again, but it's different now, for sure, and I'm just
so happy about that. Yeah, and thank you for sharing, Ron, and Paul. Thank you. Yeah, I agree,
you know, all the positive, we can all see all the positive support by the new administration. Definitely, you know, a lot of interesting times ahead. Paul, Paul Jackson, would you like to follow up?
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of folks have already touched on it, but just the receptiveness of the audience was my biggest takeaway from all this.
of the audience was my biggest takeaway from all of this.
You saw folks who were actually eager and willing to learn.
This was actually my first time on the Hill talking about crypto.
And I kind of imagined maybe a little bit more, not hostility, but I imagine there'd
be more pushback.
But I think the people, at least the staffers I was talking to, were just wanting to learn
about the technology and were open-minded about the sort of positive use cases that folks on the space have already talked about.
I think the big thing for a lot of these staffers was just trying to figure out why crypto has gone
mainstream and try to learn about it. I think Nick mentioned it earlier, most people's impression of
crypto, either they had no impression at all um or they kind of associate it with you know tokens and meme coins
um so i will say that you know uh it was encouraging to see that they were open-minded
and how surprised folks were to learn about the different use cases you know be a dpin or social
or gaming um that are being developed yeah thank you thank you. Thank you, Paul. Like everybody has some really great points.
So maybe this question,
let's move on to our second question.
Maybe it's a little bit overlap with the first one,
but what's the atmosphere like in DC during the fly-ins?
And maybe people can list some,
what's the most common questions were concerned
you heard from congressional offices.
Nick, would you like to lead off, please?
Sure.
You know, I think we're saying this enthusiasm.
I think that there was, I would summarize it for those that were curious but still concerned.
I'm cautiously optimistic that they are really learning and curious. One of the things that came out of it, for example, was a desire to immediately engage and get more case studies from some of the staffers. And that follow-up, I think someone
else mentioned it also, was immediate. I mean, that was last week, which I was really excited
about. The follow-up has been tremendous since the event. A great deal of interest to know
more. And I think that was sort of the atmosphere. On the positive side, it was like, finally,
we've heard a lot of that on this call. It's like, yes, all right, we're going. It's like,
finally, the government is getting it and regulation, proper regulation, the appropriate
regulation can get into place. On the other side, you know, it was not just this
curiosity, but this curiosity with a real desire to learn. We talked on this call already about
the fact that every one of these Capital Health members are going to have to vote. They need to
be knowledgeable. And I think we're providing a great service overall. And I'm delighted that the
Blockchain Association has had such a great impact
and will continue to have this year.
You know, we have made a huge commitment at CESS
to support all the efforts there.
And we're delighted that, you know, this advancement,
which really does democratize, you know, technology
in a phenomenal way is now giving being given
a chance to really bloom and grow and I think we're gonna see extraordinary
case studies this year of success so that overall was the feeling I think
that most of us are gonna say but I'll pass the baton. Yeah, thank you.
I think a lot of the projects are finally reaching their aha moment.
And of course, you know, you can't just have one way, but also the other side.
There has to be a desire to learn.
Ron, we would like to give you input, please.
Yeah, sure.
I think Claire did a great job as well as Paul analyzing kind of what a health staffer goes through.
I was a health staffer for five years. I was handling, at least in my role, all of health care, all finance, all of trade, taxes, agriculture, energy, and I think it was also animal rights.
So that's a lot of issues. A lot of people every single day are coming to meet with me, and it would be anywhere between seven to nine meetings a day.
meet with me. And it would be anywhere between seven to nine meetings a day. And so we always
want to make those meetings impactful, but to also meet folks where they're at, because
you can't go to a new office and start talking about DeFi and complex terms when they barely
know anything about crypto besides what they're seeing in the media. But the good thing is that,
especially how we approach this fly and how we approach offices and the question we were getting
was mostly myth busting, but also mean them where they were at. I'll never forget. We
had one question about the Trump meme coin from a Democrat office. And there was the view of saying
like, oh, you guys are probably, you know, all huge supporters of this. And this is like, you
know, something you guys all grip for. And the response was, no, no, you know, there's some,
there's a lot of people in the industry who are not big fans of this. You know, we maybe believe
that there is, you know, maybe elected officials shouldn't be launching meme coins.
That's not the general view of the entire industry, but there are views and the industry is not a monolith.
We're not all Bitcoin bros or trying to shill for one token or the other, which is really why I love BA.
The idea is that we're here for the good of the whole ecosystem, not just, you know, trying to pump the bags for someone's cryptocurrency or token. So, and so seeing that like reaction, especially from
Democrat offices who, again, are more seeing the media and seeing the political angles,
especially with the Trump administration bleeding more and more of the family business into crypto
and being insane like, hey, no, I agree with you on many of these topics. And that created a really
robust dialogue
and i feel like that are the most important conversations where it's not you talking at
them it's having a full-on dialogue conversation and that's exactly the perfect kind of meeting
that sticks out of the one of nine meetings a day you take and uh will be lasting so i'm really
excited to see how that engagement went and again this wouldn't have crossed the both sides of the
aisle so that was really exciting to see well man, man, seven to nine minutes a day.
I bet you wish us like 48 hours in the day. But thank you for what you're doing.
It's a lot of what you're still suffering.
All right, yeah, I can only imagine. Okay, Claire, Paul, or both Pauls, you would like to chime in
with your input? Maybe some particular concerns you heard from the congressional office?
I could just say that, first of all, the other comments have been right on point.
