Hi, I’m Colin Platt, co-host of the Blockchain Insider podcast, and a cryptocurrency and distributed ledger researcher and specialist. Happy New Year 2019, may this be a prosperous year for all of you. Zeth, Shaun, their team at Plexus and I have had a lot of talks about what is happening beyond pure banking in the blockchain space, so we decided to change up our regular posts this week with an insightful interview with Areiel Wolanow, MD of Finserv Experts. Areiel has had an amazing experience around delivering new technologies at large financial institutions, including within insurance. He also served as an expert and advisor to governments on blockchain technologies.

CP: Hi Areiel, thanks for agreeing to speak with me. Could you share a bit about who you and Finserv Experts are?

AW: I am the managing director of Finserv Experts, a small consultancy firm that provides both delivery and advisory services for DLT solutions. I have led the delivery of working blockchain solutions for a number of global financial enterprises, such as HSBC, Bank of America, and Lloyd’s of London. On the advisory side, I have engaged with several central banks and financial regulators around the world, addressed the G20, and am currently an expert advisor for the UK Parliamentary working group on blockchain.

CP: When you speak with large companies or government and high-level groups, how do you explain that innovation that you see in blockchain technologies?

AW: Blockchain is the latest answer to what is probably the world’s very first business requirement: the need for an independently verifiable future commitment between two or more parties. This need first emerged when we evolved from hunter-gatherers and first started planting crops and living in cities and villages, and many of the world’s most important business innovations – from writing to money to accounting to enterprise software – were simply better ways of addressing this one very old requirement. What DLT offers is a way for different people or organisations to share a single version of the truth, but still physically and legally own their own data. When I present on DLT, a simplistic but very effective definition that seems to work very well in getting the main idea across is: blockchain is simply Dropbox for ledgers. You write a transaction once, and it is automatically synced to the ledgers of every party to that transaction.

CP: A lot of people equate enterprise DLT with banking. You work a lot with the insurance sector. What are some of the pain points in that market and in your mind, how are these innovations relevant to solving these problems?

AW: The insurance industry tends to be thought of as being particularly resistant to rapid change. Given that the goal of insurance is to more effectively manage risk, most people both inside and outside the industry are okay with this and see the inherent conservatism as a good thing overall. But radical innovations can and do happen in insurance. In my lifetime, for instance, retail brokers for most forms of personal insurance have gone from being ubiquitous to virtually non-existent due to the fact that aggregators have a business model that serves most people’s needs far more effectively and efficiently than retail brokers were able to. DLT offers similar transformative potential as a clearing mechanism between multiple parties, a fraud detection aide, a loss mitigation tool, and most excitingly of all, as a way of delivering insurance to billions of people who are in desperate need of risk mitigation, but have never been able to obtain insurance at a reasonable cost.

CP: Compared to banking and other financial services, would you say that the insurance market is more or less aware of these technologies and the benefits you described?

AW: Awareness of the basics of blockchain, and of DLT more broadly, has largely become mainstream; insurance executives are just as aware of its potential as leaders from most other industries. Technical expertise is likewise becoming less difficult to come by; blockchain is quite elegant as a solution and is surprisingly easy to code. But there are two main challenges in bridging the gap between a conceptual understanding of blockchain’s potential and kicking off the technical implementation of a defined solution.

1. Articulating a business case for blockchain can be extremely challenging. This is due to the fact that adopting a DLT solution effectively means embracing a completely distributed business model. Distributed business models are new, and there are very few reference cases upon which delivered business benefits can be articulated and measured. And while it might be getting easier to find programmers who can build blockchain solutions, finding someone who can help write a good DLT business case is still quite difficult.

2. Stakeholder engagement for DLT projects is even more difficult than for other projects. Inadequate stakeholder management is already the main source of failure for IT projects in general and causes far more problems than any technical issues. With DLT solutions, by definition you are dealing with multiple parties, so instead of getting commitment from a single organisation, you have to secure commitment throughout the delivery life cycle from multiple organisations to have any chance of successful solution adoption. Finding someone who is good at this is far more difficult than finding a good programmer.

Addressing these challenges was the main reason we founded Finserv Experts about 2.5 years ago and remains our primary focus.

CP: Given these challenges around moving to a distributed model, what is the insurance industry looking at doing today? Do you see the UK insurance industry as a likely leader in adopting real implementations of these technologies?

AW: Most insurance executives already understand the transformative potential of DLT; as I alluded to above, the challenge is being able to turn that understanding into a workable plan for delivering a concrete solution. But the UK is phenomenally well placed in terms of global thought leadership. A good number of the world’s most successful and innovative insurtechs are UK based, far more so than its proportional share of the global economy. This is partially due to the crucial role that London – and Lloyd’s in particular – plays in the global insurance market, and partly due to the UK’s blockchain leadership in general.

CP: You also work with other technologies, such as machine learning. How do you see blockchains and machine learning working together? What are some areas where you see potential?

