Web3 X 3 Years - Praveen Thakur

WEB3 X 3 YEARS - PRAVEEN THAKUR

Participants:

Jervis Piera ( Host)

Praveen Thakur (COO and CPO of IBC Media )

00:22

JP

Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, once again let's start the show and welcome to the stage our speaker for today. Before we begin, ladies and gentlemen, let me let you know what's happening here. So this is JP from AdLunam Inc, bringing to you everything about Web3. On today's show, our speaker is going to share with us a whole wealth of information that he has from developing blockchain from a grassroots level up as well as what is to be seen from the bottom to three years from now, the vision that is going to be shared for blockchain and the movement that it is. So ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of Diving into Crypto and give us a warm welcome to our speaker today, Mr. Praveen Thakur. Welcome Praveen.

01:15

Praveen Thakur

Thank you so much. And JP, I'm extremely happy here and I understand the community that I am talking to has spent a lot of time in this space and I'm sure I would be able to share my perspective on various things which are pretty interesting. At the same time, I would also be happy to learn from your community. So thank you so much for inviting me.

01:46

JP

Glad to have you here. Praveen the thing is, this show caters to people from various levels of experience in the entire blockchain world, in the crypto industry as a whole. So we have people who are newbies, so to speak, and people who've been veterans in this space for a long time. And the one thing that they enjoy is what the guest brings in terms of their perspective, their thought leadership, some of the strategies and of course, industry best practices. And I know that's something you've got a wealth of information to share with us today.

02:23

Praveen Thakur

Excellent. Why don't we get started? Thank you.

02:27

JP

You're welcome. So Praveen, I think that the first point and most of us will want to know over here, where did the switch go off and at which point did you realize that, hey, you know what, Web3 is a place to be.

02:45

Praveen Thakur

That's pretty interesting and I think it would have happened with many other people, I am sure. I have been into Web2. In fact, I have started my career in IBMMainframes, if some of you may have heard of that. And in those days working in Mainframe used to be one of the best things to do in your life and I happened to start that. And of course I have spent all of my life in fintech, primarily across the geographies. I have worked in the US mortgage banking deeply then I have worked in fintech across the Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific. So what happened? I would call it as an accident that I was to one of the blockchain conferences time. And to be really honest, before that I had heard of crypto Bitcoin only in cases where somebody has hacked some system and is asking for some money.

03:46

Praveen Thakur

I mean, that was my exposure to Bitcoin before. So when I went there, in fact, of course Bitcoin excited me for sure. But I think I was intrigued by the possibilities of the underlying technology blockchain to further this. In fact, I would admit that I came back home and I would have bought ten plus books on blockchain fundamentals and what exactly does it mean and why should it be important to us? And coming from the fintech background, the most important thing, something that really impressed me the most is the DeFi and I understand finance. I am the CFA student, I have cleared level one and I have worked all my life in finance. So I started getting excellent perspectives of doing things in DeFi which were at all not possible in the conventional finance space. So I think that's how really I got started. And then of course an opportunity came where I was designing solution for my own agritech, which is called Agricosmos+.

05:03

Praveen Thakur

And blockchain really played an important role in that, though it was a permissent solution which I was trying to build on Hyperledger Fabric and I really thought that this really could do a lot of things. I mean, that's how in fact I got into and of course after that we will talk about having doing several things in this space.

05:28

JP

I find that absolutely interesting and it's always fascinating to get the story of people that have jumped into the Web3 space. Sometimes it's just a light bulb goes off, sometimes they've fallen right into it. Who knows, they dived right into it. Right? But in your case in particular, I'm curious about what you just said when you said that you were using blockchain in an agritech space. Could you elaborate more about that?

06:00

Praveen Thakur

So that's another interesting story. What happened, I was approached by a person who is an aggregator in agriculture. So what exactly that person's role is that he used to get several orders of the agricultural produce and those were basically by nature they were organic produce. Now this person had confirmation from around 15,000 plus farmers spread across a particular geography India and the requirement was that the produce should be organic. Now how do if you understand the agriculture lifecycle basically, in fact, there are several things that really happen in agriculture lifecycle which really can make a particular produce non organic. Now, being organic has to be asserted and if you know that, if you can kind of store these data points in the centralized servers, you are at the mercy of the person who owns the data. Now, the only solution that I had was in my mind was to go for organic certification by leveraging blockchain and I, in fact, designed a solution which was permission, which had various entities who had a stake in the game, such as the person who is buying it, people who are contributing with the inputs to the process.

