Latest / Identity at the Center / #250 - Demystifying Blockchain Identity with Jay Schulman of RSM

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#250 - Demystifying Blockchain Identity with Jay Schulman of RSM · Identity at the Center

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This is identity at the center. If it has anything to do with
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IAM, this is the go to podcast now your hosts Jim McDonald and
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Jeff Stedman. Welcome to the Identity at the
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Center podcast. I'm Jeff and that's Jim.
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Hey, Jim. Hey, Jeff, how are you?
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Oh, not so bad yourself. Good.
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I feel like my my voice is a little hoarse.
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I just got done presenting a executive read out of IGA road
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Map. And yeah, jump right over to do
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the podcast because the show must go on.
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You talked for almost an hour straight.
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I think I clocked at 1.15 minutes without like a break at
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all, so yeah. Yeah.
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But there was, there were points where I was like, does anybody
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have any questions? And of course nobody had any
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questions. I was like, OK, I'll talk for
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another 10 minutes straight. Yeah.
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So when that happens, I just say, yeah, I'm picturing roaring
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applause in my mind, and I just kind of go with that and just
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assume that everybody's loving what I'm saying.
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Yeah, I know. Like this podcast?
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Yeah, exactly. Like you throw the podcast out
1:17
there and the only way you know if people are listening is if
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they go and give you a five star rating or go and subscribe to
1:26
YouTube channel. Are these subliminal hints
1:29
working do you think? I hope so.
1:31
I mean, those are cool. Or come up to us in conferences
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and things like that. That was Identiverse in New York
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City last week. I think that was, I forget where
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I am this week, but I had somebody come up and ask me
1:42
about that, which was kind of cool.
1:43
It seems like for whatever reason, you're like the
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approachable one. Everyone comes up to you.
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And I don't know, maybe I just have like, you know, resting B
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face or something like that where nobody wants to come up.
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Why is where my I was wearing my fancy suit jacket, So I think
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people Los Angeles come up and say, whoa, that's a cool jacket.
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Yeah, Hugh Hefner died and left you all his jackets, I feel
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like. Yeah, exactly.
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So we're starting some new things coming up here and before
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we get to our episode, we're actually going to get into
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blockchain identity and stuff like that.
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But before that, something that's coming up later this week
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that we're pretty excited to to share is we're starting a new
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series of kind of podcast episodes calling them Sponsor
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Spotlight for now. Basically they're fully
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sponsored episodes that we've collaborated with different
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folks on and the idea is to have a less vendor neutral
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conversation. This podcast is generally we try
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to be as better neutral as possible, right?
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But sometimes we really want to get into like maybe a specific
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product or service or something like that.
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And this kind of I feel like gives us an opportunity.
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So it's extra content doesn't replace our existing content.
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Does that make sense, Jim? Yeah, yeah, it makes sense to
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me. I mean, you know, honestly, I
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was thinking during that entire episode, like this feels like a
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normal episode. So I have a feeling the sponsor
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spotlights aren't going to feel that much different.
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I think our, you know, our listeners are the ones who
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benefit because it's just extra content.
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There was a little bit more of like you know, we we always
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tried to stay very vendor neutral and we had, we had more
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leeway on the sponsored episodes.
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But actually I think that can be beneficial because if we're
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talking to talking to somebody from a sponsoring company and
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they can say like hey, this is how we solved that problem that
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just, you know, I don't know, I don't get offended by that.
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I think that's actually pretty interesting.
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Yeah, I think it just, you know, like so we, we try to stay away
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from questions that would be like too salesy or too like too
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much of A commercial for folks. But these new episodes are not
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that. So I feel like like I kind of
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mentioned it in the one that we've already recorded like the
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shackles are off. It's like, hey, let's ask
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specific questions about this because that's the things that I
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want to know. I think that's kind of the
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intent is like, OK, how does this actually work, you know,
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what does it take to do this sort of thing and get a little
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more detail around that versus just trying to be maybe abstract
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about it? I I kind of feel like the the
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folks who want to do the The Spotlight series, they want to
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be on the Identity at the Center podcast, right?
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They like the formula of what we do, which is education and
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entertaining. And so I think folks, you know,
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our listeners, if you just go out there and listen to a
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Spotlight episode and give us your feedback, like, do you like
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it? What else would you like to see
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that'll help us, right? We, I mean just like this
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podcast in general. We started it and depended on
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the feedback because that tells what we're doing right and what
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was not so right. Yeah, we are constantly building
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this car while we're driving down the street.
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And yeah, I think it'd be cool to get some feedback.
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So yeah, folks can check it out later this week.
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Probably going to drop these on Wednesday, Wednesdays or
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Thursdays, kind of kind of, you know, kind of off cycle from
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things, but curious to see what people think, you know, get us
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feedback, use LinkedIn. We've got the contact form on
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our website. We've got a new voicemail button
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that I've put on our website, idacpodcast.com.
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So if you go to our contact page now, there's a little thing that
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you can do to send us like a 92nd audio clip.
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And then from that we'll use that on our show theoretically,
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depending on how we get. But I'm curious if you know
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people want to send something to us.
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We can test it out and see how that works, but that'd be a good
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way to maybe send some feedback. Now are you concerned at all?
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Because I know we've always had to contact us link where
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somebody could type something in.
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And it feels like in the past month or two since we really
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went crazy with getting all of our content up to YouTube, I'm
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getting a bunch of contact information from people who want
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to market our YouTube site and get us as many more subscribers.
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And it's like it's not about the number, it's about getting the
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information out there. So we have like 500 subscribers,
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but it's people who really are loyal to the podcast wanting,
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you know, there's the practitioners of the world as we
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like to say, I don't care like, so there's marketing things are,
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you know, 0 value to me, but I kind of look at them like spam.
6:23
Well, you're getting them because you didn't used to get
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them before. They would all come to me and
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I'd be like, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope.
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So I was acting as a filter, but no longer.
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Now we both came at the same time.
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Oh, thank you very much then, Yeah.
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It's me. e-mail infrastructure changes behind the scenes so
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that I wouldn't be a bottleneck so much.
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But yeah, you're seeing a lot more of the the stuff that I
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would normally just filter out and be like, yeah, I don't need
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to help building our YouTube channel.
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Like that's not what this is about.
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You know what else has been cool?
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I've seen a couple of posts where people are taking these
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Spotify videos that have been put out.
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So Ian Sing, you know, he's a, he's been a loyal listener to
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the podcast for a long time. Apparently we're his number one
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podcast. I mean, that's I I.
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Love Ian. Thank you.
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Thank you so much, Ian, But that is so sad.
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Can anyone pick an identity podcast as their number one
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podcast? Oh yeah.
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Flattered. That's very cool.
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I saw the same push you're talking about.
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Is this the the Spotify unwrapped basically for like
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podcasts? So that's.
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Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
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And I actually got a link sent to me from Spotify that, you
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know, there are a lot of people where we're either their top
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podcast or their top three podcast.
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So I feel really good about that because again, we kind of
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started this as like we were calling it pirate radio, where
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it's like we get 25 downloads and know who those 25 were.
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That was over four years ago, 4 1/2 years ago, something like
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that. Now we're at episode. 200 and.
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50X Is it 250 on the button? 250 on the dot.
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Yep. We should have done something
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special. Well, we did do something
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special. We did do something special.
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We're getting into a content that you and I, I think have had
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interest in. I am a skeptic on this, so we're
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going to get into it in a second.