But what was clear to me is that the offices and everyone on the Hill really wants to see use cases.
And that's what this day was about.
It was about, okay, now you guys have actually moved the ball forward.
We know we're going to get the legislation coming to our desk.
You got to show us the things that are happening in this industry that we should care about.
So I think that's why Blockchain Association pulled this fly-in together and pulled all these great use cases together.
And it is really interesting that now, because of the changes in the political dynamics and because legislation is moving forward,
we have all these builders who are coming back into the U.S.
and starting to do the things here that we really have needed to be doing for a very long time.
And it was nice to be able to tell the offices that and say,
look, now we are going to deliver and we are going to be able to show you the use cases.
And here's a bunch of them already that you probably haven't heard of.
So I think that was just the right thing that needed to happen at the right time.
And we've got to do a lot more of it, by the way, as well.
Yeah, thank you, Paul.
I mean, I love everybody's doing,
bringing innovation back to the space.
Yeah, go ahead, Paul, Jackson.
I was just gonna say, I agree with everyone here
that talking about use cases is big.
And I think almost we're at, we're almost have to start thinking about the next level discussion here.
Because I think sometimes we always forget that these congresspersons, these senators
and these House members have to go back and get elected every two to six years.
So they're always thinking about what is important for my constituents.
How is this vote going to speak out for me?
And they're also from these communities.
So oftentimes, they really actually care about how this impacts their constituents.
And so a question I got several times was, how does this affect folks back home in Michigan?
Or how does this affect the sort of like underserved population in my community? So
use cases is really, really big. And then bringing those use cases home and talking about how that
affects local communities,
I think it's just, you know,
the next sort of step that we're starting to take in this conversation.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
I think, yeah, you're definitely right.
All these congressional members,
yeah, they're representing their community
and we have to make sure it's relatable.
You know, just like each of us, you know, with our own project,
we have our own community.
We have to make sure, you know sure the community is taken care of.
I can definitely see your point there.
Claire, would you like to follow up with this question?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think based on what we're all agreeing with as well,
it's the what and the why,
and especially pointing to what Paul just said as well, is that long-term
outlook. Again, it's easy for us to get caught up in what we're building within our projects.
I love BA for bringing us together and, as Ron said, bringing together crypto for the collective
good. And a lot of that is telling people what matters to them, so not overwhelming them with
every single possibility that crypto can do.
We're all the most passionate about it. It doesn't mean it's necessarily going to matter
to someone local, whether it's the constituents living there or whether it's re-election or
sustainability of the grid. There's always going to be something different mattering
to who you're talking to. I think for us and kind of the educational strategy we like to take
is starting with especially the different verticals of Deepin, right? When you say smart
device or when you're talking about physical devices for us in our use case specifically,
first is giving the context into what that actually covers for people. So truly bringing
it down to their daily routine. You start, you wake up before you
even leave your house. You're interacting with so many devices on your way to work. You're in your
car. Do you have solar panels? What about the Wi-Fi you're connecting to? Pointing out why these
things are already existing around them. They may not realize why that matters. And that's where
we try to encourage curiosity, I would say. And then just last thing I wanted to share in here as well, I was trying to think of
maybe more of my favorite questions I got asked or some unexpected.
One was especially the right to be forgotten with data.
So someone bringing up, OK, what if all of that data is on chain?
You know, how do I then get it off?
We didn't get into specifics, but I love that question.
I love,
again, the curiosity coming out of it. And then one story, Ron could agree with me here too,
that we started using more frequently during the meetings because it was resonating really well,
was the 23andMe bankruptcy case. That sounds crazy, but again, it's something relevant to
people in the news. These data concerns, there is an investigation happening
right now that was just announced this week into data concerns. So circling all the way back to
the beginning of this as well, being that privacy is mattering a lot more to people.
They also, again, not realize it matters to them. So how do we not scare people into privacy? How
do we show them that this actually is beneficial? We're trying to
do this for the greater good, and we're trying to do it in a way that's going to benefit how we
interact with the internet in the future and what that actually looks like from a building standpoint
in the sense that how are we building this technology and this infrastructure out? So those
are my favorite examples, I would say at least.
Well, thank you, Claire. I mean, definitely a great point. And as always, I think you always give great detail example, especially with the 23ME example, makes, you know, a lot of us think a
little bit deeper, you know, regarding the space and more also more continuing education. Again,
thank you everybody for sharing their thoughts on the previous question.
So let me begin with a third question.
Why do you think it's important for builders
like your project to engage
in these type of policy discussions?
And how can Web3 projects better collaborate
to push education and regulation forward?
to push education and regulation forward?
Maybe Nick, go ahead.
Maybe Nick, go ahead.
So, you know, what's very different, I feel, and we feel at CES,
about Web3 overall is we are decentralized.
That means we all have to work together.
It's not like we're all working in one company,
like a big storage solution out there in Web2 world.
We are all having to work together to ensure that the interaction,
the interoperability of our systems works perfectly.
We have to offer a solution as the Web3 community
that surpasses what prior technologies have offered.
We cannot just say, geez, we're decentralized, isn't that great?
And not have the same responsiveness,
the same frequency,
the same speed that we see in the Web2 world.
We have to match what's available in the Web2 world
and prior technologies with all this great advancement
in terms of deregulation that gives us the safety,
the security, the data sovereignty,
the ability to do things application-wise that we've never done before.
And that requires us not only to work together, but also think about the proper regulation
that allows us to work together extremely well.
