# Singapore talk (part 2 of 2)

> One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [295], part 2 of 2. 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/<id>.md. This file's connections are below, then his passages.

## Where this source sits

- Source: video, 2015-07-16 (YouTube upload date), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rH2PWTHB_s. Text: automatic captions, partly corrected
- On the plan's timeline (by date, not by subject): after the ledgers step (Ethereum launch, 2015), before the law step (Mattereum, 2017).
- How it fits the plan (the research build's reading): Ledger-layer explainer.
- Career works it belongs to:
  - The Ethereum Launch Process (2015): Ethereum Foundation blog post, written as the new release coordinator, setting out the launch in stages:...
  - The Future We Deserve: "Facebook for the Five Billion?" (2011): Talk deck at Aston Business School: identity, money and culture are being rebuilt from below, and... (suggested by machine)
  - Taking a crack at a practical system (introducing the ESCROWNYM) (2012): Blog essay proposing the escrownym: an identity lodged with escrow brokers under a legally binding... (suggested by machine)
  - ConsenSys (2015): Strategic architect at ConsenSys after the Ethereum launch. (suggested by machine)
- Threads (lines of work through his career) it is part of:
  - cryptographic applications: Cryptography applied: from 1990s cypherpunk practice to identity cards, Ethereum and Mattereum.
  - 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)
  - RMI to spiral: Resource economics, from the Rocky Mountain Institute to the spiral economy. (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)
- Topics: Property, NFTs & real-estate transactions (27%); Ethereum — launch, release process & programmable blockchains (10%)
- Distinctive terms here, against the whole archive: proof of work (7 here; 10 sources in all, earliest dated 2014); KYC (6 here; 27 sources in all, earliest dated 2015); proof of stake (4 here; 17 sources in all, earliest dated 2014); digital signatures (3 here; 30 sources in all, earliest dated 2006); shared database (1 here; 6 sources in all, earliest dated 2015); internet money (1 here; 9 sources in all, earliest dated 2015); contracts (8 here; 147 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 3 undated); legal status (1 here; 14 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); accounts (2 here; 51 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 1 undated); Ian Grigg (1 here; 21 sources in all, earliest dated 2015)
- The earliest dated source in this archive for (undated sources may be earlier): Ethereum team; internet money
- Importance: core-text score 0.26 (1.00 is the top), number 301 of the 729 sources it scored, the research build's measure of substance, importance and innovation
- Related sources:
  - [565] [Coin Telegraph AMA with Mattereum's Vinay Gupta 14th... (2023)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/565.md): same career work: The Ethereum Launch Process
  - [113] [The Ethereum Launch Process | Ethereum Foundation Blog (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/113.md): same career work: The Ethereum Launch Process
- On the same works, just before: [301] [Ilaria R. and Vinay Gupta discuss the Ethereum Project... (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/301.md); [775] [Vinay Gupta - Foreign Policy By Internet Protocol (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/775.md); [299] [Mic audio: Coase's Blockchain: can equity crowdfunding... (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/299.md)
- On the same works, just after: [225] [Imogen Heap: saviour of the music industry? | Imogen... (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/225.md); [755] [Vinay Gupta | Computers that just work | State of the... (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/755.md); [757] [Vinay Gupta | Interview | State of the Net 2015 (2015)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/757.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: Singapore talk, video, 2015-07-16, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rH2PWTHB_s; in Vinay Gupta's archive at guptaoption.com, source [295], https://guptaoption.com/texts/295.md.

Other speakers' passages are removed, so there can be gaps.

