Block Zero Stage | In the Trenches: Between Web2 and Web3

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1. 0:01

   all right this one is uh going to be a great chat it's in the trenches between web 2 and web 3 and we've got Olivier and Sandy Sandy from calero Olivier from parcel chain they're going to be speaking and comparing and contrasting web two and web 3 varying approaches and philosophies please welcome them up to the stage Olivier and Sandy let's go everybody woo hello everyone hello can you hear us

2. 0:35

   works works amazing so first off like uh maybe we can start with an introduction Olivier you can start uh maybe just few words about yourself I can introduce and then we can dive into uh the topic excellent good afternoon everyone my name is Olivier um as a short introduction I joined Google in 2005 and I'm one of the co-founders of Google cloud in Europe uh I've been there for 10 years and acted a CTO uh for all

3. 1:01

   these years um hopefully this is experience I can share today and make a few parallels with web 3 um I've been Al also helping a lot of companies in transforming through Cloud you know some of their business mainly in the finance uh area you know helping a few large Banks to transform as much as in the logistics Arena was you know two years ctpo for Logistics organization in Barcelona called pack Logistics series C to series D and more recently a co-founded parcel chain uh parcel

4. 1:32

   chain in in a few words is the Uber for parcel deliveries we help connect individual commuters you and I uh traveling every single day to Merchants looking for parcel transport um by doing so we acting responsibly and we providing a Last Mile uh sustainable offering obviously at the same time we bringing money to all our local commuters okay um so my name is Sandi I used to work at Facebook I join near early as an early engineer uh first

5. 2:02

   infrastructure engineer and currently uh I'm a CE of calimero which is essentially private Charing and private data layer on here um and like today we just going to try to discuss like you know what were the similarities between web 2 and web 3 uh what were the you know hard things in web 2 which people forget maybe uh you know which have to be solved similar to web 3 so I have

6. 2:26

   this question like when you have to say what would be the web 3 adop option like how do you see web three option right now from your perspective looking back what would you say well I must say just coming to the conf to this conference feels very en you know energizing when I see how passionate people are all around uh so I feel the birth like in many years when I was Google I feel you know to answer your question I feel web 3 is really still in the innovators phase if

7. 2:51

   we just referencing to Jeff Mo crossing the chasm uh bell curve but still we can see the premise of some of the early adopters trying to verage you know some of the core capabilities of web 3 um I still feel you know back to the innovator stage it still feels really hard um you know parcel chain is a web three application so we've obviously been building onto K mirrors but it still feels really hard for engineers you know to pass this learning curve and really adopt web three start understanding smart contracts and how you can change them together so I still

8. 3:24

   feel like there is a certain step uh for the whole engineering community to hop on onto the web 3 environment and um I think web 3 does things really really well but it doesn't do everything and I think like every single major technology change um you should leverage and you should focus on what it does really well um at parcel chain as an example we enjoy you know the immutability of transactions we enjoy the ability of managing ownership through nfts and the

9. 3:54

   Simplicity to integrate wallets but we don't expect everything to be delivered through web3 so we still using a hybrid model where some of the capabilities on web two and some on web 3 um and last and and least I would say not everything is real time and you know when you're thinking about web 3 transactions they're not subsequent yet so again trying to map you know some of the capabilities that you can build on these days and how these match to use cases is

10. 4:19

    potentially where we are okay sounds good uh for me like just I want to to give like a tangent when I joined from Facebook uh to the web3 space I was always like interested like how can we build applications which everybody can use applications which will be scalable usable and stuff and like in our perspective now we build you know some basic product demos after like four years being at near where you the like the user experience is not so bad um and

11. 4:45

    like we are kind of every year getting there more and more so like my question for you is like how do you see uh this like Innovation takes time perspective like how was it from your perspective in cloud like was everything immediate uh as you would expect Google is a bigger organization or you know even in the '90s uh what do you think like is it as fast is it is web three slower than the other things or it's no I think web