There always has to be rules, you know, and the rules help us
become more productive. And so we've been waiting a long time to get some of these
quote unquote rules passed. And that is really what we saw, you know, and I think this call is
really emphasizing is that this is happening in Washington now, which allows for a very fast
advancement. You know, we take a look and I love that there was a statement made about,
you know, this is in, people are starting to see we're in it for the long game. You know,
being an Oracle, early Oracle executive, delighted that Oracle is going to turn 50 in two years.
Oracle executive delighted that Oracle is going to turn 50 in two years. I want this industry to turn
50 in 45 or 40 years. I want this to be an industry that is really advancing where we are
with technology and providing the security and the sovereignty and the data control that we've wanted.
I always thought the internet in 1995, 1996 was going to provide this mechanism
to ensure that we did own our data and that integrity would be higher and all these things
that quite frankly, we gave up by 2005, 2008. And I think now people want that data control back
and they want the ability to do new things that we have not been
able to do before. All of these things echo what we've been talking about on the call and how we
need to think about working with the administration to ensure that we really do have solutions out
there that serve our community. Yeah, thank you, Nick. You're definitely right. You definitely hit the nail on
the head. Web3 is a great community. Everyone is so welcoming, you know, helping each other.
Like, you know, for this space, for example, everybody's willing to participate and sharing
the input. I agree with you 100%. Ron or Paul or Claire? Would you like some follow-up?
For Paul or Claire, would you like some follow-up?
I have some pretty strong feelings about this.
Again, I've worked in D.C. for a very long time,
and I've actually been in places that have been doing policy work
at a pretty high profile.
I worked for the Motion Picture Association of America.
I actually worked for another blockchain trade association,
the Chamber of Digital Commerce. I was at this organization called the Internet Society, where we were
working for just broad internet policy. And I think what this industry, the blockchain
crypto industry needs to think hard about is that we are going up against association and other
so well-established lobbying groups
that have been in this town for decades.
They have such strong relationships on the Hill.
They have an amazing amount of funding.
They're very well-coordinated.
They're not decentralized, which makes our work even harder. So the fact that
is just absolutely critical. And I want hopefully everybody to understand that
we're just babies still. The Blockchain Association, what, I think, was it 2018,
Ron, that it was created? By the way, Electric Coin
Company was one of the founding members. I'm very proud of that. But we are just babies. We're
toddlers. And we've got to up our game significantly. And things like this are just
scratching the surface.
And I'm so glad that I know Blockchain Association
is gonna step up and do things that are gonna amaze us.
So stay tuned for that, I'm really excited.
Yeah, thank you Paul.
Let's all be strong babies together, a group of babies.
Okay, Claire, Paul Jaxer, would like to share your input?
Yeah, definitely.
I love that analogy too, though.
We definitely are still all babies in this.
And yeah, I just wanted to add a quick thought here.
This was my first time in DC going to a Capitol Hill visit.
So from my perspective, at least especially why it's so important too, is that for us bringing perspectives
of builders around the world and also telling them it's happening right now, it matters to people,
and here's how the US can get involved, you know, very simple, high level in that regard.
But I think the thing that also is most important to reiterate as well is that we aren't trying to, for example, radically replace
the grid or, you know, trying to change up everything and coming in on this topic of
demystifying things. But what we're doing is providing a resilient alternative and basically
future-proofing what we're already doing. I believe this is also what Nick was saying earlier,
like the promise of the
original internet. We know read, write, own. How do we give people that ownership back?
But also how do we abstract away a lot of things that won't matter to people or don't actually
offer benefits past the Web2 alternatives? So I would say for, it's important like us to engage
in these discussions, as everyone was saying, the policy itself is really important.
The regulation and how it actually is being regulated, you know, taking even a step back.
One of our goals was to tell the members of Congress that Deepin is not a security, should not be regulated the same exact way.
We are a real world infrastructure infrastructure and what that regulatory treatment
would actually look like.
So especially Ron and his work
on the FIT21 bill
and all of the market structure bills.
Again, coming back to that point too,
it's not really a question anymore
of if you're going to have to vote on it.
It's a question of when
you're going to have to vote on it.
And it's happening now.
It's, you know, we're starting to tell them as soon as the summer be prepared and telling them end of
this year, next year. You know, when you start to bring in the immediacy of it, I think it also
changes their opinion from everything they've seen in the past, right? We're getting a little
further from the burns of the past. They are still right on the top of mind from people who that's all they've ever read about crypto. So how do we take those stigmas? How do we take those stories and lessons and also use them to show, again, we're not trying to be these radical replacements. We're trying to be the resilient alternatives that are actually going to benefit everyday people, not massive conglomerate monopoly organizations.
to benefit everyday people, not massive conglomerate monopoly organizations. So again,
it always circles back to what matters to people and why it's going to benefit them. And that's
what's most important to kind of show all the perspectives of these builders who are working
so hard to make this technology available in mass. And in order to do so, regulatory frameworks must come before that.
Yes, I mean, Claire, yeah, I think that aligns perfectly what we've been seeing across the industry.
And it's always great to, you know, have someone validating it from, you know, the trenches, you know, especially with you through IoTeX.
Yeah, thank you for sharing. Paul, Drexler, do you have any input regarding this question?
Paul Drexler, do you have any input regarding this question?
Yeah, I mean, I think what everyone's getting to is that you need to have something that you can give to people that's, you know, a real life impact.
You have to give something that's actually like, you know, can make tangible impact in people's lives.
And you have to be able to understand how to be able to present that to folks.
