Interview with Amor Sexton, COO of Blockdaemon | European Blockchain Convention

[Music] good morning everyone this is day two of abbc 10 here in beautiful Barcelona I'm Alona Stein Co CEO of R blond PR agency um I'm here today with a more seon zo and block D hi good morning hi good morning how are you good thank you how has it been for you so far at at EBC it's been fantastic it's my first time here at this event I've been many other events blockchain events um around the world but my first time at this one I'm absolutely loving the atmosphere the content I think the mix of companies and the mix of attendees is really interesting as well um it's it's both institutional and a lot of regulated institutions who are doing things with digital assets but also some other companies that are more in the web3 space in the blockchain space and doing you know crypto um businesses and if businesses protocols I'm I'm loving the mix it's really showing um the the breadth of the ecosystem in around blockchain very good so black d is a pretty interesting company do you want to share with the audience just a little bit about you know uh who you are and what's interesting uh you know for them to know about you sure uh well we're the world's largest W 3 infrastructure provider we're really the gateway to W 3 and that's because we have a broad range of products and services that anybody who is building on blockchain or withing hit ping in a blockchain network can use one of our tools so everything from dedicated nodes um apis staking validators right through to NPC ke management technology and an on premises wallet as well so a really broad range of products that are designed to make institutional names when they're interacting with blockchains anything that your user base is extremely excited about or like where you see the focus heading in the next uh year or so I think it depends we have such a broad range of clients um so so you our regulated institutional clients they're really interested in our wallet products whether they have their own wallet but they're using our MPC technology to enhance the security of their own key management process um our on- premises wallet is something that's incredibly interesting for a lot of these clients as well because as they move out of pilot and proofer concept and into production the idea of being able to control all of their wallet infrastructure is really important for them and being able to have the configurable option there to meet their their needs so for example deploying it in a a large company that has many different business units that with the need for Chinese walls and being able to deploy wet infrastructure to meet those specific requirements um on the other side there's just some really exciting stuff happening at the protocol level with new protocols coming out that we're supporting whether that's allowing uh people to utilize our AP apis or our nose products to participate in those networks or staking and participating in these networks at that level um you know we're really excited as well about the the nor standard I'm not sure if you've heard about that um so it's an initiative that we're part of we're getting involved in creating a node operator risk standard it's a third party certification uh that would will allow uh institutions who are interacting with e validator operators to know that the operational processes in that company meet that Enterprise GR risk management standard that they would expect in their due diligence so really looking at the inherent risks that are involved with managing these machines and um participating in the network and making sure that we are providing that Enterprise raade service to our clients and that's an initiative that you guys are leading we're part of it yeah it's being led um there's a number of us involved aluvial coin Bay amongst the the crowd are really being spearheaded up by alivi but it's something that we're really proud to be involved with at the early days because it's it's something you know being institutional grade not just in our products but in our company is really important to us we we're an unusual company in that we've got a really unique wins of investors on our cap table as well B saaks ja Walen City Bank um and then also our client Bas is so varied and includes a lot of the world's largest regulated institutions so their expectation of us is that we operate with the highest standards of operational resilience of our control framework that's in place Regulatory Compliance um and this is you know the the noise certification is really something that we believe the industry needs and we're very very uh proud to be a part of rolling that out so anything in particular that you find either on the floors near um or that excites you looking forward at the next uh year or so uh I I was talking to the crowd from GLT last night I think some of the work that they're doing with central banks is absolutely fascinating um I think that's great there was another uh there was another business that I spoke to I think it was two nights ago that are working with the Indian government on verified identity which is fantastic you know identity use cases are something that I've always believed strongly in for blockchain but I think the biggest challenge with them has always been that it has to be government L because the government is the one that really um issues the identity and and and I guess bestows the um the right to be able to to recognize verification as valid so I think there's some really exciting stuff there and I'm I yeah I look forward to seeing a real live identity use case that's uh that's government backed um we've been talking to another number of other companies who are doing stuff with security in the w three space too which I think again is exciting as we look to mature the industry as of all security is obviously a really important aspect of it um so yeah a lot of a lot of really exciting companies are there very nice uh anything you'd like to add before we rrap up just that I hope to come back again I mean it's not just it's not just the conference but B learn is absolutely beautiful sorry I could not agree it couldn't pick a better City to have a pod thank you so much for joining us today great thank you thank