07:31

Praveen Thakur

And then, of course, there were financers, there were insurance companies. All these guys were together. So to me, it looked like it is a perfect case for using a permission network where all of these guys will work as transaction validators. And all of them, once you have the majority, then definitely you are certain that what really is happening is right. And I think it proved out to be an interesting case. In fact, we have the MVP ready right now. I think that's how, in fact I saw but again when I started working on this lifecycle. JP then after that, I could think of several other use cases where blockchain could be helpful in coordination with other technologies such as IoT, machine learning, where you go and look at the different diseases these crops are developing in the process. How do you really kind of make sure that these are authentic?

08:29

Praveen Thakur

Then you get the data from different sensors on the ground and how do you.

08:33

JP

we may have lost you or have we lost me? If somebody could give me a quick reaction to let me know. Praveen, do we have you back?

08:43

Praveen Thakur

I can hear you. I can hear you.

08:45

JP

Okay, sorry. I thought I lost you there for a second. And you were hitting on a very interesting point in terms of having those use cases go forward. So please continue.

08:54

Praveen Thakur

Absolutely. So what I was saying, basically that there are several use cases which really are pretty interesting and important in agriculture with respect to blockchain. Such as the most important thing is ensuring that the data points coming from various sources at different points in the cycle, they are not tampered with, such as the data that you get, for example, from the IoT sensors. Now, these data need to be maintained. You need to go and make sure that nobody goes and touches these data points. For example, there are auditors or there are people who are, sorry about that. They come and do audit of your soil testing. Now, it is always a possibility that somebody goes and touches that data and kind of manipulates it. So I think there are several interesting cases which I could think of in agriculture which could really make a lot of difference.

09:52

Praveen Thakur

And I think one more point, JP. I would like to add here that I was a very keen observer of the World Economic Forum conference that happened in Davos. And one thing that I personally believe that if we are talking about sustainability of this planet, I think blockchain has to play its role. There is no other way, in my opinion.

10:13

JP

You're absolutely right. And I should thank you for sharing this particular case because it's so unique right, where you see the application of blockchain in this particular space, most of us in this room or most of us in the crypto industry are seeing one version of the entire range in which it becomes. And when you're talking about mass adoption, these are exactly where at the grassroot level, all puns included at the grassroot level is where it can really kick off. When you're talking about mass adoption, when you're talking about having tokenize this and of course, yes, organic produce, I mean, who doesn't want that on their plate?

10:54

Praveen Thakur

Absolutely, absolutely.

10:57

JP

Right. Okay. So this being one industry, and I know that you've had through your experiences, you've worked in different sectors, and all of them have enriched your experience when it comes to businesses switching their minds on to using blockchain, right? What is your perception of that transition for them? Will they adopt technology like they really shouldn't embrace it? Or will it be like, oh hey, this is a new fad, everybody's doing it, we can improve our market share. What are your thoughts on that Praveen?

11:34

Praveen Thakur

I think that's again, a very interesting point, which really I have been thinking quite a lot. I come from a techno functional background and as you know, I have spent most of my life in building tech products. I particularly feel that people don't have a choice. Now, if you really look at blockchain, the way blockchain is kind of helping some of the things which really were unthinkable in the past. For example, if you really look at a community having a say in what is happening at the corporate level now, can you imagine this happening in the conventional world? I don't think so. Now I'll give an example. So if you look at any startup JP today, all startups today are banking on the daily active users, DAUs, MAUs and all of that, right? And most of these startups, if you really see in fact, they have huge amount of valuation without earning any penny.

12:41

Praveen Thakur

You know, many such cases, I would not name them, but there are many such cases. Now the question is that if you are building an empire on the strength of the community, why would you not share the wealth which is being created in this process with that community? Now that's the perfect dichotomy that I think now if this has to solve, I think any technology and if you go by the Gartner's technology hype, what they call, I think, even if the corporations don't really want to do this, I think community will force them to do this. At least that's what is my perspective on this?

13:24

JP

You know, it's decentralization is really a lot about, you know, power to the people. And I think you've, you're hitting the nail on the head here with that, with that perspective, because that is really the kind of movement that we should bring, right? And that's something that encompasses, no matter where you are in the world it's always something that you can embrace and start adopting.

13:50

Praveen Thakur

Absolutely. And I think the adoption speed, the use cases, all those things could vary. I agree. But the underlying fact still remains the same that could this technology deliver something to someone and I think something to everyone not someone, basically, and I believe personally that this adoption will happen across. Now, the use cases may vary depending. If you are India, you may have a different use case. If you are in El Salvador, you may have different use case. But the technology is still relevant. It is still solving the base problem that really we have seen in the last, I would say hundreds of years.

