Latest / The Paul Barron Crypto Show / AI Agent Boom Has a Problem Nobody Is Talking About🔥Concordium CEO Interview

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AI Agent Boom Has a Problem Nobody Is Talking About🔥Concordium CEO Interview · The Paul Barron Crypto Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Let's get into AI today because agents are going to
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: be making a lot of payments out there. And one
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: of the things that could happen for Ethereum and other
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: blockchains is how these developments will start to move into
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: the market.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: We're going to jump into.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: It today with Boris, who is the CEO of Concordium,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: and really kind of just dive into what is happening
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: in this space right now.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Boris, how are you?
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm good, man. Thank you very much for having me on.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: So we're going to learn a little bit about Concordium,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: but I want to kind of get into the bigger
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: picture right now. And part of that is just the
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: AI cycle that we are entering.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: If you look at the advancement we've seen.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: The fact that we've got all the chains essentially racing
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: to try to get their upgrades in. And you also
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: have Meta and Sierra both building a standard for how
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: agents are going to interact with businesses. So this is
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: a very front of tech story right now. When you
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: consider what big tech is doing, And the possibility of
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: where blockchain is, whether it's X402, what we're seeing with
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Ethereum's upgrades, what we'll see most likely with Solana. Can
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: you give me a frame of how fast is this
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: going to come and how important are these protocols right
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: now when it comes to getting this done for agents?
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, you kind of said it very, very rightly.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: You know, everybody is trying to kind of get on
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: that train rather quickly and rightly so, because I think
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: it's a really good use case for why blockchains exist
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: in the first place. Ethereum is doing a lot. And
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: I think we're going to talk about this, you know,
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: in and around Glamsterdam. I've read what exists. like to
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: a certain extent of like what it does. Um, you know,
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: it brings a couple of things back to the protocol. Um,
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: I think it's EIP, uh, seven, seven, I kind of say,
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: I think seven, seven, three, two. Um, so there are
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: several upgrades that kind of make sense. I think when
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: you think of, um, the world racing towards this and
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: it's happening rather quickly, to be honest, uh, quickly quicker
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: than I actually anticipated when we started building this stuff
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: about one and a half, two years ago. Um, There
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: is a major piece missing, which is the point of
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: having to deal with a completely new economic actor. From
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: the payment side of things, I think you framed it
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: quite nicely at the beginning. X402, when it comes to
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: that part, because when it comes to agent activity, X402
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: plays a pretty big role and deserves a lot of
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: credit there because it's a lovely piece of engineering. And
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: What is also important to understand that this standard basically
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: has been there for a while, right? 402 has been
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: there since payment required, has been there since the 90s.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: You know, it was, however, just the parking space because
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: nobody ever parked in it. Now, agents hit that paywall. And,
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: you know, when it gets a 402, it can pay
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: in a stable coin, you know, gets the data and
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: moves on. So there is no sign up, no credit
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: card form to kind of fill out, you know, please
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: verify your email and all that kind of stuff. It's basically,
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: if you think about it, like the internet finally got
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: a cash register. But here's the thing, right, about cash registers.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: It doesn't ask who's paying. It just doesn't do it.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: So for a human buying a coffee, exactly. You know,
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: when it comes to a human just buying a coffee,
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: you know, you walk, rock up to Starbucks or whatever
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: coffee you fancy, that's fine. Nobody needs a background check
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: on that, right? For that ordering of a cappuccino or
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: a flat white. Now for agents, it's a completely different
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: story because agents don't buy one coffee, right? They buy
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: a million coffees at three o'clock in the morning on
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: behalf of someone nobody can identify. And that really is where,
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: when you kind of, you know, make the distinction of
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: like what to look at, there are several points that
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: kind of underpin it all and where A lot of
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: the projects out there are trying to kind of solve
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: it in their own way. And I think there is
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: an overarching questions that needs to be asked in and
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: around the core idea of blockchain's existence in and around
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: anonymity and the differentiations to privacy. But we can maybe
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: get into that later, right? So I think first and foremost,
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: it's completely free to create an agent, right? There are
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: loads of platforms, you know? If I can spin up
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: an agent, I can spin up 10,000 agents before lunch
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: if I'm keen, right? So a ban from a regulatory
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: perspective and also from a merchant's perspective means nothing, right?