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The other thing that you mentioned about Spotify was I
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started adding like polls and like questions to it.
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So this is just something Spotify allows us to do.
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Can't really do it on any other platforms.
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So if you're not a Spotify user or listener of podcasts and it's
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really kind of, you'll have to check it out there.
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But people have started to answer questions, leave comments
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and stuff like that. And Sean O posted a comment on
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episode 245, which I think was, I think that was Dave Middleton,
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where we're talking with him and he really loved to show you.
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So it was awesome. Can't wait to check out more,
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which is very cool, 'cause it's like, hey, we're, you know,
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still reaching new people. Yeah, absolutely.
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Yeah. And you know what I also think
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is like, people who listen to podcasts or people who have been
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our guests, like, wind up becoming our friends too.
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Like, you see these folks in person, maybe for the first
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time. You're just like, awesome.
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You really can connect. You just mentioned Dave
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Middleton. He was texting with me over the
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weekend because all the College Football Playoff games are
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happening and I'm a Georgia Bulldogs fan and it our weekend
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didn't go so great, so. I I have no idea what happened
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because I don't care. Oh, he sent his condolences to
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me, so I thought that was cool. Well, he's a nice.
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Guy, fortunately. Fortunately for him.
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Singing voice too. And he does.
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He does have a good singing voice.
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Should we get into our main topic today?
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I think it's time. He's been making Face at a Faces
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at Us the whole time here on our recording studio.
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We said we were going to do something.
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Especially he's like, what I'm here.
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Why don't we get into it? Because we really kind of.
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I'm thinking about the title here.
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It'll be kind of demystifying blockchain and identity.
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Definitely not cryptocurrency. That's not where this is going
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to go. But let me introduce you to the
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show, Jay Shulman. He's a principal and lead for
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the blockchain and digital assets practice at RSM US1 of
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our colleagues. Welcome to the show, Jay.
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I couldn't be more privileged of being Guest 250, so thank you
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for for picking me for this for this occasion.
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Yeah, high praise for sure. We appreciate you coming on
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here. And I kind of let off the fact
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that I feel like I'm a little bit of a skeptic.
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Not a little bit. I am a skeptic of blockchain and
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identity. We're going to talk about that.
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But first time on the show we always like to find out about
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background. We were kind of talking before
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we hit the record button and say, OK, well, you know, how did
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you get into the space of blockchain or identity or
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security or what are you like, what?
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What space are you like? How do you feel?
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I'm old. I feel very, very old as I think
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about that introduction. So 20 something years ago I
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started focusing on information security.
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I think like Dave Middleton said before it was even a thing my
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parents asked me when I took my first infosec job is that that's
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a full time job, which is amazing when you think about it.
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Today, 10 years later, around 2010, I got into Identity and I,
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before we hit the record button, you know what we were talking
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about how that that happened. And I've always and the theme I
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think you'll hear throughout this is I've always tried to go
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where other people aren't. And it's really fascinating when
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you think about where Identity was in 2010, 'cause you'd say,
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well, Jay, that's that. It was a thing back then and it
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was, it was amazing to hear about you.
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You guys just presenting an IGAI, don't I don't we
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definitely call it governance at that point, but I'm not sure IGA
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had been a moniker yet. I think about sale point was was
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just governance, Vexa was out there Tim and Tam you want to
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think about what UCTA looked like in 2010 versus what it
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looks like today. It is it's amazing to me while I
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have have left the identity space momentarily probably it's
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it's been amazing to watch what 10 years of innovation have done
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in the space and and I'm certainly proud of what I did
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back in 2010, 2011, 20/12/2013 but it it's it's just it's so
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cool to look back on that and so so I went back.
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I actually focused on another area of security application
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security spent a ton of time there and I did a project back
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in early 2017 at an incredibly old financial services company
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that was implementing blockchain.
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And I'll, I'll be honest, I was skeptical then too.
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I was I I was not born and bred for this and we'll go into the
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details of it. So I don't want to preface that
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part. But I looked at the tech and
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we'll talk about what the tech is and why I think it's
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legitimate. But I I didn't think this was
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going to become of anything. And doing that project at the
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Super old financial services company really showed me that
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there's value and that this was going to be a thing.
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And you know, we all, we all work together.
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Somebody at the company called me up and said, you know, is it,
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is this really a thing? Is this what you want to do?
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Think so. And they're like, all right,
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you're in charge. And and here I am today and I,
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I, I love it. But I also think that 10 years
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from now will kind of laugh that there was a blockchain guy,
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'cause I think you think back to 2000 and there's probably a
13:21
person in charge of the Internet, you know, oh, I run
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our Internet practice. I just, you know, that doesn't
13:28
exist today. And I don't, I don't think
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blockchain will be a thing in 10 years either.
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But I'm super excited to kind of get into it because I bet you're
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not the only skeptical person or people out there.
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And so hopefully you can represent all the skeptics as we
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go through it today. I'm.
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Going to do my best and you say in charge of the Internet.
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I immediately go to the IT crowd and Moss and Roy pulling out the
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little black box for Jen like this.
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Jen is the Internet and they're and she's carrying it around
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with such reverence and things like that.
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You know, I see, you know, maybe that's blockchain in the future.
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I don't know, you know, for the, for the, for the real geeks.
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So when I say I'm a skeptic, I feel like it's not because a
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technology skeptic more of a, it seems like a really good
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solution in search of a problem. And I've been hearing and seeing
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about this for at least five years now.
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I remember seeing you at a conference several years ago.
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I was like, oh, that's interesting.
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Yeah, OK. You know, five years later, one
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of the questions that I had recently in our Spotify poll
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was, have you set up a decentralized identity yet?
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Nobody has. So I think it's maybe still in
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that, you know, early adopter maybe stage of things, but maybe
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we can get into that. But I don't want to lose people
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right away. So let's talk a little bit about
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blockchain itself. What is it?
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Can you kind of help me understand the identity
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components, especially of the blockchain?
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Absolutely. And I'm for anybody who is
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actually super deep in blockchain, listening to this,
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this discussion is going to be hogwash to you.
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I'm actually going to try to think about this from an
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identity perspective. So somebody who is somewhere in
15:10
their identity career and how they might think about
15:13
blockchain and and it's kind of how I went and looked at it
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maybe in 20/15/2016 and said I I thought this was some dude in
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his basement who wrote all kinds of homegrown encryption code and
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it was going to be, you know, a hot mess.
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What I found was something really similar to way the
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Internet works. It is really based on asymmetric
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encryption, public and private key pairs.
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And so when we think about the blockchain it really represents
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well first it's immutable. I didn't in 2017 I I completely
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asked. I'm not sure I knew what the
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word immutable meant, so I looked it up.
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ChatGPT didn't exist so I couldn't quickly ask that.
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And it's a right ones technology and I think that is actually the
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use case. How much time do we spend as
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security professionals, as identity professionals, as
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investigators, making sure that the data that we have hasn't
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been changed? And so we have this technology
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that you can only write once. How do you do that instead of
16:25
having a single repository? And I'll tell you, this is the
16:28
absolute worst database in the entire world, hands down.
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It is slow. It is written to text files like
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it's not even, it's not even a real database.
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It is everything that you would hate about database technology
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is how block chains work. But because it's slow is what
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gives IT security and immutability and that's the way
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it is built as a feature, not a bug.
