Latest / Crypto Altruists: Real-World Stories of Social & Environmental Impact with Web3 / Episode 265 - Rebuilding Trust Online: Private Digital Identity and Blockchain-Backed Verifiable Elections in the Age of AI, with UrVote & Veri

Transcript

Episode 265 - Rebuilding Trust Online: Private Digital Identity and Blockchain-Backed Verifiable Elections in the Age of AI, with UrVote & Veri · Crypto Altruists: Real-World Stories of Social & Environmental Impact with Web3

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Today you'll discover the power of blockchain-based voting for privacy and fairness and what that means for rebuilding trust in elections.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: What zero-knowledge proofs are, explained in plain language, and why they will be one of the most important privacy tools of the next decade.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: A look into a better model for digital identity where you can prove what matters without handing over your entire personal life.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: And why verification and privacy are becoming existential questions in the age of AI, deep fakes, and bots, and how blockchain can Crypto Altras, where we explore the intersections of Web3 and social good through the stories of impact-driven builders and offer actual insights to empower your journey into the world of blockchain for good.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Drew Simon.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Now, before we dive in, please remember that this is not financial or legal advice, and always do your own research on any of the projects or investment opportunities that we discuss.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: I want to start with a feeling that I think most of us can probably identify with.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's from a company you have an account with.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the subject line instantly fills you with a feeling of dread.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Important security notice it reads.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: You've detected unauthorized access.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Your data may have been compromised, or something along those lines.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: And in that moment you realize just how much of yourself you've handed over to companies all across the internet.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Your email, your passwords, your address, your ID documents, or think about the last time you went through one of those intense verification processes.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uploading a photo of your passport, a selfie, proof of address, just to prove one simple thing about yourself.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: You handed over your entire identity to prove a single fact.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, these tensions are at the heart of today's episode.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because why should proving one thing require exposing everything?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: And this isn't just about spammer inconvenience.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: If you zoom out, the stakes get much higher.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Around the world, trust in institutions is ranked.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Democracy is under real pressure.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: We're seeing the rise of authoritarianism in places that once felt stable, and faith in the integrity of elections themselves is being tested.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now more than ever we need systems people can trust, elections that are verifiable and fair, and digital identity that respects people rather than exploiting them.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the crux of today's discussion.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm joined by Cooper Squirrel, the founder of Eurovote and Very, two companies tackling one of the most important and underappreciated problems of our time.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: How do you verify what's true online without giving everything else away?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Through Eurovote, Cooper has built blockchain-backed voting technology designed to be both synonymous and auditable.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: And through Vary, his team's built privacy-preserving digital identity infrastructure, including one of the first zero knowledge email credentials.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Today we're gonna demystify zero knowledge proofs, because they can sound a little complicated.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Explore how you build blockchain power elections people can trust, dig into what a better model for digital identity looks like, and talk about where privacy, verification, and trust are all headed over the next decade.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Especially as AI makes it harder and harder to tell what and who is real.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: So let's dive in.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Cooper, thank you so much for being here today on the Crypto Ultras podcast.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, fellow Ontarian, it's always great to connect with uh local folks and uh really excited for this conversation today.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks for being here.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Drew, for having me.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very excited to uh get into this conversation.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I'd like to start by kind of learning about you, your background, how you got into this space.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: So tell me a little bit about your journey and kind of what led you to your work with Eurovote and Barry.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: So with with Eurovote specifically, I I've always been involved with the the tech space with blockchain uh more recently.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it literally came down to one day.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: I was um I was at my voting station for my municipal election.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: I walked in with my my voter uh tab or or pamphlet.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um I cast my vote, and as I was walking out, I was kind of thinking, like, hey, I'm walking out empty-handed.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: What just happened, right?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it was kind of a thought that came in, left, you know, kept doing my life, right?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And um sometime later it kind of hit me again.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going, it could have been something on the news.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember what that was, but um, it hit me again.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like just thinking, you know what?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there's gotta be something out there that I just haven't seen.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm doing my research, and there are many different projects that are sort of working towards this goal of me more secure elections, right?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I just noticed something throughout them all that was kind of missing, right?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, you know what?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna do a bit more research, and that research led to a rabbit hole.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden I find myself building this platform, right?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so myself, I'm not like uh, you know, engineer by any means.