12. 5:09

    three like most of the other Technologies which kind of disrupted the place you know think cloud in the same way you know usually take about 10 years to really you know solidify within the ecosystem and and bring benefits to every single almost every single customer so Cloud was no different you know we just to give you some mileston so you can reflect on we when I was Google we launched Google apps in 2008

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    uh the first Enterprise customer joined in June 2009 so that was about you know a year a year and a half later and the first customer was about 10,000 users so it wasn't just a small step it was really you know kind of an endorsement from you know the wider it community that there could be large organizations leveraging Cloud Technologies to replace you know some of the backbone of the it environment messaging and collaboration

14. 5:58

    at the time was core so it's interesting to see that this takes time um even though now we might feel like it's normal and everyone is really using Cloud you know as a stepping stone for building applications it wasn't at all in 2008 and you have this kind of you know different Milestones which basically kind of open up every single time so this first customer in in France which basically endorsed Google Apps you know pull the whole Market you know up I

15. 6:24

    mean a lot of small organizations were using Google apps but there was immediately an acceleration in Thea option and I think where was The Tipping Point was about you know two years later uh BBVA was the first bank to go Google um that means you know the 30,000 users and those Google Apps as much as started using Cloud as an underpinning environment to run some of the applications so they really shared the

16. 6:49

    vision that we had at the time that cloud ultimately would be you know the back end of every single it uh shop and this was a tsunami to be to be candid this really had a tsunamy effect in the sense that people didn't feel like any bank would ever go Cloud because you know they immediately felt you know there would be regulatory constraints there would be you know data pracy issues and you know these were you know

17. 7:14

    points that we obviously worked up front with Regulators with customers uh just to reinsure them and how data was being managed how you know we could comply at the time with different regulatory constraints so yeah I think from the outside it always feels like it's easy it wasn't and I think web 3 is no different web 3 will take you know time for you know for accelerating we'll potentially use different channels you know some b2c which I've heard a lot

18. 7:40

    today some B2B as well and ultimately this will be you know a stepping stone in the platform being used in the future sounds good one one I have one more question I always like to ask like what are the values uh people like in the open web what brings them here I said like when I joined from near from Facebook to near like like one of the things for me which was very important was you know this data ownership thing

19. 8:03

    um and like now working at near and working in calimero we kind of have the two values which brings us one side privacy to make sure that the users and companies have the rights to privacy on the other side that they get the data ownership so I think the question I wanted to ask you for parcel chain the company you're currently running how come it came into web 3 and like what do you see as the biggest values uh you can

20. 8:28

    capitalize on web three which is different from Web Two I think I'll start with view point I mean um it might sound interesting you know from my background at Google I think Google has probably done the best um you know acting as the best Safeguard of you know users data and I think they I can tell you from the inside they really do everything they can to protect users data constantly from any infringement

21. 8:50

    whatever it could be uh I really believe in web three as a way to keep the users in control of their own data and I think for me this is the next Paradigm change where you know people can see the evolution from Web Two to web 3 why did we go uh web 3 at parcel chain well exactly along these lines um if you think of you know if you step back a little bit on the delivery environment there are major issues for us every day

22. 9:15

    as we get Parcels being delivered the number one is there is a lot of data and labels that you receive you know everyone can simply know your address eventually your phone number if this is written on labels uh and get access to a lot of sensitive data so again when you reflect back on web 3 you're like wow uh but in real we already sharing a lot of private data without taking care of so I think you know our attempt to use web 3 at parcel chain was really leveraging

23. 9:40

    this fact there is no need for labels on Parcels there's no need to Front Line sensitive information as long as we can you know keep users in control of the data on on our platform that was the number one point uh the second was obviously we need immutability of transactions uh Finance is no different or Logistics is is no different than Finance you know obviously Finance makes sense because we think about financial

24. 10:03

    transactions but it's the same in logistics uh I'm going to give you an an example I ordered a book on Amazon I'm living in a small village in France um which is probably like 15 kilometers away from the next city where the warehouse is and you know even though I ordered on Amazon The parcel never got delivered so what happened is a couple of days later you know Amazon was notifying me that the the shipment was done and delivered but no one came to my