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And so we have this, this copy that's spread all around the
16:59
world. Bitcoin is the biggest block
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chain. Again, we're not talking about
17:03
cryptocurrency here today, but just quick example is there's
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11,000 nodes, 11,000 copies, full copies of the Bitcoin
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blockchain spread all around the world.
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So as we think about data and data integrity, we're not
17:18
talking about hot and cold backups and things like that.
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We're talking about this idea that 10,000 people are keeping
17:25
copies of the same data that I have and we're comparing them to
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each other and that is really valuable.
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And so when we're talking about how the functions work, I, as
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the user of the blockchain hold a private key.
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There is a public key representation that sits on the
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blockchain and kind of what's different and and we can go into
17:47
some analogies to other security things.
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But I think what's different is it's not just recording that my
17:54
public key, it can actually record other other things about
17:58
me and certainly cryptocurrency that I hold.
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Bitcoin as an example, could be one of those things.
18:02
But more importantly, any kind of metadata that you want, you
18:08
can go record to a blockchain, whether that's a log, whether
18:12
that's what my name is or that some event happened, I went and
18:16
climbed to Mount Everest and I reached the top and we're going
18:20
to, we're going to memorialize that on a blockchain.
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There's a lot of really interesting use cases that I
18:25
think we'll dive into, but that's a pretty simple example
18:30
of it. It it is exactly if you've ever
18:34
worked in client side certificates.
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I hold the client side certificate on my side of the
18:40
blockchain and the biggest difference here and I throughout
18:44
my career, public key infrastructure was always
18:47
something that clients inquired on is it doesn't it?
18:52
It's a pain to make PKI work at scale, and I think the user
18:58
interface in blockchain is horrible today, but there's so
19:03
many people developing really high quality user interfaces in
19:07
this perspective that I really think that will get to the point
19:10
where blockchain might be described as public key
19:15
infrastructure at scale. Does that make sense?
19:18
Yeah, that's pretty interesting. So you brought up this immutable
19:22
Ledger and to me that it's something I always hear about
19:26
the blockchain with the identity management conversation.
19:29
And you said there's a lot of good use cases and probably
19:33
there's some use cases that aren't so good.
19:35
But I I guess like I hear about this immutable Ledger as an I am
19:41
practitioner, like what does that mean to me?
19:43
Where where can I see that becoming A use case that
19:46
actually can wrap my arms around?
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I think a lot of people, I mean some of the early examples I had
19:52
where they unplugged their database and plugged the
19:54
blockchain and then they're like Jay, it doesn't work.
19:55
I was like, no, that would be horrible to do.
19:58
And I've also heard the example of, well, gosh, I could take all
20:02
my log files and I could go write them to a blockchain.
20:07
Wouldn't that make sense? And I don't, I don't think so.
20:10
Again, let's think about it for a second.
20:12
This is incredibly slow. The sole purpose is immutability
20:17
when we think about all the data in the world.
20:19
I mean, I think the problem we have from a data perspective
20:21
today is so much of it is throwaway.
20:25
Where I think the use case is, let's narrow down to two things,
20:30
really important data. So I think about it from a
20:35
financial transaction perspective.
20:37
Do you care about all of the, you know, one and two dollar
20:42
transactions that you have in your bank account?
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Not really. But do I care that I paid my
20:46
mortgage or that my pay my car payment or some of these really
20:49
important payments? Absolutely.
20:52
So take that to a corporate perspective and you can see
20:54
where they may have a million transactions, but they're only
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writing like hundreds of the blockchain.
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And I think that's my mindset. So we're thinking about
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identity. We're not writing every login
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and logout. We're not writing all these
21:08
things. Are we writing a password
21:10
change? Maybe.
21:12
Are we writing a privileged access, successful login?
21:18
That's that feels right to me. And there's some of these
21:21
markers that I think that do make sense in this space and and
21:26
that's that's how I think of it. I think one of the reasons that
21:29
we see a lot of failed projects and I I think we saw these in
21:33
identity too, is you're trying to do too much.
21:36
If we just got these things smaller and simpler, we find a
21:39
lot more success. Just wondering if, you know,
21:42
we've had folks on the show talk about decentralized identity and
21:48
self sovereign identity. And I think one of the biggest
21:52
actors in that where that use case makes sense is government
21:57
agencies where they can issue a credential.
22:00
And not just government agencies, but anywhere that
22:02
you're not kind of your typical corporate IDP environment where
22:07
you change passwords and things like that.
22:09
But let's take the digital driver's license for example.
22:14
Seems to me like the blockchain could play a valuable role in
22:17
that. What are your thoughts there?
22:20
I think there's a lot of interesting use cases like that,
22:24
but I also think that there's a role.
22:26
While governments is a great example, I think there's a role
22:29
for a corporation as well. So we we all, at least
22:34
personally, I I want to be done with Social Security numbers.
22:37
I actually want to be done with passwords too, if we're going to
22:39
go argue about that. But how do I, how do I actually
22:43
know who I am? Isn't a bank a great entity to
22:49
go validate who I am? They've already done a ton of
22:52
know Your customer elements. They know everything.
22:55
They would know far too much about me.
22:57
Can't they attest on the blockchain to who I am?
23:01
That allows, yes, governments to rely upon that too.
23:06
But wouldn't it be nice to have a whole suite of corporations to
23:09
rely on it? I think the different, yeah, you
23:11
could do this today. You know the question.
23:13
I'm sure the skeptics would say I could do that in a database.
23:15
Like, that's nothing new here. I think it's the transparency
23:18
that a blockchain gives that allows you to see a whole lot of
23:22
what's going on. That gives you the comfort that
23:25
when your bank goes and attest to these things that it's
23:29
something that I can rely upon and that that I think you have
23:31
trouble doing that with the database.
23:33
So when you say the blockchain, is that a lowercase the OR an
23:39
uppercase the? Because this is one of the areas
23:42
where I'm not sure how this is supposed to work, because you
23:44
mentioned that, you know, banks had it.
23:47
What about population of people who are unbanked?
23:49
You know, we say, well, the government blockchain, OK, well,
23:52
at least in the US, 50% of the population immediately is going
23:55
to not want to use that regardless of whoever's in
23:59
charge, right? That kind of thing.
24:00
So the blockchain means, who's blockchain?
24:05
Is it? Multiple blockchains?
24:07
Is it really one blockchain to kind of rule them all?
24:11
How do you see this working? I think there are multiple block
24:15
chains. I think there are going to be
24:16
multiple public block chains. So block chains that you don't
24:20
need permissions to access. You can everybody can just go in
24:25
and use them at will and they'll be multiple private block
24:28
chains. So a group of companies get
24:31
together to collaborate around some particular idea and the
24:35
only way that you can write to that block chain is with
24:38
specific access permissions. So it's definitely a lower case.
24:43
T and I you know it, I think I compare this to the Internet a
24:49
lot because I think we see the same type of disruptive
24:52
technology coming to fruition. And if we go back to when I
24:56
started my career way, way back, I didn't you, you can't see that
24:59
I don't have any hair, but if you look me up, I don't have any
25:01
hair. I didn't have any hair back then
25:02
either. A lot of of websites failed,
25:05
right, that they got billion dollar valuations and they
25:09
crashed and burned. So are there going to be block
25:12
chains that grow huge and crash and burn?
25:15
Absolutely. Are there going to be ideas that
25:17
start off looking really successful and fail?
