gather around frens, for a conversation with Sergey Nazarov
>>60926776>Hello everybody. This is Sander Lutz with Decrypt and I am joined here today by Sergey Nazarov, co-founder ofChainlink. Sergey, thank you so much for joining us.
>>60926778>Happy to be here. Thank you for having me.
>>60926785>So, it is a remarkably busy time forcrypto policy generally in Washington and specifically in the last few months and even in the last few days,it's been a very busy time for Chainlink. Have a number of recent developments I'd love to talk throughwith you, but just to start on Friday you had a meeting with SEC Chair PaulAtkins and I'd love to hear more about that meeting. To start with, and justto get an understanding of where the SEC is at, this was a meeting that the SEC requested to have with you todiscuss Chainlink specifically. Is that right?
>>60926788>I think the the goal of the meeting was really to think about howthe US economy can move towards tokenization and then also how Chainlink canfit into, into that vision of a next generation financial system. So theagenda was a number of topics around compliance, cross-chain, connectivity,highly reliable data and how data transmission is important for regulatorswhen they're, when they're evaluating the state of the market, as well as how Chainlink fits into all those topics. So Iwould say it was, it was a mix of topics around, you know, what we think anext generation version of the US financial system looks like, which I have to say I'm very very positive on theSEC's forward-looking views. Many people can see those views in the July projectcrypto speech from Chairman Atkins, where I think now the SEC and the US government in general have the same goal as the majority of the industry, as Chainlink does, in getting tokenization of the existing financial system to bethe norm. And I think this was really the main idea behind the meeting, is how do we getthe US financial system to the place where a tokenized equity, a tokenized commodity, a tokenized fund, a tokenized everything can operate properly on chainand meet all the regulatory requirements that those same things meet offchain. And in many cases, you know, what we've what we showed them and what we've discussed with them and other regulatorsis that the onchain version of a tokenized equity commodity or fund isactually superior to the offchain version.
>>60926785You too buddy, missed (you).
>>60926791>So to that point and it hasbeen a big, a major initiative of the Trump administration and of the SEC under Chair Atkins already, they've been veryvocal about bringing the traditional financial market onchain potentially toincrease efficiency or for other benefits. So to help people at homeunderstand what are the challenges about doing that and where would Chainlinkfit into solving some of those challenges and why would someone like Chair Atkins want to get yourperspective on these issues?
>>60926797>Sure. So Chainlink is the most widely used resource to get data onchain anddata is a critical component of financial products. Financial products as they get more advanced actuallyrequire much more data in terms of their ability to know what's going on in the market with marketprices in terms of their ability to do things like compliance, identity data is a good example. Chainlink is the main provider of these different pieces of data, both into blockchains and smartcontracts and therefore also out out of blockchains and smart contractsonce the things are onchain. So if you're going to create these tokenized real world assets, you're gonna havea data component that's critical. Similarly to how decentralized financewasn't possible before Chainlink started putting data onchain in mass because you can't create a decentralizedfinance market without the relevant data about that market, like the price. But the traditional finance RWA marketsare even, even more advanced and they're even more dependent on data. I'll giveyou simple example. They for example require price data and compliance data. The other thing that's happening now is that there's a lot of different activity on different chains. So the purchasermight be on one chain and the asset might be on another chain. And so now how do you interact between those twochains in a way that meets regulatory requirements? And the answer to thatisn't just that you send something here and something there. You have a large list of requirements that need to be metfor how an asset works, what an asset reports. One of these requirements is something that, you know, few people in the web3 world know about: transfer agency.
>>60926805>So, a transfer agent is an entity or a third party that's responsible fortaking an asset from me before they give it to you to basically confirm ownershipand avoid double spends, in the language of the web3world that is understood here. Transfer agents came out of the 70swhen the DTCC, the Deposit Trust Clearing Corporation kind of cameinto existence, I mean they existed before then but they became even more critical at that point, and so oneexample of what we do is we provide an ability to do what's called digital transfer agency and digital transferagency, for example, requires net asset value data which is the valuation of theunderlying asset that's being transferred. After you do the transfer agencypart of the process, you often have a compliance part of the process where Chainlink will provide some compliancelike identity data. And then you have other parts of the process that might require a cross-chainmovement. So for example, I have a stable coin on one chain, but I want to buy a tokenized fund on another chain. Now I need a transfer agency process, I need a compliance process, I need a cross-chain process. And on top of allthese processes, there are legal requirements which have to be met in order for thetransaction to be considered legally valid. So that answers your more of your question about why is this complicated. It's complicated because in the DeFi world, everyone can do transactions without meeting any legalrequirements. They don't need to look up what the legal requirements are. They don't need to know what the legal requirements are. There's just a generalidea and feeling that legal requirements don't apply. That's it. So they don't matter. And most DeFi firmsdon't spend, you know, an overly large amount of time or effort trying to figure them out. In the TradFi world,it's the exact opposite.