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I was able to um sort of not sell my mission or goal, but um find the right people that were aligned that understood that okay, you know what, this is a problem.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Here's how we can solve it as a team, right?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been building your vote for a while now with a good, solid team of engineers that are helping me um see this through, if you will, right?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's sort of where it all got started.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: That was like your Genesis moment.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's really cool.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And um, yeah, that's awesome.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, it's such an important problem, especially today with so much going on around the world, around voting, around um, you know, fair elections and democracy.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're gonna dive into all that stuff.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: But first, I want to kind of like talk about uh the broader problem that you're really looking to address here, and that's um, you know, how to prove something is true without exposing kind of everything else, right?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um what exactly does this mean?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of unpack this problem, why it's so important.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: So for for a bit more context into this, so we've developed your vote, we've worked with many different institutions and groups um hosting verifiable elections, right?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're we're scaling that along quite nicely.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: What we've realized within this um space is that there's still, you know, a lot of room for like what that voter identification is, what it means, how they verify, right?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of what we do at our level is is just through email verification, right?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's still multi-factor resources and stuff.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's still, you know, secure, but I'm telling you today that it can be better, right?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like the technology is there to make it better.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: So what we've started developing is very or the very network, where we're working with um institutions that operate via you know email or any sort of ID on how we can um create a sort of credential system to help strengthen those areas, right?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: So we're actually like kind of going hand in hand between these two products where we have a great testing source where what whether you're a student union or uh HOA or anything that requires some form of member ID, whatever that might be, um we're starting to integrate into the very network where we can sort of test and see what what's working, what isn't.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is this you know applicable to different demographics and how how you can scale it more than anything, right?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um so so really what we're doing with very actively right now is focused on email credentials.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um so essentially what we're allowing the users to do is if you're if you have an account on very, if you have a vault, we're calling it, you can create a uh zero knowledge proof of your email address.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's only there's a handful of domains we support, but it's not every domain across the board yet.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um because like I said, very still in its like infancy where we're doing a lot of a lot of testing, but we have direct access to real use cases.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um so what you're able to do is create a zero-knowledge proof of your email.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: By doing that, all you have to do is send us an email through your address to a specific domain that we're just verifying it's you.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: We create your your proof for you.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then that way now you have this credential, right?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: So what we've done is given you access to to generate this credential.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how do we give you utility beyond that, right?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's why we're we're we're building this out in a sense where, okay, how do you access the internet with this credential?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: How can you go on a website and log in using your proof without um sharing your personal data, right?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: We want the website to know that yes, this is a legitimate individual, right?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: But they don't need to have all your data, right?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and likewise for yourself, you want to be able to access these sites without sharing all your data, right?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and a big part of this too is like how do you how do you like to really get into it, how the user experience, right?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, your vote specifically caters to a lot of people that aren't necessarily blockchain native, right?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're just giving the everyday person a better platform to use for their governance, right?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yes, we use blockchain, and yes, we're using these newer tech things, right?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: That not everyone's too familiar with.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And some people, quite frankly, it still worries, but it's so baked into the background that anyone can essentially use it and not have to question it, right?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: We're taking a similar approach to very on how we can attract people that you know understand that there's a problem, aren't necessarily techy on that side, but can still uh get value from this product and from this experience.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the best type of blockchain project, at least from what I've seen, is those that kind of hide it in the background.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you never want to just like lead with that, like, hey, crypto blockchain, zero knowledge proofs.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone's like, what the what the hell does that all mean?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And like, so that really is something.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, how do you abstract away that complexity?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: I love that you're like integrating with solutions that people use every day, like email, right?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: As opposed to you know, creating something brand new that they have to have to go through.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it's something that people can really understand, which I like.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you mentioned zero knowledge proofs, which is kind of on the one side of the verification side, you have the zero knowledge proofs, and we'll we'll talk about the voting a bit later as well.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, a lot of people hear that term and they just like, what the hell does that mean, right?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I know it's a really revolutionary technology.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen a lot of really cool use cases of zero knowledge proofs around decentralized identity and those sorts of things.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, can you break it down in plain language, like what it is and why it's such a powerful like tool for what you're building?