And so sort of my impression of this whole event, it was actually interesting.
And so sort of my impression of this whole event, it was actually interesting.
I was in a group with a co-founder and I could see sort of on his face, digesting in real
time, what it was like to try to tell people on Capitol Hill what it is that we're doing.
And so my sort of impression and takeaway from that was that we just need to have more
builders and co-founders on Capitol Hill.
Like, yes, I'm a legal guy and it's good for me to have me out there, but like you need more folks like that because it comes back to what is the
message that we're all selling. And so the more that, you know, the leaders and the founders in
the space understand that what they're, you know, putting out there for the world here is also what
trickles its way back to Capitol Hill. I think it was important. I think it's going to be important
for more and more co-founders and folks to get out there because that's the sort of thing that we have to take away is that if we're going to
truly cement the industry and bring about positive change, then we also have to focus on how projects
market themselves and how they sort of start to tell folks who are not in crypto all the time,
not in wet fear all the time. If they need to start telling other folks about this industry, then they need to start thinking about how they market it in a way that talks about,
as folks have been talking about here, the sort of positive use cases, the impact on people's lives.
Yeah, thank you, Paul. Thank you for making that great point. It's one of those
truths that you feel obvious once said, but it needs to be said out loud. So thank you for
bringing that specific example, and especially from also another perspective
from other projects you heard during the event.
So let's move on to our fourth question.
This question is geared more toward each individual project.
So for the project, would you please briefly
share the use case of your project,
what's advocating for during the fly-in,
also why it's important for policymakers
to understand your specific vertical
within the Web3 space.
Some examples may be storage, AI,
deep in compute privacy or identity.
So Nick, go ahead, please.
You know, I mentioned earlier,
and I'll just repeat it for those people
that have just joined us.
We demoed how easy it is
to utilize the SES infrastructure.
SES is a fully layer one blockchain
integrated in the same network
with a decentralized storage solution
and a decentralized CDN.
And so if you go to assess.network.com forward slash dshare, you're able to quickly
witness how easy it is to actually store an object in a decentralized system and retrieve it
in lightning speed.
And that was one of the things we were showcasing as we went around to talk about really how this looks extremely similar to what you would do with any of the Web2 providers.
However, that when you do it, as I mentioned before, this is being scattered across hundreds of nodes and is extraordinarily secure where the data owner truly does own their data.
And so that was a great way of showcasing how simple it is to understand what SESS does.
But we went beyond that.
We all know that AI, and I think we've heard that a lot on this call, is creating a tremendous
amount of data.
You know, IoT certainly started that trend, but now AI is making IoT data seem very small
in comparison.
And AI data is really important.
You know, I had a conversation with a gentleman that is head of digital assets at one of the
biggest media companies on the planet.
They're scared enough, they're worried enough about data privacy when it comes to their media objects.
But when it comes to their learning models, this is going is that AI, I believe, and we believe at CESS, is going to do to Web3 what email did to TCPIP.
AI really is the centerpiece that shows that data sovereignty, privacy, and security is essential with these learning models. And so if we can ensure that learning models can not only be retained in
terms of their ownership, but can be shared in a way that really makes it very powerful,
that gets very exciting. And we use the example of picture hospital data. Of course, you do
not want hospital data to get outside of that hospital. I wouldn't want my hospital data getting outside of any system. Picture though
that the learning models, how valuable they are. Because if I go to a hospital, I'm getting
basically a limited access to knowledge. I mean, it's whoever the doctor knows, what network he's
in, whatever the hospital has provided him. But can you picture a world
where every bit of hospital data is actually shared in a learning model where a query can
be done across a massive health learning model and that learning model, each one of those learning
model pieces are integrated and secure and sovereign. And this is where we start to see case studies that are
magnificent, where now the future of health can completely change. And there's many other examples
in the financial services arena, the real estate arena, the commercial business arena. And so
we use those, as we talked on the Hill, as examples of how essential this is.
And I'll leave this.
We also tied on the fact that gaming is a big thing in the United States, computer gaming.
And gaming in the Web3 world is huge.
And because we didn't have the proper regulation, what happened is Japan has had a huge advancement in gaming.
And so super excited about how they sort of lit up and started to understand that their being so slow to move over the past few years is actually hurting our overall opportunities as a country.
And I think that was one of the most exciting parts that,
I pick on gaming as an example,
but it really touches on everywhere.
And a lot of what we're talking about on this call,
in terms of the importance of us getting the regulation in place,
so that we do have leadership in the Web3 world globally.
Yeah, thank you, Nate. Great point.
I appreciate your highlight of AI,
along with the importance of decentralized storage. I agree with you, there. Great point. I appreciate your highlight of AI along with the importance
of decentralized storage. I agree with you. There are so many industry that could see
the importance and the potential of their space with decentralized storage. Yeah, thank
you for sharing this specific area. Claire, Paul, would you like to share input regarding
this question?
Yeah, absolutely.
So a couple of use cases we covered.
We're talking about Deepin.
As I mentioned, IoTeX is the infrastructure platform for Deepin.
So it's not an exact analogy, but we like to use, if you were imagining, the Apple App Store.
Who are the apps that you could actually use within that ecosystem?
Those are all the different kind of use cases we wanted to tell. So, you know, first of all, stating that Deepin can cover anything from mobility to
Wi-Fi to energy, you know, starting to see what kind of use cases also actually mattered to these
offices and these staffers was very important to us. Ron and I talked a little bit about the first two examples. We brought
a Nubula home weather station with us. That was an awesome example to show even how cost-effective
things like this can be. You know, we tell people they can start using their phone to connect or
they could buy a device such as the Nubula weather station or the smart ring health wearable we brought with us to show, again, the proof point of why it's here and now.
