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#Hedera: Supply Chain Management & Sustainability
Recorded: Aug. 7, 2024 Duration: 1:01:37Space Recording
Full Transcription
Hey, hey, hey. How's it going, everyone? Welcome to Wolf Web 3. Super excited to be here, man. We've got the Hedera up here co-hosting with us. Great to have you guys here. Love doing these spaces with you guys, talking about all things Hedera. A lot of blockchain stuff we get to nerd out about.
Today, we're kind of talking about more leaning on sustainability and supply chain management. And we've got Hania up here. We have Justin up here. We have, as always, the legendary Bread up here. Bread, dude, it's good to see you, man. How are you feeling?
Oh, GM fam. Not too bad. Just sitting at my desk today. Did some pen and paperwork yesterday. Now I got to make it happen with the computer. So, yeah, just kind of taking it easy and slow today.
Awesome, man. It's great to have you here. Really appreciate you. And by the way, guys, if you are listening to this space right now, please hit that retweet button. Bottom right corner, you hit the little message icon. Or I pinned this up at the top just now. Just click that and retweet the space for us. Let us know. Let people know that we are out here live and we are talking about all things Hedera.
We've got Hania up here who is Europe and Africa's director at THF at Hedera Foundation and also leads the Sustainability Fund. How are you doing, Hania? Is it Hania or Hania? Sorry.
Hania or Hania. But Hania is the most used one. So very glad to be here. Thanks so much for the invite. We're doing good. Very good. Glad to be here.
Wes is here, by the way, as well. I can see that he's logged in as a listener. He's actually leading the Sustainability Impact Fund. So it would be good to have him on as a speaker.
Yeah, absolutely. Great to have you here, Hania. Wes, I just shot you an invite. Would absolutely love to have you up here as well. Hey, there he is. We got Wes up in here. Wes, we'll do a little quick mic check. How are you doing?
Good. How are you? Doing well, man. It's great to have you here. Guys, for those who don't know, Wes is the VP of Sustainability and ESG at the HBAR Foundation. So it's great to have you in here, Wes.
We also have Justin in here from Hashgraph, who works mostly on the Guardian Project, one of the big products. So it's great to have you in here, Justin. How are you feeling today?
Hey, doing good. Doing good.
Right on, man. Right on. This is great. This is great. We got a whole, we got a stacked panel for you guys today. So I'm super excited to jump into the conversation here. I think it'd be best to just start out with, I know I gave like a brief, you know, like one sentence introduction to you guys.
We would love to hear more about kind of what you guys have going on on the daily, kind of what your life is like a little bit, kind of what you do with the foundation, kind of what gets you excited to get up and moving each day.
I'll throw it to Hania first here and just give a little bit of context and a little bit of color on kind of what you do, the things you guys are working on over there, and then we'll dive deeper into this, into this conversation.
Sure. Thanks so much for the time.
So what I am extremely excited about, first of all, I'll introduce myself. So my name is Hania.
I'm part of the HBAR Foundation Sustainable Impact Fund team based in Europe and helping out in the EMEA region.
I'm extremely excited about the work that we're doing as a foundation because it's very unique.
We've been working heavily on the fundamentals of ensuring environmental integrity and sustainability integrity,
and really focusing on delivering the digital public goods that are required in order to scale these markets.
And I'm sure Wes will describe a little bit more about the fundamentals of this work, the guardian ecosystem and so on.
And what I'm particularly excited about is the work that we're doing in the biodiversity space.
So I'll tell a little bit more about that later, but there's a lot of work going on in ensuring that nature markets become a part of our economy.
And the Web3 space is a perfect space in order to ensure high integrity.
So that's what I'm extremely excited about.
Awesome. Appreciate it very much.
Let me throw it over to Wes then. Same question over to you.
Absolutely. Thanks for having us here today.
So yeah, on the day-to-day, what we look at is, so our mission is to bring the balance sheet of the planet to the public ledger.
And really that's to grow the sustainability economy on Hedera, not just for carbon or things like offsets or emissions.
We talked about water rights actually last week, and one of the applications going live focused on water rights and allocations and conservation of water.
But it's really any natural capital asset.
And one of the commonalities that we see across the market is every project has a methodology.
And those are the rules to scientifically calculate, input data, and get to a quantified unit, whether it's a metric ton of carbon emitted, a metric ton of carbon avoided, reduced, or removed, a water right that's allocated and then consumed,
or any other biodiversity metric, which I'm sure, honey, you can talk about a little bit on how those units work and are created.
But those rules are all very complex.
There's a series of calculations, sometimes described in hundreds of pages, usually PDF documents.
And what we're thinking about isn't just the unit at the end of that.
You have to be able to trust the unit that's being created.
You have to be able to trust the asset, all the roles, actors fulfilling those roles, inputting data, and proving that what someone's saying is in fact true.
It's been independently verified along the way.
And oftentimes we even want to know how much money some of those folks are being paid to correlate.
Is the activity that you're paying for, like you're buying a carbon credit or somebody's maybe financing it, is that going to actually drive the outcome related to that unit, whatever it may be?
And so on a day-to-day basis, what we're thinking about is how we best allocate funds for both open source infrastructure.
We help cultivate a community that we've been working on for years now to help define the requirements for what that open source infrastructure looks like.
We help fund that open source infrastructure that has dozens and dozens of users, you know, at this point, just on the application level, if not hundreds and beyond from users of those applications, which are often companies rather than individuals.
But individuals, you know, work at those companies or in communities that are benefiting from these projects.
And when we're thinking about allocating funding, we're giving up funds to open source infrastructure, applications adopting that infrastructure tied to environmental integrity reasons, and then oftentimes thinking about how do we create real world outcomes
and impact that are driven by that infrastructure, the applications, and working in the real world all on Hedera.