AW: While the benefits delivered by blockchain and machine learning can often be complimentary, they are usually thought of as being quite discrete from one another; they might end up in a single defined solution, but the business case costs and benefits would typically be separate line items, as would the resource estimates and delivery plans. But there is one area of interest that is starting to garner significant interest: data quality. Data consistency is already a problem in most single enterprises; it becomes even harder when multiple enterprises try to share a single version of the transactions between themselves. A good blockchain solution can make much of this problem goes away, and this creates huge opportunities in the machine learning space. Organisations that agree to use a DLT solution can potentially benefit from machine learning insights driven by a far wider learning base without having to reveal confidential customer data or commercially sensitive transaction data in the process. We are starting to see this happen on a microinsurance project we have going on right now in Southeast Asia.

CP: Switching gears, we talked a lot about blockchain, but what about cryptocurrencies specifically? Are insurance companies interested in bitcoin and Ether, or is their focus restricted to blockchain technology?

AW: Some insurtechs have experimented with accepting cryptocurrency as a form of payment for their products and services, while a number of insurers – especially in the London market – have begun writing policies for coverage of cyber risks. But specific insurance coverage for crypto-denominated assets is not something I have seen significant support for yet. Adoption of digital currency – be it crypto or fiat – is inevitable but will take place over decades rather than years. As of now, most crypto assets behave more like speculative asset classes than they do like currency, and increasingly they are coming to be regulated that way as well. This consolidation of treatment is likely to make it easier for insurance companies to offer crypto-related products by providing patterns upon which they can define and price those products, but it is still early days.

CP: Crystal ball, what does 2019 look like for blockchain technologies?

AW: 2019 will be an exciting year for DLT. A number of significant, global enterprise scale DLT solutions are scheduled to go live this year. Most of these will fail, as is the case with any new IT solution. But the few that succeed will provide a pattern which both investors and implementers will use to gain increasing competence and confidence to start gaining tangible benefit from the incredible potential that DLT has to offer.

CP: Wow, I’ve been hearing that ‘go-lives’ are scheduled for “next year” for the last few years. I am pleasantly surprised to hear that we’re moving forward and brave enough to schedule them for this year now. Thank you very much for sharing your insight and expertise. I wish you all the best in 2019.

AW: Thank you very much. All the best to you and your readers too.

Please let us know what you think. Where are the benefits of DLT? Where are the opportunities? Is this the year we go live? Which other industries would you be interested in hearing more about?

Blockchain technology is potentially game-changing for not one or two industries, but the complete outlook of how we perceive the global business landscape. When 200 healthcare executives were interviewed, 16 percent expected to discover a commercial blockchain solution at scale sometime this year or next year. The key performers for blockchain adoption will be industry groups, regulators, and market makers. Securing and managing data within healthcare and supply chain management are two great examples of major concepts influencing and being impacted by conceivable blockchain adoption.

Despite initial enthusiasm, the healthcare industry has lagged behind other industries in blockchain adoption.

IBM’s HUN – Big Win for Blockchain in Healthcare

Initially, the healthcare industry, similar to other industries, focused on delivering specific blockchain use cases first, each with its own application and network. However, to get competitors to collaborate with this approach was quite difficult.

Owing to the lessons learned from early blockchain work in the healthcare industry and the industry’s unique nature, IBM established the Health Utility Network (HUN).

What is HUN?

HUN refers to a blockchain-based ecosystem for the healthcare sector that incorporates a platform + network design. Rather than building a network for one use case, the intent is to fabricate a network for a platform that can scale for several use cases. In this prototype, a collaborative entity will stand up a blockchain-based platform and an inclusive, open, ecosystem upon which everyone will concoct solutions.

Platform-based solutions will leverage the data collected by the network. The network is pre-competitive, and consequently, it can and will benefit all parties involved. At its core, the network has a set of fundamental rules: a governance practice for how data gets exchanged across the network, how participants join, and how to adhere to regulatory compliance. Then there’s the platform, on which all interested parties will both consume and develop applications. The network, as a non-profit, will have expenses that will be sustained by a percentage of revenue from the platform and its apps.

This shift from the use case first technique has made blockchain a desirable investment and enables competing solution providers to enter a network and strive together for profit. The platform expands the scope beyond blockchain to carry applications leveraging technology like robotic process automation and cognitive computing. A recent IBV study entails the importance of thinking just beyond the first use case and the steps crucial to designing successful blockchain networks.

What to Expect? blockchain and healthcare

At the moment, the HUN network is in the formation phase, focused on establishing procedures and policies. When HUN goes into production later in the phase, the plan is to make the network accessible to any organisation that wishes to benefit from participation, ideally expanding to one day include all healthcare providers and consumers worldwide.

The use cases being prioritised, currently, are efficiency and back-office based, with a focus on refining processes by streamlining and decreasing expenses. These are conventional use cases that can prove the efficacy of blockchain right out of the gate. Once HUN has established its value, the hope is to expand the platform to be more revolutionary for the industry.