I wanted to bring up one other example I actually just remembered that we were talking about as well that worked really, really well, which was Wi-Fi connectivity.
Specifically talked about Helium and Wi-Fi map.
Helium and Wi-Fi map. Helium Mobile, I actually learned this myself as well when we were talking
about it, that their hotspot network now can actually be used with AT&T customers who are
roaming in areas with limited coverage. They can now connect to Helium's hotspots, which goes back
to my earlier point as well of that we're not trying to replace current systems. We're trying
to pose an alternative
that's building on top of, you know, better incentivization models and rewiring these
business models that bring creator economies and individuals back into the fold. And I even loved
Wi-Fi map. We were talking specifically about travel. Obviously, that gets people talking a lot
too. No one hates having to get a new SIM card, an eSIM, or connect to Wi-Fi when they travel. Obviously, that gets people talking a lot too. No one hates having to get a new SIM card,
an eSIM, or connect to Wi-Fi when they travel. The best example as well was saying that if you
actually set up your own hotspot, you can get tipped when people connect to yours. So it was
not only the idea that you can benefit from traveling, connecting, getting Wi-Fi wherever
you're going, but also this other half of the
equation that if I'm interested in this, now I can also set up my own hotspot, get a little deeper
involved, and now on the reverse side of it, people can actually tip me for being involved in this
ecosystem. So I think that's really important too, that whatever use case you're talking about,
you do kind of give it from that perspective of the user in terms of a user journey. They don't need to know everything up front. They need to know
what matters to them, but especially paint that picture of how they can get involved.
Because while technology can feel scary and can feel far away, it's one of those things that it
could be as simple as spending five minutes setting up on your computer. And if that's the difference
between, you know,
wanting to dive deeper into this or even just getting positively curious, as we've all kind of
been noting was the general theme, anything to make it the most applicable to people.
And also take that current use case, take Wi-Fi connectivity or weather or smart wearables,
take Wi-Fi connectivity or weather or smart wearables, first of all, talking about it in the
now, but also where it's going. So paint that picture also of why open, permissionless,
decentralized actually does matter, right? It's words we've been talking about for years,
but really reminding ourselves at the root of what we're doing, why we're doing it.
Because the most human examples are the ones
that are actually going to stick with people. They don't care under the hood. Again, with HTTP,
whatever, with email protocols, doesn't matter what it actually is. Eventually, that's going to
get obscured away. So also, I am hesitant to use the word educating. I like to think of it as
exciting educating because we don't
want it to seem like a task for people to either say I'm pro or anti-crypto. We want it to feel
like something they understand and it opened the door for them and happy to be a resource,
but also understanding that that sort of big picture is what's going to matter to them,
not sort of the ins and outs also,
as we kind of like to debate that between ourselves. So just kind of wrapping up, as Nick
said, we're all in this together. And Ron's, you know, point that BA is crypto for good,
and we're all trying to move this whole industry forward, but not kind of forgetting why it matters
to the everyday people, both this year, but also 10 of forgetting why it matters to the everyday people,
both this year, but also 10, 20, 30 years down the line. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing,
Claire. Thank you for giving two great detailed examples. And I agree, love what the Web3 is
doing in solving real-world headaches and pain points. I agree with you. I think majority of,
I guess, the average users,
they're not really going to care too much about the deep tech.
They just have a problem, and they want to see it solved.
And I think Web3 have all the tools
to solve all these issues.
And making everybody's lives a little bit better
with all these great projects, I think that step
will be one that comes at a faster rate.
Okay, Paul and Drexler and Paul Breiner, would you like to share, please?
Yeah, I think for us at Ceylabs, I think that there's a lot of different use cases that are
important to us. And so there wasn't a single one that necessarily that we advocated for.
to us. And so there wasn't a single one that, you know, necessarily that we advocated for,
you know, that, you know, all of the, all these use cases, as we talk about deep end,
AI, you know, storage, like all of these things are important. I thought one that was interesting.
And I think it gets to Claire's point a bit about, you know, trying to show people,
you know, kind of abstract things away a bit, but also show them sort of, you know,
comparing what we have nowadays versus comparing them to what could be, you know,
unlocked with a blockchain was talking about digital identity. I thought that that was like comparing what we have nowadays versus comparing them to what could be unlocked within blockchain,
was talking about digital identity.
I thought that that was an interesting point that really was salient to folks because everybody is familiar with the data breaches of yesteryear.
I think I brought up digital identity a couple of times,
and people were thinking about Equifax and the different data breaches that have occurred.
And so talking to people about the fact that, you know, in the future you have this, you have, you know, the
technology now that in the future folks could have digital identity where they could, you know,
limit access to their data, where they themselves can monetize their data as opposed to like, you
know, other, you know, entities monetizing their data for them. I feel like all of that was really
salient, were really salient points to folks
and meant a lot to them because you know everybody's online everybody knows that their data is
everywhere and so this concept of having a sort of digital identity where you control what
information is out there about you i think was really salient to folks um so that was one that
ended up coming up a lot uh in my discussions with staffers. Yeah, thank you for sharing.
Yeah, I agree with you.
And the digital identity is such an important task,
especially these days, more activities going on online
and everybody wants to be online,
but at the same time,
they also wanna protect their anonymity.