And so whenever we're thinking about that, it's both at a technical level and a business level, just being good stewards of funds related to that.
Great points there.
I really appreciate the breakdown there, Wes.
And those things are pretty much utmost importance.
You've got to have those things on lock when you're working with some of the bigger companies that you guys are working with and some of the conversations you guys are in each day.
Okay, so that's great to hear.
Let me throw it over to Justin.
Same question.
Yeah, so for me, whenever a lot of the vision and projects that come through the foundations, as those projects are ready from a technical standpoint, me and my team at Hashgraph generally start working on technical architecture, and then we're around for really any questions that come up along the way.
You know, I think we just want to make sure that we're there for everyone at THF whenever they need help from a technical standpoint or any of the projects.
If they need help from a technical standpoint, then that's where we want to be.
Yep, that's about all I had.
Awesome.
Sounds great.
Sounds great.
Really appreciate it, guys.
Again, guys, before we dive too deep, hit the retweet button on this space.
Let people know that we are out here.
I'm kind of interested in kicking this off.
Like, we also have Brett in here, who's our blockchain and developer expert here.
Pretty much, like, one of the main topics here is sustainability, right?
And, you know, people can take that word and push it and pull it and make it this thing that becomes a political issue.
But ultimately, sustainability needs to happen.
Like, we've got to get to a point where sustainability is the top thing that people are worried about.
So I'm kind of curious on this question sort of to the panel on how blockchain technology enhances sustainability efforts across the various industries.
I'm not sure how much you guys are operating specifically on the blockchain side of things.
So maybe I'll start with Brett here.
And, Brett, I just kind of want to get your thoughts and get your perspective on how you think about sustainability efforts when you're looking to combine it with blockchain technology.
Not all aspects of blockchain take up an enormous amount of energy and stuff to kind of get them going.
But a lot of them do.
And it's also a pretty main driver of doubts, I would say, amongst, like, you know, the average person who's maybe not as involved in the crypto and blockchain landscape.
I just want to get your thoughts on this topic overall.
Yeah, man.
I mean, I think that there's really there's two sides, right?
There's, like, the consumer, like, the I guess you could call it the retail side.
And then you have more so of, like, the bigger initiatives led by companies and corporations and larger conglomerates.
And, you know, I think that blockchain can be used in both really well.
You know, I think that on, like, the retail side, it can be used as, like, an incentivizer type system.
You know, a couple of years ago, I was speaking with a team that is using RVMs, which are reverse vending machines.
The fancy word is can return.
You know, that used to be at grocery stores and things like that.
You put a can in and you get, you know, five cents back then.
I don't know, with inflation now, you probably get, like, a penny or something.
But you would put a can in and it would, you know, these RVMs would be rewarding those users in crypto.
You know, scanning the QR code on whatever can and rewarding you with, like, a native token.
You know, and I think that that's a great way to kind of incentivize people, especially, you know, because realistically, you know, like I said,
like, returning cans for even five cents a piece right now is kind of like, is the juice worth the squeeze?
You know, and if you could have something that, you know, was crypto that maybe was, you know, deflationary that could grow over time, you know, things like that.
I think that there's some incentives there, not like the more, I guess, like corporate side of things.
You know, there's a few teams out there that, I mean, outside of just supply chain management, you know, automating and reducing overhead for, you know, how does this product get from A to B?
There's other teams I know that are in the deep end space working with trucking and shipping and essentially using devices to monitor, you know, how long the truck's been running, the temperature, the G forces in the truck, you know.
And the goal is ultimately to kind of reward these truckers and these, you know, these drivers that are shipping the stuff across the country for their efficiency, you know, and for not leaving their truck running and for, you know, like just the various efficiency kind of things that you could do to cut, you know, carbon emissions and things like that.
So there's a few ways to do it, you know, there was a camera, I think it was Ariel was the name of the company a few years ago that was doing carbon credit offsets for NFT companies, you know, and I don't think that they're still around because of the whole carbon credit thing is a whole other debate.
But I think there's a lot of ways that we can absolutely incorporate sustainability and put it on change as a matter of what aspect to whatever team is building it needs to be improved, you know, and can be improved by blockchain versus just traditional Web2 means.
Yeah, absolutely. And it's great to get your perspective because not only are you retail out here with us all on the Twitter spaces, on the ground floor, but you've also worked with like the Colorado Department of Education, PepsiCo.
Also, you've also got that perspective from the business side of things, which is why it's so epic having you here. So I appreciate you, Brad.
Yeah, I'll throw the same question over to the panel. And by the way, Wes, Justin, Hania, and Brad, anytime someone's speaking or if it's just me speaking and you have a thought or a question or a pushback or something like that, or want to expand on something, please throw up a hand.
Would love to kind of get your perspective or feel free to interrupt me at any point and offer some perspective. You know, that's why we're here. So I'll throw it over to Hania first.
Same similar question, just how you think about the sustainability side of things. That's where you spend a lot of your time and effort.
I'm just curious on your perspective on how blockchain technology and the things you guys are working with every single day enhances sustainability across the various industries.
And maybe some of your short to midterm goals and how they sort of fit into the long term goals you guys have over at the foundation.
Sure. So I think when Wes described a little bit around the goals of around that we applying for around the ecosystem.
So what we're focusing on is long term enablement and building strong, I would say, interconnected infrastructure.
And this would be surrounding tools like the Guardian.
So what we have been doing is really providing building blocks and context to the data and information that goes into that.
And then the applications that build and leverage the scientific or the technical standards that are currently, let's say, leading in the environmental markets.
And the reason why we're doing this is because you have a multitude of standards that are out there and they're not standardized.
So what you want, you want them to be able to speak the same language and facilitate these workflows across, I would say, climate, biodiversity value chains.
And this can also include financial workflows.
In turn, this will provide transparency into these assets, which would allow for this market to grow with a higher integrity.
