The People's Orbit: Democratizing Space for a Connected Future - TOKEN2049 Dubai 2025

Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for staying to the end of the conference to listen to an exciting panel today on the people's orbit democratizing space for a connected future. I'm Adam Wasserman, the VP of investments for input output. We're the research and engineering arm behind the blockchain Cardano. And today we're exploring how the commoditization of space is enabling more people to launch satellites, creating opportunities for decentralized communication networks and permissionless connectivity.

And we have an esteemed panel here and I'm I'm very much honored to as an American to have a former fourstar US general sitting with me. Any other fellow Americans here? Let's get a loud round of applause for General Clark. Very exciting. We also have a a a wonderful Dr.

Kim who is a former CEO of um ex-president I'm sorry of Samsung electronics who is the founder of spacecoin and akin who is the group CEO and founder of Ayella. So today with that said space in the blockchain indust ind industry is rather novel right. So I think it is worthwhile to give a quick intro to those unfamiliar with this intersection of blockchain and space tech. As you already know blockchain offers unique solutions to coordinate decentralized networks creating permissionless systems enable new economic models all surprisingly valuable and applied to space infrastructure. Spacecoin is launching the world's first decentralized satellite network aimed at providing global internet.

They've successfully launched their first satellite. Let's give a round of applause for their C2C zero which is launched last December and they're launching three new satellites this year. Very exciting. The vision is to connect 2.6 6 billion people worldwide who still lack access to reliable internet which is honestly mind-blowing in today's environment since we think of the internet is almost a basic necessity in today's environment at least for everyone in this room that's for sure the ambition for for spacecoin and and the journey wouldn't be possible without the exceptional guidance of strategic advisers and partners who understand both the technical and strategic aspects of space infrastructure so I do wanted to give credit where credit is due.

And as mentioned, we have an esteemed panel and I'd like to start with Tay to give his introduction and further along down the list. Please take it away. Hi, I'm Teao. I'm the founder of Spacecoin and I'm also founder and CEO of the core contributor of Spacecoin, which is Glua. Um since 2012 I've been working in this company glua and to build the uh bring permissionlessness and the what it's capable of to the uh more people and then uplift them from their situation and get better um to creating a borderless economy.

And I've been working on a project called creditcoin since 2017 uh which was focusing on banking the unbanked. And while uh was focusing on that problem, we learned that there's a adjacent problem of connectivity and that's how we started end up finding Space Point. Thank you, Tay. General Clark. So, um I'm retired Army fourstar general.

I was NATO commander in the late 1990s. I uh before that I was with Richard Hullbrook. We negotiated the end of the conflict in Bosnia. Then I got to be the NATO commander to run it and uh in the process we stopped uh Serb ethnic cleansing in Kosova. We we saved about uh 1.

6 million Albanians from being ethnically cleansed. And Kosovo is today an independent country. Serbia is still mad at me. If there are any Serbs here in the audience, I I'm come up and talk to me about it. And uh you know let's let's bury the hatchet.

But uh you know I think that uh we've got to move into the 21st century in a way that respects individual rights and liberties and freedoms and uh that's why I'm proud to be here with Teao and working space. Thank you. Okay, Dr. Kim. Thanks Adam and General Clark.

I'm Yoni Kim. I'm former president of Samsung Electronics. Now I'm leading a committee for autonomous driving back in Korea. Before introducing myself, I'd like to share momentum. when T uh present his sincere and grand visions of decentralized internet network based on low orbit satellite uh satellite uh throughout the my uh entire career dedicated to the Samsung uh mobile which now support about 1 billion uh smartphone users.

worldwide. Uh throughout all all those uh uh entire career, I never uh envisions that kind of a grand visions I think but I immediately uh realized it is a a great vision. It is more than was worthwhile to pursue and I decide to help him he realize his vision with my experience spanning 1G to 5G. I think there are many obstacles we which we have to overcome since Tesla vision is breaking the limit but I will help him realize his vision and I'm very happy to be here today. Thank you.

Thank you Dr. Kim. And last but not least, Aken, take it away, my friend. Um, I'm Akin Jones. I am the CEO of Ella Bank.

Um, Ella is a 2 million user NEO bank, a YC company from Africa, and we're building global mesh banking. I think we are here because we we're one of the first partners to glue a spacecoin and creditcoin and how do you intersect banking um with the space network and how do you get a a banking system without terrestrial networks? I think that's what what we're trying to solve for. So yeah, thank you. And once again, thank you everyone for being here.