So projects like WorldCoin,
and there's another project,
Anon ID, they're trying to solve these issues.
But great that you brought that um you know major point up thank you uh power biner
do you have any inputs regarding yeah yeah i really was there to mostly support the other
projects and talking about the use cases because zcash is primarily focused on the financial use
case that digital cash utility um so i thought it was it was fantastic to be in a group with Jesse to talk about CESS,
as well as we had a representative from TOKU, it's T-O-K-U,
that their organization provides services for companies that issue tokens and
want to pay their employees with crypto and they
do this all around the world so wherever you are in the world and I don't know
many jurisdictions they are able to provide like that back-end
infrastructure for companies to pay their employees and do all the reporting
so I think that was really nice to be able to show to the staffers to say, look, this industry is really growing up where we're like global and we're doing all of the work on the back end that allows all the companies in our industry to be compliant with local laws. was a really positive message. But of course, talking about something so relevant as decentralized
storage was also, it really resonated with all the offices that we talked to, because that's
something that I think people can relate to very well. So yeah, that was my role there, I think,
was more of a supporting role. And I was just really impressed with all the other teams there that were talking
about their particular use cases.
Yeah, thank you for sharing.
Yeah, glad that you brought up, you know,
with SES, definitely there's a real world use cases
for people within the pin sector
and also Toku, like direct payment.
So it's something, I guess, another pain point
that people will need to have a result.
Yeah, thank you for sharing.
So, everyone, let's move on to our final questions.
So what is everybody's final thought?
What gives you optimism for the future of Web3 in public policy?
Nick, please go ahead.
What's your thoughts regarding this question?
You know, I think given all the answers we've been giving, you can
absolutely see that there is this, you know, what I call, you know, cautious optimism,
cautious only because we need to do it right. And I think we have been way too much on one side.
Now we're seeing that it's going the other side. And there's a balance here that we have to get to
that will really ensure the future, the longevity of Web3 globally. And the United States plays a
very important role in this evolution. And so it's absolutely fantastic that we're going in
the right direction. And there's this curiosity that we've been talking
about. There's this excitement. There is this, you know, exciting learning opportunity, as has been
said. And I think that as we look forward, it's really this working together. You know, I was
on a call with Filecoin yesterday. And how do we all work together
ensuring the future really is going to happen?
And we're gonna deliver on the promises
that have been made.
I've seen a lot of technology evolutions over the years.
My career goes back to the client server
and mini computer world.
And we saw the evolution of the PC coming in, we saw the evolution of the PC coming in.
We saw the evolution of the web coming in
and the application server.
And there's constantly been this innovation of technology
and we have it again.
And the biggest challenge to innovation
has always been that, you know,
in general, people don't love change,
although change happens and we should embrace it.
And here, once again, change is happening.
And the good news is that we're seeing many more people embracing it.
But as was said earlier, you know, this is just the beginning.
We all have to work together.
We should share what is happening here on this call
with those people
that are very involved with regulation, regulatory activity, because this has been a great conversation
on the challenges and the opportunities. You know, bringing case studies to regulators is the best
thing we can do, because then they start to see the potential of what we can actually accomplish.
So could not be more excited about how this call has gone.
And all the people that I've met through this wonderful experience, excited that I just heard someone just DMed me that they're going to be in Durham.
I'm here in Durham, North Carolina, next to Duke.
Duke is doing a lot with the whole Web3 space, as some of you might know.
And, you know, it does take some work there.
We're talking a lot about D.C.
I think we also have to think about the fact we have to work very closely with our large, influential college and university communities, because that's the future of our technology evolution.
And so thank you so much for doing such a great job of running this meeting, and I appreciate all the shares that have been made.
Yeah, thank you, Nick.
Yeah, definitely collaboration, also. Yeah, definitely collaboration,
also international collaborations, definitely picking up projects, you know, like CES,
aligning on best practices. Also, there's potential for more coherent pro-innovation
frameworks that benefit everybody, especially like CES, IEEE decentralized standard. Yeah,
the IEEE decentralized standard.
Yeah, thank you for what all the assessors
thank you for what all the CES is doing for the industry.
are doing for the industry.
So Paul, Claire, please give your input.
What do you see as the future for Web3 in public policy?
You know, I think the biggest thing that you're,
I think the biggest thing here is just policy
that enables development, policy that enables tech, and that gives people certainty.
I think I have a lot of optimism that, you know, I think someone said cautious optimism, and I think that's probably correct.
You know, I have cautious optimism.
encouraging and I think gave me a lot of, you know, reason to believe that I think folks are
willing to put legislation out there that can give people some sort of certainty. And I think
with that certainty comes, you know, sort of the next level of development in this space. You know,
so far, if you get involved in this space, you know, there are lots of risks involved. And,
you know, everyone who's gotten involved with it so far are generally, you know, I wouldn't say
like risk on, but what I say are, have gotten into the space knowing kind of
what could happen around the corner. And so I think that the fact that now we have the possibility
of regulatory certainty, the possibility that the legislature is going to think about this
in terms of the use cases and the positive things that are going to happen for folks
that come out of this technology and therefore to sign their legislation you know with that in mind as opposed
to just designing legislation that's been to like sort of make all this go you know out of the
country i think all that stuff's super positive so um you know cautiously optimistic but uh it was a
great day on on the hill and i i thought that everyone's tone was you know just gave me reason
to believe that something can happen here.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for joining, Paul.
Claire, Paul Brainerd, please follow up.