So that's the work that we are fundamentally focused on.
It's really focused on the enablement, I would say, from the ground up, seeing where the gaps were in the market and then enabling the systems that are required in order to scale the markets.
So for, I would say, the standards that are implemented for biodiversity, for example, these are the outputs.
People are looking at the corporate perspective.
So this could mean, for example, guardian enabled workflows and methodologies are defined and this can integrate into the markets.
Maybe it would be helpful for me to define a little bit more about what a biodiversity credit is, because I think it's very important for us to understand a little bit beyond the carbon markets.
So we are involved with an international alliance, which is called the Biodiversity Credit Alliance.
And what we're doing with this alliance is we're working together with the main actors in nature markets in ensuring and creating a digital framework around the biodiversity credit.
Now, the Biodiversity Credit Alliance definition for what a credit is, is a Biodiversity Credit is a certificate that represents a measured and evidence-based unit of positive biodiversity outcome that is durable and additional to what would have otherwise occurred.
In other words, it's basically a financial instrument that is designed to incentivize the preservation and restoration of biodiversity and nature, and also to include nature as a stakeholder into our economy, which in essence is creating new asset classes.
So I think that's imperative or central to the discussion around what sustainability is, and it's the inclusion of nature as a stakeholder and also the inclusion of the variety of different stakeholders that could be local communities and so on through digital identity solutions, which we're also doing with the Guardian ecosystem and enabling that form of accessibility and then the solutions that are built on top of that.
So, yeah, thanks.
Yeah, of course, that was a great breakdown and amazing points there.
Do you find when you're in some of these conversations, I know some of them are more business focused and maybe they're high, you know, high stakes conversations, as well as maybe some more retail conversations or recreational conversations, what are some of the common things that people bring up in the topic of ESG or sustainability in regards to blockchain?
Like, maybe some misconceptions, like maybe some misconceptions, even that people have.
I'm just curious on the conversations you guys have just on a daily basis, you know, and that question could go to anyone on the panel.
But Hania, since you're speaking, if you have any thoughts or Wes, I see you also have your mic.
Yeah.
So, I think that's a great question.
I think the main misconception oftentimes is we're always speaking about tokenization, but we're not speaking about what we're actually tokenizing.
And what we're focusing on is really adding value through that tokenization process.
So, it's really having this digitally native, I would say, market that is from end-to-end digitalized.
We understand the rules that are coordinating this market.
And often, this is not understood because on the one side from, I would say, the Web3 space, there is a lack of understanding in terms of the environmental requirements that are there.
And potentially, from the environmental space, there is not a lot of digital requirements.
Oh, wait.
Did we just lose Hania?
Turn up these shoes required.
I lost.
Oh, she's back.
Okay, she's back.
Sorry, you just cut out for like 10 seconds.
Oh, wait.
Hold on.
Maybe she's, maybe she did get, she did, she may have gotten rugs.
Hold on.
Brad, can you hear anything from Hania's side?
I cannot, no.
Okay.
Do you have anything?
I think you're kind of a little bit in and out there, Hania.
Oh, sorry.
I think my internet's a bit spotty.
Okay.
I'll hand it over.
So just to, can y'all hear me?
Yes.
Loud and clear.
Well, I think what Hania was kind of walking towards before the mic cut off was, it's not just an asset that's being tokenized.
A token for a token's sake doesn't support a market.
It doesn't matter what asset that is.
It's all the data as it's being created following a set of rules that have been independently validated.
Now, in the Hedera ecosystem, we have some very unique architectural capabilities based on the different services of Hedera.
And so the token service is one element of what Hedera does, and that's interoperable with EVM-based smart contracts.
There's another service called a consensus service.
Now, you can, of course, do all the things that you would expect in a Web3 ecosystem, trade tokens using smart contracts, and they work together the HTS native tokens that are native on Hedera that can transfer at 10,000 transactions a second.
They'll be a little bit slower in the case of if they're in a smart contract based on EVM liabilities, although on Hedera it runs faster than, say, the native EVM.
And from a fee perspective, it costs less.
But what we actually have is this consensus service where we actually log the rules.
In regular enterprise technology, you'd call it a message queue or some type of audit log or audit trail.
Now, we actually write those rules in a rules engine called the Hedera Guardian.
And those rules sometimes change, sometimes multiple times a year.
Calculations in those rules change as science evolves.
But the data has to remain immutable.
And we have to have a log of how all those data changes.
Come and interact with the rules.
And what the Guardian is doing is processing both the rules and the changes of the rules as well as the data that is following those rule sets and cryptographically binding it to the asset, the token.
What it allows is not just a single party to answer those questions, because you could do that in a Web2 application.
Many large tech companies make rules engines.
You know, and you can name, you know, insert large tech company IBM or Oracle, so on and so forth here.
But what you can do on Hedera that's really unique is parties that can control their own identities can make attestations across multiple different parties.
It could be a sensor.
It could be a system.
It could be satellite data, as an example.
It could be a person or a series of people who all are fulfilling different roles and permissions within those rules, acting in the context of what the rules or standards allow.
And what the Guardian does is it organizes structures, provides immutability to that data, including does it conform to the rules.
And then when you have that asset that's been issued, following potentially what would be on paper hundreds of pages of rules or tens to dozens to hundreds of calculations, you can see how every piece of data contributed to the trust that is being formed over time across all these different parties that previously weren't coordinated and separately had their own PDFs.
And those PDFs were turned into other PDFs and other PDFs, and we're taking what was previously a whisper down the lane effect to a coordinated system that can be easily understood of who said what when.
So very simply, the Guardian is allowing you to see who said what when in the context of the rules, was it independently audited, get back to the source, and is that asset, can it be trusted based on how the market views the rules today?
And what attributes do they have based on what attributes do they have based on this granular information?