>>60926810>Your first question in the TradFi world is often, can this transactionlegally be done? Does this transaction have a transfer agent who can execute itfor us? Does this transaction have a compliance process that allows it to be executed? This is really the challenge that we're working on solving, you know, with the SEC and other regulators is how do you merge all the problems and complexitiesand requirements of the existing legal system, the existing transfer agencysystem, the existence existing compliance system and make them work onchain. But what wewant to do is not just make them work onchain, we want to make them work better onchain. So for example in in the transfer agency world, you can strike the value of afund. So you can have a have a window to redeem the fund, to enter the fund or exit the fund, let's say once a daybecause that's the cycle on which the valuation of the fund happens. What we're saying is we can get the fundvaluation cycle to be every couple of seconds. And so now people can enter andexit funds every couple of seconds, it’s not a once a day event. It's a many many many times an hour event. That's anexample of an advantage. With compliance, we’re saying that instead of there beinga two or three month onboarding process into multiple banks to do a transaction,if you already onboarded into an institution previously and that institution proved onchain that youonboarded against a certain set of requirements like investor accreditation, not being on the OFAClist, you know, various other conditions, then that onboarding is reusable for other institutions. So now you don't have to go through another two, three month on boarding with someoneelse. So there's there's actually a lot of really big advantages that we're showing the regulators that we are in aunique position to show because basically no one else right now in ourindustry works on all of these problems at once.
>>60926814>No one right now can build youa highly reliable, highly compliant smart contract that can ingest all the necessary data, comply with all thenecessary identity requirements, connect to all the necessary chains, and meet all the necessary regulatory conditions for the transaction to happen. That's a kind of unique position thatChainlink is in at this point. For example, last year before we started working more with the, with the US government, Chainlink did the most transactions in Singapore's MAS Guardian framework that we announced last year atthe Singapore Fintech Festival. And likewise, we've done multiple transactions now of various types with Hong Kong Monetary Authority. And so now Chainlink is in aposition where and this is what many people don't understand about Chainlink: it's not that it's a data oracle or abridging oracle or even a compliance oracle. It's that because it's all of those things together, it'snow defining a set of standards for how transactions workand how they work in the RWA sector, how they work across chains, how they work across jurisdictions and TradFi institutions. And there's multiple independent firms that have analyzed: what is the most popular real worldasset technology and they continually find Chainlink month after month at the very top of the list and number onebecause of all these different flows that we power and no one else powers.
>>60926819>So the function you're describing isobviously extremely important, right? Without it, traditional marketscould not move onchain, specifically when it comes to that compliance angle with transfer agents. And if you, itsounds like what you were saying outright, is that Chainlink is the only company currently in the US in theposition to fulfill that function. Is that a somewhat unique situation,where if the SEC is talking to you about this process, right, if they were to do it in the near term, which we'll get tothe timeline, but it sounds like they want to move on this stuff pretty imminently, thatthey would naturally only be able to work with you at this moment, or thatthere wouldn't necessarily be a spectrum of firms that that would be able to provide the same function at the levelof compliance that the US government would need. Is that your understanding of how the playing fieldlooks right now?
>>60926822>So there are private firms right now that do transfer agency for digital assets. There are private firms thatprovide data. There are private firms that provide some cross-chain connectivity. What I'm saying is thatChainlink is the only platform where all of that stuff comes together in one system and that gives us a deep understanding of every step in theprocess while other firms tend to focus on only one specific step in theprocess and that's also why Chainlink is becoming more popular with institutions, it’s because institutions generally just want a solution. They don't want to cobble together 15 different startups and hope that theywork together well enough to make a transaction happen. They just need a system that'll get the thing done. And that's what Chainlink has now become. So I just want to be clear that there are other transfer agencycontracts and systems. Chainlink is the only system that has transfer agency, anopen compliance model, cross-chain connectivity, data standards, and an environment like CRE where you can compose all of this into a single workflow. That’s, that's what I mean.
>>60926830>To the point we were talking about or just mentioning earlier about the timeline, based on your meeting with Chair Atkins on Friday and hearing where his mindis at or based on the questions he was asking you, did you get any sense of how immediately in the near, mediumor long term they want to move with this process? Was it more in the theoretical stage or were the questions prettypractical and granular?