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: Because you can block one and subsequently 10 more show
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: up just wearing a different hat. So it's a whack-a-mole problem,
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: if you want to look at it that way, except
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: the moles are generated by a script. Okay. The second
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: problem that needs to be tackled, which a few try,
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: is that nobody knows who to hold accountable if something
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: goes wrong, right? If an agent scams you or hammers
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: your API or, I don't know, moves money for something dodgy,
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: who do you call, right? Right now, It's just an
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: alphanumerical string. So on most of the chains, it's just
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: an alphanumerical string. But the wallet doesn't have a phone, right?
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: So that's a problem that needs to be solved. And
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: the third part, in my opinion, which is, I think,
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: the big one, specifically with what's going on in the US,
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: are the regulators, right? The regulators, and it's not just
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: in America, it's also here in Europe, they don't go away, right?
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: So AML. Sanctions, KYC, those rules don't switch off because
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: the customer is a software. So a bank basically can't say, well,
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: it was a bot to a supervisor, nor will the
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: regulator buy it. And why payments get standardized first, which
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: is also the important why there is excitement around it,
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: is because payments are an engineering problem. Identity is a
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: trust problem when you deal with that type of actor.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: It's a legal problem. It's a who takes the liability
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: if something goes wrong problem. And engineers, which we have
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: great ones in this world, specifically in our Web3 world,
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: they very much love the first kind. But everybody avoids
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: the second kind. And that's the gap specifically that we
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: close at Concordia.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Well, you've addressed a few things there, identity, authority, and
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: also accountability. I think to a certain extent, this is
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: going to be a question that everybody's going to be asking.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: And when you get into payments, I agree, you have
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: AI agents bringing shoppers. Now merchants are going to essentially
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: have to close the sale. To your point, they're going
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: to have to understand how to connect the dots here.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: So with all that happening.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: You've got Visa's agentic commerce lead saying that the industry
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: hasn't figured out the agent identity yet. Kind of shows
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: that there in this article is that merchants are still
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: kind of having to do this.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: When you guys are going into.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: It, This is something that I think, first of all,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: how is the tech work with Concordium? When you plug
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: this in to an agentic commerce engine, what is the
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: primary thing that it's trying to do?
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: Well, the first thing to understand is that identity is
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: enshrined into the protocol layer. So it's been there since Genesis.
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: And I've been saying this line quite a lot lately
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: because due to what's going on in the world, we
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: are getting some eyeballs on us right now. But for
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: the first, you know... If you wanted to talk about
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: identity in 2020 and 2021 and 2022, it was a
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: very fast way of standing alone at the bar during
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: a conference because nobody wanted to have a chat. Nobody
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: wanted to. And we basically built a solution for a
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: problem that just, you know, it was just too early.
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: But we kind of knew that eventually we would go there. So,
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: you know, to your question, yeah. There is great things that,
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: for example, Ethereum, because he mentioned Glamsterdam, right? Ethereum is
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: doing quite a lot on that front as well. And
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: I really want to be fair on that front. You know,
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: ERC 8004 is a genuinely good step, right? I'm really
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: glad the Ethereum ecosystem is taking agent identity seriously. Now,
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: it gives agents an on-chain identity in the form... of
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: you being able to have a registry and a way
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: to attach a reputation and validation to, um, the agent itself.