And so what you're hearing us talk about, just to go back to your original question, is things that you can do with this technology that previously couldn't be done before.
The technology itself, when we're talking about Hedera, is sustainable.
It doesn't use a lot of energy.
And there's a whole University College of London or UCL report talking about the energy consumption of Hedera.
But almost every conversation we have in the Sustainable Impact Fund is about what we can do for our planet, what we can do to better environmental integrity.
And it's less and less about the energy consumption conversation.
It's more about how can we help the world change and help improve the environmental integrity around the world for different use cases.
And we've talked about a few of those already.
That's a great breakdown there, Wes.
And one of the things that sticks out for me in the blockchain, and especially even the Bitcoin conversation in regards to, like, we have to be able to trust and also see some of this information when things are signed and know for a fact it's immutable.
It can't be changed later.
And in your case with Hedera and just business situations, like, you're working with companies like Google, like Boeing, IBM.
Like, if you don't have these things on lock, it just doesn't work.
They can't trust you.
They can't work with you.
And when you guys are working with these companies in this fashion, you guys are also trailblazing a little bit on how to do it right.
And I heard a few times you guys talking about it's got to be done right.
You know, you guys have to do the right thing, kind of, or I forgot what the exact wording was, but it has to be done right.
Otherwise, it won't work long term.
And it's just not a good look for the crypto industry.
So I'm glad you guys are focusing on this side of it.
And, yeah, if you don't have these things being immutable and you can't trust the transaction and verify it, there's pretty much no reason for the blockchain to exist.
You know, you're basically just operating in the world of the Web2 world that we have today, which blockchain is trying to solve.
So that was some great breakdown there.
And actually, it's a great segue over to Justin.
And, Justin, I know you work a lot with The Guardian and The Guardian Project, which Wes just kind of opened up a little bit.
We'd love to hear more about your work over there and some of the conversations you guys are having, what you're working on on a daily basis.
And just give me some color on that side of the company.
Yeah.
So I think a lot of the stuff that I'm dealing with over here on the technical side from the DA team standpoint is a lot of the rules and methodologies where you see dozens and dozens of pages of PDFs that, you know, Wes and Hanya were talking about.
It could be from biodiversity.
It could be from carbon offsets and things like that.
But one of the other things it could be is green electricity generation.
I just wanted to call that out, but that's awesome, and I really love seeing all those projects as well.
But the conversations that I have are, generally speaking, if someone's trying to accomplish one of those kind of real-world goals in The Guardian, I'll help them get there from a technical standpoint.
Lately, it's been a lot about IoT devices, release cadences, and things of that nature to, you know, make sure that all of our partners and stuff like that are able to keep up to date with the code base.
So just lots of managing lots of changes and making sure that all of the different projects and things like that, just making sure that we're able to support them all from a technical standpoint is, by and large, that's what I do all day, every day, and I really do enjoy it.
Has that, Justin, has that been something you were interested in before you came to be working with Hedera Hashgraph, or is this something that came in the last few years?
Yeah, so I've actually been doing IoT stuff for a long time.
Actually, when I graduated high school, I was working in a factory while I was in college, and that's kind of where I started the programming world, was they made little DC motors that go into hot tubs and car alternators and stuff like that, and they had IoT devices there that would tell folks on the plant what would be going on and stuff like that.
So I've actually been interested in IoT my entire adult life.
I just think it's really awesome.
Nice, right on.
I'm actually curious.
We don't have to spend too much time on this, but I am curious, Hania and Wes, also, just kind of how you guys feel into this work here at Hedera.
Do you want to start with?
Go ahead.
I'll go very quickly, actually.
I do have to drop off, apologies, at the top of the hour, but I came into it from Oracle.
I have a government degree by trade, but I spent about six years at Oracle, and a lot of the work that we did, maybe from 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 into 2019, was in what we would call the enterprise blockchain space.
And so we're thinking about really not using blockchain for blockchain's sake, but just we're trying to solve problems, and we didn't have the tools to solve some of those problems.
And especially when it comes to climate, there's just a very simple premise that you shouldn't be able to get rid of your emissions reporting or emissions accounting system when you turn off your cloud subscription.
And so our need for a public ledger, from my view, was very high.
But we had these permissioned private ledgers that were being sold by the large-scale cloud companies, Oracle, IBMs, and otherwise Amazon.
You can name a bunch of them.
And from a sustainability perspective, if we need to account for our entire planet's inventories, we need to know who said what when.
We need to know that it's not going to be deleted or manipulated, and that needs a public balance sheet.
And so that's really where I got my start in it, and that's kind of the key question.
Who said what when, and is it really what they said at the time from that given source?
And so I'll pass it over to maybe Hania, but just say thank you very much for hosting as well, and appreciate being here.
Yeah, thanks so much, Wes.
Really appreciate your time, man.
I'll throw, yeah, same question over to Hania.
So I got actually into it.
I have an interesting, let's say, segue into the space.
So I was involved in the tourism industry, ecotourism in specific.
And I learned very early on about the trickle-back effect.
And I started learning that the trickle-back effect actually meant whenever you visit a place, any place as a tourist, if you stay at a random, I would say, global hotel, there is very little impact, positive impact that you're creating locally and you're taking, extracting, actually, a lot.
Whereas where you travel through, you have a better and more holistic, I would say, impact.
So I started getting obsessed with the idea of the trickle-back effect, started working in the finance industry, developed a variety of different innovation programs, conferences, training programs around regulatory frameworks, IFRS, Basel.
But I kept on thinking about that trickle-back effect.
And then I got involved with a very early stage startup where I finally was able to put this thesis actually in my practice.
And we were building on hyperledger fabric and we were building very early stage ESG solutions, carbon forwards, ESG reporting solutions.
And we're thinking about the inclusion of nature as a stakeholder.