For example, HUN may one day streamline the patient’s experience by transferring records between providers with their consent, removing the need for the patient to fill in the same details repeatedly. Before long, patients would be able to see the journey of their data across a network that encompasses all healthcare providers and consumers on a global scale

Hi, I’m Colin Platt, co-host of the Blockchain Insider podcast, and a cryptocurrency and distributed ledger researcher and specialist. This is the fifth in a series of cryptocurrency/blockchain posts that explore some of the topics that Zeth, Shaun and I found interesting and worth exploring further. As always we hope that you enjoy this series of fortnightly posts, and welcome your feedback.

Note: Nothing in this post should be construed as investment advice, legal advice, or a recommendation of any particular project or crypto-asset.

November has been an eventful month in the wild world of cryptocurrencies and permissionless blockchains. Between the Bitcoin Cash hardfork, in which the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto –Craig Steven Wright– decided that Bitcoin Cash was no longer the true Bitcoin, and that he alone –along with Canadian e-gaming tycoon, Calvin Ayre– could save it, the price of cryptocurrencies continuing to fall, the much talked about Baakt exchange tapping the brakes a bit, Steemit and Spankchain announcing layoffs, and new moves from US securities regulators on ICOs and ICO promoters. We’re all kind of left scratching our heads and trying to figure out which way is up.

Amongst all this, I was somewhat surprised when Zeth told me that November has been a very positive month for the team over at Plexus, with lots of top talent getting matched with quality enterprise projects (see our first post where we talked about hiring trends). Time to HODL CordaCoin?

So a lot to focus on, but the one topic that has been at the forefront of everyone’s –at least everyone involved in ICOs– minds, is “what does this action by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) mean?” and “are ICOs dead?” Remember, I’m not a lawyer and this isn’t legal advice.

Starting with the news, the SEC announced two sets of settlements, the first involving Airfox and Paragon Coin, and the second involving Floyd Mayweather Jr and DJ Khaled (Cue the ‘you smart’ memes).  My friend Stephen Palley (who is actually a lawyer) already has a great write-up on the first one, I suggest you check it out.  What is interesting about both of these cases, is that they are different from previous action, and everyone had been warned previously. The last major enforcement action, in April, on Centra involved fraud. People raised money for an ICO then –allegedly– took off in the Lambos they –allegedly– paid for with ICO contributions.  That’s not happened here. Paragon and Airfox were charged with selling unregistered securities, and our celebrity friends were charged for having promoted unregistered securities (actually, for Centra), without disclosing that they were paid for this promotion.

Let’s take this in reverse order. The takeaway for most people reading this from the Mayweather/DJ Khaled settlement is probably fairly limited, although what do I know? You could be a major celebrity reading this after having promoted an ICO, if so my only suggestion is to contact a lawyer. The broader, more likely scenario, is that people working with or holding tokens that have received endorsements from celebrities or otherwise should hope that if they were paid, it was disclosed.

On the first case, Paragon/Airfox, there are probably a lot of people at firms that are involved with tokens that conducted and ICO or thinking about joining one. First question, will all tokens get shut down? Answer: I don’t know, (still not a lawyer) it seems hard to imagine 100% of them going away, but it is hard to guess. Those firms should probably speak with a competent lawyer and assess their options. People involved in those projects should also consider having a dialogue with the leaders of the projects to ask what has been done to ensure that their project has not run afoul of regulations, and where it has they have worked to comply with the relevant authorities’ investigations. Also, don’t panic. Even if you were involved with an ICO project, you may not have done anything wrong. It would be wise to seek legal advice in this regard however.

There is good news though, we now know where we stand. The problem isn’t necessarily issuing tokens, but ensuring that they follow the rules and regulations.  Several projects have leveraged crowdfunding platforms and/or restricted sales of tokens that could be consider securities to ensure compliance and should not have this hanging over their heads. We’ve also seen a lot more proactive regulatory support for selling securities tokens in places like Switzerland, Gibraltar, Malta and Liechtenstein. These rules combine innovative technologies with common sense rules and regulations designed to ensure their success. Projects going down these routes should hopefully be on the right track towards success.

For those still not convinced that working with a project using tokens is for them, let’s circle back around to my snarky comment about CordaCoin at the top. There will likely soon be a lot of people with hands-on experience with smart contracts and blockchains moving to enterprise DLT and non-token applications of these technologies, at the same time as these platforms are maturing. I’d expect that this should be somewhat of a resurgence in development around these projects.  Have a chat with the team at Plexus if you’re curious.

As always we love hearing from you, let us know what you think, and how you view the next phase of these technologies and markets.

Hi, I’m Colin Platt, co-host of the Blockchain Insider podcast, and a cryptocurrency and distributed ledger researcher and specialist. This is the third in a series of cryptocurrency/blockchain posts that explore some of the topics that Zeth, Shaun and I found interesting and worth exploring further. As always we hope that you enjoy this series of fortnightly posts, and welcome your feedback.

Note: Nothing in this post should be construed as investment advice, or a recommendation of any particular project or crypto-asset.

Having checked out the world of enterprise DLT platforms in our last post, we now shift back to public blockchains, and more specifically those which focus on smart contracting. If you are reading this, chances are that you have heard about Ethereum, it is –by many measures– the most widely used smart contract-focussed blockchain and cryptocurrency.  Speaking with many firms working in this space, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that there are interests in other competing platforms.  The natural questions that arise are, which ones? and what do they look like?