14:31

JP

True blockchain really becomes a game changer on that front. Right. So Praveen, I'm curious to know, because you have worked across a variety of industries, do you see this picking up in you've given us one example of agritech, right? Any other examples or cases that you've worked with or observed that you'd like to share with us before we move forward on that?

14:56

Praveen Thakur

No, I think so there are several use cases. I think in some part of my career I have worked in supply chain logistics as well when I was working for Tata Steel, if you have heard of this, is one of the premium companies globally. So I was working in supply chain logistics for them and I have seen the pain that the industries the companies face. I'll tell you, we had several of the sales offices, marketing offices and the information flow that was happening from all these places to one central server and the information flow used to happen using several applications and several hardwares in between. And at the same time, there was a gap information at different points in the flow. Imagine now, I don't think they really have adopted this but then my point here is that if you look at supply chain today and this I am talking about one small example of a particular use case but then if you look at the global supply chain, what would you think?

16:06

Praveen Thakur

I was reading somewhere that all the important the containers that we do that we use for shipping products and if there are high tech containers and most of the time people don't know whether they are going to get a reverse strip confirmed or not. So the point is that there are many ports in the global market today where I understand that people have started developing these solutions where everybody has got point in time information about what's going to be the container demand in next few days, what exactly so imagine how much money you are saving there. I think there are several use cases in particular. One last point I would like to make here where I have personally been into media use cases. Now the media has transformed in several years. As you know, the form and shape of media is completely different now what it used to be several years ago.

17:05

Praveen Thakur

So I think now the media is getting into the hands of the community. It's not a place now or it's not a situation now where only few people are creating stuff and others are consumers. I think the creator ecosystem is getting widened like anything. If you look at blockchain, in my opinion.

17:30

JP

Most certainly, yes. That is something that we are looking for. More of these use cases being applicable in the real world and the aspect of traditional and web, two companies being able to transition. Because I've also seen something very similar in real estate and the fractionalization of home ownership being a concept built on what you and I may have remembered as timeshares of that particular point. And you can see this also when it comes to time sharing when it comes to large or heavy capital assets, right, whether it's machinery, whether it's the luxury sector, it's these cases at the end of the day that have a real world transition points and we often ignore them. But I'm glad that you also mentioned that it's coming up in the media. And I can certainly imagine that there would be so many avenues where that would beneficial all the way through, especially when it comes to up to the minute news being able to work across its entire process and lifecycle.

18:45

JP

Fantastic. Thank you for that. Praveen.

18:49

Praveen Thakur

Absolutely.

18:50

JP

Okay, sorry. Go ahead.

18:53

Praveen Thakur

So I think I agree with you. We will talk about I have got few other viewpoints in this case. Maybe we can talk about them when we progress further.

19:03

JP

Okay, sure. Fair enough. Feel free. Feel free at any point in time. Because my next question to you is now going to take this one step, if we take one step behind, right? You have said that you've worked in various places across the globe. Right? I'm curious to understand how you've seen technology adoption in these particular geographies. And knowing what you've learned then seeing what you see now, what's your take on … will it be accelerated in these places? Will more technology adoption happen across the geographies that you've done?

19:43

Praveen Thakur

So, I think I look at this particular point from two perspectives, basically. So the perspective number one is basically the check adoption that you talked about. The second perspective that I am also looking at it. How exactly are the government bodies looking at it? I think these two really have to at some point in time, these two have to kind of go hand in hand. Otherwise, I don't think this will reach a stage or place we want it to. Now, fortunately, the good news is that most of the dominant countries or the people who are tech heavy or who are the leaders, they appreciate this. If you look at America, you understand US. Now, it may happen that different bodies in US, they look at it differently. For example, for some it is security, for some it is currency, virtual currency. I think those differences and stand may exist, I do agree, but at the same time people appreciate and the government cannot really or they are not really just ignoring it.

21:02

Praveen Thakur

Similar to that. All the countries I think I see very interesting trend in the Middle East where the government is in fact encouraging blockchain adoption. And all these MENA countries like you talk about Dubai, you talk about Bahrain, UAE, all these guys are definitely looking at it very favorably and I'm particularly very impressed by the progress that Latin America is making. And I think all of us really are very proud of El Salvador adopting Bitcoin. Now, there may be that I'm not going to that, but then I definitely am very engaged and I think these are the precursors to things happening across the globe. And I think if you look at Singapore, they definitely are to be the Asian blockchain hub and of course for the action they are to come. And if you look at their government actions, I think several things, they encourage the startups, I think in my opinion, JP, I personally believe that governments have taken note of this technology very strongly.