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: Now that's real infrastructure. Um, but here's the gap. And,
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: and what I've been using quite a lot is, um, a,
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: a analogy in and around a conference because I, you know,
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: token 2049, um, that's just, uh, is, is, is on. Um, so, Ultimately,
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: ERC 8004 is a name tag, right? So it's a
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: very nice tamper-proof name tag. Now, the problem is you
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: wrote your own name on it. You know, it basically says, hello,
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: my name is definitely legitimate bank representative. Now, the tag
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: is permanent, right? It's on chain. It's beautiful. And it
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: tells you absolutely nothing about whether that's true. Now, What
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: we do at Concordium is we anchor the agent to
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: a verified identity. The way that it works is that
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: you basically just go to the, if you want to
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: be part, if you are going to be part of
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: the ecosystem, you basically go through a verification process once.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: And from that point onwards, can verify in a privacy
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: preserving way using zero-knowledge proofs. You maybe have seen what
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: Hester Pierce said from the SEC just a couple of,
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: like a week ago, that zero-knowledge proof KYC and AML
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: does make sense if implemented correctly. And it also is
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: the best from both worlds, right? Because I said this initially,
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: there is a massive difference between anonymity and privacy. I
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: would like to be able to prove that I'm over
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: 18 without somebody knowing exactly what my birth date is
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: and exactly where I live. That's just extra information that
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: they don't need to know. And then suddenly on my birthday,
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: even though I just had to prove that I'm over 18,
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: I'm getting, hey, happy birthday. Here is 10% off in
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: my email inbox, right? Surprisingly. So I would like to
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: stay private. So at the end of the day, What
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: we do at Concordium, to kind of anchor it back
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: to what I said, is that we attach it to
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: the verified identity that is yours and should only be yours.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: So our standard is called CIS 8004. And the agent
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: registry build on it works basically like this. I mean,
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: there is not much more to say. Behind every agent
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: and every registered agent sits an entity in the form
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: of a person or a company, you know? that has
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: been verified once at the protocol level. And the agent
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: carries that zero-knowledge proof forward with any interaction that it does.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: So a counterparty can check in very, very simple terms,
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: this agent is backed by a verified party in this jurisdiction,
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: is not on a sanction list, is old enough, whatever
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: the rules require, without learning of who the party actually is.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: What you basically get on Concordium is you get privacy
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: by default and accountability when it's legally required.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you're getting at something I think that our
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: audience is very keen on, and that is the idea
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: of privacy. So as we're getting into an agentic world,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: and we're already seeing this even with what Meta has
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: been doing with Muse, there's a lot of triggers within
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Muse that you can kind of turn on and off
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: in terms of how much data is being shared, what's
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: not being shared.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Mainly to try to keep it in control.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: If you have an agent out there that does get
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: authenticated and does have that privacy connection, whether it's through
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: 8004 or X402, whatever protocols are going to be used,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: how is the user, the person who deployed that agent
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: or agents, how are they protected? Is this just creating
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: another honeypot for Potential an attack vector down the road
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: for you know, personal information or privacy down the road
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: or not.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: No, because like we already in this horrible situation right
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: now like to your listeners and anybody else like I
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: am that that's the reason why I'm Building Concordia, right
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: is the fact that every single digital interaction basically now
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: carries a copy of my passport or my driver's license.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: Those are databases that are, and you just have to
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: ask yourself, right? How often have you done this? Every
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: single time you buy something online and you need to
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: verify something, you need to send them a copy of
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: your passport and please in good lighting. It's like, it's
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: just basically a PR release. Sorry. It's just basically a
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: PR disaster waiting to happen. And we see this more
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: and more. Those databases are getting hacked. And also with AI,
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: it's getting easier to hack things. So ultimately, my core
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: ethos is, and there is the other side of the
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: coin as well. And I really want to say this.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: I've been in this industry now for 10 years. And
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: I got into this industry because of also that core belief.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: So I'm an absolute cypherpunk at the core. But the
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: matter of the fact is, the people that are also
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: screaming quite loud about this and are like, you know,
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: riding the wave of Zcash and Monero and whatever, they
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: still have a verified, you know, they go and buy
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: the stuff wherever, well, they're switching it off anyway on
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: the exchanges because of the regulation. But ultimately, it comes
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: down to the fact that they felt very, very comfortable
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: in order to onboard on Coinbase or onboard on Kraken
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: or onboard on Binance, right? And it's the same issue.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: You have to go through that verification cycle. And that
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: doesn't change, right? The world that I would like to
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: live in is that I have the ability to only
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: having to verify myself once.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: One time.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: And from that point onwards, interact in a complete privacy
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: preserved way while staying compliant. Because to my point that
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: I made earlier, the regulators are not going to go away.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: They're not going to go like, oh, yeah, this is
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: cool tech. Let's, you know, screw AML and KYC checks.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: Let's just YOLO into this. That's not going to happen.