25:20
Absolutely. But there's also going to be
25:23
ideas that kind of chug along for a while and then you realize
25:26
that they work really well and they will become the next, you
25:29
know, whatever brand name Internet company we want to
25:32
quote right now. So what happens when a block
25:35
chain fails? If I've been using that as my
25:39
decentralized identity source or my, you know, way to verify some
25:43
sort of credential or something like that, right?
25:45
If it fails, well, now what? The data's gone with it?
25:50
How do I can I save it? Do I have to start over on a
25:54
different blockchain? So you probably need to start
25:59
over on a different blockchain. That I mean and this is super
26:03
complicated technical question, but that is one of the big
26:06
considerations of building on top of these platforms is what
26:11
what's the long term probability.
26:13
And so you do see some centralization around a number
26:18
of very big platforms because of that exact purpose.
26:22
But I I think that's a short term, a short term thing that
26:27
over time we will see that becoming less of a concern
26:30
because we can just we know which ones are going to be
26:33
successful and which ones are not.
26:34
I'd argue it's the exact same thing when you go pick an
26:38
identity tool or a governance tool or or any of these tools is
26:42
well what happens if they go out of business.
26:44
I got to go rip it out and put something new in.
26:46
And so I I don't think that the issue is that much different.
26:50
It's probably a lot more impactful though to your end
26:53
user, whereas you have a a tough weekend of transitioning from
26:58
one platform to another is a little different than ripping
27:00
out, you know, your your decentralized identity.
27:03
I guess the closest thing that I can probably liken this to would
27:06
be like switching password managers, except without maybe
27:09
the benefit of being able to export and then import, right?
27:13
Trying to go to each website and then figure out whatever
27:16
credential I had, I don't know. I mean, I think I'm speculating
27:19
here what happens, I guess. Is this something where
27:25
organizations should be creating their own blockchain?
27:28
Like if I want to start one, how would I do that?
27:30
Or maybe this isn't something like a normal organization
27:33
should be. Maybe it's like you said,
27:35
something's either finance related or maybe civic or
27:38
government or maybe education. Like do you see, like any
27:42
company, just name one starting their own blockchain for their
27:45
own. Purposes.
27:47
A lot of companies have started their own blockchain for their
27:49
own purposes I think, and I can answer the question a little bit
27:52
differently, whether we're talking about companies or
27:56
whether we're talking about individuals, I think everybody
28:00
should be experimenting and understanding how this
28:03
technology works. I don't think you should run out
28:06
and go implement this and and be a decentralized identity guru
28:10
tomorrow. I think that would be a a
28:11
horrible mistake. But I do think that it's really
28:15
important to understand how a blockchain works, how it might
28:19
be applicable in the identity space and and play with it.
28:23
And you can play with it in a public way and I can give some
28:26
examples of how to do that. Or you can spin one up in a
28:30
private way too. And all the major cloud
28:32
providers have a pretty easy template to go spin up a
28:36
blockchain. Not to say that that's
28:39
inexpensive for a personal person to do it, but there's a
28:41
lot of ways to easily play with this stuff and I think that that
28:45
is the most important thing. That's what's going to prevent
28:48
you from making the big long term mistakes and you just
28:52
become educated on it and you'll start to see the use cases
28:55
yourself. I'm pretty confident in that.
28:57
So what? How do I get started with this?
28:59
I guess what are the building blocks here associated with if I
29:02
do want to experiment? You mentioned templates, but can
29:04
you talk a little bit about like what's what does it mean to set
29:07
up a blockchain? So I think the the 1st place I
29:11
would go to really quickly understand how this works,
29:15
Ethereum is what is the second largest blockchain to to Bitcoin
29:20
and Ethereum is much more like a decentralized cloud computing
29:24
platform than anything else. And so you can run little
29:27
programs on there and it's quite powerful.
29:29
They have something called login with Ethereum and that is the
29:34
answer to password less logins or decentralized identity.
29:38
There's probably a bunch of different ways that we could
29:41
describe it and none of them would do it justice.
29:44
The idea there is again, if we go back to that basic definition
29:47
I started off with, I hold the private key, the public key key
29:52
is on the blockchain. I can go log into a website,
29:56
present my private key and public key pair.
29:59
Obviously I'm not giving my private key away.
30:01
Just for those who think I misspoke and and go log into a
30:05
website, there is a full documentation suite.
30:09
It's obviously all open source code.
30:11
You can really look at not only how to do it yourself, but how a
30:15
bunch of companies are using that technology and then you're
30:19
off to the races. You can go implement that not,
30:23
you know, full production corporate world, but you can go
30:25
implement that in a dev environment pretty easily
30:28
yourself on a private blockchain.
30:29
You can go experiment with your own website and having people
30:33
log in that way on your own website.
30:36
There's a whole lot of different things and I think that's the
30:39
best place to get started and thinking about it and that I I
30:43
think that's it's really well documented and there's a great
30:46
community behind it if you have technical questions and things
30:50
like that, to go try to figure this stuff out.
30:53
All right, I've got a couple questions here.
30:55
The 1st is, I guess you mentioned Etherium is and then
31:00
you've got blockchain. And I know there's a whole bunch
31:03
of other things out there and I don't want to equivocate this
31:07
with like cryptocurrency, right? But there's like Dogecoin and a
31:10
whole bunch of other things. Is there a benefit or drawback
31:14
to some of these blockchain styles?
31:17
I guess I don't know if that's the right word or not for
31:19
identity, like is yeah, if you're going to do something
31:22
identity like a theory miss the one to use, or if you're going
31:24
to do identity, you know whatever other template or style
31:28
is the one that's probably the best fit.
31:30
Or are there different styles of blockchains that that maybe lend
31:35
itself better to different types of identity use cases?
31:38
I'm going to try not to get too complicated or technical here
31:41
with the answer, but Ethereum has been copied a ton of times.
31:47
And so that mini decentralized computer is actually called the
31:50
Ethereum Virtual Machine or it's abbreviated a lot EVM.
31:54
And so a lot of block chains are built on top of EVM Etherium
32:00
virtual machine, which means they're actually all completely
32:03
compatible with each other. So if you build login with
32:05
Etherium, you can actually reuse a lot of that technology to log
32:09
into or to use that to use a different blockchain because
32:13
they are EVM compatible. There's probably a lot I could
32:17
go into and get more detail there, but wait, let's let's
32:19
leave it at that. So by building on top of that
32:23
style blockchain, it really allows you to extend the
32:27
possibilities. Absolutely, each block chain is
32:30
going to be different. And I think over time, what
32:33
we're going to find is block chains will have maybe not a
32:37
singular purpose, but a really small number of purposes.
32:42
And so, do I think there's going to be an identity block chain in
32:46
the future? Absolutely.
32:48
Do I know which one it's going to be today?
32:49
So that you guys could all run out and figure that out.
32:52
They don't. And I anybody who says that they
32:54
do, I mean there's some theories on which one's going to be the
32:57
the media or video and music and things like that are stored.
33:00
I'm not sure which one is going to be for that either.
33:03
So it's it's again, I think you're yeah, you put it
33:05
correctly. We're still in the early adopter
33:07
phase and we have to kind of figure this stuff out.
33:10
Who benefits from controlling the blockchain?
33:14
So if I am setting up AI, don't know if I'm one of these
33:18
companies, maybe that specializes in blockchain and I
33:20
decide, hey I'm going to create this thing that does X, what
33:24
benefit is to me to own? I don't think you can really own
33:29
the blockchain, but maybe there is some component of it.