Uh we're going to go through a couple rounds of questions, but I just want to say one thing before we we jump into the Q&A. Um I'm I'm very fortunate to have been selected here as not first, not the second, but the third choice to be the moderator. We we did uh try to bring someone in from the UAE government from uh their space agency, but unfortunately they they couldn't join us. So I'm honored to uh be able to to to talk with us today and thank you to the city of Dubai for hosting this uh wonderful uh event. Um Tay, you built Creditcoin which is an RWA project.

Now you're building Spacecoin, a crazy deep pin project launching satellites into space. Would you share how you ended up launching a satellite into space? Right. So when we were deploying um over 100 million US dollar in loans uh to over two million people with our partnership with Ella, we learned that many of the unbanked people that we were targeting were also unconnected and if you're offline there's no way for us to reach you. So we decided this is a problem that we need to solve as well.

And we initially look into the solutions already in the market such as Starlink. Uh but unfortunately the price point wasn't uh feasible for our target demographic. So you have to spend over $500 for the base station and over $100 per month for subscription fee. While Starlink works uh works really well for high bandwidth for our purpose of providing basic financial transactions and uh communication u it wasn't a great fit. So we were researching what alternatives are in the market and after after researching we understood that thanks to SpaceX the space industry it has been heavily commoditized which will allow smaller companies like us to deploy satellites on our own and then start formulating a constellation and that's how we ended up deciding to build our first satellite CTC0 launched last year and deploying our next satellite our first Con constellation uh CTC1.

Amazing. This is incredible stuff and I'm excited to see what the the future holds here. General Clark, could you comment on how open-sourcing satellite technology at the software layer, accelerating global innovation and interoperability while maintaining essential security controls at the hardware level might be beneficial to national security and international c cooperation? I think that um if you look at where we're going with satellite technology um of course there's a huge proliferation now of of satellites low earth orbit medium earth orbit beyond the geocynchronous and um when we do this we're trying to make uh space uh and access to space accessible to everybody. But a lot of these um satellites are not oriented on the people who would most benefit and have no other alternatives because they're not connected to ground networks.

And that's why u our system is going to orbit over the equator plus or minus 20 degrees. We'll pick up uh the central parts of Africa, Asia, uh Nigeria, Uganda, India, Indonesia and u and these are uh huge populations and uh and large portions of them don't have access to fiber. They don't have fiber for the last mile. They don't even have they don't have dialup. they just don't have access.

And um and so um uh this is going to be really important. But we're also at a time when the national security situation, the global security situation is is is more, let's say, volatile than it has been for the last 35 years. There's a group of four nations challenging the current structure led by Russia, China, Iran, North Korea. They don't like this system. They want their own system uh from start to finish.

It's not just the dollar. It's uh it's the whole way the structure works. And um so we don't know what's going to happen in this. We've got war going in Ukraine. You've got uh Russian spokesman threatening nations in Eastern Europe with nuclear weapons.

We know that Putin is building up forces in Bellarus and opposite Finland. Uh President Trump's trying to get it settled. Uh and on the other side of the world, uh President Xi has said 2027 is his key moment. So uh I think nations that are not part of this um are looking with some concern on the whole architecture in space as well as undersea cables and they need greater control over their data over their systems and um and so uh I don't want to name any of these other systems that are going to be rivals of us today but I think you know who they are because they could be turned off like this at a national decision and then everything stops and you don't know why they would be turned off and if you were a nation uh that's not in caught up in this immediate conflict you couldn't do anything about it so uh I what we're doing is we're providing a a service to nations the data is theirs the control of the satellites is theirs they can have as many satellites as they want one or a dozen or whatever and it's all their system. All we are is a provider, but we're providing it in a way that it connects to the ground and serves a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't have it.

So I think it's um it's not only something uh that's democratizing space but it's also uh providing a certain uh essential degree of stabilization for uh let's say the global south and and other regions that aren't caught up in this struggle that's starting to emerge. Thank you so much general to hear your perspective on this is invaluable and I hope everyone is out there listening. Incredible stuff. Dr. Kim, you were the ex-president of Samsung Electronics, as we mentioned, specifically focused on telecom network infrastructure.

You've seen how telecom technology has evolved over the decades. How do you see satellite to phone technology evolving in the next 5 to 10 years? What challenges remain in making this seamless for everyday users, especially those in rural areas who currently do not have internet connectivity? Okay. uh in response to the demand for uh complete coverage and stable connection uh 3GPP has been uh developing uh standard for the link between satellite and phones.

uh as of uh 2023 release 17 and 17 178 for the link has been published and uh the grand frame uh 6 vision is in progress uh and some companies uh provide uh satellite and the phone link already but at this time we have it is important we note that there are two different some different demand. One is for the uh people in developed country. A uh for that demand the series PP standard aiming to uh complementaryary provide complimentary uh uh coverage and the high speeded data. But there are the other demand for the people who have no internet connection at all. They need a basic internet service which will be crucial for their life.