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: And we've been pushing this as an industry as a whole.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: And didn't really focus on the core thing that I
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: think was missing, which is build cool tooling. Because otherwise,
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: you know, I wouldn't say that our industry has been
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: enormously successful. Just because the market cap is around 3
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: trillion doesn't mean that we've been successful. If you ask
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: your neighbor today, to what extent are you using blockchain technologies?
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: First and foremost, you shouldn't have to explain it. That's
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: the first problem that you have, because blockchains... The technology
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: should be used rather than understood, but everybody now needs
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: to sit there and needs to understand what a mnemonic
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: seed phrase is. And if I lose those 24 random words,
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: my money is gone. Well, I'm not going to touch it. Right. Meanwhile,
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: I can just rock up to a place and click
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: my button twice here. Right. And then go beep. And
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: I paid for something. Ask the same people if they
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: understand how the payment works behind the scenes. They've got
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: no clue. Nobody does. It's all a trust question. So I, I, I, Basically,
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: take it from the privacy angle that you are also
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: from Concordium's point of view and why we were like,
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: you know, the kid with leprosy in the sandpit all
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: by ourselves in the playground for a long period of
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: time is because identity was the thing that was kind
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: of pushed hard. And that's the core of the blockchain.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: That's really what it comes down to. But what was
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: not understand is like what privacy actually means and what
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: it actually means in comparison to anonymity, which all the
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: other chains are built on. Right. All the big ones.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: It's just a wallet address. You hold the private key.
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: It's yours. But if you need to prove something, you
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: have a completely different problem, at which point you're building apps.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: But those apps are what's the right word? Sorry, I
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: was speaking German earlier. So optional. And from a regulator's perspective,
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: an option is not good.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Well, and I think the key thing here is that
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: you're starting to see this being used mainstream. And I
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: think the real question is how mainstream is going to
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: address this because they know it's coming.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: You guys did a.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Partnership with MasterCard with their crypto partner program.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: When you look at this, where does your.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Agent verification right now show up outside the ecosystem in
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: places like this with the use of regular payment rails
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: that are going through merchant services, companies like MasterCard, Visa, etc.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: How does that work for you guys?
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we are cozying up, of course, because
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: the payments part is the thing that, you know, payments
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: make the world go round, right? At the end of
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: the day, we just play the verification layer. This is
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: in many ways extremely boring, but which was also why
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: it kind of took a lot of time. You know,
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: the registry and what we do with the agent IDP,
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: which we are about to release, and the agent kit itself,
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: you know, first and foremost, we've done this in a
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: way where we're non-invasive. We basically are rather quickly now,
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: and there will be quite a lot of talk about
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: Concordium very, very soon, is because of the fact of
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: us having done it in a very non-invasive way. So
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: we don't require you to move your building from Ethereum
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: or Solana or from anywhere to Concordium. We're just basically
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: giving those ecosystems that verification leg in order to be
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: whatever the use case is or the payments rail to
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: be there. Now, That works both. And this was not
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: the hard bit, but that's the way that we kind
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: of build it over the course of the last year
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: and a half specifically because the identity, there's a lot of,
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: you know, there were several steps in order to get
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: to the point where we are. But it ultimately came
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: down to the fact that it's not only Web3, it's
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: also Web2. And the matter of the fact is when
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: it comes to the payment specifically, if you think of
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: rather large enterprises right now that we're speaking with, They're
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: not necessarily going to switch their traditional payment and banking
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: rails off and go on to stablecoins full stop, right?