33:32
But who benefits from being the owner of a blockchain?
33:36
The end user, and I think that is the hard part for a lot of
33:43
different stakeholders to, to get their head around.
33:48
So today we have a lot of centralized data and we have a
33:53
lot of security breaches and we have, you know, a whole bunch of
33:56
issues all around that. And the whole idea of
33:59
implementing A blockchain is, is changing the paradigm away from
34:03
the centralized data store and pushing it out to where each
34:08
individual owner owns their data.
34:10
As I say this, for those of you who have spent time in PKI,
34:15
you're going to say that's great Jay, but but the end user is
34:20
going to go lose their private key and then all their data is
34:23
lost to. And I think that that is in fact
34:27
where we need to get to. That's the gap of where we sit
34:31
today. And what the feature looks like
34:33
is not only the user interface and the tooling to make it work,
34:38
but it's the IT. It's kind of understanding that
34:43
process and making sure that the user is bought into it.
34:47
I'm there's absolutely an argument that most users don't
34:51
want to own their own data. I think it.
34:54
I'm not sure that that I fully believe that.
34:56
I think given the choice, a lot of users would own that data if
35:01
they had the right tools to hold on to it.
35:05
And I, you know, I think about my less than technical mom.
35:08
No offense, Mom. If you're listening to the
35:10
podcast today, you know you have to you have to include them in
35:13
the the, the use case here. And I think that's that's where
35:16
it gets hard, right? Mom needs to be able to to own
35:19
their own data too. The end user's the benefit, I
35:22
get that part of it, But what's in it for me as a entrepreneur
35:25
in the space? How do I make money off this?
35:27
Running a blockchain? Or is this a loss leader of some
35:31
sort? Or is that really not a viable,
35:33
I guess, strategy to build a business of creating blockchains
35:36
and rely more on public funding or or something like that?
35:40
I don't want to get too deep there.
35:41
There's a whole lot of different theories on the economics of it.
35:44
I think most importantly, you need to have sound economics
35:48
behind it. But there's a lot.
35:51
You know that there's the old expression, If you're not paying
35:54
for the product, you are the product.
35:56
And that that's the paradigm that blockchain changes, which
36:00
means it also changes the monetization model.
36:03
And there's a lot of different companies trying a lot of
36:06
different monetization models here.
36:09
Again, early adoption phase, I don't know exactly how this is
36:12
going to work. The one that strikes me that's
36:16
really interesting from that identity and the identity
36:18
proofing model is if my bank is going to proof me and write that
36:26
to a blockchain then I'm probably going to pay my bank to
36:29
do that. And there are.
36:32
Then you can start to see where there's a whole lot of new
36:35
services that pop up. Today when I go to on board with
36:39
with a company they're paying the fee to proof me versus me
36:45
paying the bank to proof me and then being able to use that all
36:50
all over the place. That's the paradigm changing
36:52
that I'm talking about and and yeah, that's that's I'm used to
36:56
getting something for free that I now have to pay for.
36:59
So I could see where that end user's like, wait, why, why do I
37:02
want to pay for this? But I also think that they'll
37:05
see a ton less friction if I only have to do that once and I
37:09
can reuse that proofing all over the place versus having to go
37:12
reproof every single time. If potentially your next
37:16
question is, well, why would a company want to do that?
37:19
Less less expenses of having to do proofing.
37:22
And from what I've seen for the past 1520 years, friction is
37:27
still a huge factor in onboarding a new user.
37:30
We got to keep that friction down.
37:32
And if I can rely on somebody else's proofing to to to reduce
37:36
my friction, that's going to get more customers on my platform
37:40
where I can then interact with them and and solve them or
37:43
whatever the platform does. Yeah.
37:46
I've mostly been listening here and learning a lot.
37:50
And it's interesting when I think Jeff was talking about,
37:54
well, how would I get started, I was expecting you to maybe say
37:58
hey go out and check out some of these services that Microsoft is
38:02
starting to create like around the web 3 point O around
38:06
Microsoft intra verified IDJ. I'm totally talking way out of
38:12
my element here. Can you even, you know, based on
38:15
what I just said there, can you give us kind of a high level
38:19
explanation of what those pieces are and whether or not that's
38:23
something that people could get into to start, you know, using
38:27
blockchain to build applications, maybe those are
38:30
identity applications. I think that it's this is, this
38:36
is that paradigm change is. I'm not going to go to the big
38:42
cloud providers and go sign up for a service.
38:45
I absolutely can go spin up a blockchain over there.
38:48
But if I'm going to go build, I'm probably going to build on
38:51
something that already exists and almost everything in the
38:54
space is open source. And and I want to remind you, if
38:58
we go back to 1997 or 2000, a lot of the Internet was open
39:02
source too. And that's that's where I find
39:05
these similarities. And So what would I have
39:07
recommended in 1997? Go learn HTML, go set up a
39:11
website and go play with this and try to see what you're going
39:15
to do and you're going to build on top of open source.
39:19
That's kind of the same thing I'd recommend somebody today.
39:22
Logging log in with Ethereum is a great example of an open
39:26
source construct that there's many possibilities that you'll
39:30
see when you get in there. And that's actually a a great
39:34
place to start, even if your goal isn't identity because
39:37
you'll see all the interconnections and you'll be
39:39
able to find whatever it is that you ultimately want to build.
39:43
But it this is bringing us back to our open source roots and I
39:47
think that's hard to believe sometimes when you see a lot of
39:50
commercial enterprises deep in this space.
39:55
But the reality is, is that that it it's open source at it's at
39:59
its core. Jay, you mentioned you were old.
40:02
Thanks, thanks for reminding me. Reminding you of that, no.
40:04
But I've heard you speak several times, and when you talk about
40:10
blockchain identity, you bring up PGP, which is like a thing of
40:13
the past, right? Why is that even relevant to
40:17
this subject? And what is PGP?
40:20
Pretty good privacy Back in in 2000, when I wanted to go send
40:27
an encrypted e-mail to somebody, I would encrypt the e-mail with
40:30
PGP and send it, you know, with my private key.
40:34
And they'd use my public key to decrypt it, much like we do in
40:37
blockchain. If that sounds familiar, Amongst
40:40
many other things for that matter.
40:42
And it was clunky and painful. It worked, man.
40:48
It worked really well. But part of the problem was
40:51
always, how do I know it's really J on the other side of
40:56
this message? And so there was the PGP key
41:01
server. And it's amazing to me that that
41:04
2324 years ago that was still housed at MIT and it is still
41:09
housed today. And I bet you can find, you
41:11
know, my, my 2324 year old public key sitting on that
41:14
server. But there's also something part
41:16
of that that was the web of trust and that was the idea that
41:20
three of us are on a podcast together.
41:22
And I'm like, guys, this is really my public key.
41:24
And you vouch for me and say, Yep, I've met Jay in person.
41:28
This is really Jay's public key. I'm going to to to cosign the
41:32
key so that you can see that that it's real.
41:35
And obviously the more people that validate that you're real,
41:38
the higher up your trust level goes.
41:41
And and I look at that and I mean brilliant in its time and
41:47
kind of left behind as a lot of the capabilities around
41:53
encryption and SSL and and a whole bunch of other things, you
41:58
know, SAML and all these things come to fruition that allow us
42:01
to do that process a lot easier. But honestly, you know what's
42:06
old is new. Again, I feel like there are
42:09
people building on top of that philosophy using a blockchain.