Yeah, that's going to be hard to follow Paul's. I think that was so eloquently put, especially I love how you said it gives people certainty as much as we can.
as much as we can. I'm going to even toss in cautious certainty. But I think the building
I'm going to even toss in cautious certainty.
with utility, building things that matter, but also not chasing the next trend. And I say trend
within crypto, you know, we're all building together. We're all collectively working with
ideas, kind of experimenting, seeing what works, what doesn't work. But at the end of the day,
kind of experimenting, seeing what works, what doesn't work. But at the end of the day,
I loved, I believe it was during one of the presentations from Filecoin Endowment and
Trial Extreme Gaming that they said this generation will speak digital. And I think that is so true
too, to be advocating for that also, what does the next generation look like in terms of consuming the
internet data privacy we're saying is kind of important now it's going to be paramount um in
the years to come but not only that but the sentiment to going to u.s regulators saying we
don't want to hide from the u.s market we want to show you globally this you know how many people
are using it the the revenue possibilities,
the passive income earning opportunities for your constituents. We don't want to hide from the U.S.
market. So please regulate that landscape for us. I think that is also extremely powerful that
the U.S. is also not the first player in this. We're not trying to get them to do something
completely new, completely never explored before. We have so many
proof points to go off of. And I think demystifying those proof points in themselves is really
important. And this kind of goes to what Nick was speaking on as well. But just especially this idea
that we want to not only move the technology forward, the capital opportunities, but also just the great equalizer,
right? The decentralization. That's a word not a lot of people know. I think the actual meaning
of decentralization, how do we unpack that? How do we show why we're bringing a more equitable,
fair future in the digital realm and how that translates over into the physical categories like Deepin,
like RWA, any real world asset that needs to be tokenized on chain or maybe would benefit from
being tokenized on chain. Just kind of showing people that it is not a one size fits all.
The industry is not monolith, as Ron pointed to earlier. So the clarity we're hoping to get, and also, as Paul
said, gives people certainty. I think that's a really, really strong message and definitely a
takeaway that the IoTeX team felt from leaving DC. We all had a completely positive experience
together, encouraged all of our team to kind of go and experience it for themselves as well.
I think talking to,
you know, policymakers who are doing that day in and day out, and we're the technologists doing
our stuff day in and day out, the merging of minds can be really powerful, even just from
an ideation standpoint, right? We want regulatory clearance right now. But when we also hopefully
maybe get even more support on our side, I would say, and
enthusiasm, we're also going to see a lot more mainstream building and development from
individual developers or even some of these midsize, larger side companies.
So our goal with that first step being regulation, second step being innovation.
So once we have that framework, once we have this digital playground, so to speak, and
we know the bounds in which we will be regulated, there's a huge opportunity there, both on
the economic side, but I'm really excited for the innovation side and what applications
can be possible.
Once we all build this infrastructure for it, how do we come in and build and invite
people into our space and meet them where they're at?
So very excited, very optimistic. And I think it was very receptive on both sides of the aisle and just really saying, hey, we're a resource for you.
There's going to be bills upcoming. Please let us know if you have any questions, use cases, case studies, all of that is super important. It all boils down to what kind of proof points we're showing and what kind of future vision
we're painting and how we're going to fulfill those promises.
That's just the last of it that I think Nick 100% pointed out that we need to also follow
through, show the application facing.
How do we bring more UI UI UX experts into the space,
more big brand marketing.
I'm really excited by that potential as well,
how we're selling these stories
and how we're actually positioning to greater users
and showing them what matters to them.
So from that standpoint, I'm super, super excited
to start marketing that kind of side of things as well.
Yeah, Claire, that's some very strong points.
As you said earlier, also, Mr. Paul Jexer, he made a plethora of numerous great points.
Also, the follow-up, as we discussed earlier, it was the recent passage of the first crypto-specific U.S. law.
It's a big milestone, and it shows that policymakers
are starting to engage more deeply within this space,
and signals that future legislation could offer clear guidelines
and protections without staffing innovation.
Definitely a big welcome for all the projects in the U.S.
Lastly, Paul, we'd like to share your input regarding this question,
please.
Sure. I'll just be very brief because I think everyone has covered this so well. My
personal view is I could not be more optimistic and enthusiastic about the policy environment.
I think everyone here needs to understand how important it is that they focus on this policy environment right now,
because the legislation is going to be finalized and voted on within the next few months. We're
literally going to see legislation that defines decentralization, and that will become law. So
if you're not tuned into this, this is the time. It is such a pivotal time.
And I feel certain it's going to happen.
The president is asked to have this legislation on his desk by August.
So tune in and celebrate. This is an exciting time for our industry.
Yeah, thank you for sharing, Paul.
Again, this is not financial advice.
Definitely exciting times ahead. I can see, you know, the poly market area is going to heat up
within the next few weeks or a month. Yeah, thank you for sharing. So everyone, as we approach the
end of the space, I would like to pass the mic back to our panelists for the closing remarks.
Speakers, please feel free to share any final thoughts and let us know the best panelists for the closing remarks. Speakers, please feel free to share any final thoughts
and let us know the best way for the audience
to connect with you directly and also your projects.
Go ahead, Nick, please share.
Well, I am so excited about this call
and all that we're sharing.
CES is there to partner with everybody.
This is our core focus is to ensure data sovereignty that we take back ownership of the data.
I invite you for those that don't know anything about CESS to start with reading our white paper.
You go to CESS.network.
That's C-E-S-S dot network.