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: So again, like you could go with a super like uh technological explanation, right?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Or you could just say, like, what is it?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: What are you trying to achieve?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that resonates with a lot more people.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: So what like your zero knowledge proof does with your email credential, those two things, is it's picture like you have, you know, essentially a digital wrapper for your email where you're able to peruse the internet, access things, uh, verify yourself without like necessarily sharing any of that underlying data.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're proving that something's real, you're verifying that something's real without necessarily, you know, showing anything, right?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um now and then with that, like both the both parties actually get what they're supposed to receive, right?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like you're pulling a fast one on the website um and like hacking it or anything, right?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: That website's still getting the information it needs to understand that you are a real user, you're not a bot or anything else, right?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you yourself you're gaining access to all these different this places.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like you pretty much get access to the internet without worrying about your your data, right?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um now with email specifically, like every every credential arguably has a different use case, right?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Email alone has this ability to give you access to the internet, right?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: But you can go down to phone numbers, bank cards, um, membership cards, um, your your government ID, right, to prove your age in some instances.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I know age verification online right now is becoming a really hot topic.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it like it really depends on what the credential is and how you're utilizing it is how that zero knowledge proof sort of operates.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, you're just proving something's real without you know sharing the underlying data.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love that.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great way of explaining it and kind of breaking it down in a way that you know is understandable to folks that maybe don't have that technical background.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I appreciate that.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, really cool.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, talking about your vote a bit more, um, you know, obviously you've built this blockchain-based uh voting technology.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, first I was wondering if you could tell me like a little bit more about like how you've integrated blockchain, like you know, what blockchain are you building on right now?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm curious to learn more about that.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, cool.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we've been operating on Algorand um since day one.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm not sure if you're familiar with Algorand yourself.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I am.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay, cool.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we've been working with them since day one for for one reason.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Really, is when we were shopping for like what chain we wanted to use, because there's a lot of options, right?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't just come down to um cost per transaction because there's many chains that are far, far cheaper per transaction cost, but it's a trade-off of okay, what's your like Algorand's instant finality is like the number one thing that we we use them for, right?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's you're not waiting for your block times.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, for example, when you're sending um sending Bitcoin, like it does take it's it's fast, arguably, right?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: But it does take some time.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this way when you're when you're talking about governance and voting, you want to make sure that when that user casts that ballot, that they get their receipt right away, like as fast as possible, right?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's not one of the number one reasons we use Algorand for that.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the the blockchain side of it and how we utilize that is when think about like um the the voter casting a ballot is that blockchain experience, right?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's that little like nutshell.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then we've built an entire like experience around that for the the administrators when they're creating the election and the analytics and the results and the voter lists and everything else that goes into an election is around that like tiny little nutshell where it all started of just how do you verify the ballot, right?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: So when a voter submits a a ballot or vote, they receive at the then that moment their sort of identity is attached to a wallet that's making a transaction on-chain under that sort of election ID, under that choice, right?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And um, they're receiving that sort of transaction hash, their digital receipt.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And and with that, they can go on-chain and check, okay, this was counted.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they can audit, they can self-audit, self-verify.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: And same with the administrative side too, right?
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: They both have you know equal amounts of access to this sort of event that just took place, right?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it takes the the questioning and it removes the need for for even having to trust it.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: You can just go verify it, right?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so many things are built on trust us, trust this, trust that, or like that's great and all, but you know, when that fails, what do you do?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that, you know, at the moment, trust in elections is a little shaky right now.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's, you know, a lot of challenges to democracy around the world right now.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh a lot of people have a lot of kind of lost trust, or maybe not so much lost trust as they have lost agency, maybe in the voting process as well.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, just don't feel excited about it, maybe.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how do you see what you're building kind of helping address these issues and rebuild that kind of trust and and engagement in democracy and other you know forms of voting?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Or yeah, I'd love to hear about that.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, keyword you said there is engagement, right?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's so much more than trust and verification, and all these things help create the experience.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: But the the biggest problem is like engagement and participation, right?