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: They will use also traditional payment rails. And the verification
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: standard that will be required without having to be, you know,
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: pushed into a specific camp is why we do things
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: like with MasterCard, you know, why we are, you know,
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: in the Linux Foundation. We were building age verification payments
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: seven months. I mean, you can just look it up.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: And Kevin LeFue, actually, who is one of the co-authors
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: of the paper, the white paper of the X402, now
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: Linux Foundation. We were going live with this and actually,
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: you know, showcased it and had it working five or
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: seven months before the foundation actually was created, the Linux Foundation.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: So we've been in this game for a long time,
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: but it wasn't just necessarily the sexy part. Now, things
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: like with MasterCard and the partners that are in there,
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: they require the verification standard in order to stay compliant
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: and ultimately increase transactions in whichever shape or form, specifically
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: geared towards the agentic side. So because the rulebook exists
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: for humans and businesses, but suddenly we have an economic
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: actor that actually overtook you in internet activity already in
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: April this year. And you need to find that. Yeah.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: How do you guys track the agent growth, especially with,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: I guess, authenticated agents or registered agents right now?
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: What's the size of that look like.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: For the overall market? Yeah. For the overall, I mean,
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: right now there are, there are about 25 million, uh,
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: agents that are active globally. Our number right now is
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: about three and a half thousand. Right. Um, but the
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: great thing is, you know, the curve is, which is,
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: which is nothing. If you want to put it into
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: that comparison, the ERC 8004 got about, I think 200,000
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: agents that are registered there. But coming back to the
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: problem of what this actually, what that registration actually is, right.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: We go far beyond. Um, And ultimately, the only thing is,
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: you know, I can kind of only showcase the curve
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: right now. We more than doubled in the last three,
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: four weeks. And it's a continuous growth rather quickly. And
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: there are quite a few partnerships coming out where also,
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: you know, other ecosystems are not partnerships like collaborations with
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: other ecosystems where they just use our verification standards because
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: it's very non-invasive. You know, the use case is to
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: do the payment over there, but they need the verification
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: leg that they bring by us or we bring to
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: them via the Concordia registry. And subsequently, you can take
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: it a step further and give those specific attributes to
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: your agent itself.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: But when you look at Ethereum's Glamsterdam upgrade, this, of course,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: is set to activate here on the test net later Tuesday.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: That happened this week.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: So with all this going on, is this a positive?
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: It sounds like it doesn't really matter. What happens here,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: you guys are going to be able to work with
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Glamsterdam and the upgrade on ETH, with Solana, with what's
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: happening on Base.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: It doesn't matter to us at all. So it's both
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: Web3 as well as Web2 compatible. So you don't necessarily
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: need to set up agents on Solana or Ethereum. You
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: can also set up an agent within the Google workspace.
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: The most important part for us is that you actually
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: create an actual use case for, or you answer the
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: question of why blockchains. Because I think that hasn't been
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: answered yet. It sounds cool in order to go, RWA
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: is doing quite well right now. Yes, it absolutely makes
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: sense in order to tokenize Apple shares and everything else.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: But the reason of why you do it from a
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: consumer perspective, because right now I can just go to
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: my brokerage portal and just buy Apple shares, right? Exactly.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: So the question is, why do you actually do it?
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: And I think we I mentioned this earlier from a,
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: from a tooling perspective, I wholeheartedly believe that we will
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: go there and you can see that already because it
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: makes a lot of sense. We can disintermediate prices are
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: going to be better, more money is, it's just going
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: to be more efficient. Right. But the core question when
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: it comes to the blockchains itself is how do they
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: operate within a regulated world? And we've been all shouting,
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: you know, I've, You know, I've been listening to you
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: as well when it came to like clarity and everything else.
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: And maybe we talked, you mentioned that we talk about
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: it later. We've been shouting that we need regulation and
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: we want regulation and everything else. The cypherpunk in me
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: goes like, no, actually, I don't want regulation. You know,
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: one of the things I agree on with Charles Hoskinson,
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: he was like, no, absolutely no to clarity because we
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: can build better things. Right. But then again, what's more important?
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: That we get the underlying, forget crypto for a second, right?