42:16
And I think that it's important to think about some of these
42:20
failed experiments from the late 90s and early 2000s and revisit
42:26
them in light of new technology and that, you know, that's going
42:30
to be true of AI and a whole bunch of other new things that
42:33
are coming out as well. But it goes to show you back to
42:39
the the first comment you had Jeff is this a solution looking
42:44
for a problem? It it takes time for these to
42:49
develop and I'm confident that when we look back over time,
42:55
blockchain's one of those things that holds up.
42:58
And it'll be interesting to see what very dated old balding
43:06
technology actually reappears now in the age of blockchain and
43:11
AI and a bunch of other new technologies.
43:13
I kind of feel like what we generally do with new technology
43:19
and identity is try to map it to a real world use case where we
43:24
we don't have technology, we have driver's licenses and we go
43:27
to the liquor store and that person just wants to see that
43:31
we're of age to buy their product etcetera.
43:34
So you have like this issuer and relying party and so we tie that
43:41
concept back to this. Now thinking about that I'm the
43:46
OR the Internet practice manager, you know I I run the
43:50
Internet consulting practice. And I think if you're in that
43:54
role you would have said and by the way the Internet does not
43:58
have a construct for identity for how you identify yourself.
44:03
And that's kind of one of the core problems that we've been
44:07
trying to to solve forever. And I don't know that there is a
44:12
parallel, you know, real world use case that maps to how you do
44:17
it on the Internet. So you're talking about this web
44:20
of trust in the PGP world where other people wind up attesting
44:25
to you. I think the parallel is that's
44:28
the block chains that attest to you.
44:31
I think that's a pretty fascinating concept.
44:33
That's probably why it's hard for people to wrap their brain
44:37
around this kind of approach, do you think?
44:42
I not only do I think, I think your example really resonates
44:46
with me because we we added passwords and we said, gosh,
44:52
that's the end game, right? Passwords work.
44:54
We've secured everything. And then it turned out passwords
44:57
aren't that great. And we said, OK, two factor.
45:00
And we've tried a whole bunch of different kinds of two factor,
45:03
right. UB keys again, really, really
45:06
secure but pretty clunky. Text messaging, really easy but
45:11
not necessarily that secure. And again, at each one of those
45:13
steps we kind of say, hey, we solved the problem and we we
45:18
kind of stay that way until something else better comes
45:22
along. And I think that that is in fact
45:25
the best analogy where a lot of these things we think are solved
45:30
when in fact something better is being built and developed that
45:34
will at some point realize, you know this is better than a
45:38
password. You know, this is better than
45:40
than two factor and we kind of move on.
45:43
I mean I I think about 2005 doing Access reviews and man
45:49
like I have there are definitely some companies out there that
45:52
thought they had nailed Access reviews and they had the
45:56
fanciest Excel spreadsheets and man they were on top of their
46:00
game and then the sale points and of Access come around and
46:04
it's like whoa this this we could do this a whole lot
46:07
better. And then you look at where we
46:09
are today and there's a lot more automation underneath it to make
46:13
these things work better and it and and I think that's that's
46:17
the piece we don't know it's coming or we don't think it'll
46:20
work because of our pre-existing thought process.
46:23
But when it actually comes time to to use it it's better and
46:27
that that's hard. And I don't think that's unique
46:29
to blockchain. It's certainly not unique to
46:32
identity, and I honestly think not to make, you know, go on an
46:35
AI rant, but I think I think we're going to have a really
46:38
hard time with AI for that exact reason.
46:42
Oh, you're going to tell me that AI can do an access review?
46:45
No way. And somebody's going to
46:48
implement AI on top of a governance platform in a really
46:51
unique way and they're going to kill it, man.
46:53
And I think that's hard to see as it's coming.
46:57
But once it gets here, you you kind of see the whole
46:59
perspective. So, given all that, PGP Pretty
47:04
Good Privacy Pretty Good kind of hints at the idea that it's not
47:10
perfect. Jay is PGP pretty good.
47:13
That's pretty good. That's the big moment with the
47:16
podcast for today. There's our teaser, the shortest
47:21
teaser ever. Jay, I want to ask you about
47:23
some of the applications of blockchain in the identity
47:27
management space. Is there I guess, Is there a
47:32
blockchain tool for identity? Is there a tool built on it
47:35
already today? Are there other features maybe
47:38
like ldapse or graph databases or things like that where there
47:41
are parallels that exist? So all the the graphs and and
47:49
other repositories are going to be built on top of blockchain.
47:52
Again, horribly, horribly slow on purpose.
47:55
And so that is one of the, gosh, why am I doing it this way if
48:00
I'm so I'm going to go pull all the data off the blockchain and
48:03
go put it into a graph to go access it better.
48:06
But again the immutability is, is the reason that you're doing
48:10
it. So login with theorem is is
48:13
probably the the, the beginning stages of a full identity suite.
48:19
But again, I don't look at this as let's go log into a website.
48:23
I don't I don't think that's the use case here.
48:26
I think and and let's weave in AI because I'm usually the guy
48:30
that can drop 100 type buzzwords in a a 45 minute podcast.
48:35
How do I know that. And I was my daughter and I had
48:39
a fun time listening to AI generated music.
48:41
And is this is this the real artist or is this the AI artist?
48:46
And it it was a good time. We had a a good time doing it.
48:49
But there's a lesson here in not do I want to know whether this
48:54
is real or not. But creating AI music is in fact
49:01
a skill set that I want to get credit for that.
49:04
So how do we identify the AI artist, whether that's music or
49:09
video or a picture? And so we're going to be
49:13
entering an area where identity is going to look a little bit
49:17
different and it isn't going to be the common username and
49:20
password, e-mail address and things like that.
49:24
Where blockchain identity may not actually replace LDAP, it
49:31
may not replace all of the O auth and all the different types
49:36
of of identity we do today. It may actually fill a new niche
49:41
of being able to identify some of these non traditional types
49:46
of users or or entities right? Authenticating a bot in a a
49:52
unique and definitive way so that there's again kind of a new
49:56
world of the Internet that we're going to face and I think that
49:59
the blockchain identity is in fact concentric circles versus
50:05
replacing some of the existing technology that's out there.
50:08
Sounds to me like time is a flat circle for all your True
50:11
Detective fans out there. So one of the things that I
50:14
think vendors in, well, really any space but the identity space
50:19
like to attach their products to whatever Wave is cool at the
50:25
moment, right? We saw a whole bunch of zero
50:27
trust marketing over the last few years.
50:30
When vendors come along and say, oh, we're a blocked, we have a
50:33
blockchain product, what do you think they're really trying to
50:39
get to? And I know this is probably a
50:41
little more speculative, but I feel like there's a lot of
50:43
marketing speak out there to say, oh, you know, we have the
50:46
best zero trust XYZ, we have the best blockchain XYZ.
50:51
Like what do you think vendors are thinking about in the
50:53
technology space around this? I mean I I This is why, why it
50:57
is so important for for people to go play with the talk and
51:03
understand it in a controlled research, research oriented
51:08
mindset. Because when the vendor shows up
51:10
in the room and says now with blockchain inside, you know,
51:13
with a little stick around the box, you want to be able to ask
51:18
the the really thoughtful questions that get to how are
51:22
you using it, why are you using it, what are you actually doing?