>>60926835>We didn't discuss specific timelines, but I get asense that there is real urgency to create real change and we've alreadybeen able to do some of that together with the SEC on the topic of transferagency. Through our previous conversations with them, they have issued some new guidance on their viewson transfer agency, which comes directly out of our meetings. That has already happened. And on that same day that Iwas meeting with Chairman Atkins, our team, without me, was going back to meet with the staff and to discuss, you know,further additional guidance and key ideas on the topics of compliance,transfer agency, cross-chain and and these other key topics. So I would say that there is already progress beingmade. So I would say there's already very practical real steps happening now. I would say there's real urgencybecause the Trump administration has made this a clear priority. That same day that I was meeting with ChairmanAtkins, I was also lucky enough to go to the White House and meet with people there from the digital asset group,the new executive director and others. And so I feel that the Trumpadministration has created a set of priorities that regulators and the thedepartments in Washington are eager and focused on making progress on. And so I, if I have to personally make a guess, I would say that there's going to be really significant progress thisyear and in the first half of next year on a lot of these different topics. But that's just my personal guess.
>>60926844>Well, the other thing is, I mean, these are in the last few months, the SEC and the CFTC have really aggressivelybarreled forward with their intention to fulfill the White House's wishes toact very proactively when it comes to crypto policy or even integrating traditional markets with blockchainnetworks, did it feel like, you know, because it seems like the SEC has already made statements to the effectthat regardless of where, you know, legislation moves in Congress and there's currently a pending marketstructure bill that they want to act on this stuff now. Did you get the sense or the impression from these recentmeetings that with such a a goal as moving traditional markets onchain thatthey're, they're ready to proactively take the steps to do that as opposed to waiting for this legislation, which maycome or may not or may take some time. Did it feel like they are very proactive and eager like you werementioning to move forward with this on their own at the regulatory level?
>>60926848>Yeah, I feel that they werealready eager to start moving forward. We have had multiple meetings with them, I think our team is one of the teamsthat's been meeting the most with them, repeatedly, out of the rest of the crypto industry. And we get a sensethat, you know, these conversations are honing in on practical real worldproblems and places where changes can be made to improvethe quality of a blockchain based financial asset from a regulatory point of view, to make it safer forinstitutions to hold and deal with blockchain based securities and otheronchain financial products. So, I think they, I don't think they're really waiting for, I thinkyour question is are they waiting for the legislative process? My feeling is that they're not waiting. My feelingis that they're actively doing things now. That's what we're experiencing and I'm very very grateful for that. I mean, it's really just been fantastic working, you know,with the various regulators. I think, you know, Hester Purse, Commissioner Purse, we're extremely grateful to her asan industry. I'm very grateful to her. Chairman Atkins now is taking things to a whole new level, thankfully. So, I really think this is the best situation our industry can be in.
>>60926852
>>60926852>And I also think people don't fullyappreciate just what it means that the US regulator has this position because the US regulator really sets theagenda for a lot of other regulators in other countries. So, while it seems like we're talking about the SEC and USregulation, I am pretty sure what we're actually talking about is what in large partglobal regulation of our industry will look like, which is in my opinion one of the big missing, finalmissing pieces of taking the financial system and turning it into a blockchain based system, which is what I define as mainstream adoption. So, you know, another way to phrase this isyou have people who are completely empowered from the highest levels of government to encourage and enable andaccelerate rapid mainstream adoption of smart contracts, blockchains, and oraclenetworks as the preferred way to do transactions in the USand therefore the global financial system. I mean, that's just kind of like a mind blowing situation to be inrelative to where we were a year ago.
>>60926857>Going briefly to the meeting you had atthe White House on Friday and with Patrick Witt, who's the new executive director of the President's working group on digital assets, for a numberof months and under the leadership of Bo Hines, who previously held that position, the priorities seemed to becoming from the White House. one getting that massive report out that they put in July whichdomino effect led to, you know, Project Crypto at the SEC and putting out its recommendations. There was also a hugepush from the White House to get the Genius Act passed which they succeeded in helping with in July. From yourmeeting on Friday, what was your impression about where the White House's current priorities are when it comesto crypto policy? What were the big headline things they were either trying to get your thoughts on or you got thesense from them are front of mind for them right now in this moment?
