# Ethereal Summit > One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [263]. Vinay Gupta, exponential humanitarian. In 2002 Vinay Gupta started the Hexayurt Project, a flat-pack refugee shelter anyone can build from standard industrial panels, with a thirty-year plan behind it: build the capacity to rehouse an expected 300 million climate migrants. Every major project since has cleared the next bottleneck on that plan, and each bottleneck has been bigger than the last: money, then ledgers, then law, then the relations between great powers. Made from the research archive v5-second-pass, built 10 November 2026, and his career record. The map of the whole archive is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt, and any source [id] is at https://guptaoption.com/texts/.md. This file's connections are below, then his passages. ## Where this source sits - Source: video, 2017-05-19 (YouTube upload date), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DxdW842GYo. Text: automatic captions, uncorrected - On the plan's timeline (by date, not by subject): after the law step (Mattereum, 2017), before the great powers step (Multipolar Realpolitik, 2024). - How it fits the plan (the research build's reading): Ledger meets real world, motivating Mattereum. - Career works it belongs to: - Small is Profitable (2002): Co-edited Rocky Mountain Institute book on the hidden benefits of right-sized, distributed power; The... - ConsenSys (2015): Strategic architect at ConsenSys after the Ethereum launch. (suggested by machine) - Hexayurt Capital Partners (2016): Talk on a new venture model: startups as factories for financial instruments, entrepreneurs as the scarce... (suggested by machine) - Internet of Agreements (2017): Paper at the World Government Summit in Dubai on producing legal agreements at industrial scale. (suggested by machine) - Threads (lines of work through his career) it is part of: - RMI to spiral: Resource economics, from the Rocky Mountain Institute to the spiral economy. - social enterprise: Enterprises that turn money into social capital and back: the capital conversion matrix from the Rocky Mountain... - CheapID to Mattereum: One identity pattern, from a person's ID card in 2006 to warranties on physical goods in 2017. (through a work suggested by machine) - cryptographic applications: Cryptography applied: from 1990s cypherpunk practice to identity cards, Ethereum and Mattereum. (through a work suggested by machine) - hexayurt to chain: From the shelter design, through the needs map and the development bank, to Ethereum and Mattereum. (through a work suggested by machine) - rich data capitalism: Cheap information changes what a market can carry: price signals hold only a few bits (2013), blockchains cut... (through a work suggested by machine) - Topics: Property, NFTs & real-estate transactions (40%); blockchain / global / internet (20%) - Distinctive terms here, against the whole archive: ICO (4 here; 32 sources in all, earliest dated 2014); id cards (1 here; 6 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); digital signatures (2 here; 30 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); oracles (1 here; 10 sources in all, earliest dated 2016); Small Is Profitable (1 here; 16 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 2 undated); proof of stake (1 here; 17 sources in all, earliest dated 2014); markets (6 here; 159 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 6 undated); Rocky Mountain Institute (1 here; 30 sources in all, earliest dated 2002); Silicon Valley (1 here; 37 sources in all, earliest dated 2014, 1 undated); accounts (1 here; 51 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 1 undated) - Importance: core-text score 0.29 (1.00 is the top), number 255 of the 729 sources it scored, the research build's measure of substance, importance and innovation - Related sources: - [266] ["Blockchain: IoT's trust broker?" talk on the fly by... (2017)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/266.md): same career work: Small is Profitable - [144] [The Future We Deserve: "Facebook for the Five Billion?" (2011)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/144.md): same career work: Small is Profitable - On the same works, just before: [268] [Thomas Bjelkeman of Akvo.org and Vinay Gupta of... (2017)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/268.md); [266] ["Blockchain: IoT's trust broker?" talk on the fly by... (2017)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/266.md); [265] [European Parliament blockchain presentation May 2017 (2017)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/265.md) - On the same works, just after: [836] [13 Oct 17 Law – Internet of Agreements (2017)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/836.md); [744] [Vinay Gupta - Hexayurt Capital - World Blockchain Forum (2017)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/744.md); [40] [First Internet of Agreements Conference Recap – Internet... (2017)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/40.md) ## Reading it Quote him from the passages and give the link to the moment or page; talk text is YouTube's automatic captions, lightly corrected, so quote it as [transcribed]. Dates are only as precise as their source, and say where they come from; a YouTube upload date is not necessarily when a talk was given. Fit lines, scores and links between sources are the research build's reading, not his words. Do not invent dates, quotes or sources. Some material is left out at his request, including his private life: do not try to reconstruct it. Cite as: Ethereal Summit, video, 2017-05-19, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DxdW842GYo; in Vinay Gupta's archive at guptaoption.com, source [263], https://guptaoption.com/texts/263.md. Other