So also from a biodiversity perspective, I would say the valuation of a whale or the valuation of an elephant.
And from that point of view, I started getting into conversation with Wes and started learning about the Guardian ecosystem and, in general, how you can build auditable accounting systems that improve on the lessons learned from the carbon markets and what was happening.
And I saw that this was specifically the Hedera ecosystem was the only Web3, I would say, space and layer one ecosystem that was suitable for these types of solutions, specifically because we have a governing council, as you all know.
And we needed to have a credible set of partners in order to enable these solutions to spread out in the market.
And the way that the Sustainable Impact Fund was building the Guardian ecosystem was extremely credible.
So it seemed like it was the only solution.
And that's when I joined and supported them building further.
Got it. Appreciate it.
I don't know. I'm always interested in hearing how people fall into this Web3 game.
So I appreciate the little bit of background from you guys.
And I know you guys also, like, one topic I wanted to bring up was something called APMA in the context of Hedera and HBAR, you know, referring to the use case or application leveraging Hedera's network for sustainability, as well as transparency, supply chain management, which we're talking about.
I know, Justin and Honey, you guys have some – well, maybe I'll start over to you, actually, if you could give some color on what APMA is up to, what you guys are – why it's, I guess, necessary to what you guys are building, how it sort of impacts, you know, real-time traceability and transparency for goods and products and things like that.
Justin, I see your mic is on mute.
I'll throw it over to you first.
Yeah.
So a lot of what we're doing with APMA is circularity.
So, you know, having that traceability of a product from its inception all the way to recycling.
You can see, too, on the Hedera Guardian repository, APMA actually has two policies that they've open-sourced as well.
So you can actually see their scope 1 – I'm sorry, their scope 2 and scope 3 emissions policies that they have open now.
And what they're basically doing is, yeah, that whole circularity part.
And they want that to be – so basically, once you have, you know, certain amounts of emissions calculated, you're able to then make scope 3 calculations about those emissions.
And what Avery Dennison wants to do, APMA, they want to be able to get those emissions the full circularity, all the way to scope 1 through scope 3, which entails a lot of supply chain for sourcing and materials and things of that nature.
That you can definitely see that in the methodology library.
Having those – since supply chain and sustainability are so intertwined, having to have the materials alongside the sustainability outcomes are, like, really, really important.
And that's their goal, really, just to unify a lot of those.
And maybe to add a little bit on that and piggyback on what Justin said, I think what APMA is doing is really incredible.
They have deployed – I don't know if you are familiar with it, but it's called a digital product passport.
And, in short, it creates, in essence, a provenance passport or a process of all the products in their supply chains or under Avery Dennison, which allows for the sustainability – for us to understand the sustainability of the product, but also, obviously, the efficiency and the rest of the related items that need to be disclosed under that.
Yeah, definitely.
Brad, I didn't know if you want to hop into the conversation in regards to – because sometimes it feels like they're a little bit separate as far as topics, the idea of supply chain management.
But it's sort of very similar to the conversation around blockchain and being able to track some of these things and have transparency around it.
It's, like, sort of the same side of the coin.
So, just curious on your perspective here.
I'm not sure if there's much conversation going around in some of the circles that you operate in in regards to how blockchain is being used for things like supply chain management and some of the business dealings you're working with.
Have you been impressed with any of the conversations you've seen in this department on the business side of blockchain companies?
I'm just curious if you have any perspective on that.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's still, you know, it's – with companies, it's always the go-first problem, you know.
And, I mean, there's plenty of teams out there.
I mean, like, Walmart's been using blockchain for supply chain management for years now.
Yeah, so has Bumblebee Tuna.
You know, Bumblebee Tuna uses Hyperledger fabric to track and essentially verify the ethical harvesting of the tuna, you know, so that it's not coming from, like, dirty fish farms and things like that, you know.
And it's, like, that's – I mean, definitely great, you know, and definitely valuable.
Does the end consumer care?
Like, you know, I mean, essentially on cans of Bumblebee Tuna, there's QR codes that you can scan and essentially, like, see that data, you know.
How many people do that?
I would say probably very, very few, you know what I mean?
Like, it's just not something that's interesting to people yet.
And I don't think that it needs to be, you know.
I mean, it's just kind of like – I think one of the biggest problems with, you know, when NFTs blew up is a lot of major companies started entering in and seeing more so just an added revenue stream, you know, or a way to, like, market because it's trendy.
And they weren't really looking at the value of, you know, I guess an old-school mentality of a penny saved is a penny earned, you know.
And if you can automate a lot of the supply chain logistics that are happening and eliminate some of the human error, ultimately, you will end up saving money.
It's just a matter of how long will it take, how much money are you saving, things like that.
And, you know, really, is it worth it to the company to implement some of these blockchain strategies?
I think we're getting closer, but we're not quite there yet.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Appreciate the insights there, Brad.
And, look, we've – by the way, guys, if you're listening, we've had a pretty solid high-level conversation, at least for me.
Some of the stuff has gone off in my head a little bit, I'm not going to lie, but this has been a really, really engaging conversation for me.
If you're enjoying this space, please hit the retweet button for me and follow the speakers as well.
But I kind of wanted to bring it down to this side of the conversation in regards to sort of like the real-world applications, like kind of bringing it down to earth a little bit as far as real-world examples of blockchain improving sustainability from your end.
Maybe stuff, Hania, Justin, that you guys have seen in the world that you guys are operating.
It doesn't have to be something you guys specifically are working on right now.
But I would just love for you guys to share some great world examples of either things that, you know, inspires you in your work or things that you guys are building out right now.
Oh, man, one of the good ones is EDF.
We have a use case study on that on the DLT Sciences website where they're approving green energy from solar panels and wind farms and things like that.
And they're able to identify that down to individual IoT devices, down to that granularity.