>>60926861>So, so I think that office and Bo andDavid Sachs have done a great job coordinating all the complexities and nuance groups of Washington to getthings to move for our industry. I think you're right that the big wins there was the stable coin legislation,then getting this report out, now market structure. So market structure is definitely a big focus area obviouslybecause that's the next big bill that's going to help figure out a lot. There is a lot of otherstuff in that report and I do get the sense that the recommendations in that report were not just somethingthat they had to put into a report. I get a sense that many of those recommendations are things that they're going to look to follow through on andtake action on. And so I think thatthe moment, what's happening in the moment in Washington DC, is always very important because that's usually theonly thing that you can get done is what's, you know, what's the trend, what's on the floor, you know, what'sgetting voted on, what can we get done now. That I would say is market structure but what's next, I would look at the recommendations in the report because some of thoserecommendations I think they're they are going to do and take seriously and move forward on. So that reportis actually something worth looking at.
>>60926867>So real quick before we move on, just with the the meeting with Chair Atkinsand the meeting with the White House, I'm curious off the top of your head, was there any moment from either meeting that surprised you the most? Because obviously you came in with a lot of expectations and you're probably mostly on the same page with them, butstarting with the meeting with Chair Atkins, was there any moment or detail of that meeting that surprised you pleasantly or otherwise that you weren't expecting?
>>60926871>I think just the positivity. So the folks that work at a place like the SEC are not alwaysas excited or as positive about things because they're often involved in allkinds of very serious issues around, you know, consumer protection and a number of other difficult situations where they have to come up with ways to protect the economy and make the system work well and and growat the same time. But this meeting was very interesting in that we were discussing, kind of, thefuture and the future is exciting and I could sense a very real excitementfrom the Chairman and from a number of his key staffers that were there in the meeting, that there was a genuine excitement about the future that we were discussing and describing in relation tocompliance, data, connectivity, across chains, the ability to take tokenization in the US tothe next level. And that was probably the most energizing and positive thing. Really after the meeting wasover, me and and my general counsel and our deputy general counsel, we gave each other high fives because we were just so,so thrilled about, you know, the the response that we had gotten to some of these ideasfrom a group that's usually pretty conservative and reserved and that there was a lot of positivity on these things. So I would say thatwas the impression, that's very much the impression I was left with.
>>60926875>Just for some texture, like could you give an example like one of those ideasthat you floated that maybe was something the SEC is looking for to streamline this process, like what was one such idea, you know, that maybe theyhadn't heard before or were excited about, about how these things might work better onchain or how Chainlink mightbe able to help these processes.
>>60926879>I'm not sure exactly what details I'm able to share, but I would say thatthe three main topics we covered were transfer agency and making sure that thetransfer agency process and the the use of blockchains as books and recordshappens in a way that enables tokenization of public equity and various other types of of tokenization. That was a topic we had already spoken to them about many times. There was already new guidance or I don't know the exact term, new ideas that they were able to release with our help earlier in the year. So that's a topicthey were already familiar with. The next topic that was a big topic was compliance: compliance across chains, compliance in relation to transactions on any one chain against identity andpolicies. That I think was was an exciting topic for them. And thenthe final and big overarching topic across the whole thing was data and the use of something called unified goldenrecords. So the ability to understand what's going on in the market becausethe blockchain is a reliable data transfer and transparency mechanism. This idea I think is extremely compatible with what theyunderstand, is the value of blockchains right, is that blockchains can create a kind of transparencyabout transactions, about market activity that historically I haven't really seenregulators or institutions fully appreciate. I think our industry, the DeFiindustry and the public chain industry has appreciated that I can go on Etherscan and see what's going on. Ican look into Aave’s contracts and see what's going on. But the regulatory version of that, theinstitutional version of that, I think is just now starting to fully sink in.
>>60926882>And it's actually very powerful because one of the biggest problems in institutional and in institutionregulation process is what is going on where, like this isalso something you can see in the 2008 financial crisis where it was just very difficult to understand who had what,what it was worth, what they were doing with it, when it was sold or bought, who traded it to who, what was going on,what is going on is still a basic question that is oftenunanswered in the current institutional and regulatory environment. But I think what, what's starting to happen now isthat if you're able to put data onchain, if you're able to track cross-chain transactions correctly, ifyou're able to comply onchain with identity onchain, you can know what's going on. You can know that this accredited investor sent this token to that accredited investor. The token wasbacked by, you know, the relevant assets based on proof of reserves and that thetoken transaction was done under this set of laws and this set of laws and the smart contracts on both chains checked that the conditions of the transactions were met for both sets of laws. So now you have an international transactionwith two different regulators with two different sets of laws that both of them can look into and they can understandwhat happened in this transaction. They don't need to ask a bank for records. They don't need to contact anyone andtry to look into what happened. They inherently know it from from the unified golden record on the blockchain. So I think this is where we, where we kind of have a real opportunity with with regulators.