## Passages, part 2 of 2
[41:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rH2PWTHB_s&t=2503s) with this total mess where the new platform is a reference that says yeah if you want to know what the value is of this asset you've got to go look at this other platform and I I think just nobody has any idea yet I that's that's tomorrow's kind of worms uh you know it's a really good question it's really worrying I have no idea yeah I like like if you said this current SC so Master Card VA all these guys are there but there are bodies which kind of Ensure coordination among them yes think move okay I mean it would be nice if Ethereum evolved into a proper Global standards body that maintain this kind of stuff um could happen nice if it did and certainly you know the approach we've taken is very very decentralized but it does connect very heavily to kind of legitimate structures like you know we we're a foundation we intend to stick around to you know essentially maintain the technology and all the rest of that kind of stuff you can imagine that as time passed if there were multiple implementations in a lot of different users that could grow into a standards body of a proper kind you know if we had 25 different implementations of ethereum a standard body to keep the implementations cross compatible this kind of stuff could evolve out that and that would be kind of best case for the foundation's future somebody back up here yes was asking about property yeah and you said about smart contracts yeah so what you're saying is you need to have a smart contract for each sale of the two individuals yes so wouldn't it be easier just to do just identity first um identity is a really hard question I mean in some way it's the hardest question because getting usable solid identity for people that don't live in countries that provide a strong identity B is almost impossible that's the whole point identity yeah I mean yes but getting an identity that is robust without State intervention is quite tricky I it's the state which also uses it so you know MasterCard in Nigeria are trying to roll out the scheme where all the identity cards with Master Card in I still think the issue here is that we don't have good enough Biometrics technology to generate unique human identities without also uploading pictures of people's faces what you really want is a really high quality biometric hash and right now the

[44:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rH2PWTHB_s&t=2653s) algorith Dos do yeah but does it work out scale is it fast enough works very well it's already being used yeah yeah I I'm not saying that there are no systems working on it I just haven't seen anything looks like it's the final solution but the problem is you don't you don't have the identity problem sold there are certain sort of legal transaction you cannot like the sale of a house because there is a state interest in knowing exactly who who owns particular piece of house absolutely you can engage in certain types of transactions but I don't think you can you know presume that that ident I mean for me I would agree identity is actually critical a that no abely agree identity is critical to transactions but I think identity is a why could you just the kyc sorry why could you just do the kyc that applies to the jurisdiction that you are exactly all under the jurisdiction control but you're going have a deiz well there there's no problem with lodging there's no problem with lodging kyc credentials on a blockchain right so if I go to my bank and my bank is adequately sure of who I am they can give me a certificate stating that this digital key is connected to this human being with this kyc record is sitting in the back so my notion would be that You' have blockchain users who would then go to their Banks and get kyc on the blockchain for the applications that required you don't have a problem with turkey you cannnot actually take any form of information kyc outside of turkey so on the blockchain South Korea you're going to go to the state you're always going to have this problem right the states don't always like each other they're not always compatible with each other but if you're going to do completely solid identification of persons without going through the state you're always going to have a whole bunch of fishiness with the Biometrics on the bottom of the P but that also comes with the property sales as well that information canot a Juris um we manage that kind of cross jurisdiction or Shale of property all the time the problem is poor jurisdictions where you don't to stay back on for identity I mean what I see as being a permanent solution to that is high quality cheap uh uh DNA scans so that you can use really fundamental biological indicators to get identity but then you need the ability to Hash that stuff securely and right now all of those Technologies are still completely rubbery they're just not here and there was a privacy issue the

[46:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rH2PWTHB_s&t=2803s) privacy issues are amazing I just really want to see Americans submitting their DNA yeah so does the American govern okay I think one last question just just a technical question is this the one network or is the is the platform you can develop different instan of the network uh it is the one network I mean you know we've had a series of test networks but when we ship it that's it that's going to s b uh there are some open questions about whether or not we're going to have to do weird stuff to the network in the process of moving from proof of work to proof of stake um the best idea I've heard about that so far is the two systems run in parallel for a year or so and once we're sure that they always come to the same conclusion every time the proof of work drops out the proof of State continues but that is UN certainly next year's concern uh 8:00 good time to wind