51:26
And so I I can't speculate and I'm sure there's going to be 100
51:29
different answers to those questions across the the vendor
51:32
ecosystem. But if you're not armed with
51:35
that first layer, I've touched it, I kind of understand enough
51:39
to ask the good questions. You are kind of left in the dark
51:43
with with marketing speak and I think we saw in 20/17/2018 a ton
51:49
of the built with blockchain I think that's gone away a little
51:54
bit and we're we're seeing a lot more thoughtful inclusion of
51:58
blockchain and vendor products. And so I I don't, I don't want
52:02
to say that everything's perfect, but we're getting to a
52:06
better place where it's a lot more thoughtful than it has been
52:10
in the past. And I think that's just part of
52:11
any. I'm sure we saw the same thing
52:13
with zero trust, right. Everybody puts it on the the
52:16
cover and now we're probably to a better place where it's used
52:20
more judiciously. Yeah, it was at RSAI, don't
52:23
know, a couple years ago and I I came back, my report was you
52:28
know to the to the podcast crowd, good news, zero trust has
52:31
been solved. Every product now has a part of
52:34
their you know, solution setter features.
52:36
So everything's good now. You mentioned, I thought it was
52:40
kind of interesting what you're you're talking about I guess
52:43
with your daughter trying to figure out AI music versus
52:46
regular music, right. What was the kind of the artist?
52:50
It's it's clear obviously generative AI is kind of taking
52:52
over. It's having a moment right now.
52:54
And I think there's a lot of people who talk about ownership
52:57
and rights and things like that and being able to verify that,
53:02
you know this is authentic. Certainly I can see the benefits
53:08
of having something like an immutable Ledger out there that
53:11
kind of tracks this. But then I also hear things like
53:14
NFTS, which get a bad rap as well, right?
53:17
I'm, I'm selling a picture of, I don't know, board a parade or
53:20
whatever that whatever those are right for 10s of thousands of
53:23
dollars or even millions of dollars.
53:24
And I guess how do we balance the two to make sure that we're
53:28
really not getting too crazy with how we're trying to
53:31
leverage this? Yeah.
53:32
And I'm, I'm going to come at it from the other side because I
53:34
think if we assume everything is fake, then I want to know what
53:39
is real. And that leads me to how do I
53:43
know that that what I'm looking at came behind the lens of the
53:47
camera. And yes, I think we need to
53:50
authenticate all the AI generated content.
53:53
Me personally, I'm not terribly excited about reading a book
53:56
that was completely generated by a computer.
53:59
I think there's some value in in human being having written a
54:02
book. And so I think at some point
54:04
you're actually going to authenticate that this is a
54:07
human generated what percentage of this book was generated by
54:10
the author, human being. But but let's take that picture
54:14
for a second and there's if this were a video, this, this will
54:18
encourage you guys to do more video podcasts.
54:20
There is a picture of Jared Leto at the mat dressed up in this.
54:26
I think it was a Bunny costume. And when you look at the
54:28
picture, it actually looks AI generated, it looks fake.
54:32
It it turns out it's real. It's a real photo.
54:36
And so having that authentication that this came
54:40
off of a Canon or a Nikon or a like a camera is going to be
54:45
hugely beneficial. There's actually a standard that
54:48
a lot of the camera manufacturers and others have
54:50
created, C2 PA if you want to go Google for that.
54:53
That is a really interesting standard.
54:56
That by the way, anchors itself to a blockchain.
55:00
I've been, I found it fascinating to look at kind of
55:04
how how that standard gets implemented.
55:06
And there's a camera from Sony, a camera from like, I think
55:09
there's a a camera coming out from Panasonic.
55:12
And like if we compare the styled app, everybody's
55:16
implemented the standard. It's a little bit differently.
55:18
So it will be interesting to see, you know, what this looks
55:22
like in a few years. But again you can see the
55:26
identity of the the camera person, the identity of the
55:30
camera, the identity that that they were standing in this place
55:36
and actually hit the the shutter button and took that picture is
55:40
going to be valuable. And I think the genesis is that
55:46
that photographer will likely get a higher fee for that piece
55:53
of artwork because it was it was real versus completely AI
55:58
generated. I pay a buck for an AI generated
56:01
sunset. I yeah, I'm just throwing out
56:03
fun fun numbers. I paid $10.00 for a real sunset
56:07
taken by a photographer. Interesting conversation, but I
56:11
also think that over time, the nature of art is going to
56:15
change. I mean, I look at things people
56:17
create in Photoshop or, you know, it's some of the computer
56:23
generated video. I'm just blown away.
56:27
That's real art. There was some human behind the
56:30
scenes, but of course there's a lot of technology brought to
56:33
bear as well. I can see, you know, potentially
56:38
in the future people don't just deal with paint brushes and
56:42
canvas, but actually they use some kind of like virtual
56:45
painting and you know, it probably feathers out the paint
56:49
and things like that. That doesn't mean that it wasn't
56:52
human created art, just that. Not that doesn't counter
56:57
anything that you just said, but it just it got me thinking that
57:01
I think the nature of what we consider human generated will
57:04
change over time. Let me add on something to that.
57:07
Where is a good example of that paradigm shift I was talking
57:10
about what if Photoshop was free and the art that you created
57:17
with it, they got a cut of that art.
57:20
That's really hard to do today. There's no way to do it right
57:23
Try. It's it's just trust like that
57:25
that you're going to give them 10% of of whatever art you
57:28
create. If we anchor these pictures to a
57:30
blockchain and Photoshop has an identity and I have an identity
57:36
and when I sell that photo that that there's some automation
57:39
behind it that gives Photoshop their 10% cut and I get 90% cut.
57:44
Now, now that's a that's a completely different dynamic and
57:48
I think that's what is exciting to me about blockchain
57:51
technology is that's really hard to implement today.
57:54
For Adobe would never enter that market where they're giving away
57:58
this product in the hopes of getting some artistic return.
58:02
But if we can, if we can actually put some some contracts
58:06
on a blockchain that enables that, that's really interesting
58:09
and that's really exciting. And that Jeff going back to what
58:13
are the economics that make it work.
58:15
That's why it's hard to predict you know what the right
58:17
economics of running a blockchain is.
58:20
But you could see that that's a good example of an interesting
58:23
model that some upstart AI image company might choose.
58:30
We'll just take a cut. I feel like my head is spinning
58:32
a little bit because we went into this with trying to
58:35
demystify this. I think we've done a good job
58:38
with that. But I think there's still so
58:41
many questions that it's just kind of like, how's this going
58:44
to work, right? Where is this thing going?
58:46
If you had to put on your prognosticator cap on what do
58:51
you think blockchain looks like as like a market and sort of
58:55
like an industry and two years from now?
58:58
So first I think I need to come back on episode 300 to to do a
59:01
follow up to. The time zone just.
59:03
Throw that, just throw that out there.
59:04
Right now I I think we actually talk less and less about
59:08
blockchain. I think it becomes this boring
59:12
thing at the bottom of the tech stack that enables some stuff
59:16
that we kind of just forget about.
59:17
I I actually think the blockchain will be most
59:20
successful when we don't think about it.
59:22
How often do we have really deep conversations about L DAP?
59:26
We don't. It's just there.
59:27
It kind of works and we take it for granted.
59:30
And is that going to be in two years time?
59:33
I think we'll start to be on the road.
59:36
I definitely think that the retail user probably doesn't
59:42
think about blockchain very much, even when whatever product
59:47
they're using actually uses a blockchain.
59:50
Now, does that mean IT people and identity people?