22:00

Praveen Thakur

Same time, there are some implementation challenges. For example, if you talk about CBDC. Now, CBDC is something which is a hot topic in blockchain and the government financial circuits. But of course, I personally believe that CBDCs are not only a national agenda, CBDCs could play the role of international financial conduit without quoting any particular currency today. Because if you look at currency, JP, currency has been reserve, currency has been changing. If you look at the last 500 years now, it would have been nuts. Currency have been British currency, it would have been US dollars. China's currency is getting dominance. I think all these things could be there. But the CBDCs that we are talking about, this could be another innovative, I would say advancement when you talk about the international and global trade and commerce. So to answer your question, in short, I think I am very encouraged by the stand the different governments are taking, especially in terms of blockchains.

23:12

Praveen Thakur

They might have some reservations as well because ultimately, at the end of the day, if it is money, it starts conflicting with the fiat money which the government owns. So I think there might be some conflict there, but I think the government and this community is in a position to resolve those and come up with something which really is, at the end of the day, good for mankind.

23:35

JP

Precisely right. And that's exactly why crypto came into existence. It's to empower people across whatever strata, whatever limitations exist, whatever categories are there today. I think that you've touched on not just an interesting point, but to some degree a point about CBDCs that most people have just blindly written off. It's like no, they're the enemy. That's something that we don't want to have. They're going to use it for control. But there is also, I mean, if you look at it objectively, the positive side that you're mentioning, right? And there are very strong reasons also to build an argument around that. Would you like to elaborate more on that just because of the knowledge that you have and the insight that you can share?

24:26

Praveen Thakur

Absolutely. So I think if I look at CBDC implementation, I think I look at it at different layers. Now, if you look at countries like for example India, and I think India in the last ten years has done tremendous progress in the UPI payment, as we all know. And I think all banks have covered that network where paying money to somebody else has become a matter of seconds, not minutes. Now, that really is something which India has achieved in the last ten years. But at the same time there are still places in the world where these kind of payment infrastructures really has not been created. Now, I think CBDCs could be such an infrastructure which really where you go and make these the lives of the people such ease condition. I think that is one thing. Second thing, what I also think that CBDCs could play a very important role international trades.

25:27

Praveen Thakur

I think in fact, many forums have been set up already where countries have come together and they have started looking at things together. And I think that really helps build the intercountry transactions using these CBDCs. I think CBDCs could play various roles and I think I'm not against the opinion that even say for example, like Bitcoin, maybe there could be other currencies depending upon how much traction do they get in future, they could also be adopted. So the point JP, what I'm trying to come at here is that definitely these things have value. Now, the only point where I am little giving it a time that these things have to mature also an ecosystem has to be created around it so that the adoption and a universal state is reached. Now that is something which in my opinion still to happen, that really we haven't really gone to that stage.

26:35

JP

I think you hit the nail on the head because when you focus on the mechanics and when you look at nations that don't have access to banking, have poverty as a major issue, being able to use a cell phone, for example, to be able to transfer money, that's a quantum leap ahead, right, in technology adoption. And interestingly, and I always come back to this particular case is that as a medium of exchange, at some point in one country in Africa, they were trading value. By trading they had the ability to trade talk time, right? So if they wanted to exchange value, they would send somebody else the same equivalent money as stock time to their phones. And this could have been the base of how an innovative way of exchanging off trade began. And yes, that also like you're saying is that where CBDC is, they will be able at least the mechanism works or rather will work in that fashion.

27:44

Praveen Thakur

No, absolutely. And I think if you look at the civilization and I think I just maybe take 30 seconds on that, how exactly these things have developed and evolved. I think you go and look at I remember one such case where what used to happen that there was a central place in one civilization, I don't remember the name, where the different representations of assets were kept there, people were not holding them with them and it just changes hands. Say for example, there is a particular stone which represents some value. Today JP owns it and tomorrow JP gives it to Praveen and Praveen own it. So even that doesn't move out of the place. But then ownership, I think the society, I think that is the beauty of this society or mankind where we really have progressed over these years towards better, in my opinion.

28:37

Praveen Thakur

Blockchain is the next level of progression that really we should look forward to.

28:41

JP

That certainly is the trade fundamental in its manner of being able to exchange value from one to the other. So, yeah, Praveen, I agree with you. I agree with you on that particular point, especially where the mechanics are concerned. It is since we are in this space of innovation, that certainly is something that we cannot try to remember per se, but actually try to focus on a bit more. So yeah, fair enough. And like you're saying, it's yet to mature. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. And let's see how this mechanism plays out. Right. We've covered a lot of topics, Praveen, over this brief interaction that we've had and it's extremely interesting because we've touched on blockchain being used for logistics, more importantly, agritech. And I want to circle back to agritech once again, right in different cases around that. So the question I really have to ask you, considering this range is given that you've seen it from the ground up, where do you see it going three years from now, for example?