[47:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rH2PWTHB_s&t=2855s) up we do question uh yeah sure what's the difference between NXT and thei uh good question I have not looked over NXT inail because your functionalities are exactly the same as NXT which has been running for two years many contract no the reason why they don't put contract because it's B on the blockchain that's why they do pring on the messaging which which which explains the main difference but you don't have space you don't want to that's the point they it because it up the so it's not optimized for smart you canot they have pring blockchain pruning so they can do it but is not there is very explicitly a SM contract platform I we are all about Contra um but I mean we are s within this, flowers blo phase blockchain development I mean you know tender is out there there's all the C party stuff I mean every time you turn over a rock there's some bunch of smart guys who are beavering away in the corner cranking another blockchain technology um right now I think ethereum is fairly clear a front runner because we were heavily funded we've got amazing but how long that will stay true you know how long is gole going to be the dominant search it's all very very very slippery because we're going up a technological gradient this and at any given point you never know what's going to just kind of Zoom past you but the price of doing this kind of Technology development is that you're always in a position where the risk is the guys coming behind you forward and you either take your shot in the lead or you don't play yeah what type of decentralized application you're anticipating to go and jump into your sorry I what type of decentralized application you anticipated to jump into your platform initi so the Front Runners right now the things that are kind of our poster shter uh there's a thing called Oger which is a decentralized prediction market so you know you think that Argentina will win the World Cup you put a bunch of money behind that a bunch of other people say it will be Germany they put some money that H if you are right and they wrong you get their money super so well well yes and

[50:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rH2PWTHB_s&t=3005s) no so now we go for rocking right is the icense for well hang onang on so prediction markets a good long academic history being used to guess what will happen in future events so for example there's uh I think it's the Iowa prediction Market where people basically uh bet against each other on the outcom future presidential election um that's specially licensed by the US government and it very successfully predicts who win elections so there are lots and lots and lots of you know academic studies and using these markets as general prediction of the future because it turns out that the confidence to put money behind your bet and people who' have done real research and have a good idea what will happen are strongly correlated so the idea of a is to create a generic platform for prediction markets which will allow experts to make their living money off Ms so we could get a ton of high quality expertise about the future organized in a format where these people can make a living by knowing what will happen now is that gambling yeah kind of but it's not just rolling the dice it's gambling on an outcome that you can't control in an environment where you're using your skill to figure out what the future will hold in an abstracted way so I would say it's paying people for research in you using the mechanisms of course some people nap to iTunes M basically pardon describing Napster to iTunes uh you're going from one jumping very far forward control yeah in which HSBC is waiting to pay a two digigit B figure forchain Technology based on that M oh I the number of uh you know people circling this entire space with checkbooks that are basically like n digit Bank balances is enormous anybody in the financial sector who's not seriously is like people not looking at databases in 1976 or not looking at the web in 1994 you know I mean we're at that moment where the next Amazon is being founded somewhere on blockchain right now and all the regulatory stuff you're talking about I can't even imagine how they're going to fortunately it's no my concern you know I mean there just I just can't imagine how you approach R find a jurisdiction full support and pray I mean you know we we as a platform vendor we are neutral to what our users do we have to be lots of people running

[52:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rH2PWTHB_s&t=3155s) gambling sites on the internet the backbone providers are not responsible Apache software Foundation is not responsible what people do with the Apache block the Apache uh web server similarly we are not responsible for what people do with the ethereum network their business with you the other really nice thing that we got cooking is called uh bra Providence right and the provence folks are interested in the way that blockchain uh Supply chains strip information off when they move so you know the products is made in some part in China and as it moves towards its eventual consumer Su America we throw away information all the time until it arrives as a shiny Anonymous package with no history at all where did they come from where was it in transit manfacturing its components who designed it all of that stuff is just washed out the supply chain until you wind up with a sterile object and it leaves a lot of really important question to answer what does this mean of where did it come from is there anything toxic in say was it manufactured in an environment with appropriate labor protection so the Providence folks will to basically wrap products in their stories so that the story is preserve as the product moves up the supply chain so that when you finally buy the thing you can get the entire history [Music] so the price of 20 gig hard drive storage assuming that we're buying a 2 TB Drive is probably 10 cents something like that