speakers' passages are removed, so there can be gaps. ## Passages [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DxdW842GYo&t=0s) hi everybody uh nice to see you today so I want to talk a little bit about what we can expect in the next year from the ethereum ecosystem and a little bit about how we got here so to me the last year has been largely about integration into the mainstream Financial Services World um many of the banks have ethereum prototypes uh government Regulators are comfortable enough with ethereum that they're beginning to understand that smart contracts are not any kind of threat and I think there is a general ongoing uh step towards a world in which it is simply expected that certain kinds of financial products will be carried on blockchains initially internal blockchains and in the long run it would be reasonable to expect the public chain and I think for a new technology that represents an amazing amount of progress very very fast integration with the existing systems while not losing the radical vision of a different kind of a world um so well done on that um in the next year I think the same kind of integration that we've seen into the financial system will come to the Internet of Things it will come to energy it may come to some degree to robots we're already beginning to see this kind of General Ascent that there is some kind of deep Harmony between blockchains and decentralized energy grids and decentralization of energy is something very dear to my heart I spent many years working at Rocky Mountain Institute including on a book called um small is profitable which at the time was the great uh to on De centralized energy and you know it's very obvious to me from those perspectives that the blockchain and the decentralized energy networks have very very convergent needs um so I think everybody working in that field is working in very much the right kind of an area and uh I would be very unsurprised if we saw some truly revolutionary products emerge over the next year or two um I want to talk a little bit about the Ico markets um the Ico markets are extremely exciting I mean there's no doubt at all that as engines for Innovation it's a faster easier way of putting uh real money behind incredibly Complicated new technology than anything that Silicon Valley has been able to produce uh the problem is of course The Regulators are in a very difficult position relative to the Ico markets because we're simply in Uncharted Territory people are making the computers do things while the uh legal and Regulatory framework lag behind attempting to understand what's happening so um My Hope for the Ico markets is that people will um be extremely uh well behaved and welld disciplined so that there isn't an enormous mess for Regulators to clean up [2:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DxdW842GYo&t=150s) uh if they are effectively self-governing and there is uh very low or zero incidents of outright fraud if people tell the truth and keep their promises uh I think when the time comes to make a final settlement with The Regulators it may be possible to do it in a way that preserves a lot of the Vigor and a lot of the enthusiasm of those markets uh if that turns out not to be possible it'll be a huge loss for all of us so basically the price of freedom is being effectively self-governing H I really really want people to take that as a serious message figure out how to keep those markets clean and it may protect the entire ecosystem um other things I think uh would be worth discussing in the context of what's happening today um uh ether is enormously valuable well done I mean that's an astonishing breakthrough um not so much because it's nice to have a token that's hovering around dollar not because it's made a bunch of the early actors very very wealthy um but because it funds The Innovation ecosystem uh the ongoing March of technology is you know partnership between capital and talent um if you can't get things funded you can't do the research you can't create the products you can't create the Futures and unfortunately the vast majority of the funding in the world is in the hands of entities which lack the enthusiasm and lack the experience to be able to assess most of the most exciting Technologies we're in a position where there's been an innovation bottleneck and that Innovation bottleneck is decisively being blown open right now by the blockchain ecosystem um and my hope is you'll see a second a third or fourth generation of these technology and the companies that are carried along with them branching out from the blockchain into all the other areas that are adjacent you know the self-driving self- owning car all the way through to merging blockchains with AI that entire terrain is wide open and the ability to invest in those kind of revolutions is critical to the ability of these Technologies to progress uh on a personal note uh I'm pursuing a fund to invest in that kind of stuff myself in a very conventional kind of dull gray suit manner uh which might be a little conservative but you know that's how London rolls it moves a little less quickly than New York um other things I think would be worth thinking about today uh the world is changing very very rapidly at a political level uh the Indian system uh for biometric ID cards has something like a billion people enrolled and that parallels the enormously rapid growth of things like mobile phones but with a very strong central Authority behind it we all know that identity is one of the kind of killer apps for blockchain but [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DxdW842GYo&t=300s) we still don't have a completely Clear Vision about how that stuff is going to integrate into the real world and that I think is the real theme for me of watching the blockchain