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Especially when you're talking about feedback, even you know, you could say at uh a company of 50 people, you know, if you're only getting feedback from one person, you're not gonna operate as as efficiently as you can because like you're not hearing the voices, right?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, from a nation level, right?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you're getting really low levels of participation, like you're not hearing the true opinion of your people, right?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: So essentially what we're trying to do is like you tackle this larger problem of we just want to increase participation, right?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to be very careful because you're walking on a thin line.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: You can't make it too easy to access because you'll have, you know, problems, right?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Or or too difficult to access because you'll be in the same boat where there's, you know, they don't want to engage, access is too difficult, right?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you increase participation without uh lacking any security and if not even like increasing security, right?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that's sort of how we're how we're operating right now.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's very interesting.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very interesting space because you find out that many voters, it's not that they don't care at all.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a lot of, you know, it's just too complicated to access.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: And when you talk about the complications, it's really, I mean, it it's all a lot of human psychology where like even having to log on to do certain multi-factor authentication steps um turns a lot of people down, right?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like they have other things going on in their day and they don't necessarily need to take the five minutes, you know, to to go cast this vote when it could take 30 seconds, right?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that plays such a big role in engagement nowadays because people, like I said, they're busy, they got their life going on, right?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's not that they don't care, they want to take part in it, they just like they're getting turned away by these these friction sort of tasks.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: That was a great way of breaking that down.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I'd love to hear now some of the kind of like piling you've done.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned how it's relatively early stage, really testing out a lot of these different use cases.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, tell me about some of the different kinds of uh elections that you've supported or um types of organizations that you're working with.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: So originally when we started this, I had my eye set on like, yes, we need to run municipal elections, we need to run, you know, national elections, right?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: I I very early on decided that, okay, maybe not.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um let's focus elsewhere for now.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because one, the regulations are so high, and two, it's just, you know, you don't have to start there.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so what who we've been working with is like student unions, homeowner associations, condo boards, uh like country clubs, for example, um, small businesses, large institutions, just across the board, right?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's an association for about everything you can think of across North America.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they all need to make decisions, right?
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we're just sort of uh facilitating that decision for them, giving them the the technology, the platform to do it seamlessly, easily, and and all very securely.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but one of our highest um repeat style clients are definitely uh student unions.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um when you think of like how important governance is to them, it's it's kind of like you're you're voting on your your student president before you're voting on your you know municipal leader, right?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um like you're that's like where it's sort of born, right?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um and they take it very seriously, and it's really cool to see too in how how um far they want to take it as well, in the sense that like they they care about so much of this stuff, and it's so cool, like more so than you know, some governments, right?
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's it's bananas, but um working with them early on has really helped us shape our platform as well.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we're very thankful for that too, because you see firsthand what these tiny little tweaks and tiny little changes can do for the entire platform.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so speaking about like pilots, is you know, you go into these things wondering, okay, like how much can you study what they've done in the past to try and you know help what's going to happen now.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you almost just have to let you know humans be humans, right?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like just let it be and see how the platform reacts, right?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And we've actually seen um participation double once we actually saw a fresh pilot triple, which I thought was insane.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're going from a new platform, something you're not too familiar with, you're looking for you know, at least the same numbers, right?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Relative would be great.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: But to see these participations spike is like, okay, you know, maybe, just maybe, this is something that can work, right?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and meanwhile, having no like security risks at the same time.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that the early on pilots have been very, very successful and very um reassuring that you know, people do care.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Just give them a better way to access these things.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like student unions is a great kind of entry point uh as well, because you're right, like um, you know, they I was 17 when I started university, so that was probably one of the first elections, if you will, that I, you know, voted in, definitely before a municipal or provincial or federal election.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, you know, it could be a first kind of experience that people have with taking part in a form of democracy.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, you know, it's really cool that you're providing them with a unique experience.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and yeah, you never know, maybe from there it'd be interesting to see where it goes, right?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's you're right, everything has an association.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: You think of unions, grassroots like collectives, like activist groups.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's so many different, you know, groups that could really benefit from something like this, which is really cool.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll be right back after this brief announcement.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: Are you part of a nonprofit or mission-driven organization curious about Web3 but not sure where to start?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: We've got you covered.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: The CryptoUltras Web3 Impact Toolkit is a free, comprehensive resource designed to help nonprofits and change makers navigate the world of crypto and web three.