[55:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rH2PWTHB_s&t=3305s) yeah but that's the that's the same blockchain where you said that it moves transactions a second right yeah yeah so if it moves thousand times faster you also I do want to store program information so it's going to be a lot larger I assume so well yeah let's take this in two phases so blockchain scal eum Network might be 10 times the speed of Bitcoin Network might even be 20 times the speed but it's going to be it's going to be an incremental speed up rather than a proper R computer speed up his increment so at that point you might wind up having if you want full chain storage you might wind up with $100 worth a hard drive that just storage that's exceptable if you're going to be mining you're going to have several $100 wor the graphics cards if you also require $100 of hard drive it's fine uh once we get to blockchain scaling the question of how aggressively you Pro the blockchain what you need to store we becomes one of a really major technical challenges because you might well wind up with during the term oltp online transaction processing it's the enormous data Clearing Houses that places like these are used to just shovel transactions through their networks so you begin to wind up with oltp type problems which is a whole bunch of really serious rocket science that blockchain land has not yet had to so as we get to massive transaction volumes we're going to need to get expertise in from other fields and not there probably going to be no ltp people and you know welcome to Innovation yeah we can see that problem is coming somebody will figure out or the or the network will get really slow and expensive right but you know that notion oh you we have all the answers and we work all this out hell no right this is really seriously bleeding Ed stuff Rec wrote a pardon recently wrote a paperchain absolutely right but until I see a working implementation it's all gas oh yeah it's all gas work and I mean you know my feeling about all this stuff every time we come and talk about ethereum it's like you know talking about the web in like 93 oh look at this thing this thing is going to be really amazing one day it's going to change everything and you always have that sense of like are we sure well it seems that way and that feeling of like the uncertainty and the things the the uncertainties which don't resolve when you think about them really

[57:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rH2PWTHB_s&t=3455s) hard that to me is the smell of the actual Edge like I've had that a few times in my life I've been lucky enough to work on things which were genuinely Bann on the edge and ethereum is really like it is the biggest Ed are we really good job and you know really excited but what it goes with is you get into these areas where there are just enormous unknowns what if the network is really successful how are you going to Pro and that's exactly where we are right I mean if you get the technical team talking rather than me their versions are a little more detailed right you got metallic white paper right that's a very sophisticated probably like this let's write it down with right the sof and see if it works in a year and that's where this stuff really is it's the absolute excitement of like we are this close and that's where we are right one last question and then let's WRA it s if you'd get a100 million now and then the obligation to stop with Ethereum and do something else what we do1 million I think I could probably figure out something that builds on top of Ethereum worthy success sorry um yeah I mean it's remember that we're not company right we're charity so we don't have equity in ethereum uh a lot of people have been looking at ether as a speculative commodity that they expect to rise like Bitcoin I think that's actually fairly unlikely we make it so incredibly easy to create instruments that store value which are not ether I think we might wind up with 500 different currencies on top of ethereum and people will use ether to pay what amounts the web hostings they'll use it to pay for the utility functions of the network but I think it's entirely possible The Ether will simply wind up as a sort of thing that people use in1 or $200 quantities on a regular basis rather than something that becomes this enormous ramp kind of store value um but I don't know we literally just have no idea what the real user Behavior will be we don't know uh whether money will Pile in from Bitcoin we don't whe Pile in from Fiat we don't know how much demand there will be for the network I mean as a as sort of notion right if we saw

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End of [295] Singapore talk, part 2 of 2. Its connections are at the top of this file; the map is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt.
Read next: next on the same works, [225](https://guptaoption.com/texts/225.md) Imogen Heap: saviour of the music industry? | Imogen... (2015); the most closely related, [565](https://guptaoption.com/texts/565.md) Coin Telegraph AMA with Mattereum's Vinay Gupta 14th... (2023); his whole career in one file, https://guptaoption.com/story.md.