"Rediscovering Ethereum's Opportunities" - Aya Miyaguchi

to our very first talk of the day and this is where we're super excited to have ayamiya gucci who is the executive director of the ethereum foundation and she'll be giving us a big overview of how we can discover what else is possible with ethereum and without further ado i'd like to welcome aya to uh give her our very first talk of the day and uh hope you enjoy the rest of the summit okay let me okay sorry it took a bit thank you for the interaction i feel honored to be the first speaker of the summit and we will appreciate the work that east global has put together to make this event accessible to hackers thinkers and influencers globally escobar has done an amazing job over the last couple of years expanding the ethereum ecosystem to new places it has been incredible to watch how their newly established country hackathons have connected builders around the world this year and we're applied to support their work with that i wanted to talk today about not just how we can continue to expand our community but also about to expand ethereum's opportunity in the regions where it can be most most impactful as you know and uh like just kartik just explained how amazing this year has been the state of ethereum is strong ethereum celebrated its five-year anniversary and the block number exceeded 10 million each two phases are making progress including the phase 1.4 for the merger of e02 and sorry e2 and 1 and 2 multiple layer 2 solutions have been implemented to provide scalability and with all these along with other technical advancements the community is realizing new solutions with the same that bring real world adoption that we hear about every day i often use the analogy of ef being like a parent of the exam i'm not talking about giving birth but in the way we want to provide support we are happy that ethereum is growing and we want to let the women go happen as much as possible our mission is to ensure the success of ethereum and to do so in a sustainable manner we also definitely care about the right kind of growth and healthy growth without health no systems no community no human can survive long term as parents prioritize and make trade-offs to nurture and support the family so too that's the year today i want to talk about one of the priorities that i cannot emphasize enough it is to continue working to discover opportunities in emerging economies i often tell my team to expand the definition of the lithium community by this what i mean is that we must expand our targets and the types of opportunities where ethereum can create the biggest impact which i believe is in emerging economies and i will share my reasons why about 10 years ago i became an ba student that was sort of an unexpected accident but i met one great teacher who taught me about all the problems with centralized power in the business world and about problems problems with capitalism i learned that in order for a business to succeed long term you need to think about three pillars economic factors impact the growth of society but we should also look at both social and environmental problems in building a business at the end of the day if your country or this planet becomes unlivable because of social or environmental issues succeeding with your business or making money means nothing this should be easier to understand now looking at what's happening in the world i've also learned that businesses with those three pillars can create more impact and opportunities in emerging economies in 1976 muhammad yunus found that lending a small portion of money to the poor would make a significant difference in their life he led 27 u.s dollar mark to different women in poverty in the rule of virgins in bangladesh and then each loan can earn two cents profit this later became known as microfinance and he and his grameen bank received the nobel peace prize i myself went to bangladesh and joined a field trip of brac the biggest ngo in the world and another my big michael finance operator i joined their team to watch a program targeting the ultra poor 99 of time the poorest of women because they have to take care of babies without fathers often supporting these women to help them learn the simple knowledge for them to run a small business would create a huge economic benefit not only to those women but also to their viewers and to their country i watched and saw how simple systemic changes were able to create business opportunities and economic growth there is a lot we can learn from the way we describe distractions happen in emerging economies i will repeat this part but this is not for charity these are business opportunities now the stats are showing as proof that companies that perform well in esg factors show better performance in their return on investment so investors are paying more attention to emerging economies so what does this mean for ethan and why we are making this our priority like i said before ethereum is succeeding and the technology is growing thanks to all of your work now it is time to think about who will be the next big users out of four hundred thousand babies born every day three three hundred sixty thousand babies are born in emerging and developing countries these simple numbers show us something also i just happened to watch teen nights this webinar this week and they showed a map of crypto p2p transactions and this chart of ranking of crypto adoption in each country it shows the areas with with biggest crypto adoption index are in eastern europe and other emerging economies do you know why the numbers are big there my next reason for this priority explains why so ethereum has huge potential to make systemic changes in the world but making system exchanges is not an easy job with this we need to look at regions where changes are absolutely necessary people adopt new changes quickly when they are really needed like when something like life or death we all saw that this year with kobe and other chances it reminds me of one of my favorite inspiring stories from princess casares of zappo when he was selling bitcoin on the street of argentina in the early stage of crypto before ethan an old man asked to buy a lot of bitcoin with all the money he had winsor said hey old man this tech is still experimental so you may not want to put all your money into it and the man said i lost everything twice believing in our country's currency so investing into this is nothing we insist decided to start his company's apple after this here is a map that shows us a few challenges that we have huge opportunities to solve and there are some examples of solutions already provided by blockchain you may have read the word economic forum's case study in colombia for the e-procurement system built on the hand and for this challenge in sub-saharan and africa another community member beat the risk is providing a solution to this huge challenge and opportunity if the risk is solving one of the most challenging issues facing farmers globally revenue loss from unpredictable weather that destroys crop output the solution is smart contract driven weather index insurance out of 48 million smallholder farmers in sub-saharan africa only three percent are insured i have advised small businesses and for entrepreneurs and i'm aware that micro insurance is often even harder than bike lending due to the cost of providers to operate etheris solution could serve 14 billion usd market in sub-saharan africa alone also what muhammad yunus discovered was not just a way to save poor people he established a serious business model just by disrupting the estradis loan system now the market size of microfinance is 7.2 billion only in america if you understand what ethereum can do there is already a huge opportunity for ethereum to disrupt what he destructed to build microfinance 3.0 problem with microfinance still exists too many middlemen with high overhead costs are still making the system not entirely fair to those entrepreneurs who are lending the problem isn't necessarily that the lenders are being able but rather just the structure of the system is not efficient or effective globally this market is 124 billion as you can see this is an opportunity for the entire community including builders entrepreneurs investors to make an impact here lastly i want to update you all on what the ethereum foundation is doing to make this a priority we have studied local grants program that is providing grants to talented and un undersupported regions with high potential to support those builders and new communities you might have heard about our community members in honduras who helped this effort as the first group we are continuously working with the united states innovation team through the crypto fund to support blockchain startups in emerging economies as well the second round of investments supported by ef invested 125 in eight different startups in seven countries guatemala india argentina turkey mexico cambodia and city we are also working with them on their diga project which maps out and connects school with the internet after schools are mapped help with the payments to providers and a lot more we are also working on a new ef fellowship program to work with change makers in regions that are more in need of systemic changes the the program is still at the piloting stage but we will share our progress by the next step from and speaking of devcon and speaking of devcon we're excited to say that devkong 6 will take place between august 10th and august 13 of 2021 and we hope to see things continue to improve our team is working hard to make this webcam the best the most improved and the most exciting one ever and we hope to share more developments in the regency thank you very much and i hope to see you in voda next year