• 21:31
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• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's everything you need to take that first step all in one place, and the early access is now live.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and it's of course all free as well.
• 21:46
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• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: Don't worry.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: To check it out, head to cryptoaltruist.com slash toolkit or simply click the link in the show notes.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: And now back to the episode.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: But I do want to shift as well to talk a little bit about very, um, which is kind of the other side of it, of course.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, there's so much going on right now around data and privacy and concerns, you know, that that people have around how their data is being used online, and um, that we're maybe giving over a lot more data than we than we should be to to folks that maybe don't always have our best interests in mind.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, how do you see what you're building with very like helping address this and and building a better system where we don't have to have these worries every day and every time we interact with something online?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's like a million-dollar question, I think.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: So um super interesting right now, and you're totally right about the space we're in, especially like where AI is going and how that is going to help or hurt our own personal security, right?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um what we're trying to do very simply is just give the people more control, right?
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: You are a person, an individual in charge of your own life, in charge of your own identity.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if we can give you an option to help keep that more secure, then that's amazing.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you do something without or not is up to you.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um now, with that said, there is a level of security you have to keep an eye out for because as threats increase, as technology increases, these two things go like head to head, right?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you're always sort of trying to like stay two or three steps ahead of of what those threats are.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um another big thing too is the the push from a lot of our governments right now towards this matter, um towards data privacy, security, your personal data, age verification online, um is to me quite scary that uh all of a sudden too, it's like I'm sure that there was always the talk for for many, many years about this, but they're just really putting the hammer down now.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it worries me that if our citizens don't have an alternative where it's either, okay, now the government's totally in charge of my data, and you know, I'm not saying they're bad actors by any means, but there's it's such a large group where like, how do you it's you know yeah, there's opportunities for someone to take advantage of that, yeah.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: And what we're trying to do is just say, hey, listen, you know, you're your own single individual person.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't you take control of it yourself, right?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you can operate how you want, however you want, but know that you have control of who you are, right?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that that's a big part of it.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you mentioned AI, and that's obviously another, you know, big thing happening right now.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's getting harder to know what's real and what's not online.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot more bots and deepfakes, and and so I'm curious like how you see this potentially playing into that and helping uh address this kind of concern and and challenge around truth on online.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've always been like a straight line down the middle with AI because there's equal opportunities on like how you can build and and and grow and scale and do so many cool things.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if you if you know how to use it, it becomes so powerful.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, it becomes so powerful, like what kind of threats are that is that gonna create, right?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Especially online.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're you're looking at videos of stuff, you're you could have sworn was real, and then you're reading that, oh, that was fake.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what?
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's crazy.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: You have to circle back and go, are you sure?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, more so than videos is just general data, right?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: When you talk about um uh the news, right?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what AI could be out there doing and posting.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I think this will play a large role in in verifying that.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: For example, you could be an accredited uh journalist, right?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: But like how do you verify that those things you're publishing online are from you, for example?
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it could be a great use case on how you defend that, right?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, because of of course there's gonna be AI across the internet, and you know, you can't necessarily hide from that, but if you can sort of navigate it, right?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's I think a good start, at least.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, I don't know.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you if you can tell me where it's going, then you're a very wise man.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think anybody knows, but uh, we're all just sort of building to kind of go with the flow, honestly.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: We have projections of what we think might happen and we build towards that.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, obviously with safety in mind and security, but um you also want to utilize this tech too, right?
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: You'd be a fool not to ignore it is just crazy at this point.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: So uh happy, happy balance.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's a it's a tricky balance to find for sure.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that like technology like what you're building will be essential in helping us find that balance, right?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and find how do we make sure that folks can use this technology in good ways while also limiting how it can be used to kind of like you know harm us, right?