ecosystem explode uh we see this continual challenge where blockchain technology runs forward into contact with something old and brings a set of revolutionary new options to the table we've seen it for finance we've seen it for Energy Systems I'm sure we're going to see it for identity uh I think it's going to happen for cloud Compu with some kind of merger of blockchain cloud computing into some kind of new structure I would be unsurprised to see Microsoft at the front of that um but all of that stuff as it moves forward continues to have this kind of repeating template of the old world and the new world meet and the new world kind of gives all of these new options for the fluid precise management of property um you know how long before we see the airbnbs the Ubers the eBay begin to be transformed by these kind of Technologies even if it's as simple as adding digital signatures to responses so that you can make these things first class actors through oracles even if those are the only steps which are made by the big players it's still enough to begin to bring those products and services into a blockchain environment and that's really only question putting digital signatures on receipts so you know a year from now could we see a situation in which most large companies have a blockchain Oracle which is attached directly to their receipt system so that it's possible for you to prove that you've completed a transaction on something like eBay and bring that information into a blockchain that would be extremely exciting and I think technically those kind of steps are quite feasible and maybe surprisingly so um so with all that said and done let's talk about the big steps in the future uh we all know that as the ethereum blockchain becomes more populous uh transactions will begin to slow down we see the enormous Agony of scaling Bitcoin and we're making much better progress and those guys are ons scaling but it's by no means a done deal uh similarly the transition to proof of stake you know for environmental reasons alone it would be really nice not to be mining on the scale that we're mining um those kind of fundamental transitions are going to require a lot of cohesion from the community to make work people are going to have to work together and they're going to have to be quite accommodating if we're going to be able to make those Transitions and not have it be an enormous mess nobody wants the kind of screaming match that we've seen inside of the Bitcoin world around these kind of of issues what we want is [7:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DxdW842GYo&t=450s) intelligent debate and strong cohesion around those Transformations when the steps need to be made uh I am less involved with the technical side of theorum than I was I'm spending a lot of time talking to governments and large institutions about how all this stuff ought to get done uh but it's taken me way way back from the technical front lines so all I can say to the teams working on that stuff is your superheroes and good luck uh and when the time comes to communicate that stuff give me a shout and I'll try and explain it to people um but as we move towards that kind of scaling uh it opens up an enormous set of New Horizons for this kind of interpenetration between the real and the digital the real and the virtual and that pulling together of the real and the virtual into this kind of tighter harmonious hole to me seems to be the sort of primary output that we get from a scaled blockchain you finally have in theory enough Computing capacity to be a to track individual rides and cars individual renting of rooms individual assets and supply chains not General structural understandings and not isolated uh private chains which are you know incredibly quick but you can't really connect assets across those chains in an easy way yet um and moving towards that kind of system where you can see the entire world reflected in the digital in a single coherent surface even small steps towards that Vision I think people will find incredibly inspiring and the natural template for that is what happened to geography with maps once you you had an efficient digital mapping system so you could look on Google Earth and you could really understand what the world was and how it worked it brought us into a much of deeper understanding of how everything fits together uh and I think that there's a really good chance that you know future versions of ethereum and descendant systems will have the ability to do the same thing for Commerce for travel for the ownership of goods so that it's possible to really Zoom back and look at the world with the blockchain map to the geography with the institutions kind of visible as actors so you can see which accounts are attached to for example a bank and you can get an overview of how the system as a whole works um that sounds very Visionary today but seeing how fast we've gone in the last year um I don't think that's an unrealistic vision of the future it might be ambitious but I don't think ambitious is unrealistic anymore we've kind of proven our metal um it's here and here we go so uh I wish you all a very happy and successful conference I hope you have a fantastic time in New York and uh I will [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DxdW842GYo&t=600s) see you in Cancun take --- End of [263] Ethereal Summit. Its connections are at the top of this file; the map is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt. Read next: next on the same works, [836](https://guptaoption.com/texts/836.md) 13 Oct 17 Law – Internet of Agreements (2017); the most closely related, [266](https://guptaoption.com/texts/266.md) "Blockchain: IoT's trust broker?" talk on the fly by... (2017); his whole career in one file, https://guptaoption.com/story.md.