I think my understanding of space coin project is we will space coin will provide this basic uh internet service. I would like to call it that lifeline uh uh internet service. I think space coin going to start their their business with this lifeline internet service and which will evolve to the a variety of service as their uh space coin decentralized architecture will attract more uh investment satellite investment and satellite uh involvement. I think uh within four within five or 10 years the space coin start with uh this lifeline internet service and evolve to the variety service uh in a way along with the communities that is uh my projection for the five to 10 years and space queen has a different I mean the quite specific and unique approach toward that one. Thank you Dr.

Kim for your uh perspective. It's very very very interesting. And akin you run a bank in Nigeria and you are based in Africa where many of the 2.6 billion who don't have access to internet are based. Would we love to get your perspective on a few things here?

You've been running a lending business over the past uh decade as well in in Nigeria. Is it fair to say that you're uh somewhat of an expert on emerging markets at least in in in Africa? What do you what can you tell us about the the market opportunity there for for helping uh those without access currently? Uh I'll say the future of work is in Africa. Um it's the fastest growing continent and by 2050 you're going to have 2.

4 billion people with a with a median age of 20 years old. How you going to get all those people work? Work is getting digital with the advent of AI. How you going to put everyone? How you going to get people access to medicine, access to banking, access to smart techch, IoT?

And the only way we can do that is with spacecoin or with space technology because we have to be able to connect the remote areas that have no connectivity. Um fiber and all these technologies are just too expensive to lay and to pipe down to some of these regions right now. And with the advent of space technology improving so fast, we it's something we can clearly do. Um I I was there with them at this first launch and you know I'm seeing the progress especially when we can hack the direct um connectivity to this to the smartphone. Once we can do that the access is is is enormous.

You know meeting with various uh leaders across the continent um you know we've met with various vice presidents, presidents, ministers of communications. you know, we've seen u that they're so excited about the strategic opportunity that this presents. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you for your perspective.

As as again someone who lives on the continent of Africa, I know this is near and dear to your heart. So, thank you. Let's uh spend the last uh several minutes of our our talk here opening this up to uh a dialogue and we'll go down the panel and let each of you answer this next question. First, let's look 10 years into into the future. What new applications or use cases might emerge when satellites become truly permissionless and decentralized?

Tay, would you like to start? Uh I think there's uh two layer of services that will be developed. So one first layer will be um what Dr. Kim call uh lifeline service, a basic service for people uh who gets access to the connectivity such as payments uh messaging um basic web browsing and as the technology evolves they will get to stream videos and whatnot and that will be the the basic level of service that people enjoy. Um it will be a zero to one situation.

Um another layer will be um decentralized enabled technology. So for example, our company has filed a technology that we call proof of location and velocity patent um in the United States which be which allows people to not only identify their location um similar to GPS but also to generate a proof that you're located somewhere. Um this has never been done at this global scale and by having a decentralized of decentralized network with satellite you can now add access of the your physical presence of certain location uh to your security. So for example you can use an applications like I decide to sign this smart contract only at this location and nowhere else and that means you can in you can add the physical security to your um crypto security. Wow.

So you're talking about geo fencing, correct? Very interesting. General, you know, when I uh when I think about Nigeria and these uh and the other countries like Indonesia that are going to be under the orbit of our satellite, I just see amazing things uh amazing possibilities. One of the biggest things we can deal with is food security. Mhm.

You know, uh, when you don't have connection to the internet, u, I was in South Sudan a few years ago and a woman was growing cassava and and she was asked, "Why don't you sell some?" She said, "Because I'll be cheated because I don't know the price in the market because she didn't have any communications. So, she's only growing it for her own family. So, open up that communications channel through satellite. Let her see what the opportunities are.

And then when you can provide other information, weather information, warnings about uh uh infestations of of of pests, when you can deal with the exact value of your soil square meter by square meter like our farmers in the United States are doing in corn, they farm by the square meter. They know exactly how much fertilizer it takes. They know exactly when to cultivate it and so forth. It's amazing. And um so in the United States just to give you an example you 60 70 years ago we were getting like 50 60 bushels of corn per acre.

It's about 2.4 acres in a hectare just to give you an idea. We were getting about 60 or 70. Now we've got hybrid corn and the improved cultivation and management of the land in such a way assisted by satellite and real-time information. getting 170 bushels an acre across the whole country and some places are getting over 200 bushels an acre.