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, yeah, I see blockchain as kind of essential to the future of AI.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like, you know, when it comes to creating like fair, ethical, like safe AI tools, I see blockchain as essential in that um, you know, especially from the kind of like the verification, you know, layer, um, absolutely.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really cool.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, you know, I think that with all this, there's a real kind of tension, you know, between privacy and accountability, right?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, especially when it comes to like online elections.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, many argue that too much anonymity, you know, could enable bad actors, while others worry that uh verification systems could be used as tools of surveillance, kind of like what you mentioned, like you know, you know, governments being in control of it could create opportunities for a bad actor in the future to take advantage of that.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: So um I'm curious, like, how do you think about walking this kind of line responsibly and reconciling this privacy and accountability piece?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like, um, what's your thoughts on that?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, I think uh a key part of this is just your self-sovereign ownership of these things.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you can remove the amount of people involved, I think it's better, right?
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, for example, like if you're um if you've been issued an I den a piece of identification, right?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like how many different parties are involved in that that identification and beyond that, where you use it, who's involved, right?
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, for example, you're you're scanning, okay.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: You have your Canada, you got uh maybe a PC optimum card or some sort of rewards card.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sure do.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Gas station, the grocery store.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Everywhere you go, you're scanning that, right?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: That they know that is you.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: They have not to sound like crazy about it, but like for a really good example, an everyday example, is that's tracking you in every everywhere you go, right?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so these tools sort of kind of give you that that security back, right?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's not it's not like you're hiding any vital information, but you're just in charge of the information that you share.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's up to you whether you want to share it or not.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think that between that and the government being in charge of everything is is a pretty um easy answer for most people.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, it in saying so, a lot of people don't understand that this technology does exist and that it is accessible.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: And like it really comes down to distribution and how how you can just, you know, just like we're doing today, you and I talking on a podcast that has the ability to reach so many people um that might otherwise not know that this stuff exists.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think that's just so important in this day and age, is so much education needs to happen towards this.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there's just not enough of it right now.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh couldn't agree more.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you know, lots of folks listening might work with uh an NGO or an organization or work with a DAO.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, walk me through like the process for how they could, you know, get engaged and start using varying your vote within their organizations.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: So for your vote, if you are just any you know organization, you have a group of people, you need to make a decision.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: You'll you'll need some sort of administrator to to log on, create an account, and host an election.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but once you're in, you can choose from like a list of templates we have, um, depending on what you're sort of doing, what you're trying to do.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: We have public forms and private forms.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: So the private form is more for your actual sort of you know private election, right?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Public form is more survey-based, feedback based, right?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: We've worked with conferences in the past to um just kind of be on site and get general feedback, right?
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: And these feedback machines are equally as important when you're talking about user friction, right?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: If if you scan this QR code and you need to share your email before you give feedback, nah.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like people are just gonna stop.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: You'll still get a couple committed individuals, and those are probably gonna be bad reviews at that point because they they want to get in there, but um, for the most part, you just you get drop-off.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so, anyways, if if you do the the private election will prompt you to upload a voter list.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um and this part is pretty important too because we don't hold any lists, like every new election you have, you'll need to upload another list.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: We don't store any of that information because we just become a target, essentially, right?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when that list is uploaded, all of those contacts are all hashed for the the meantime, like the duration of the election.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um so even if somebody got in, you know, you gotta get through a lot still, right?
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they're not just like, you know, kind of naked email addresses, just copy and paste, see you later.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um so, anyways, once you do that, you can manage your email list, you can you can create your election, drag drop questions.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's all like pretty straightforward.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's nothing, you know, out of this world crazy.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's just really accessible, really manageable.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you publish that election, it goes live, away you go.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody gets their email, they interact with it.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it comes with like an access code too for for your access.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then you as the administrator, you have your own results panel, right?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Where you can see your live results coming in, you can see the live tallies, participation rates, all your sort of analytics.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we take analytics very seriously because um, you know, what you learned today is gonna help you grow tomorrow, kind of thing, right?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that goes a long way, especially in this space.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then as a voter, like we talked about before, you're simply just casting your vote and you're getting a receipt and you're continuing your day, right?
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: You're good to go.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, you have like results, exports, and all these, again, like just so many different things that like create the experience.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, it's really just about being able to create an election in a matter of minutes, not you know, fuss about with your voter list and worry about you know misinformation and publish it live, good to go.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: The voters voted for you know in 30 seconds, and this whole entire process just doesn't need to take as long as it currently does, right?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then as far as like integration for very, right now a big thing for us is getting partners that want to integrate us as um sort of verification or login um actions or items, and um with that, you know, there's growth, right?