>>60926889>So on a similar theme of transparency, big news a few weeks ago was that Chainlinkhad partnered with the Department of Commerce and with the federal government to begin integratingfederal government data including GDP and other statistics, bridging that into DeFi and bridging that into thecrypto ecosystem and Chainlink is playing a crucial role in thispartnership, which is ongoing and is only going to ramp up as time goes on. I've seen youwere at the White House earlier, we were discussing at the crypto summit and you were also there for the Genius Actsigning. But I think it's just interesting to learn how, you know, everyone knows that the Trump administration is very pro crypto,they say it, they say it often, they say it frequently, and they say it generally. But on this more granularlevel, how does something like this come together? If you could shed a little light on, you know, how does a processsuch as this, the Trump administration saying they want to do things more onchain? Maybe they'rehypothetically interested in bringing data onchain. How do those general conversations become a specific partnership like this one?
>>60926893>I think what that political shift does is it empowers a select few people in places like the Departmentof Commerce, you know, very smart, really hardworking people that had been wanting to do stuff onchain but didn'thave the necessary political support behind them. And once they get thatpolitical support, what they do is they seek out, you know, how to do it. In the Department of Commerce case, Chainlink put the vast majorityof data onchain from that initial implementation at the highest frequency, for the most amount of datapoints. So I would say that Chainlink is kind of the main and most, kind of,active provider putting that data there. I do think that our work with themand other departments in the federal government work will continue because there is now this kind of politicaltrend and a political value from doing blockchain related things as a department. But we are also reallyactively looking at not only how does the data go onchain but how does that data get utilized in various use casesby various users who are already Chainlink users, who have alreadyintegrated Chainlink and know how to use Chainlink to get relevant data into their contracts, which is by far thelargest user base of that type with Chainlink powering over 60% of DeFi globally and on popular chains likeEthereum at well over 80%.
>>60926897>So, we have a big user base that we're now going to go to and talk to about, hey, how are yougoing to use this data to do something valuable? We've already found a few exciting use cases. I think in everydepartment of government, I've seen people who are fans of cryptocurrencies,fans of blockchains, fans of Chainlink. And so the federal government,I think over time gradually, will become a larger and larger user of Chainlink in my opinion because the federal government moves at its own speed but fundamentally thefederal government does adopt technology if it has fundamental value and I think blockchains and oracle networksand smart contracts have, have a lot of fundamental value.
>>60926901>So when you mentioned that people at the commerce departmentseemed to already be wanting to do this and now they felt empowered to do it. What is your understanding of why they wanted to do this? Cuz there are explanations going from one it’s, youknow, it's pro crypto, it’s showing how close we are with the industry. Some people say it's good fortransparency. Others say that this actually allows for the creation ofsounder financial markets or more opportunities or prediction markets or other new types of tokenization. Whatwas your understanding of why the Department of Commerce saw opportunity in this sort of partnership?
>>60926905>So I think it's all of those, the reality of working withlarge institutions in my experience is that they need to take small incremental steps. They can't take very bighigh risk steps unless there's like a massive massive gain, which in this casethe gain is that the US government and the the president have decided that they want to go intothe modernization of the federal government and the US financial system with blockchains, right, so I would saythat this is a incremental step. This is a low-risk, efficient way to begin the process ofgetting involved in the blockchain ecosystem working with blockchain technology. And so what we're trying to do in our work with the US Department of Commerce and other departments in Washington is make surethat they have a positive experience and that not only do they put the data onchain, but that something positive comes out of that beyond just publishing the data and and that's what we're trying tothink through more and more. And hopefully we'll have some some new interesting interesting developments there. But the first step withinstitutions this big is usually just that. It's just the first step that theyneed to make to show that something can work, that it has value, that it's worth doing. Personally, from my interactionswith people in DC, I can already see many steps beyond this happening. It's just not a fast process in the government, is the nuance.
>>60926910>Sopaint a picture a little bit or to get us excited, where could something like this feasibly go and, you know, there'sthe pie in the sky but also like do you think feasibly even with the rest of thetime before, you know, 2029, the rest of the time of the second Trump administration like what could some ofthose slightly more bold steps look like onchain with the federal government?