25. 10:28

    door the the carrier decided not to come to my door and the reason was simple it takes them too too much you know cost them too much to come and drive you know half empty um a truck to bring this book to me this is what we're calling in the industry a fake delivery and it's happening more and more why is this important because Amazon doesn't even know that the carrier didn't bring the you know the the book to me and obviously what's impacting Amazon is I

26. 10:53

    become an unhappy customer like many others so why you know immutability of transaction can really help us is we can and finally provide tracing of who does what along the way so we keep track of who is liable if something an incident happens and and basically bring this liability back to them um in you know same you know I'm sure you've you've maybe experienced the fact that sometimes you expected you know something to be delivered and you never received

27. 11:18

    anything what you do you call back the retailer and the retailer will ship you another parcel again uh doubling the cost so on one side it's like keeping track of everything on the other it's obviously fighting fraud that is really happening within the logistic environment so again these were the core reasons of why we wanted to uh go web three obviously as we building parcel chain we building this as a platform so far we have a single service which is

28. 11:41

    about shipment uh but next there will be more as we expect and having this wallet integration makes things really simple so we can we can have liquidity on the platform you could basically buy something and resell another and we basically build this sense of community along the way so this this was definitely really important to us yeah I have one more to topic which we discussed many times and I always I think it's very interesting for the

29. 12:05

    people to hear about it so when we started poalo as the company private Charing we wanted to Target Enterprise customers and I had a very hard time talking to Enterprises months of uh you know talking and talking and talking and never happen something um and then we kind of decided to like focus on companies who are trying to sell to Enterprises to build on top of us um and there's always this is discussion for many years you know web 3 will be an

30. 12:32

    Enterprise used product and many people disagree from your perspective what do you think that we as a web three industry have to do to get to the point where Enterprises are using us as a default uh thing and will it ever happen like maybe it just becomes this Anarchy thing which we say Enterprises never use blockchain because of I don't know why I think in 2005 when I joined Google people were telling me I was joining a a

31. 12:56

    Dy search company no one beli believe that how simple was search on the consumer side could be brought inside the Enterprise because of course Enterprise had richer more complex environment and data the evidence is not um but it takes time and I think it takes multiple channels for you to become the de facto player so making web 3 a de facto for everyone um first you've got to look at all different channels you know it's really important that you know from a consumer front and you know near being you know main net being a front line to everything

32. 13:29

    happening in the ecosystem is really important because it brings Vis visibility it validates the technicality behind it the scalability and all these facts and you know this is one of the three channels so obviously you go consumer public consumers then you move into the b2c environment where it's a lot of small shops looking for leveraging web three in one way or the other and the third is really the Enterprise which brings more loyalty you

33. 13:53

    know trust uh which is also much harder to enter because you've got to prove yourself you may be asked to do well to add features that you may not have so it's always you know trying to find the equilibrium in between what is reasonable what is making sense for the product to be shipped into the Enterprise world as much as you know what it's good at and making sure again that's the point I was making

34. 14:17

    earlier you're not a One-Stop shop you don't want everything to happen on web 3 you want you know what you really best add to happen on web 3 and and basically play integration with everything else so I think for me the answer to that is you need to look after the whole three channels uh they all have benefits you know obviously it goes faster on the b2c channel when it would go on B2B it's also you know higher turn so you've got to keep on people you know with new

35. 14:43

    features with a speed of and velocity that they would expect and at the same time you know Enterprise gives you the solidity and and the foothold that you want to you know land you know maybe small initially but expand very quickly so you've got a larger foot stack uh later I'll give you some examples just to to to resonate a bit more when we started with Google Cloud you know you might think Google apps but there were

36. 15:06

    also you know really important building blocks for for us at the time I can't think of Big C or just app engine um when Kate and William got married in the UK uh they obviously had a need to have like a website to let everyone you know uh stay aware and and share best wishes to to the Royal um princess and and and and and Prince and they basically used appenine at the time uh and appenine basically really helped us you know spinning up this environment very quickly scale to millions of Heats