Not only can you find there the de-share opportunity that I mentioned earlier,
but you'll find our white paper, you'll find our community connections,
Discord, and all the things that we're doing out there.
We invite you to follow us on CES on, of course, X and Discord,
and go and check out our GitHub for those of you that are Node operators
and really learn about how easy it is to implement SES.
After 14 releases, we really made it super easy to become part of the SES ecosystem, and we invite everyone to participate.
More importantly, for all of those that are here that could partner with us, we're very open to partnerships.
Please DM me, contact us.
That would be a great opportunity.
I personally will be at Token 2049 next week in Dubai.
So any of you that are going to be at Token,
please look me up.
I love to connect with you on Telegram or X or however.
You can find me there.
And the bottom line is we're here about really
providing awareness that this D-PIN slash Web3 blockchain community is alive, as we've been
talking about, and it's doing things that are really going to change this world and make it a
better place. So very excited for this call and thank you for your time.
Yeah, thank you for sharing, Nick.
I also understand that CES will do weekly updates
regarding their progress to their project.
I just believe the latest weekly update
we just shared a few hours ago.
So for those in the audience who is interested,
please follow CES's account and take a look
at the weekly update.
Yeah, thank you.
Okay.
Claire, would you like to let us know or Paul, the two Pauls that we'd like to introduce?
I just want to, I actually have to drop, unfortunately, but I want to thank everyone for being here.
Thanks, Seth, for hosting again.
I'm here on X, Paul Brigner, or on LinkedIn.
I'd love to connect with you all.
So thank you so much for this opportunity. It's really been fantastic. Okay. Thank you, Paul Brigner, or on LinkedIn, I'd love to connect with you all. So thank you so much for this opportunity.
It's really been fantastic.
Okay.
Thank you, Paul.
And I understand, I think for PGP,
it's also a YouTube channel, right?
People can actually follow on there too?
It is.
It is.
PGP for crypto, right?
And of course, that meeting on the 23rd coming up,
I posted about it earlier today.
Hope everybody tunes in.
Thanks again.
Yeah.
Thank you, Paul. Thank you for your valuable time for joining us today. Hope everybody tunes in. Thanks again. Yeah. Thank you, Paul.
Thank you for your valuable time for joining us today.
Really appreciate it.
Awesome.
I will keep this real brief as well.
Thank you guys so much for tuning in and all the speakers and CESS for hosting this.
I'm leaving this one feeling even more optimistic, even just hearing, you know,
everyone be aligned and on the same page and really excited and working fast and hard towards
this messaging. A couple of things from me, if you want to learn more about IoTeX, go to
iotex.io. If you want to learn more about Deepin Scan or about Deepin, we have a Deepin Map Explorer, which shows all device metrics,
basically the CMC for Deepin. So you can go to deepinscan.com to find out more about that,
as well as any Deepin builders here or any listeners. Two IoTeX team members, Giuseppe and Aaron, just launched the first ever live
talent show called Crypto's Got Talent. And it's discovering and supporting builders and deepen.
Right now, this first season is in collaboration with Polygon and Eliza OS. So there's grant
opportunities available. We just finished phase one, We're entering phase two. That you can also check out on iotex.io.
It's also on Spotify, the full episodes, if you want to tune in.
Those are very, very fun.
We're very excited to kind of invite more projects on, more sponsors, more judges.
So if you're involved in any or all opportunities, definitely message me or the team.
involved in any or all opportunities,
definitely message me or the team.
And as always, you guys can also follow me here on
x at Claire Biasco or message me on LinkedIn as well
with any questions.
Would love to connect with you guys.
And yeah, thanks for hosting.
Thanks for listening.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you, Claire.
Thank you for joining.
I'll definitely give you a follow.
I hope you'll check out the Spotify episode.
And Paul, Paul Drexler, please give us your final say
about the SAI project.
What's the best way for audience to reach you directly?
Also find out more about the SAI.
Yeah, yeah.
Just to echo everyone, great conversation.
Really enjoyed it.
To, you know, you can follow me on X at Paul K. Drexler.
You could also, to learn more about the Say Network, you can go to say.io or you can follow Say Network on X.
They're also now, the Say Network is now actually sponsoring a podcast called Crypto in America, which is focused on regulatory use cases being built out in the United States.
So I think that's a nice tie-in to this conversation.
Yeah, so thanks for having me.
Thanks for everyone for listening.
Thank you, Paul.
Okay, one more check thing on my list.
Go to Spotify and also subscribe to Crypto America.
Yeah, thank you for sharing.
I guess we want to wrap it up.
So I think we can to wrap it up.
So I think we can all agree that advocacy is stronger than ever.
Organizations like the Blockchain Associations are doing incredible work educating policymakers
and representing the interests of the Web3 community.
As the space matures, these advocacy efforts are helping bridge the gap between builders
and lawmakers, filling hope for a more informed and constructive regulatory future.
Also, lastly, I would like to share a quote.
But unfortunately, Mr.
Ron Hamid, you had to leave it a little bit earlier.
You have a prior engagement.
So I'd like to share, I think when he first mentioned that back in 2017,
he was bringing these legislation being heard on deaf ears but this is
a quote from muhammad gandhi uh first they ignore you then they laugh at you then they fight you
then you win so i want to thank everybody in the web 3 space um let's uh let's all win this
together and as what paul said earlier with little. So let's all win this together as cute little babies.
Thank you, everyone.
As always, looking forward to the next phase.
Take care.
Awesome.
Thanks, everyone.