>>60926913>I mean I'd love to do that, I really would. It's difficult for mebecause I'm not sure how many of these things we're able to disclose. I think that personally, I think thatblockchains are really good mechanisms for enabling security andcyber security and guaranteeing the integrity of existing web2 systems. Ithink that blockchains are very good at transmitting key pieces of data thatneed to be made public or need to be used in markets. And I also think that blockchains are very reliable voting systems which can be used to track voting accurately and making it immune to manipulation. So I really can't speak about the details of what we're doing with different groups but personally myself Ifeel that those three applications of blockchains and oracle networks working together are verysignificant, you know, cyber security, data for transparency and marketpurposes, as well as the ability to guarantee voting systems.
>>60926919>Well, as justthe last point, you know, that's been a very vocal issue in the first monthsof the Trump administration and even the last two weeks. The Trump administration has been focused on issues related to voting integrity and election integrity, etc. Have you had any conversations with the Trump administration related tovoting and voting integrity, as it pertains to onchain systems?
>>60926921>I mean, we've had conversations withdifferent groups inside of Washington about, you know, voting and blockchain systems being used for voting. I'm notgoing to probably name exactly who we've talked to as, you know, it's still early days there. I wouldsay that the nuance with voting and blockchains in the US political system is actually much more aroundidentity than it is about, than it is around using blockchains. I think theinteresting nuance in the US is that identity and a federally issued identityis a very sensitive topic. It's a very politically charged topicfor both parties. And so before you even process voting,voter roles or before you confirm that a voter hasn't switched states and isn'tvoting twice so they're not double spending their vote, and before you have ways to guarantee propernode distribution to make sure that voting roles aren't manipulated and you know that external state actorscan't get in and manipulate them. Before you get into all those interesting questions, your first questionis how are we going to create an identity layer for someone to prove their identity as a registeredreal voter? And this is a political topic that is very sensitive that Ithink, you know, it's not a technology issue. It's a politicalissue about whether Democrats and Republicans, who both have their own fears about creating identity, even if it was a narrowly focused form of identity on voting. That issue will have to be resolved before, you know, you have this backendtechnology - blockchains and oracle networks - working together to create, you know, a voting system.
>>60926924>With something like that, how far away are we? Is the technology already there and it's a matter of the willpower or isit something that would take some time to develop to make it, you know, ready for use in such a such a sensitivesignificant application.
>>60926926>It's 100% willpower, 100%, technology is ready to go, oracle networks ready to go, some cases even identity systems,everything's ready to go. It's just a question of how the US government wants to approach the topic of identity. They want to approach the topic of identity for financial transactions in very specific ways. How they want to approach the topic of identity for voting is avery unresolved issue and that's not an issue that a technology platform orstandard or open-source way of doing something like identity can resolve. So we can absolutelyprovide the technology that would enable, you know, highly securesystems using blockchains and oracle networks to do things like log verification and other key, you know,cyber security activities. You can absolutely enable the proper use of dataand compliance onchain and, you know, voting is really just another type of onchain data that would have to besynchronized across chains. So that's something that can definitely be done. It isn't something that I think politically DC is yet, you know, anywhere close to apractical level of agreement on.
>>60926934>As you mentioned also though, you know, these things, it's gaining trust, funnyenough, or baby steps with something like the program that's already initiated with the Department ofCommerce and potentially future steps like you alluded to potentially working with other government agencies, etc. How imminently might those future steps beannounced? Is that something that in the near term there might be more news soon?
>>60926941>I don't know when they'll, when they'll be announced. We are workingon next steps on various data initiatives and other initiatives with the US federal government and we'rein discussions with some state governments as well. It's very unpredictable, you know, the rate at which,the speed at which they're going to want to announce things. We're in September now, so you know, everyone's back from vacation. So hopefully things can move quickly, but all of these agencies,departments, have their own process, which is unpredictable for approvals,plus they have other priorities that they want to announce. So, I can tell you that we're definitely movingahead into a set of next steps at least on the data side and on some different cross-chain initiatives that we're also starting to discuss more, but I can't predict exactly when.
>>60926944>Got it. And because, you know, commerce seems like a very natural place to start because so much of what they do is involving releasingkey data to the public, that obviously is a natural segue. But there are other,plenty of other I imagine federal agencies where the use case is a very natural fit, right, where other sorts ofreleases of data to the public or even internal dissemination of data.