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we already have a growing user base through our our beta, which is pretty exciting.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and we use them for a lot of testing.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we have a couple early login partners already, like authentication partners, that's the word I was looking for.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: And um and with that, just you know, organic growth happens, right?
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: You see that this adds value.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's simple, it's easy, and it's secure, right?
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're an organization looking to um give your employees, your members a simple, easy, secure method to to interact, to access, to verify, then this could be a great option as well.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh very cool.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I love that how much you're taking like the data privacy piece seriously, because that's obviously one of the main criticisms of folks that are hesitant around like online digital elections, is that you know, the information getting um getting like stolen or or there being some sort of vulnerability that someone accesses, and then all of a sudden all your info's on the dark web or something like that.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: And we've seen so many cases lately.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I've gotten a number of emails from different organizations like oh sore, you might have been involved in this hack and you might have, yeah, you know, your email might have been, you know, sold off.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Some like, you know, those sorts of things.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of freaky.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's great that you're making sure that you don't store any of that, you know, and you just every time they have to kind of start from scratch, re-upload that list, which is good.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it turns out that like those lists they they change all the time, anyways.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: You have employees coming and going, you have students coming and going, and members coming and going.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's really just no need to keep it in the first place, right?
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: So that's great.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, as we near the end of this conversation, it's been fascinating um chatting you chatting with you about this.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's really uh one of kind of the web three use cases that I think has that staying power and and will be you know important in the future.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we're seeing, you know, a lot of big institutions around the world start to explore this technology as well and see how it can be you know enabled in their institutions to to help with everything from accountability to kind of data management and access.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so looking, you know, as someone who is at the intersection of this kind of space of decentralized identity and digital voting, what are some of the like trends you're keeping an eye on or emerging kind of tech or primitives that you know we should keep an eye on that you think are interesting that will continue to grow into the future?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's all about general adoption, right?
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like how many people do you know that have uh a crypto wallet, for example, right?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's always a good, you know, metric to keep an eye on because there's some sort of familiarity, right?
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: When you when you receive your uh digital voting receipt, that's essentially like an introduction to a wallet, right?
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Very simple, first time, like not in your face or nothing, but it gets you gets the ball rolling.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's it's a really good question though, because there's so many different things you could look at.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I think your general adoption is the most important to keep an eye on on how people are thinking, how they're interacting.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um I know for sure that the majority of people that are involved in Web3 is still nowhere, it's just minimal, minimal compared to our the rest of our um people that are not so involved yet, right?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Whether that's just through skepticism or um they just don't even know about it, right?
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um I still have conversations with people all the time, and they're like, oh, blockchain?
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: What I've never really I've heard of it, but I never looked into it, you know?
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because it and another problem is it's so associated still with with like uh, you know, blockchain tokens, you know, trading.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just like it goes straight there for so much of it, right?
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: But what we're really trying to do is paint the picture behind, like, you know, you take blockchain and you strip it down, and what is it most valuable for?
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: What is it actually used for beyond all these other things, right?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's people create technology all the time and it has so many different use cases, but like just what can you use this for to create value elsewhere?
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're really trying to focus on.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's like the educational piece behind it, right?
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get scared about blockchain, just look at what it can do, though.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: I see that every day.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: I do some consulting with nonprofits uh on different ways they can use blockchain at their organizations.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: And um, when I have those first meetings with folks to kind of talk about it, it is always that, you know, isn't it scams, you know, meme coins like pump and dump sort of things, you know, shady criminals, all that sort of stuff around blockchain.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think the space has a lot of work to do, obviously, to shed some of those uh kind of stigmas that people have towards it.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so again, it's great that you're like kind of baking that into the background and abstracting away the complexity of blockchain so people when they interact with it realize, oh, that was easy.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it made things easier, it was valuable for my life, like it gave some sort of benefit as opposed to just you know seeing all these kind of negative things in the news, right?
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, obviously there's so much more that we could have talked about uh in this conversation.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what's the best place though for folks that want to learn more about your vote and very follow your work, get involved.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: And do you have a call to action for listeners?