37. 15:39

    whenever they got married and then just vanish and disappear like two or three weeks later it was very economical it was really simple to manage and it fitted really well this use case we also worked with the national security organization in in the UK because we wanted to be able to Trove you know millions and billions of data records medical records to see and detect any insights for specific diseases uh and

38. 16:03

    this is when Big C really fited well so I think the difference in between Enterprise and b2c is it's not a One-Stop shop you've got to identify the use case what part of you know the play will work extremely well um for which there is no competition whatsoever and then you know land there however small it might seem initially but because this will grow and and land much bigger later

39. 16:25

    so again very different approach uh still with the same portfolio products obviously okay we have four more minutes I have a hot hot take hot question uh like I'm talking a lot yeah no no that's that's good we want to hear your opinion they can hear me every day I talk too much either way so um one thing um when I joined the space def5 was very hot I never lik the defi tokenize everything in the world uh tokenize this tokenize that tokenize this we share a

40. 16:51

    perspective which is similar around it um and I can talk about tokenizing everything but I would love to hear your opinion as like what do you think about token everything is the value of of of blockchain just tokenizing everything or there's something else there behind it I think there is at least in the outside world a lot of confusion because people think you know web 3 and blockch and web 3 and defi is is kind of the same and I feel like it's really two different

41. 17:16

    things you know defi for me is really business transformation it's about disrupting the financial environment and providing something which is you know really unique in terms of decentralization of payments uh so definitely something is opining but really fits within the business transformation Arena I think what when we talk about web three it's really underpinning a whole transformation whichever industry you SE in so it feels very much along the lines of cloud or

42. 17:40

    you know virtualization anything else which we've seen in the past which you know you might you know underestimate initially but has fundamental changes down the line so yeah definitely I mean I'm a technologist by background so I feel much more appealed you know as you know by web three than I would by defy but again I think um we have to split these two together so web three doesn't

43. 18:01

    get hindered because people confuse the two together okay one more question I thought it going to be more um let me ask you one more I have like uh ad hoc questions are regulations slowing down web three what do you think regulations and web 3 you said you talked about SEC like you talked about Cloud had companies were companies were not willing to adopt Cloud because of security and privacy concerns and regulation how do you think that applies into

44. 18:33

    web3 well I think in the same way right people will be asking you know okay but where is still sitting the data who could eventually access my data um so as part of my role within the Google Cloud environment I was also helping building the road map in terms of certifications for you know Google Cloud to be accessible across multiple environments and and the challenge is obviously as you build a global infrastructure you're

45. 18:57

    still hitting local loal Regulators uh and you've got to eventually you know split and dice um things just to suit the local Regulators so I think the same applied at the time if you think of cloud no one could uh walk inside a Google data center to see how data was stored and you know for good reasons to be to be candid uh because you know everything was virtualized it's not like one server was earning more data of one service than another it was changing

46. 19:22

    constantly and fully Dynamic and it was just trying to help explain to Regulators what was done front in terms of guidance and policies so that they would you know anyone any Enterprise customers could still have access and only them have access to their own data so it a lot of it was around recommendation re um was around Communications was around providing clear principles to the outside to the

47. 19:47

    outset on how Google was handling the data and I think the same applies with web 3 right you know I trust you know yimo and and Nia to do the right things from a background you know from a regular perspective so I can comply as well as as a customer of yours and make sure that you also hting my data correctly so I think a lot of it done is done to communication explaining things uh explaining how technology can map to some of us spec specificities to the

48. 20:13

    outside I think the the simpler it is the better uh you want to go against you know complexity and uh and really explain very simply to uh to people how how technology is being managed okay we have five more seconds one quick quick question first word which Pops to your mind when you hear open web one word freedom freedom trust for me so thank you very much for the time I hope you enjoyed it uh thank you Oliver for coming here and and and three see you

49. 20:57

    bye