>>60926948>I think oracle networks andChainlink systems do a great job at creating internal dataintegrity. So internal data integrity is very important from a cyber securitypoint of view and that's something that the US government is extremely, extremely sensitive to and extremely, extremelyinterested in. I think there's the ability to createguarantees of data accuracy and data integrity publicly. So, Chainlink is able tovalidate and provide proofs and and prove that data is a certain way andthat is valuable for transparencies and market purposes. And then I also think that the government faces a number of trust issues where there are different groupsthat are arguing with each other about if something happened or it didn't happen, right? Did the vote happencorrectly? Did the vote not happen correctly? Was the machine manipulated? Was it not manipulated? These arefundamentally trust issues and they're trust issues that can besolved technically, if people want us to solve them technically. So I would put it in those three categories, if you're thinking about it broadly: Internal data integrity,external accuracy and transparency of data publicly and for markets, and then various trust issues, supply chain trust issues, voting trust issues, various trust issues thatthe US government has that can be resolved.
>>60926954>And do you expect and some of these things that you're, you're excitedto roll out at some point with other federal agencies and with other state governments, are those going to touch onall three of those categories? You're kind of starting with I mean, trust you kind of get to eventually, that's kindof a bigger one, right?
>>60926959>It's always very specific, the people that want internal data integrity for their internalsystems and to be able to verify logs and verify tamperproofness are not interested in making anything public. The people interested in makingthings public via onchain data, they're interested to some degree incross-chain, they're interested in the reach of the data, they're interested in markets because a lot of the data iseconomic in nature. The trust issue use cases are alwaysvery specific. They're very, very specific implementations. That's one of the things the Chainlink community and the people who implement Chainlink for these institutions beyond us usually do agood job at is they're able to take a very specific problem and think throughhow to solve that problem. And the problem might have many different parts of it. It might have a dataissue, might have a cross-chain issue, might have a compliance issue. And that's once again why Chainlink is inin my opinion so unique. And that if you have a data issue and a compliance issue and a cross-chain issue,you really can't solve it right now with any other system other than Chainlink. You can try and use three separatesystems that don't work with each other and don't want to work with each other or you can just go to go to a single platform. So, Chainlink has really become now closer to something like an AWS where you can show up and you enteran ecosystem of providers of primitives of building blocks of tools and serviceswhere you can solve your problem in a comprehensive way.
>>60926967>Well, uh an astonishing amount that'salready been happening over the last few months and I'm sure plenty more to come that Chainlink will be playing amajor part in. But for now Sergey, thank you so much for joining us and sharing the latest of what'shappening in Washington.
>>60926972>My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
>>60926776A note to the interviewer Sander Lutz: PLEASE, when you are interviewing the most important man in the world, can you possibly not have 99 bottles of booze on the wall behind you? I was worried you were going to pull out a guitar and start playing to close out the interview
>>60926793thanks fren, love you special thanks to this anon>>>60926161and>>>60926229and>>>60926264
>>60926776Alexandr Dugin lookin mofucka
>>60927003Interesting ID given today's events...I appreciate you and the small nostalgia bump of your post fren.May we all become multimillionaires before the civil war really kicks off. I need time to build a nigger proof bunker and find a waifu.
cringe
>>60926954Wow I didn't realise they are already talking about cryptographically secured voting. A few more steps from that is a true direct democracy where you can vote directly on specific policies without the huge overhead of referendums. You could even have a system where you choose where each one of your tax dollars flows.>>60927340No you.
>>60927396A system that you can opt out of paying taxes to fund slavery and genocide? Sounds very anti-semetic.
>>60927396Was patented by the us postal service in 2019. This has all been around for some time, but as Sergey said that part is a complex political issue
>>60927003THANK YOU, BROTHERI WISH YOU NOTHING BUT GOOD FORTUNE
Dude no one cares. Price? Chart?
>>60926913>>60926919>>60926921>>60926924most interesting part of the convo imo. ty transcript anon. sibos soon :)
>>60926776Thanks OP, wicked ID tho.
extremely bullishfor pyth
Most based poster on here
>>60927396>>60927464This is exactly the problem, the thing is, I don't know if we can go around the identitiy issue. We NEED digital identities for actually important federal services to happen onchain, and for that we NEED some kind of first off biometric confirmation thats stored in a secure way on a blockchain.And I would say both the leftists wouldn't like that (fascist authoritarianism in their eyes) and the right don't like it (NWO system in their eyes)Reading about this, I think thats something thats 1-2y away
>>60926989kek>>60926844>I would say that there's going to be really significant progress this year and in the first half of next year on a lot of these different topicsanon read this
>0 GUNS, Kid IDThe weaponless revolution will not be televised.
>>60927396>A few more steps from that is a true direct democracy where you can vote directly on specific policies without the huge overhead of referendums.I used to think this was the dream until I participated in a DAO where I was expected to participate in every tiny change to the site/protocol, no matter how trivial.It soon became clear how good it is that you can delegate decision making away.