In our typical style, it is worth making a quick stop to explain what smart contracts are, and what we mean when we say “smart contract-focussed blockchains”. The term “smart contract” originates from a 1997 paper published by Nick Szabo, entitled: Smart Contracts: Formalizing and Securing Relationships on Public Networks. In this paper, Szabo concluded that:

“Smart contracts combine protocols, users interfaces, and promises expressed via those interfaces, to formalize and secure relationships over public networks. This gives us new ways to formalize the digital relationships which are far more functional than their inanimate paper-based ancestors. Smart contracts reduce mental and computational transaction costs, imposed by either principals, third parties, or their tools.”

While looking at these digital functions between multiple parties on a blockchain which can automate the movement of something of value (e.g., cryptographic tokens), brings a load of functionality, things become more complicated when one considers the legal implications of these tools.  The result is that it is likely a misnomer to call these tools “contracts”, and when compared with other “smart” things out there, that may also be an inappropriate terms.

That said, these are cool, especially when integrated closely to a blockchain protocol.  We refer to these married concepts of smart contracts and blockchains as “smart contract-focussed blockchains”.  The architecture and implementation is wide enough to skipper a couple of oil tankers through comfortably, however.

At their base these platforms integrate, at the protocol level, a wider set of scripts than “transaction-focussed blockchains” such as Bitcoin.  Of course adding new functionality than originally intended to Bitcoin is completely possible, either on vertical layers, or through the use of cryptographic primitives, there is little evidence to suggest that these uses were part of the original intention.  Ethereum, EOS, Lisk –and to an extent Stellar– on the other hand come from very different roots, seeking to offer a level of abstraction for developers allowing relatively easy coding of functionality directly into a live network.

Ok, enough with the background. Make with the details!

In the style of the last post, we line up some of the various aspects of these platforms below:

1: Ethereum forks, which closely mirror aspects of the Ethereum project include Ethereum Classic (ETC) and Ubiq (UBQ)

2: Source: https://bitinfocharts.com; Cost of a simple send transaction as at 9 Nov 2018

3: Code compiles down to Web Assembly (WASM), currently the C++ tools are the most mature

4: Lisk, while technically not a smart contracts-focussed platform, works to interface other blockchains and run smart contracts in dedicated side chains

5: Cost of “outgoing transaction”, transactions within a sidechain are free

(https://lisk.io/help-center/getting-started/does-lisk-have-transaction-fees)

There are of course, many other platforms, more or less in current use, including NEO, Cardano, Tezos, and more. What continually amazes us is that ability for the community to keep bringing new ideas and ways to tackle problems, and thereby increasing the number of options and tools available to developers. As these platforms grow and evolve, we are starting to see projects move away from some of the earlier more well known options, to newer platforms. However, don’t forget that like in every technology, not every platform will survive, and those that do may not be recognizable in the future.

Due to the open source nature of most, if not all, public blockchains and with an increasing amount of resources available it has never been easier to get involved.

As we asked with permissioned DLT, we love hearing from you about how you look at these platforms, or which platforms you find interesting.

Hi, I’m Colin Platt, co-host of the Blockchain Insider podcast, and a cryptocurrency and distributed ledger researcher and specialist. This is the third in a series of cryptocurrency/blockchain posts that explore some of the topics that Zeth, Shaun and I found interesting and worth exploring further. As always we hope that you enjoy this series of fortnightly posts, and welcome your feedback.

Note: Nothing in this post should be construed as investment advice, or a recommendation of any particular project.

In the last post, we spoke about permissionless, or public, blockchains and their user numbers. Today we are changing tack and looking into the world of enterprise distributed ledger technologies.

Before diving in, it is worth noting what –and why– enterprise distributed ledgers exist.  Though maligned by some as simply marketing terms for distributed databases that sought to cash in on the blockchain hype, distributed ledgers have begun to evolve and mature into no-nonsense codebases designed to meet the needs of large-scale enterprise technology implementations. I stress “begun” here because the job is still incomplete, and as we know, enterprise technology stacks –particularly those relying on distributed networks– tend to move at a different pace when compared to the “move fast and break things” world of technology stacks used, for instance, in consumer web and mobile applications.

This relatively slow maturation process has also revealed a disconnect between the vernacular used to describe these technologies (“permissioned blockchain”) and the reality of what is being developed: distributed datasets, leveraging cryptographic primitives, where linked transactions are validated by a list of identified, or semi-trusted actors, and broadcast to a network of nodes. A mouthful, but hopefully it encapsulates the “what is it?” at a high-level.

The why is more straight-forward, permissionless blockchains (the ones with coins) are relatively expensive to run, throughput is (currently) limited, they rely on game theory for security, transactions can be validated (or not) by anyone, and there is no recourse for errors. This is fine for some use cases, but potentially poses issues for companies looking for the benefits of blockchains, whilst trying to remain compliant with regulations and minimise the risks for their business. In short, the desire for distributed ledgers is not born from ideological roots, nor is it reactionary response to a threat posed by cryptocurrencies, it is a rational decision based on costs and benefits, and it is certainly not a silver bullet.