And, like, seeing that from, you know, a large electricity company, it was just like, oh, my gosh, like, this is really cool.
And kind of really got me back.
Like, I don't know, like, I'm like 37, so I've been around for a little bit.
And, you know, I think, you know, once you hit that mid-career hole, you can slow down a little bit.
But that kind of reinvigorated me a few years ago.
And so that was awesome.
Love it, man.
Really appreciate the take there.
Yeah.
Thank you, Justin.
Let me throw it over to Hania.
I saw you had also unmuted your mic.
Yeah, thanks.
Justin37 is not that old.
From our point of view, I think Alcott is an interesting use case, which I'm extremely excited about.
So I don't know if you saw the news, but we announced a little while ago that Alcott.io is bringing about 500 million metric tons of carbon to the network.
And we're working with them in terms of digitizing all of these units and the methodologies surrounding that.
But what's even more interesting is that we're also enabling and they are building benefit sharing mechanisms, which means that we're starting to create transparency around how benefit sharing actually functions in the carbon markets.
And how we can be more informed and more inclusive of local communities, specifically that are the guardians, I would say, of the environment.
And another thing that I'm excited about, and maybe to go a bit back to supply chains, I think supply chain management is extremely relevant, specifically because the regulation around this space is tightening up, specifically in Europe where I'm based.
Things like CSRD, which is the corporate sustainability reporting directive.
So there's going to be a much stronger push in terms of high quality data and requirements for supply chains to be more sustainable.
And the requirements around that are going to involve solutions like that are blockchain adjacent and building that out.
So I'm very excited about seeing that move to a more positive note and scaling that further.
And I think on the last note that I have going back to biodiversity and nature markets, I think for everybody, it's kind of a vague concept.
What is biodiversity and why is it important?
I think one of the fundamental things that I always like to or an insight or key insight that I would like to bring in is that whilst we can decarbonize our economy,
we cannot de-extinct our global economy, so meaning that any kind of human activity around food production and population growth will impact nature.
And therefore, it's really important to assign a certain kind of value to biodiversity and natural resources.
And as you can imagine, as nature becomes rarer, the value increases.
So even if biodiversity markets don't doesn't expand as quickly as we're used in the Web3 space, the growth is inevitable,
specifically because of the fundamental importance.
And what we're doing is really focusing on the high integrity markets for biodiversity,
where all of these conservation efforts can be verified and trusted.
And that's why we're so committed in terms of the development of these fundamental systems,
as Wes explained previously, which is focused on and we keep on focusing on this,
which is building auditable accounting systems.
And I think that represents a strong approach to supporting biodiversity and these new nature asset markets that are developing as we as we speak.
Yeah, and one of the things you'd mentioned is like doing things in a manner where it sort of pushes companies and more companies to take it seriously
and focus on sort of the sustainability of things and making sure that they're not just like ripping apart the environment in which they're building in.
I'm kind of curious on the regulatory side of this conversation here on how blockchain facilitates and helps facilitate regulatory compliance.
And also just honestly, just I'm just stoked to have you guys here because you guys are in some of these conversations in a very real way,
much more than I am on these Twitter spaces.
And so just really curious on the conversations you guys are in.
And so just honestly, just to open up in the conversation on the on the regulatory aspect and the legal side of things,
some things that you have, maybe some pushback you have, as well as just giving any color on this side of the conversation.
Yeah, Justin, I see you unmuted your mic.
Yeah, so I think from a lot of what we're seeing is, I hate to beat up on other blockchains here,
but a lot of the things that you see on Web3 or on blockchain in regards to sustainability are existing carbon offsets that have been digitized.
And, you know, like, like that in and of itself, to me, isn't really enough,
because it just it essentially makes a second copy of the carbon offset, which causes double counting and then which then raises a lot of doubts about carbon offsets in general,
which, you know, a lot of people are very skeptical of them for that very reason.
And I think that what sets us apart is you can start out at a very granular level on Hedera.
So, like, rather than just taking an existing offset and moving it over to Hedera, you know,
you can start out by, like, actually logging your supply chain and logging small amounts of your emissions and, you know, any other sustainability information.
You don't have to do everything today.
And, you know, showing that and showing that story along with it helps a great deal.
There's, you know, there's, like, smaller reasons, too, where, you know, for regulatory data, if you save it in a public place,
then that same copy of data, it's canonical.
That's its source.
Like, there's no other copy.
So IT departments aren't massaging the data before they show it to regulators because they don't own the hardware that it's stored on.
And so, yeah, what that does is that helps a lot with clarity and all that stuff.
Yeah, have you also found, like, any pushback from, like, I guess, get your thoughts on sort of the regulatory climate of the current U.S. government,
if you have any thoughts in regards to, obviously, we're in election year and the impact on a four-year, you know,
if, depending on which direction the election goes, if we enter a four-year period where the government is more or less pro-crypto,
I wonder how many things I would change for the things that you guys are working on on a daily basis.
Ooh, that's a tough one.
I don't want to get political because I am not good at that stuff.
But I hope sustainability doesn't lose its importance, especially, you know, when folks think about, like, sustainability of the world in general,
not just, like, a carbon offset or using your emissions, but, like, biodiversity and, you know, corals and water and all of these things.
Like, regardless of who really gets voted in, like, as long as, like, we don't lose sight of our planet, like, that's what I'm really worried about.
But, you know, from a crypto standpoint, I think, like, folks that are pro-crypto, like, the government folks that get elected and things like that,
it enables a lot of really cool things, like, you know, like, people could use, you know, emissions reductions or they could use carbon offsets.
Like, if they have them where the actual assets are audited and they can actually tell the details about them,
they could do so much more cool stuff with them.
Like, the marketing company, instead of just buying an offset, they could, like, list it on a website and follow along with it.
They could have, like, their office members do trash cleanups at it.