29:53

Praveen Thakur

Yeah, that's very, you know, I think loaded question, in my opinion. So I would like to answer this by breaking in two parts.

30:03

JP

Sure.

30:05

Praveen Thakur

ally see what all happened in: 2008

31:20

Praveen Thakur

If you look at today, in my opinion, there may be peaks and troughs right now this industry may be in a trough phase, but I think these are all in my opinion, this should not be surprised to anyone basically, right? If you look at the way it really has already started impacting the socioeconomic fabric of today's life. If you really look at the kind of experiments that those are happening today, they are amazing. If you really look at, and I was talking to someone some of the time that you look at the Web2 and you look at the conventional industry, what really happens in crypto and blockchain, they do in one year. That's the kind of speed we are talking about. But I think this will still take some time to get mature. That also I feel, and I'll say why? While all these things are happening and when the technology is moving towards maturity, I think lot many hacks and exploits. We often see that so many millions of dollars have been exploited, bridges have been hacked.

32:29

Praveen Thakur

I think all those things we keep now, these are definitely disturbing. And especially, sorry, not to you and me, because we understand this industry so deep, but the people who are watching this from outside, this definitely concerns them right now. If this concerns them, then adoption becomes more difficult. People, maybe they may start losing confidence, but then it is our responsibility, being evangelists of this space, that we give them more confidence. Now, how do we do that? So basically, I think I have a few thoughts on this. I think if you really see in my opinion, one of the most important things which would happen in the next few years is basically tokenization. Now, tokenization has been one of the most important derivatives of the whole process that we have seen in the last 15 years. In my opinion, unless this tokenization happens now, tokenization may mean various things, all the real world assets that we are talking about, unless they are tokenized in the right way, number one.

33:36

Praveen Thakur

Number two, unless those use cases are visualized in the blockchain world, I think mass adoption is difficult. I'll tell you why I see so many projects today where we are creating parallel worlds, parallel verses, Earth two. There are several such projects which are coming. But my problem is that the real world where we live, in our house, our homes, our kitchen, the drawing room, they don't have any parallel connection with those worlds. Now, these two worlds continue to exist, but unless we create those interfaces between these two worlds. Now, I'm equally buoyant about metaverses, I am equally buoyant about NFTs, I'm equally buoyant about all these infrastructures that are being created. But these will get a meaningful, I would say meaningful positioning when these two are related. Now, that's very difficult question that I'm posing right now. That's something which I think now I think if you give me a couple of moments, I'll try to say what exactly are the things that I am seeing in next few years.

34:52

Praveen Thakur

So, number one, I think several things are happening in technology, in blockchain today. And I am very excited about them. Starting from Bitcoin to Ethereum to all these innovative chains that we talk about today. If you look at Polkadot, if you look at Cosmos, if you look at Solana, if you look at Avalanche, Cardano, I think all these guys are solving some of the very key problems. Now, this also is important here that how much developer communities were building. Now, say for example Polkadot or Solana or for example NEAR Protocol, all these protocols, they are built on Rust Framework, right? Rust programming language. Now, are we in a position to go and democratize this technology or this knowledge to a level where people are capable of building? I think that is something which is going to happen in the next few years, in my opinion. Okay, that already started happening.

35:53

Praveen Thakur

I was talking to one such company today, which is called Unique Network. They are part of ecosystem of Polkadot. And what they're doing, interestingly that they are coming up with an SDK where getting into the complexity of Rust, you still could build. Now, that is the complexity abstraction that I see happening. Now, if you build these tools, imagine the developer community that you are doing right now. How exactly you are going to be building that. And that is very key to building solutions here, right? That is number one. Number two, that I think which is very important here is basically standardization. Now, these standardization, very important for any system. Now, if you look at how did this www how did this get standardized? Unless you had HTTP, unless you had SMTP, imagine pain that you know, that you would be having everybody having own standards.

36:52

Praveen Thakur

Now somehow blockchain is at a, you know, at a corner or at a point where these standardization in terms of tech stack or the business use cases. Now, from these two sites, this standardization has to happen which can only take you to the next stage. Very, very important thing, in my opinion. And what is happening, by the way, it's not that it's not happening. The third and the last important thing is basically interoperability. Now, as we all know that there are several chains, several protocols, several consensus mechanisms have come. Unless they all get unified and unless you give that holistic and one kind of unique experience to the end user, I think it is going to be difficult. I think all these things are going to be extremely important from adoption perspective, which in my opinion now, I think you asked me a question for next three years.