Now we’re on to the who. There have been multiple attempts at building distributed ledger solutions for enterprise usage, from those attempts five projects have gained broader recognition: R3 Corda, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Sawtooth Lake, Enterprise Ethereum (including Quorum & Pantheon), and Digital Asset’s GSL.

Comparing these stacks, we look at several aspects in our cross-section of these technologies. Amongst these factors, one of interest to DLT geeks such as myself, is their architecture. I wrote a post about this awhile ago, have a look if you’re interested in details. TL;DR? There are two factors to consider when looking at blockchains, statefulness (stateless or stateful) and data diffusion (universal or selective).

1: Whilst the Corda ledger is stateless, Smart Contract state can be logged into the ledger
2: Additional Enterprise Ethereum implementations include Clearmatics, and Axoni but are not currently open sourced, and/or do not currently have plans to do so
3: Source: https://hub.digitalasset.com/digital-asset-platform-non-technical-whitepaper
4: Dependent on specific use-case requirements

As the table shows, there are still several large differences between the DLT stacks. While it is likely that some of these differences will disappear through convergence as they are put into production use, it will be likely that we’ll see greater entrenchment on other fronts.

One of these notable points is the smart contracting languages, currently there are three camps.  The first is the push towards purpose-built generalised languages, most notably Solidity (the main smart contract language used in the Ethereum public mainnet). The second, is a push towards greater abstraction of smart contract code, e.g., Corda uses a deterministic JVM.

The last moves in the other direction, DAML is a proprietary language, inspired by the functional programming language Haskell, which is specifically intended to not be Turing-complete. Though this remains a relatively new concept, smart contract bugs seen in public blockchains have demonstrated why this decision may be more suitable in some uses. In addition to security concerns, advocates say that these methods may be easier for less experienced developers to work directly with smart contracts.

Consensus mechanisms within enterprise distributed ledger technologies is an example of something that may converge over time as we experiment more in production environments, and a focus on settlement security (i.e. ‘assumed’ immutability) becomes more important than a simple focus on transaction throughput (arguably if this is your principal concern, perhaps DLT is not the optimal technology choice for your use-case). It’s too early to say which one will reign supreme, or if it will be only one model, but there seems to be some momentum gathering around PBFT-inspired algorithms as well as Notary-like mechanisms.

The final note that we’d make is the license for each implementation, Apache 2 has gathered a lot of interest amongst open-source implementations. Several aspects of GNU GPL 3 have shown themselves to be less desirable for enterprise implementation, including “copyleft” provisions. We might speculate that future implementations of Enterprise Ethereum specifically choose to not use GNU GPL 3 licenses, and perhaps even utilise Apache 2.

In summary, this is still an evolving space, but the phase of excessive hype with little progress seems to have passed, and projects have started to deliver on some of the promises made. It’s too early to see the full roadmap, but more things are becoming clear, and better communicated. Releases are becoming more stable, and now rarely even require a full rewrite of your code from scratch!

We encourage anyone looking at these technologies to share their own framework on how they evaluate these technologies, identifying their respective strengths and weaknesses.  Core development teams are always very happy to work closely with their community and jointly develop the project.

Hi, I’m Colin Platt, co-host of the Blockchain Insider podcast, and a cryptocurrency and distributed ledger researcher and specialist. This is the second in a series of cryptocurrency/blockchain posts that explore some of the topics that Zeth, Shaun and I found interesting and worth exploring further. As always we hope that you enjoy this series of fortnightly posts, and welcome your feedback.

Note: Nothing in this post should be construed as investment advice, or a recommendation of any particular project.

Last week we had the pleasure of attending the Blockchain Live conference in London’s Olympia.  The headline sponsor of this event was Block.one, the team behind EOS. EOS is a smart contract cryptocurrency platform, like Ethereum, which implements a delegated proof-of-stake (DPOS) algorithm. The Block.one team includes well known figures in the space including Dan Larimer (CTO), Ian Grigg, and Brock Pierce (Brock has stepped back publicly from the project somewhat). I was able to catch-up with Dan and Block.one CEO Brendan Blumer, you can hear that full interview on my podcast (bi.11fs.com). What was interesting for me was their relentless focus on two things: usability and developer adoption. While this is far from the ony project to realise that you need quality teams and projects in order to create a valuable proposition for average users, it is impressive to see how fast it seems to have come together. What really clinched it for me was a Tweet from Qiao Wang, Head of Product Messari:

Zeth and I first met at an early Ethereum meetup in London, in early 2015 in the months leading up to the launch of the mainnet, the excitement behind Ethereum at that time was impressive, and since we’ve seen a large percentage of new projects focussing in some way around Ethereum and Solidity (its native smart contracting language).  To see a new platform catch-up in a matter of months by daily active users across Dapps is exciting, and definitely worth spending some time on. Speaking for myself, I still have some unanswered questions about EOS from a technical point of view, but I am open minded.