59:53
Yeah, well, obviously still be in the middle of all of it, but
59:56
I would hope that that this is not a front and center thing.
59:59
I do not think the sticker on top of the box that says now
1:00:03
with blockchain inside is actually going to be that
1:00:05
exciting. It's really the ultimate use
1:00:07
case of being able to get a product for free and they just
1:00:12
take a cut of whatever I developed with it, that's that
1:00:16
is going to be the front and center value.
1:00:19
That you may ask, hey, how how did they do this thing?
1:00:21
But the reality is, is we're just not, we're not going to
1:00:23
spend a lot of time talking about it.
1:00:25
Well, we're hitting here an hour, and I want to wrap up the
1:00:27
conversation with a little bit of a lighter note.
1:00:30
You mentioned one experiment that you were running with your
1:00:32
daughter around the AI music. We were talking before we hit
1:00:35
record about another one that you were working on regarding
1:00:39
eggs and coffee. You want to care to explain
1:00:42
yourself, Jay? So I got I got three daughters
1:00:44
just in case anybody's confused at home as to what's going on
1:00:47
here. My oldest daughter and I share a
1:00:50
lot of music and so we're we're listening to that.
1:00:53
The middle daughter is working on a an interesting science
1:00:57
experiment. I hadn't thought about this
1:00:58
before. We are taking eggs and dying
1:01:02
them with coffee. I I will pause for a second and
1:01:06
say, gosh, why did she pick coffee?
1:01:08
She has this strange feeling that she's going to get to drink
1:01:11
coffee during this experiment. So that that's how how she
1:01:16
picked coffee and we're testing a cold cup of coffee, a room
1:01:22
temperature cup of coffee and a hot cup of coffee to see which
1:01:25
one is going to die the darkest. And that is what's yeah,
1:01:30
everybody asks me so what's on tap this weekend?
1:01:32
That is what is on tap this weekend.
1:01:34
So that's coming up. We're going to have to look for
1:01:36
an update to see, do you have any theories or posits that you
1:01:40
want to put out there and say we think that this might hold true?
1:01:44
I mean, I I'll be honest. I asked ChatGPT what what the AI
1:01:48
bought to the world thought and I learned all about the pores of
1:01:52
an eggshell and when eggs are or sorry, when the temperature of
1:01:57
the liquid is hot it opens up the pores and allows more dye to
1:02:02
come in. I'm I'm actually I so I I'm
1:02:05
pretty sure the cold coffee is not it's it's probably going to
1:02:09
be pretty light. I'm really curious where
1:02:11
lukewarm falls in the spectrum so I'm I'm still going to be
1:02:14
surprised here. But it it I'm really curious why
1:02:21
no egg dying company at Easter recommends warm or or dare I say
1:02:28
hot die for their eggs and that it it may be that there's some
1:02:33
real world applications of our little science experiment and I
1:02:37
can report back exactly how we should be dying eggs in the
1:02:40
springtime. OK, So what I'm going to do is
1:02:42
what we typically do is put out like a little teaser.
1:02:45
And so when I tag you on LinkedIn on Monday when this
1:02:48
comes out, I'll be looking for an update to say, so which one
1:02:51
was it? Was it hot coffee that got the
1:02:54
pores open, which, hey, logical makes sense, right?
1:02:57
That's how humans work, I guess. What is the temperature that
1:03:00
allows the pores to open enough, right?
1:03:03
Maybe there is a big difference in cold and lukewarm, maybe not
1:03:07
so much difference between lukewarm and hot.
1:03:08
I don't know. I'm not an an agologist or
1:03:11
whatever. I will put my risk management
1:03:14
hat on for a second. And for those of you who are at
1:03:16
home who might have a young child who's going to stick their
1:03:19
hands in boiling hot water, probably not the best idea.
1:03:22
And so I highly recommend you check the temperature of your
1:03:25
your dyes before choosing to die an egg.
1:03:29
That's that's my disclaimer of the day.
1:03:32
That's Identity Center for you. Safety first at all times.
1:03:35
Jim, have you ever done anything like that with your kids with
1:03:37
like any sort of like scientific experiments or anything like
1:03:40
that? I don't have kids, so it'll be
1:03:42
difficult for me to do that. I'm sure I have, but I, you
1:03:45
know, it's been a long day and I actually don't remember what
1:03:49
they were. But you know, I spend a lot of
1:03:51
time with my kids, like trying to fix things.
1:03:54
And you know, I'm not the most handy person in the world.
1:03:58
My, my father was like, he'd get out under the car and replace
1:04:03
the brakes and do all these like, crazy things.
1:04:07
And then I became an adult, got into computers.
1:04:10
And now I I can't even, I can't change brakes on a car.
1:04:16
But my son is now 19 and he got a motorcycle.
1:04:21
He's like taking it apart and fixing.
1:04:23
And I'm like, I guess that Gene kind of skipped me, 'cause he
1:04:28
seems to have it. I don't know where that came
1:04:30
from, but not a lot of science experiments.
1:04:34
OK. Well, other than this podcast,
1:04:36
this we'll call that this is our experiment.
1:04:37
See how this? Goes what are you doing on the
1:04:38
side, Jeff? Are you doing science
1:04:40
experiments? I'm always tinkering.
1:04:43
I wouldn't say I would say computer science experiments.
1:04:46
How about that? You know what's a better way to
1:04:48
use, you know, this tool or that tool?
1:04:50
How do we make the podcast better or things like that?
1:04:53
I'm always. I'm always tweaking stuff behind
1:04:56
the scenes. Yeah, no.
1:04:57
And you do a, you do a great job with that.
1:05:00
Well, thanks for that. I think that's a good spot.
1:05:02
I always like hearing compliments and that's how we'll
1:05:04
close the show out today. So Jay, thank you so much for
1:05:08
taking the time with us. I know you're a busy guy, but we
1:05:11
definitely want to have you come back on and be looking for an
1:05:14
update on the the egg experiments on on Monday when
1:05:18
this goes live. And hopefully we'll see you
1:05:20
there. We'll have a link in our show
1:05:22
notes for people to connect with you if they have questions about
1:05:25
this or if they want to tell you you're wrong or you're right or
1:05:29
what maybe people are seeing in the market, etcetera.
1:05:31
Obviously, please be respectful that we'll go ahead and leave it
1:05:36
for this week. We're on the web,
1:05:37
idacpodcast.com. Try our new voicemail feature
1:05:41
you might get on the show if it's something we think we can
1:05:43
use. For that.
1:05:44
We're on Twitter at IDAC Podcast, Mastodon, Hey
1:05:47
Decentralized, at IDAC Podcast, at Infosec, dot Exchange.
1:05:51
And of course, Jim and I are always looking for feedback on
1:05:53
LinkedIn, especially for these new sponsor Spotlight episodes
1:05:56
that were going to come out later this week.
1:05:58
So let us know what you think, what works, what doesn't work.
1:06:02
We want to hear it all because the goal here is to put out
1:06:04
something that we think is worth our time and your time to listen
1:06:07
to it. So with that, thanks everybody
1:06:09
for listening and we'll talk with everyone in the next one.
1:06:13
You've been listening to Identity at the Center.
1:06:17
We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and
1:06:21
review and we'll be back soon. But in the meantime, hit the
1:06:24
website at identity@thecenter.com and find
1:06:28
us on Twitter at IDAC Podcast. See you next time on Identity at
1:06:36
the Center.