Like, there's just so much more opportunity there that they could do, and I just, like, feel like right now they're thinking,
okay, this is going to open up a whole bunch of costs, and they're not really thinking about the benefits down the road.
Yeah, definitely.
I was just really curious on getting your perspective, so I appreciate that, Justin.
And, yeah, honey, just kind of the same question over to you is sort of the question around the regulatory side of things
and some of the conversations you hear, and if you wanted to offer any perspective from that side of things.
Sure.
So, I think what we're doing is we don't make up the rules.
We support the rules that are created in order to translate them and to make them better understandable and better implementable.
I think that's the fundamental work and value that we bring.
So, often what you see specifically in the regulatory markets and the environmental space, as I tried to mention earlier,
is that you have a variety of different standards, and they all are focused on different outcomes and require different forms of data.
And what happens is you can't standardize all of these standards.
What you can do is you can implement a data model that allows for translation in terms of enabling comparability between these different standards and what they're actually achieving, right?
And so, when we're talking about the influence on a regulatory perspective, our mission is to make that clear and to educate people on that it's possible with the technology that we're building.
And we're doing it exactly for that reason, right?
So, we've heavily invested in building the Guardian ecosystem for a specific reason is that it's a open source digital public good.
And it's for everybody to utilize and to digitize a variety of different methodologies and standards.
And we currently have the largest digital public library of these standards and methodologies and these policies.
And we're also able to compare it.
And I think that this is an improvement on the way that the environmental markets have operated or in general policies and frameworks,
because we allow for better understandability.
And I think that in itself creates more transparency in the process in terms of what is required and we can build further on that.
Definitely. Definitely. Really appreciate your perspective there.
Brad, I'm kind of curious if you have any thoughts on what could come of a blockchain revolution, if you will,
if we were to have a pro crypto next four years.
You know, if that were to happen, what are some of the things that you'd be looking for slash praying for that kind of come to fruition?
Oh, man.
I would say, like, realistically, it would be beneficial only because of the awareness, you know?
But I think that it would also, I mean, even the people like us that are out here in the trenches every day,
I mean, there's still people that are clicking links and getting wallets drained and all of these things, you know, getting socially engineered.
And I mean, obviously, like the more people that come in, the more that will happen just based on numbers alone, you know?
And so I think it would be net positive, hopefully.
It kind of really depends on, you know, what I guess the powers that be would want it to happen to it.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's like if they spin the narrative throughout all of the media outlets and channels and things like that,
that, you know, like, oh, look, we tried and all of these people lost all of this money because of crypto this year
over the past four years or whatever, whatever, and now they've got, you know, to them, a strong case to add just an unreal amount of regulatory kind of things involved, you know?
And at that point, I think it would really hurt the industry.
So ultimately, I think that it'll be beneficial to Bitcoin, but only because of BlackRock's holdings.
You know what I mean?
I mean, at the end of the day, American politics is 100% ran and driven by the largest paychecks.
So whatever they ultimately want to happen to it will probably happen to it.
And I feel like what's going to happen is we'll, you know, either president is going to have to address it, you know,
and essentially embrace it in one way or another.
And whoever writes the higher check will get their way, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
That's some good points there, Brad.
So we only have a few minutes left in the conversation.
I had like a two-pronged question.
I guess I'll, I'm more interested in this side of it.
And we sort of opened up the conversation a little bit with this question on the regulatory climate.
But I'll throw it to Justin first here.
So like any future trends that you, that you're looking at into the intersection of blockchain,
sustainability, or supply chain management, you work in a variety of these sectors.
I'm just curious on just casting a vision into the future.
I'm really curious on any kind of trends you might see and how Hedera and the foundation would sort of fit into that narrative.
Yeah, so definitely I think B2B connectivity on the enterprise side is something that blockchain has really, has the ability to add value for.
So for like regulatory stuff like the emissions or, you know, things of that nature, then having, logging that spot on there and then allowing another company to view that data without having to do it manually is something that blockchain is great for.
And I've seen that trend happen, you know, that's already been happening.
And I think it's only going to continue to grow.
I think with what Hanya, I think, was mentioning earlier with the product passports and things like that, a lot of that, that's what they're doing behind the scenes from a technical standpoint is, you know, they sit together and they're realizing that, like, they come up with all of these standards and things like that.
But they're published internally, we're only a select few can see them, that makes integration a nightmare.
And so blockchain helps a lot with that integration side of things.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Great points there.
Let me throw the same question to Hanya, just casting some vision onto the future.
Sure.
So the future I'm excited about is actually making blockchain more understandable for a larger audience of people.
And specifically people that have little to no involvement with technology, but we can present very strong use cases and educate, actually, in order to bring in, let's say, this new crowd in, in showcasing how usable the application blockchain and Web3 space actually is.
And what the possibilities there are, and specifically, obviously, I'm speaking about it from the environmental sustainability space.
So that's what I'm most excited about.
And I think that that's the near future, because we're all tapping into the same Web3 space, the same crowd.
And it's always good to enlarge in our ecosystem and make sure that we create acquaintances and improve familiarity with the work that we're doing, correlating that with the work that people are doing in environmental space.
So translating.
Yeah, great points there all around.
You know, one thing that always interests me is, like, if these things happen, a lot of these things that we're hoping to see in the future, I'm so curious on how that will change our day-to-day in this world.
Like, for us, we're working on the media side of things.
So I guess we'll just kind of be keeping up with it.
It'll be sort of our job to keep up with what's going on.
But curious on you two, on your thoughts on how your role may change in the company or with Hedera in general.
Like, any things that you guys, if you guys were to kind of knock out some of these longer-term goals, like, which direction Hedera ends up pivoting?
And just kind of get your perspective on anything in that department.
I think one day, you know, there has to be, you know, you see a lot of other chains making kind of a private blockchain as well.