Let’s start with Qiao’s point, Dapp daily active users on both platforms. Dappradar.com has lots of really interesting stats covering 944 Dapps on Ethereum, and 75 on EOS at the time of writing.  These cover figures including the volume in the base currency flowing through the projects, number of transactions and user stats. Projects are broken down into categories, covering things like exchanges, games, collectibles and more. Clearly the 2.5 year headstart that Ethereum has had shows up quite quickly in the number of Dapps (944 vs 75). When we looked at the numbers on 1 October, EOS Dapps collectively had 13,897 active users over the past 24 hours, whilst Ethereum Dapps showed 11,059 active users.  Interestingly, the most used Dapp on each network (PRA CandyBox on EOS, and 333ETH on Ethereum) accounted for a large number of total users, 5 085 vs 1 872, respectively. Some have also suggested that due to the design of EOS, which has low, or zero, transaction fees compared to many other networks, much of these numbers may be overestimated due to “transaction spamming”. We should note that EOS, unlike Ethereum, requires users paying an amount to create a new account (in RAM), which is currently about $1.00.  Even at this, developers coming from non cryptocurrency backgrounds accustomed to more widely adopted technologies will find these DAU numbers low, compared to for instance mobile apps, we concur.

What other numbers can we look at to monitor the success and growth of these networks?  Ethereum, is usually touted as the most widely adopted cryptocurrency by developers with some entities hinting at 250 000 developers apparently based on downloads of a popular open source developer suite (Truffle), though the number feels high. Smart contracts placed on the Ethereum blockchain, and processed by the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) are written in a purpose built language: Solidity.

Looking at Github repositories, at the time of writing, there were 235 public repositories marked as having the Solidity language (though we’ll note that the language search functionality in Github is likely not comprehensive).

If we broaden the search to include Solidity anywhere, this showed a larger number of repositories at 7 359 public repositories. Whereas “Ethereum” returned 19 049 public repositories:

Another datapoint to consider, is that approximately 30 000 people list Solidity on LinkedIn.

While these are not perfect measures, they help give an idea of the number of developers and projects built on one of the most used smart contract platforms.

Beyond Ethereum, and EOS, there are several other smart contract platforms including Tezos, Rootstock.  Outside of the cryptocurrency space, companies like Digital Asset Holdings, R3 and IBM have worked to develop distributed ledger technologies which incorporate smart contracts targeted at enterprise usage.

Though the current numbers of users and developers are lower than the hype around the space would suggest, the growth in EOS over a matter of months shows the demand behind these platforms.  It will certainly be an interesting space to be involved in.

Zeth was asked to speak about the blockchain talent war on the Investor Stage at Blockchain Live 2018.

While a lot was covered we have outlined some of the key takeaways around talent in the blockchain space:

These figures are based on blockchain or blockchain related terms on individual LinkedIn profiles. Regarding concentrations of talent is was surprising to us to find both the Benelux region and France featuring higher than Germany in terms of blockchain talent hubs.

We also looked into the corporate exodus across Europe where corporates are losing their best talent. This is not just a blockchain specific trend but due to the funding from both ICO and VC this problem is magnified.

Across Europe 53% of profiles referencing blockchain or a blockchain related term now work for a company of 200 or less employee’s:

Another interesting set of figures is around the breakdown of hiring of talent across enterprise and start-up businesses. It was clear that unsurprisingly, tech makes up the biggest percentage of the team across enterprise and start-ups.

What is perhaps relevant to the enterprise space is that there have been increases in hires that will generate internal buy-in.

For start-ups, not surprisingly there has been a significant increase in hires to promote awareness around upcoming ICOs. It has become a lot harder to secure funding for firms without a solid strategy around this.

For companies that have ICO’d there has been a rise in business development and partnership type roles to help increase awareness and ensure their platforms are remaining relevant through their corporate partnerships.

Check out the other events we have attended here.

Hi, I’m Colin Platt, co-host of the Blockchain Insider podcast, and a cryptocurrency and distributed ledger researcher and specialist. Zeth, Shaun and I started discussing how to delve into a series of topics that we found interesting –and perhaps less well covered– in and around the cryptocurrency/blockchain space, a few months ago. We think we came up with a good formula to get started, and we hope that you enjoy this series of fortnightly posts, and of course welcome your feedback.

Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but by now it is quite obvious that the H2 run-up in cryptocurrency prices and flurry of ICO raises was unsustainable. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is down nearly 70% from its December 2017 all-time highs, and Ether is down more than 85% from an all-time high in January 20181. Though hardly dead, the total amount of funding for ICOs has seen a nearly 80% fall from its peak in December 2017 of $1.66 million raised, down to $337 million in August 2018 according to icodata.io.

Though there may be blood in the proverbial streets of crypto, one meme that seems to live on in the cryptocurrency space is that when markets are down, people build. So let’s have a look at whether there is any merit to this.

