Organized by Consensys, the Ethereal Summit aims to encourage conversations on decentralization and its impact on the future of technology. We spent the day hearing media influencers, government officials, futurists etc share their views about the future of Blockchain, Tokens and their influence on our digital world. Here are 10 key takeaways summarized from various thought-provoking panels across the summit.
“In a decentralized world, it is all great when things are functioning. But what happens when things go wrong? People will want to go to a place or a thing to blame and this is when the community will need to come together to fix them.” - Sandra Ro, Executive Director and Head of Digitization at CME Group
“In the Physical world, we view ourselves as our identities, and possess what we know as ‘personhood’. In the digital online realm, we have multiple versions of our ‘personhood’. There needs to be a way or a framework to control this.” - Melanie Shapiro, Co-founder and CEO of Tokenize
“One of my favorite books is Homo Deus, which paints a future that is influenced by science and technology. I can picture a world where our data is our currency, where an everyday transaction is based on the data that you are willing to hand over, what you are willing to share and what you feel uncomfortable sharing.” - Jake Porway, Director of DataKind
“Blockchain is not a form of decentralization but rather a form of distribution. It is a mechanical tool to record the DNA of transactions. Nobody can monopolize it. The beauty of Blockchain is that it creates similar development opportunities for both developed and developing countries.” - Giorgi Vashadze, Founder and CEO of Innovation and Development Foundation, Member of Parliament of Georgia
“Media helps build the foundation of knowledge. Many people still do not know the ideas and key terms related to Blockchain. Media has an important role in shaping the future of how people view Blockchain. The biggest challenge is to get people to understand and build a positive association with it, especially with new tokens being launched everyday. There should be more content on Blockchain and the reason why nobody is writing it is because there is a lack of interest in articles related to Blockchain.” - Alex Klokus, CEO of Futurism
“A popular way for independent filmmakers to raise funds is to approach a large studio or to leverage a crowdfunding platform. Through Blockchain technology and a tokenized system, filmmakers can connect directly with their audience from the beginning by giving them the opportunity to become investors in the film. This also enables filmmakers to better understand their audience and provide them with favored content.
Once the audience has invested in the film, they are considered equity holders and are incentivized to market and promote the film, increasing its success rate. With this method of fundraising, artists can also maintain creative control of the film.” - Mitzi Peirone, Filmmaker and Director of Braid (First feature film to be fully financed through equity crowd sale using cryptocurrency)
“Where Virtual Reality (VR) is now is not where it will be in 10 years’ time. In the future, there will be a whole new way of storytelling. Holographic avatars may exist for us to communicate not only with one another, but with historic figures as well. Expect merging of various technologies to produce hyperrealistic interactions.” - Cortney Harding, Professor at NYU, Author and Consultant
“Automation and IOT could both have significant impact. When you have automation, the data transacted can come from anywhere, so we need systems to keep them in check or we risk going off the rails. There is a dystopian potential to it.” - Peter Asaro, Assistant Professor at The New School & Affiliate Scholar in the Center for Internet & Society at Stanford Law
“The token is a new form of currency that will fuel the Blockchain economy for the next 10 years. It is not an ownership of some sort, but it can be part of an application or a software. At its core, it consists of an account and an account number. These tokens can represent everything, from financial assets to products. Their utility is growing at a rapid rate.” - Nick Dodson, Founder of Weifund and Boardroom, Consultant at Consensys
“Traditional equities such as shares give shareholders the professional rights to a company’s profits. This system of equity drives shareholders to focus solely on growth of profits, and when companies have this sole narrow focus, they are more likely to face market failure. With a tokenized system, a token holder is incentivized to get more people to use the token to increase the company’s financial value instead of getting the company to fixate on increasing profits.” - Joel Monegro, Investment Team at Union Square Ventures
It was an eye-opening event at the frontier of innovation, with industry leaders delineating how Blockchain and Decentralization are disrupting their respective industries. If you want to know more about other emerging technologies beyond Blockchain and Tokens, check out 6 Emerging Technologies and their Applications.