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: I'm not even keen to talk about crypto as such.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: I'm interested in the underlying technology. And you need to
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: build tools and features that actually are worth implementing. And unfortunately,
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: the vast majority, even though, you know, the market caps
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: look great, haven't really done that. Or at least from
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: a regulatory and compliance perspective, miss major, major building blocks. Um,
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: and this is not something that you can retrofit, you know,
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: you can't retrofit the, the foundation after you build the
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: third floor, like if you build a house, right? So, um,
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: you need to either build it from the beginning, which
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: we did. And like I said, we were like the
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: kid in the corner of the playground in the sandpit
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: with leprosy and dimples all over the face. Nobody wanted
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: to play with us. That has changed rather dramatically now,
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: not because suddenly the world understood that compliance is important.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: Absolutely not. Because that is, um, I can't believe I'm
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: saying compliance is important, but do you understand what I mean?
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: Suddenly you have a new economic actor and the use
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: case is there. Because for the traditional humans and businesses,
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: we sign contracts. We have governance processes in place. And
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: if one of my employees is starting to transact with
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: North Korea, I'm the director, I go to jail. Those
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: are the rules, right? So for an agent, that doesn't exist.
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: And in a fully digital world, that's exactly what we
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: build it for.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: Well, I think the key is this has to happen.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: We're at a stage now where the speed of technology
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: is now moving faster than, and we see this in
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: a lot of other industries, but especially now in crypto.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Crypto has been somewhat ahead of the game for the
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: most part, granted with outside the exploits that we've seen,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: but in terms of advancements, it's been very consistent. What
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: are your thoughts on the SEC and the CFTC moving
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: forward without clarity, and they're doing it through structural law
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: making via these organizations. Are you for that process and
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: are behind it? Where do you guys stand?
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: So, I mean, look, we are definitely for that process
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: because I think it's inevitable, right? It comes to my
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: initial point, like under no circumstances will the regulator say,
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: even if we take everything on chain, that suddenly those
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: AML and KYC rules don't exist anymore. Yeah. or become
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: an option. So on that point, you know, um, you know,
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: the question would be, you know, several, several, like, for example,
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: you know, age verification, right. Um, because that is, you know,
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: you've got COPPA in America, right. There is the, um,
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: there is the age, uh, um, age verification act here
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: in the, here in the UK. And we've seen this.
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: This was all over the news about underage children using
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: social media and all that kind of stuff, right? Having
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: to go through that, right? So stablecoin rules, specifically, if
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: you kind of take it there, when you think of
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: the Genius Act, expect issuers to run proper anti-money laundering
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: and sanctions checks and to be able to freeze funds
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: when lawful or not. when basically an order arrives. They
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: have to be able to do this. You can't do
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: that on a chain where everyone is a stranger in
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: a hoodie. Yeah.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: Well, and I think we've already seen this happen, too.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: You know, you've seen, of course, Genius Act take place,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: but you've also seen a lot of these stablecoin companies
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: start to implement exactly what you're talking about. Is Concordium
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: in a position where it's going to be able to
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: offer these kinds of technology advancements across everything out there,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: whether it's social, banking, crypto, agent payments, all that.
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Okay, so across all layers. It doesn't matter.
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: It's life. Yeah. You just need to go and use it.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so now it's a matter, I think, because use
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: cases is coming fast as we see it, especially with
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: you look at the basically Wall Street tokenizing everything. The
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: likelihood is that's going to create not only awareness, but
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: it's going to create the demand, which is something that
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: you guys have been obviously focused on. Now you're going
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: to get a chance to see it in play.
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: Get it, get it in action.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Well, listen, Boris, I've learned a lot about what you
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: guys are doing and this is good timing because of course,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: agentic payment is coming very fast. I'm still concerned about privacy.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: I'm glad that you guys are very consistent on how
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: you're standing on building a privacy network there that, that works.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Cause that, to our audience is one of the paramount
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: issues that could become a big problem down the road.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: So hopefully everybody's paying attention to how they're using crypto
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: right now.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: But thanks for coming in today. We do appreciate it.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: Pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
• 28:11
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• 28:13
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• 28:16
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• 28:17
  Speaker 2: The link is in the description.