To start answering this question, I headed over to ITJobswatch, they have some interesting tools to analyse the trends of the IT jobs markets.  Their dataset is UK-centric, but it gives an interesting indications of what is happening. We can see in the graph below that jobs vacancies for permanent roles citing “Blockchain” somewhere in the description:

This number peaked in May of this year, accounting for more than 1.2% of all IT jobs at the time. This number has dropped, currently representing roughly 1% of all permanent IT jobs. Contract roles have been slightly more volatile, peaking at about the same time at 0.7% of contract IT jobs, but dropping roughly 60% to 0.3% in August. Perhaps unsurprisingly 80% of these jobs are currently concentrated around London.

We also know that people are skilling up. With sustained interest in the space this should come as no surprise.  But what is quite interesting to ponder, is that even if the price of cryptocurrencies has dropped, a lot, recently they are still up, a lot… What this means is that many people that have been in it for awhile are financially independent enough to do their own thing. This leaves a void for strong talent to acquire the skills and move into project, some of them possibly led by these early adopters.  Another thing that we are seeing is that the new crop of talent, who may not come from a cryptocurrency background but industry bring in a strong background that complements the team. This is critical for a lot of projects that want to change industry, but don’t necessarily know the finer details of building production software in that industry.

What can we glean from all this?

From speaking with people in the business, it is clear that companies are still recruiting, and that there is a serious talent gap. The ability for indiscriminate fundraising at incredible levels may have gone away, but there are two clear positives.

Firstly, there are potentially fewer low quality projects raising money in the ICO space for blockchain projects with little to no technical justification for using these technologies and an equally slim chance of any meaningful success. The second is that the many of the more promising projects that have weathered the storm, practiced good treasury management and have a clear path forward are still hiring, and they need the best to deliver on their ambitions. They also appear to be paying up, median salaries for blockchain roles have increased by roughly 11% since this time last year.

On the enterprise and non crypto side of blockchain, the hype phase seems to have died as well. Anecdotal evidences suggests that a lot of the proofs-of-concept popular in 2016 and early 2017 have proven to be less efficient than more traditional implementations. As a result companies have become more focussed on quality projects and doubled down on working towards implementation rather than simply exploration. Returning to the numbers, perhaps a lot of the jobs that weren’t really focused on blockchains but just cited them have been taken off the table.

Another promising sign in the enterprise blockchain space is that several of the code bases are starting to mature and become stable enough to actually envisage using them in production. From Corda, to Hyperledger to Enterprise Ethereum, companies have stopped becoming involved simply for the press release factor, but because of an actual conviction that these can be useful.  We’ve seen a series of successes coming not only from larger household name companies, but small providers who need to deliver solutions that directly leverage these technologies.

Bottom line is, after the hysterical days of crypto in late 2017, talented people that can deliver are back in vogue. There is still a lot of work to be done, but plenty of investment and willingness to pull it off.

Are you interested in breaking into the blockchain space?

Zeth Couceiro, one of the Founders was asked during an interview with 11-FS how to get a job in blockchain. Some of Zeth’s advice was:

It’s no longer just Financial service companies that are looking for people to work in the blockchain space but also a mixture of start-ups and corporate companies across many industries such as automotive, utilities, defence, supply chain and pharmaceutical.

If you’re a Developer you have a good chance of moving into a blockchain role, this could be as a:

Core Developer = C++ usually, sometimes Go-Lang

Back-end Developer = C++, Java, Net, Node.js, Go

Front-end Developer = Usually JavaScript or mobile

Experience working with multiple languages and big data sets will be useful and make you better equipped to handle the complexity of working in blockchain.

Generally, blockchain roles are opening up for Developers, Designers UI / UX, Product and even non-technical roles like marketing.

A good piece of advice is to start looking online to find out which projects fit your tech stack, or skills and start looking at which organisations or platforms are using those, generally they’ll use modern tech such as JS and Go-Lang as detailed above. Also go onto GitHub and start looking at what these guys are doing. Download the software, start messing around with it. For more information on GitHub, check out our other article: Should I be on GitHub?

Give all this a go and of course speak us here at Plexus!

Zeth was invited to speak  at the 11:FS podcast on Blockchain Insider. Here’s what he had to say about breaking into the Blockchain industry:

Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

My name’s Zeth Couceiro, I am the Co-Founder of Plexus Resource Solutions, we are a specialist recruiter, or talent partner, in the blockchain, DLT and cryptocurrency space.

I’ve been asked the question quite a few times, “How do I get a job in blockchain?” I’m sure you probably get that question a lot. What type of companies are hiring?

So, years ago, when I first started, it was predominantly financial services companies, and so it was consultancies linked with those guys. Recently, it’s been an explosion of, automotive utilities, defence, supply chain, and not just startups. Corporates are getting on this; big, big consultancy firms, too.

What are you seeing those companies asking for? What sort of skills should people be looking for?

Generally speaking, they’re looking for developers. So, basically, you get three types of developers, I’m finding. Core developers: the guys who would have built the actual Bitcoin protocol, or the Ethereum protocol. Then you get your back-end developers, who build on top of it, like the emergence of solidity, for smart contracts. Then, lastly, you get your front end developers, which are like React, front end guys, they’re less common, but they’re becoming more common now.

You’ve got to have something that touches the user at some point. You’ve got to have things somebody can use, not just code.