37:48

Praveen Thakur

I'm not sure on that timeline, but I think we are moving in that direction, JP. I mean, that's what I think and.

37:55

JP

I think that it's spectacular. I think you were able to encapsulate what we can expect and especially if the industry works with these fundamentals. Just as you said, you need to have people who are going to build it. You need to have a certain standardization and then you obviously need to have those solutions that will help transition from what we are building as the matrix, in a manner of speaking, and yet be able to come out of being that battery that's right there. Right. So, yes, these are interesting times. I also appreciate the fact that you've shared that it is still information. Right. And that is something that a lot of us may fail to realize that what we are looking at this point is that cake being baked. So it's still being formed, right?

38:59

Praveen Thakur

No, absolutely, JP. And I think in my opinion are we working towards them? Absolutely. I am very encouraged by the talent that I'm seeing entering into this space. I think it is our responsibility to convey to people that this is the new life it's going to be. And I think why should they join this field and why do we really want I mean, innovations need bright minds and I think somehow that is happening. And of course, I also think that JP, at the same time that there will be, I would say, co-existential agreement between all entities, all bodies, be it government bodies, be it social organizations, be it the for profit organizations, all these people will get to a point where, I mean, this will be appealing to everyone. So I'm very hopeful about that and that's where I think that's where my optimism is towards this industry.

40:00

JP

Fantastic. Thank you for that, Praveen. And I believe that a lot of us are sharing that optimism. And for those of you that do in the room, ladies and gentlemen, I've had such an interesting time, I forgot to keep mentioning this to you, but please use those reaction buttons and let our speaker know the thoughts that you appreciate. Give him a reaction. Send a heart tweet in your questions that you might have because that's what we're going to be opening up shortly after the next two questions that are coming up. So, Praveen, I promised you that I would circle back to this interesting case about blockchain being used in agritech. You did say that you've got something interesting to share with us. The floor is yours.

40:43

Praveen Thakur

Absolutely. So I think, as I say, that there are several areas in which I think agriculture sector is going to benefited. And these are fundamental. I would say the fundamental. I would say building blocks of agriculture. And I think blockchain is going to be contributing immensely to that. The first thing is the purity. The first thing is that you are talking about our scarce resources. Now, these scarce resources are very important. If you talk about how much food do we have. And I was reading somewhere pretty interesting and pretty scary basically, that would we have enough food to feed our people, the world population, after 50 years? That's a big question. Or not even 50 years. The question is that are we moving in the right direction? Are we doing something in desperation that is further causing more damage? For example, there are places in the world, and I've seen some places India where people have been using pesticides to their farm or farmland in such a way that soil cannot produce anything if you stop giving pesticides to those soils.

42:03

Praveen Thakur

But the question is that how do we check? Because this is very, I would say vicious circle. You keep adding pesticides and after that your soil will not respond to you if you don't get that. And what you are getting out of that produce so dangerous. So dangerous to eat, so dangerous to consume. Now, can you do this without enforcing? You cannot do that. I think government is doing a lot of things where people are encouraged, first of all, to make pesticide free. And this will be for example, this may take few years. Typically I see that there is a three year cycle where a land becomes organic when you stop using pesticide. Now, that is something which really has to be checked in every day that you are using the kind of fertilizer that you're using. I'm not from agriculture as such, but I love farming.

42:51

Praveen Thakur

I love seeing mangos on plants and I cannot tell you, my boy, when I see these fruits on the plant. So somehow I am very connected with agriculture, being from the background. But I see many things can be done here. Now, this is not a small problem in my opinion, JP. This is a very big problem. This problem is to the extent that the whole planet is under question there and can blockchain do it? Yes, it can definitely do it. Now, related field is basically your health of people. People are consuming all these things and what happens is that people don't know it. They are not aware of what exactly they're consuming. Now, this is from the sustainability perspective. Now, there are some other very important things which I think which is very pertinent in agriculture. For example, there are many I'll tell you, I was doing some research when I was kind of building my product few months back and I saw one situation where average land holding and I'm talking about the Indian scenario where people are not having more than two acres, three acres, average land holding.

43:59

Praveen Thakur

Now all these people who are owning land of two, three acres, they do not have enough money to go and grow crops in their field because they are not so financially doing so great. Now how do they kind of crowdfund the investment now? Is it easy to get loans? Is it easy to get funding? They're very difficult thing in conventional world. Now blockchain there could be their platforms which are coming up, I think, I'm sure about it, where crowdfunding becomes very easy. I was talking to one of the bankers sometime back and very interesting thing he told me, Praveen, look, I can go and finance a few million dollars to somebody for farming. But I am not sure that what he really commits to me on paper is he really following that when it comes to the actual action on the ground. He told me that you told me that I'm going to be giving you organic produce which will be five times more expensive to sell.