>>60927848Give people the choice. If they have the time and want to directly steer their tax dollars, they can. If they want to delegate portions to any number of politicians, most will. It's about the choice.
>>60926776Thanks a lot for effort post. So he says significant progress in the first half of 2026. Almost there>>0 guns kidWhat a fucking legend. A revolution of truth won without a single shot fired.
>>60927173dam didnt even notice the ID last night but you are right, thanks for being here fren>>60927396>Wow I didn't realise they are already talking about cryptographically secured votingya and he said its 100% ready to go too. wonder if it'll be implemented by the next US election. I think the baby step before that would be giving people free money, either covid style one off payments or recurring UBI style (already talk of payments to people from tariff revenue) and in order to receive the money you have to have the digital ID, later to be used for voting of course>>60927454kek>>60927588checked and based caps lock anon>>60927634sibos soon fren, looking forward to it. And that was a great part of the interview i agree>>60927648thanks for being with us fren, agreed on the ID>>60927679no YOU>>60927726i do wonder if they can get the left and right on board with digital ID by just simply offering free money, or if they need to lockdown the world first so that people really really need that money and cant avoid signing up.
>>60927812>significant progress this yearso bullish with sibos end of sept, fed reserve innovation of payments thing oct 21, smartcon beginning of nov>>60927846amen>>60927874based
>>60926814>requirements like investor accreditationThis is the very thing we fought against with crypto thoIts all gonna be insider trading and then dumping an ico on the plebes again
>>60926852>t's really just been fantastic working, you know, with the various regulators>>60926875>after the meeting was over, me and and my general counsel and our deputy general counsel, we gave each other high fives>>60926944>We're in September now, so you know, everyone's back from vacation. So hopefully things can move quicklySergey is winning, therefore we are all winning frens
>>60927396not just that but you could, down the line, choose where a good chunk of your taxdollars go as wellthis will all probably come with a bunch of cool things, at the cost of some kind of horrible prison planet style bullshitI can easily see a scenario like this, which will scale with whatever storage solutions for data are possible in the future:>at birth, get a personal ID address on whichever execution layer blockchain tptb decide on, which is part of an international register, or a national register which is interoperable with all other participating countries to track your movements and visa status later>all taxes will automatically be calculated and deducted using it, based on accounts that your ID has been granted access to by financial institutions>every single purchase will be recorded, subscriptions and insurance will be under it>biometric data will be recorded>all of your health information will be recorded>internet usage and communications will be recordedalmost any kind of personal data could be stored under the guarantee of zkps and the promise that the "right parties," have access to this data, providing that the relevant legislation is pushed through in the right placesas LLM's become advanced, these could also be hooked into this kind of thing to do all kinds of extra research on you, down to the smallest thingsi'm so excited for you kids(i can't find my meds please send help)
>>60927981oh im an idiot, you already mentioned the taxdollar thingthe rest still applies
>>60927848You could easily delegate your stake on-chain, much like the delegated staking nowadays...
thanks OP. best id ive seen in a very long time too
>>60927996thank you fren, and i agreebtw i did a short and sweet one earlier in the year, if you missed it:https://warosu.org/biz/thread/S59955558also, sorry about the formatting issues on this one, i was rushing and cut some corners. Sergeys sibos speech will be transcribed, you have my word frens, see you then
It's gonna happen, I can see it
>>60927957>UBIThey will need to unless they want the multitudes of white collar wagies radicalised via starvation. It would be easy too with tax on automation. Either that or they kill them off with covid 2.0. We may be the bad guys investing in the prison planet or the good guys if this is the only way for our species to pass a great filter. Fuck knows, I just want enough money to fuck off and have a family.
What's up with all these missed spaces in the transcript?
>>60928034kino. I genuinely think I would cry if that ever happens. I think I love sergey more than I love myself.
>>60927396>when managed democracy becomes reality
buy an ad for your scam ponzi faggots
>>60927812Heard this a million times before. Will go back to 5-7$ next year.
>>60927963Yes, but they'r etalking about existing financial structures and participants that have to go through shitty AML processes and that this new way would save a lot of time.For us, we will still need the non traditional institutions like Binance or DEXs that can allow us "non-accredited" investors. Which yes, is bullshit, but at least we're not being totally left out like we are with TradFi today
>>60932685>Heard this a million times before. Will go back to 5-7$ next year.and how many times have we heard this?
>>60932925many times, and it's been true many times. how often did the significant progress happen?
>>60927848you'll be able to delegate your political decisions to your personal (and personalized) artificial intelligence who will vote in your best interests