Yes, exactly, and you’re also seeing a lot more devops guys coming into the space, as well, just in terms of continuous integration, in some of the work they’re doing. So that’s coming up a lot more in the last, six months, I’ve found.

So, what percentage would you say is technical development experience?

I’d say 70, 80% of them are developer based. I had some more stuff around, digital marketing, particularly pushing ICOs. You’re also getting some stuff around subject matter experts, or PMs, but mostly it’s developers. 80% plus.

Wow. That’s interesting. So, if you are a developer, but you’ve not been in the blockchain or DLT space before, what sort of skill set and background do you need?

It’s tough. Generally speaking, you want somebody who’s maybe worked with multiple languages, and maybe big data sets. Distributed systems, or maybe polyglot engineers is probably what you’d call them. Each of these platforms is built on different languages, and so someone who understands multiple languages is better equipped to handle the complexity of working in blockchain.

I guess this is the challenge, right? We’re still seeing a market that’s pretty complex, and you’re looking for diamonds, really, because there aren’t many of these polyglots.

No, there are not. There’s a lot more guys coming through, or the newer platforms are looking for a lot of functional programmers, which is an emerging trend across the whole of the developer space.

What’s a functional programmer?

In a traditional sense, a functional programmer is someone with [proficiency in] Haskell or Scala, or Lisp.

So these newer languages?

Yes. Well, some of them are quite old, but they were traditionally academic languages, but then they’ve moved now into the mainstream. They’re generally better in terms of handling a lot of data, hence why they work quite well with blockchains.

Interesting. So, what trends are you seeing from the growth perspective? There are a couple of industries there, but if you had a candidate saying, “Right, where do I take my career now? I’ve got a little bit of developer skill, I’ve worked in project management here and there, I’ve been a BA here and there,” what advice are you giving out?

There are three main platforms currently, and these guys are generally leading most of the corporate blockchain innovation. That’s the stuff that R3 are doing with Corda, it’s the stuff that the Linux Foundation are doing, and IBM, as well, with Hyperledger and the Ethereum Alliance.

Generally speaking, most of the big core projects are that, but I’m starting to even hear about people already looking to integrate stuff like Iota, which is incredibly new still, but people are still looking at some of the newer things that are only just, sort of, starting to come through. But in terms of what to expect, and how to maybe get into that space, there’s no shortage of  these projects, or programs that are looking for some form of developers to help build their open source projects, and so what I would recommend is, start looking up online, start finding out which projects maybe fit your tech stack, or skills.

[For example] if you come from, I don’t know, a java background, maybe R3 might be good for you, or Corda, because that’s a Kotlin, which is a JVM type technology stack, that might suit you better. So, start looking at your technology stack, start looking at which organizations or platforms are using those, and then just get onto GitHub, and just start looking at what these guys are doing. Download the software, start messing around with it.

Have a play.

Yes, exactly. Exactly.

There are some really great Hello Worlds out there, and a lot of developer support and evangelism. If you get to their websites, there’s a lot out there if you just do a cursory bit of Googling. What about the companies looking to bring the staff in? What advice are you giving to them, and what should they be looking for?

Everybody wants the best developers, and everyone wants to pay as little as they can get away with, and they need them straight away. So, I would always try and go through a bit of an exercise with them, in terms of, just try and evaluate what it is you’re looking for.

Do you need someone who does core blockchain? Or are you just building, Ethereum smart contracts on top of what you’re doing? Or evaluating what you’re looking for. Once you’ve got that idea, then try and prioritise in terms of time, quality or cost. Do you need them straight away, or can you wait?

Quality, do you need them to have specific blockchain experience? Or are you comfortable up-skilling them with blockchain later on? Maybe have someone in the team who can help up-skill them. Or cost. Are you willing to pay over the market to get the best guys? Or are you on a budget in terms of limiting what you’re looking for?

So that’s a really interesting point. What do you want to be good at as an organization should inform how you hire, as a business, you have to know what you want. How do you get towards that, do you think?

A lot of consultancies are just looking at, “Right, well, I’ve got clients here, how can I start not looking like I’m way behind the curve on this?” so then they think generally, “Right, I’ll get in a really, really, hot architect,” and generally, they’ll need the best of the best, because they’ll be speaking to, guys who are well established in the space. If you’re a startup, chances are you probably have a CTO that already understands this market, and so I would normally say to them, do they actually specifically need blockchain experience? If you’re looking at bringing guys in with blockchain experience, you’re going to be paying a premium for that, and you might not even need to. A lot of these guys could up-skill quite quickly on this stuff.

I think it’s fair to say that the first blockchain employee was probably Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. There is probably nobody on the planet, with ten years of blockchain experience. So we’ve all had to learn this pretty quickly, and good skills are reusable, right? I think it’s sage advice.

Anyone looking to get into this space, how can they find out more about what you do?

In terms of getting into the space, there is no shortage of meet-ups, wherever you are. So, I’d encourage people to go to meet-ups and speak to other developers, other guys in the space. I’d also say just get onto these GitHubs, and just check out what people are doing in it. What are people uploading? What matches their tech stack?

If you would like some advice get in touch with us directly.