44:57

Praveen Thakur

But are you really doing that? There only comes the whole end to end process where you should be able to check each and every action that the farmer is doing to ensure that you are complying to your commitment that you have given to the banker. Now imagine these situations. The banker comes into insurance, comes into the crowdfunding, guy comes into the sustainability, comes to the what else do you really need? Do you really need in this space? I think all the dimensions of agriculture will be immensely impacted if you really use blockchain in the right way, the space, JP.

45:35

JP

JP, I think that's a spectacular picture that you've painted and that's exactly what I wanted to ask you. That question is because it's often that we don't see the picture from the surrounding aspects, the stakeholders that go into doing it. I mean, most of us in this room know, okay, we have a broad idea about where food is concerned. We all on a see-food diet. The more we see, the more we eat. And we don't really particularly care where it comes from without often that's some of the orientation. Right. But what he's saying is the system that you've just described helps people on the ground who are not part of this room, who spend their days in their fields with the focus on I need a good crop this year. So yes, that's a very interesting point of view. It's a very interesting system and I hope that all of us here can advocate for systems like this coming up, so that blockchain has more of a mass adoption all over.

46:45

Praveen Thakur

Absolutely. And I think imagine if this gets to see I think you cannot force a system if you cannot force a technology on people. It should be a natural choice for people to adopt it. And I think, in my opinion, I think there are people in this room who have been in blockchain for maybe 10-15 years. I'm not that old in this industry, but I can tell you one thing that we need to make this system in such a way or give the direction in such a way that it really starts solving my day to day problem. Now, the moment, the day it happens, the day I find using an away or compound in blockchain with equal ease that I am doing Amazon today or I'm doing any banking transaction or any other bank, I think we have won the back.

47:32

JP

Spot on, Praveen. Spot on. The biggest issue for anyone to change behavior is that they have to change behavior. And the quickest that you can get them across to a behavior that they're familiar with, the more easily you win them over.

47:48

Praveen Thakur

Absolutely. JP I agree.

47:51

JP

Well, it's also one of the reasons why my wife says that I remind her of her father. But jokes apart. But jokes apart. Praveen, thank you. Thank you for sharing these insights. I do have some questions that are coming from the floor. If anyone else also wants to ask a question, raise your hand. Our host is going to help you out with that. Question number one. I'm going to take this one that's coming from the floor. And it's a bit clear to what we've seen is that we have someone who's asked, we've seen some environmental issues about blockchain and- around the mass use-. Praveen, just checking if you're still there with us.

48:55

Praveen Thakur

I could not hear you for last 10 seconds. Please repeat the question for me.

49:01

JP

Sure. Okay. If you can hear me now, then that question was, right. We have some environmental concerns that have come about where cryptocurrency in particular and some level blockchain comes into the picture. Right. How can this be mitigated for a more sustainable environment?

49:27

Praveen Thakur

That's a very interesting question I think. I thank the audience which put this question, I think. So if you look at blockchain, we started with Bitcoin where we are trying to solve the puzzle. And I think that was the initiation where we just wanted this to work. And Proof of Work was a very, I would say, innovative method. JP, if you can hear me. Okay. So I think that was something which really if you look at Bitcoin or if you look at the early days of blockchain, I mean, that was a solution direction, in my opinion, which had a fundamental philosophy. Now, I agree that Bitcoin mining is pretty energy intensive process. And that is where if you look at blockchain, we talk about DSS, decentralization, scalability and security. And these three are the three vertices of trilema that we talk about. Now, the question is that how do we move from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake where I think all the newer protocols are getting into Proof of Stake which does not have energy pressure on the environment.

50:37

Praveen Thakur

That is number one. Now, the question arises there are we compromising on security? Are we compromising on decentralization? Now, that question is a very difficult question, but I think to answer your question, I think today people are becoming innovative. I think I was looking at Cardano and what do they do that not all validators, validate all the blocks. I mean, that could be now. How do we derisk these problems that are coming out when you really limit the number of validators, for example, and how do you say that you still get the same result? So the answer lies in the point that we started with Proof of Work. Proof of Work is definitely not relevant today. So the immediate question on the energy pressure goes away, but at the same time we still need better, we need to go to a place where we are able to achieve the decentralization that Bitcoin has given, the confidence that it has given, we get in the Proof of Stake and other variations.

51:38

Praveen Thakur

So I'm pretty sure that it will further mature. But I think today also that energy concern is not there, in my opinion.