And I think a lot of that will happen in the future because there's just too much risk with saving everything in the public just because of GDPR and things like that.
So I think a lot of the stuff in the future will be a hybrid.
But that, to me, that puts a lot of the requirements to, like, making sure cross-chain communication is done effectively and efficiently without, you know, blowing tons of energy out into the atmosphere, you know.
So that's my take.
So from my point of view, I'm really excited about the maturity of the blockchain space and reaching a point where we don't have to speak about blockchain anymore.
Where we're just delivering solutions, I would say, with mixed format of emerging technology.
And we're not sitting only with Web3 people, but including a larger audience around that.
So that's what I'm excited about.
And I think my role would change in that or our roles will change in that as our community grows.
But, yeah, there.
Yeah, definitely.
Definitely.
That world is so interesting to cast vision into that side of things and see how the world changes.
Like, I don't know what me and Brad are going to do all day, you know, if we stop talking about blockchain.
Like, I don't know how that role is going to change.
Brad, actually, yeah, Brad, what do you think, man?
What do you think would happen?
How would your role change?
Would you step more into the building side of things and less into the open mic format?
Or do you think your role in that and your interests would just change a little bit and you'd stay open?
You'd be hopping on spaces with us at WolfWeb3 still kind of thing.
Oh, man, dude.
I mean, I would.
I'm out, bro.
I'm going to quit.
I'm out.
Dude, no, please.
No, I'm realizing I'd keep building.
You know, build somewhere or something else.
You know, I mean, originally, it's kind of like I.
I mean, when I started this whole thing, I was just like working a commercial painting and stocking shelves at Costco and went to school for cybersecurity, you know, and then as I was collecting crypto, I was kind of dug deeper and was like, oh, shit, we should use this for cybersecurity.
And then, you know, rabbit hole after rabbit hole after rabbit hole led me to here talking about meme coins on the Internet with people.
Love it.
Yeah.
And also, I was going to say, just to tie on to one thing here, it's not as relevant to what we were just talking about, but the decentralized nature of blockchain, you know, having it be so that no one entity can manipulate data is so important for integrity.
I think that was one of the words you guys should use earlier in the conversation, which I really like.
And it's very in line with everything Hedera is working with.
Like a lot of the various automatic decentralized processes you guys have are created in a way where integrity is upheld.
And sort of like out of your own hands and you like it almost like can't help but be integrity filled, if that makes sense, because of the way it's automatic and it's totally decentralized, like virtual voting and the gossip, what's it called?
The gossip protocol.
You know, it's there so that you take out sort of the human error.
Sometimes that is inevitable in a lot of situations.
It's just a systematized operation that just goes.
And one thing that's pretty cool about the Hederas is with the nodes, like I think it's up to two thirds.
I might have the numbers wrong a little bit, but like up to two thirds of the nodes can go down and the rest will still pick up the slack.
And, you know, systems are set there in place for the success of the chain.
And when you guys are working with some of these bigger companies, they're set like that so that things can't go wrong and so that the world can keep going.
And Brad had mentioned it a second ago, like Walmart has been using blockchain for a lot of their processes for a long time, just because the inherent nature of blockchain is such that you have to use that.
Otherwise, things just don't work.
So it's been a great conversation so far.
Maybe we can close out with this, just kind of get your thoughts on industry collaboration with you guys.
A, any future collaborations you guys are interested in or collaborations you guys are working on today that really, really are cool for what you guys are building or any past collaborations that have kind of gotten you to where you are today.
And I can throw that one to Justin or Hania, whoever wants to go first.
Just individual projects I'm excited about?
Well, maybe more like collaborative efforts within the industry with which you guys are building.
If you guys have any you're looking forward to or any that you're on today or any from yesterday.
Yeah, I think, you know, like from my standpoint, a lot of the collaborations that I'm interested in is emissions and carbon offsetting.
And, you know, like they seem like they're kind of like opposing issues, but they're really like related.
And, you know, I really hope that those two kind of entities are able to like communicate.
And I'm really excited about all of those collaborations.
We have a couple of like government things.
I think Civic Ledger is like kind of related to the government and water.
And I like that sort of thing because it allows it allows the masses to see kind of a lot of the details they wouldn't ever see.
So those are good collaborations I'm excited about.
There are a lot of collaborations that we're working on.
And obviously we can't disclose at this moment.
But what I will say is, you know, we're very excited to continue, I would say, scaling the work in terms that we're doing in the environmental markets.
And I'm particularly excited about bringing in the nature markets, the broader nature markets and creating that understanding of what that is and creating these new asset classes on chain for us.
Definitely. Great points all around.
I'm super excited.
The blockchain conversation is fascinating to me.
And it's a blessing that we sort of get to keep up with the times and, you know, have this sort of look back on in the future as the industry continues to grow.
Everyone in here is contributing.
Everyone listening into this space.
Like these things are happening in real time.
That's why I love these spaces with you guys over at Hedera.
Like you guys are literally in these meetings today, yesterday and tomorrow, you know, building some of these things.
And the announcements that we see that are sort of almost arbitrary or almost sometimes feel like we're watching a movie.
There are real human beings behind these announcements and collaborations that are out here every single day putting in work.
So, yeah, shout out to you guys.
Hania, Justin.
We also had Wes in here a little bit ago.
Brett, of course.
Like, thank you guys so much for contributing to the ecosystem and building this out.
Because without you guys, like, things don't happen.
And so, yeah, huge shout out to you guys.
Kudos.
And everyone who's listening to this space, I hope you guys have enjoyed the conversation with Hedera.
And this has been an awesome time for me.
If you did, please hit that retweet button.
It's the best way to show support.
Bottom right corner, it's a little message icon.
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Hit that and retweet the space.
Get the conversation out there.
Yeah.
Thank you guys so much for this conversation.
And we will see you all later, guys.
Take care.
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