Now that's corn, but you can do the same thing with other crops. It just takes it just takes the flow of information and it takes teamwork because agriculture is probably it's the most fundamental of of economic skills. value and wealth comes from the land, but it is a bet your family every season when you plant. Normally, you have to borrow money to plant. You don't know for sure what the output's going to be.

And so, it's it's a pretty frightening business and it's very individualized. So, I think that our spacecoin network is going to make a huge difference in agriculture. I don't I I know for a fact from my dealing in Indonesia that food security is one of the key issues in Indonesia. They just aren't getting enough nutrients and enough calories in that nation of 200 million people, 280 million people. And as Nigeria grows, uh it's the same issue.

It's going to be that same issue across Africa. Just we we just can't keep relying on uh Iowa corn farmers. We got to develop the crops in these areas that are native to the areas. We got to really work on the food security issue for for mankind. So, I think that's one of the big issues.

If I could just have another minute. Look, um, Bill Clinton said something that was really meaningful to me a long time ago. He said, you know, in the state of Arkansas, a lot of people don't have much of an education. and he said, "But you got to be careful who you're talking to because even if they haven't been to Harvard, they might be really really smart." Now, when I've traveled around Africa and and Asia and met people, um I meet some really really smart people, they know the world that they're in and they know it really well, a lot better than the academics know it.

The thing is if we can connect those people, give them the right educational tools early on and bring them into the larger global community, think what we can do. You know, the most important resource we have on earth is not lithium. It's the human mind and heart. And if we can connect through the internet with the 2 and a half billion people that are not connected right now and give them the same opportunities to learn that others have just imagine how much better we can be. Thank you Dr.

Dr. Okay. So I going to add some more things on the technical side but that you are talking about space coin vision very much. So I going to focus the technology unlike the star link the space coin start with I call uh lifeline internet service. So which which means which mean definitely this two uh uh two two network will differ in a technology profile.

I think uh uh so we're going to start with this lifeline uh internet service. So to make it happen one great option would be uh MB IoT at low orbit satellite which will provide much better coverage and lower cost. that is uh that that is one uh uh one uh pos one option and uh link level at at network level we have a decentralized network uh architecture. So to make it happen we we we could consider add network which which could uh which could make the add and delete of each node with freely. I think uh I'm quite excited this uh grand vision decentralized network which the space coin will bring in.

I'm quite excited with their futures. Thank you. Fascinating. Yeah. Um earlier in the year T and myself met with some central bank leaders across Africa and we were trying to talk to them about CBDC's.

We did get some agreements with some central banks and what we noticed is why were they not penetrated? It's back to the same thing. No proper connectivity. Um CBDC's can be a very effective tool. Um as we've seen a lot of countries and emerging markets have very unstable currencies and there's a real push and a real need for stable coins or different types of stable uh cryptocurrencies.

And what you know with space technology and with proper internet tools penetration rates you can see them jump as high as an additional 30%. Right now CBDC penetration is less than 1% in most emerging markets. Uh so working with this ecosystem I think how you have to think about it is you have to find a way to bridge the government um technology and then user penetration. How do you bring all those three things together? How do you get all these people thinking in the same direction?

And I think, you know, a great first step is what we're trying to do at at Spacecoin. Um, we're talking to all these people, this entire ecosystem, and we're building something that would actually work. Um, you know, shooting one satellite into space is a big feat, but trying to shoot three more this year and a lot more over the next couple of years is a much bigger bigger feat. So uh and then connected into a banking system and a mesh network and an ecosystem is is something that's pretty amazing and I think everyone should watch out for that. That's my comment.

Thank thank you everyone. That's fascinating answers to this question. In our last minute, Taye, why don't you walk us through uh the road map on what everyone can expect from Spacecoin over the next 6, 12, and five years from now into the future. So everything uh starts from the first step. Um we're trying to establish our first link as a baseline.

Yeah. Um define our bottom line there and from there we will increase um our capacity while trying to minimize the price increase. So there's two axis here price and the capacity of the network. And at the same time we are adding the third axis which is the decentralization or being permissionless. So eventually we will push these three all together and ideally we will create a cheap access to internet uh with a this decent data rate with full decentralization.

Wonderful. What a fascinating topic. I hope everyone enjoyed this panel. We're talking about satellites and decentralized internet. How exciting.

I want to thank the panelists. We have uh wonderful insights and perspectives and hope everyone has a a wonderful rest of the afternoon and and enjoys the rest of the time they're here in Dubai. Thank you. Thank you.