51:45

JP

Fair enough. Thank you. Thank you, Praveen. Okay, one more question that's popped up as you were answering this one. How do you see Web3 changing the world in terms of employment over the next few years?

51:59

Praveen Thakur

A very important question. In fact, I wanted touch upon that. See, the Web3 is basically a skill driven industry today. And one of the most important things that people should know, that it is people in crypto and blockchain industry, they encourage work from home. So it doesn't matter whether you are in Terai in Nepal or whether you are somewhere in Bihar or somewhere in New Mexico or somewhere, does not matter. So you could work if you have got a skill, your employability becomes global today. Now, earlier you used to work and you had to look at the location before you kind of apply for a job. Nowadays that is not there. Now, number one, number two, I think one trend that I'm seeing in this industry that earlier when we started with Ethereum, then people were kind of required to know, for example, Solidity.

52:51

Praveen Thakur

Now I think we are coming into a stage where all these newer and Web2 programming languages, or whatever you call conventional programming languages are going to be used and like all these are getting converted to WebAssembly WASM. And as long as you can do that example, you could still work in this. So I think the languages will expand further and in my opinion, in next few years, the boundary between the Web2 skill set and Web3 skill set, especially when it comes to the back end writing, code writing in terms of the smart contract side of it. That will change. If you look at the front end side right now, today also you are using the same thing what you use in Web2. And there are some libraries, JS libraries which are required for you to connect to blocks. So I think employability and the job opportunities are immense.

53:48

Praveen Thakur

The question is that whether really are prepared for that.

53:54

JP

That's an interesting point and I also appreciate the fact that you've put a bit of a spotlight on the fact that not just the fact that you can work anywhere, your education is going to be secondary to the fact that you can actually work, that you have an employable skill.

54:10

Praveen Thakur

Absolutely. And I don't know whether your audience here they are aware of there is blockchain company which is called Instadap and I'm very impressed and that's why I'm naming them here. They are created by two young kids from India. I think they were of the age 20 in their early 20s, like 21 or 23 or 19, something like that. And such a massive system they created where I think sometime back they were managing $5,000,000,000 of asset. What they do basically they give you access to the whole device ecosystem of ethereum and you could go and do anything on that platform. Imagine the level of that people have and people don't care what exactly what background you come from, do you know this? And you are just okay.

55:05

JP

Imagine that. I mean, what a wonderful world that would be when we could all have not just a skill that would earn us money, but also be able to do something we enjoy and earn from that 100%.

55:18

Praveen Thakur

I think I am very positive about it, JP. And I think we could see those things in our lifetime. But then, yeah, very excited about it.

55:29

JP

All right, fingers crossed. The last question that I have for you, Praveen, this isn't from the audience. This is one because we are bang out of time, but one that we cannot let you go without having to listen to. What is your personal philosophy on life? A message that you'd like to share with everyone in the room today?

55:51

Praveen Thakur

No, fantastic. I think what I have done all my life is that I'm a very optimistic person. As I was talking about, you can compare with me with optimistic roll up, JP. On a lighter note. But then, yeah, I think I am an optimistic guy. I look towards the future. One thing that I am very passionate about is that I do want to share my knowledge with the community. And I personally strongly feel that we all should invest in our next generation of society. I think we have definitely taken this journey to some point. And when I look at some bright minds in young bright minds, I feel very excited and I think in what way we could contribute to them so that they are the people who are taking this planet to the next level. That's definitely a very important thing. And I think last but not the least is that you should be embracing change.

56:46

Praveen Thakur

I think you may have ups and downs in life, but then I think those things should definitely not deter you from what you want to do, what you think you are capable of. And lastly is that enjoy what you do. And I think that's where I think success lies. That's where your satisfaction lies. These are few things from my side.

57:12

JP

And thank you for that. Praveen, those are certainly words to remember and a quote to live by, so thank you for sharing that with us. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, put your hands together and in applause for the gems that you've picked up today from Praveen Thakur, who has been so kind to be here on the show. Talk to us about everything from literally a grassroot level point of view to where blockchain is going to be three years from now. Praveen, once again, thank you so much for being on the show and I hope that we hear from you again and you have the opportunity to come on the show again in the near future, I think.

57:53

Praveen Thakur

Thank you, JP. I do appreciate having me here and I want to thank you. I want to thank all your audience and community members and in any way, if I can be of any help to anyone, I'm always there. So thank you so much for having me.

58:11

JP

You're very welcome. It's a pleasure to have hosted you. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, thank you so much for being here. This is JP from AdLunam Inc. Bringing you things about Web3. Have a good one, Cheers.