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you can check out our website at yourvote.ca or.io if you're outside of Canada.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you can find our very information at get very.co.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'll share the links with you after if you if you're if you want to share them.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: You can follow myself on Twitter.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: You have um your vote's on Twitter, Very's on Twitter.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: We do a lot of our communicating over Twitter.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: We have Instagram and Facebook and stuff too.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: But uh if if you want to get involved, that's definitely where you're gonna find us.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll of course make sure to include all those links in the show notes for folks listening along.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um to wrap up on a kind of final note of I guess like inspiration or really kind of going back to the urgency of this problem that we're that we're looking at.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: If we get digital identity right over the next decade, what do you see this changing for the everyday person?
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: And if we don't get it right, um, what's really at stake here?
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think you're gonna see more change if we don't get it right versus if we do.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think if we do, you're gonna see things kind of grow as you think they would, right?
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be no scary moments, there's gonna be no concerns, you're just gonna be doing life and in charge of your life, in charge of your data, right?
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: Which I think at the end of the day is like what everyone probably thinks is happening right now.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but really, you know, in fact, it's not the case at all.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I don't think much would change in in that sense, but I think if we get it wrong, you're gonna see a lot of things change.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna see the internet change entirely, right?
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you go to age verification to these different levels of access, um, you're gonna just see this entire thing flip on its head.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there's no one corner of it that you'll be able to like recognize anymore.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you really want to get like, you know, extreme about you know getting it right or wrong.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're at a very pivotal moment where it either, you know, is gonna go one way or the other.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's important that we're building these tools to help um, you know, at least move the needle a bit, give people more control.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm not saying like day one, you know, we're gonna riot against the government towards our digital control, but there just has to be options and alternatives, is all I'm saying.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: And we are definitely at a pivotal moment, like you mentioned.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's great seeing tech like what you're building being built as part of the solution.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it definitely gives me hope when you hear all this scary stuff around data and elections and privacy.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's good to see folks building towards you know positive solutions like you are.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for what you're building.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for joining today.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: And for those listening, again, everything you need to know will be in the show notes, social links, uh, links to the website if you want to get in touch or get involved.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, thank you so much, Cooper, for being here today.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was a real pleasure uh connecting and learning from you.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Drew.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your time.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that was Cooper Squirrel of your vote and very a few things from this conversation really stand out to me.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: First, it seems that so much of how our digital world works right now is backwards.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: We overshare by default, handing over our entire identity just to confirm a single fact.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: And zero knowledge proofs offer a different path where privacy and verification work together, as opposed to being at odds.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's a powerful idea, and given everything that's going on right now, it's easy to see why it matters more than ever every year.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: The second is what this means for democracy.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: The idea that a vote can be both completely anonymous and fully auditable may feel almost contradictory when we started.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: But it's what fragile, distrustful moments like this call for.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: At a time when faith in elections is being tested around the world, technology that lets people verify an outcome without compromising anyone's privacy is a real game changer and could go a long way in rebuilding trust.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the third is the clear-eyed view of the risks.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: In a space like identity and verification, it would be easy to be a pure evangelist.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: But honesty about the tension between privacy and accountability, about how these systems could be misused or turn into tools of surveillance if we're not careful, is so important.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: We're heading into a decade where it's going to get harder and harder to tell what's real and who's real online.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: Getting digital identity right, in a way that empowers people rather than exploits them, might be one of the defining challenges of our time.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: So for listeners who want to learn more about your vote and Very, follow Cooper's work, or get involved, we've included all the relevant links in the show notes.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: A huge thank you to Cooper and the teams at Your Vote and Very for sharing the work and vision with us today and for leveraging the power of blockchain to build a better, more democratic world.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that wraps up today's episode of CryptoUltrists.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for tuning in.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: If you're inspired to explore more stories at the intersection of Web3 and Social Impact, be sure to visit us at CryptoAltrist.com for articles, resources, and more.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: And if you love what you heard, it would mean the world if you could rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: Your support is huge in helping us reach more listeners like you and keeping the platform going strong.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks again for joining us, and I look forward to having you back for the next episode.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: Until then, let's keep showing the world the good of crypto.