Bandwidth as a New Asset Class | Suruchi G. - Giant Protocol, Deborah S. - Althea | Gravity Bridge

two of $110 million us and actually we invested in giant protocol and this is the uh CEO and founder of giant protocol suuchi Gupta so I'll have her introduce herself s suuchi tell us a little bit about yourself first and foremost thanks for having me moiko thanks for coming on stage and doing this together my name is suuchi Gupta and I'm the founder and CEO of giant protocol at Giant we're turning bandwidth into a globally tradable digital asset so that all of us can buy sell trade connectivity or bandwidth contracts anywhere in the world now my my background is that I um am originally from India I was born and brought up in Mumbai and then I came to the US for my masters in computer science and then after that I had this unique opportunity to work at Juniper Networks for a while um I was a technical lead over there and I got this very fantastic opportunity to to cross functionally work with five different teams and just learn about how networking infrastructure Works how internet works behind the scenes around the same time I started participating in a bunch of hackathons the whole idea being I wanted to validate all these problems I was facing and wanted to test their business potential so presented the idea for the precursor for giant at one of such one of those hackathons which was organized by Tata Communications and Tata Communications is one of the largest infrastructure providers in the world onethird of all internet traffic actually passes through Tata Communications infrastructure so we were declared as a global Prize winner at the hackathon and after winning the hackathon we actually became the only team to have then gotten incubated by them and so that's really how how uh my journey began but it really started from a very silly problem that I wanted to solve which was I hated paying overage fees to AT&T and I was like hey why is there no way for me to just buy and sell data from each other I'm happy to pay for incremental data but I wasn't willing to uh pay for the overage fees that you know they they kept charging every now and then so just decid so couldn't find a solution decided to pitch it at the hackathon won the hackathon and that's really how the journey actually began so uh as a venture capital person and as an investor in suruchi like my mindset is really looking for dissatisfaction right which is to me like I want to find a dissatisfaction that affects a large number of people and I want the dissatisfaction to be very very high right so the thing that's amazing is if you think about the size of the internet right the size of the internet is now something like five billion humans right and actually the size of the mobile internet is actually most of the size of the internet right so mobile data and mobile internet is like gigantic right and the thing that's amazing is how dissatisfying our experiences you know and I think that the dissatisfaction she's describing was definitely something I felt personally and I think has been felt by billions of people right so in a sense this idea of making bandwidth into a currency right and into a tradable currency and you know in in a blockchain cryptocurrency right I think really struck me but the thing that's so important in my role is not the idea because actually in my business ideas Venture Capital uh ideas are really cheap right the thing that's really really really scarce and rare is Talent right so the thing that was really amazing is I made my investment decision really at the first time I met suuchi uh you know we met in a Starbucks and you know as soon as I heard her talk I basically was like okay I need to support this entrepreneur so I was very excited about that and I think that you know while the idea she has is very large I think it's a very interesting person here and I think that part of it is that she has a lot lot of excitement for solving this problem so Siri maybe you can tell us about kind of how you experience this problem of uh you know and how did you come up with this idea what was the core yeah so it started from when I was a student and had just moved to the US and I hated paying overage fees to AT&T and what I what what I always kept doing was just kept my data completely turned off towards the end of the billing cycle renewal so that that I wouldn't be charged the overage fees and then I kept on doing that multiple times where um I would just rely on Wi-Fi all the time and then when I would go to see my friends the first thing I would ask them is hey what's your Wi-Fi password without bothering to ask them how are they doing or how you know how was everything going on so that just earned me a very silly nickname which is called chindy in Hindi which means stingy and that just frustrated the hell out of me and I was like gosh there has to be a better way why can't we just buy and sell data and then I saw this over uh provisioning of network so the point was that we when we are like anywhere we go we see these dozens of Wi-Fi hotspots that are everywhere and then on the other hand I had a bunch of friends that had unlimited data plans so I was like there's there's this massive underutilized capacity but there's just no simple way for us to buy and sell sell and trade this capacity so why is there no solution for that so that was actually like the earning the silly nickname was quite frustrating and motivating to in fact you know go find a solution to this problem and at the same time I saw that there was this massive overr provisioning of networks and capacity and so there was an opportunity where you know we could create a more open efficient Network and that was what um we you know decided to follow and B you one of the greatest patterns in venture capital is this idea of feel the pain cure the pain right so if you feel the pain in your heart right like if your friends are calling you stingy like you know you're really feel and in a way one of the deepest motivations for entrepreneurship is actually almost like Revenge right and Mark Andre's Twitter feed someone asked him what motivates you right to build a16z this huge Venture Capital firm and his one word answer was revenge like that's what drives him right and so in a sense this feeling of the pain and having the pain I think is very deep so I'm really curious like how is it going right like how is your project you know what's happening and like where are we in your entrepreneur Journey right so it started from that silly problem and then as we dug deep into it we realized well it's a massive systemic problem because if you think about how internet actually works today there are only three or four providers in every geography that have that quasi Monopoly and us as consumers have no bargaining power and I was like why is like why is it like that how can we actually change that where we are able to create a more open and inclusive internet that is owned and governed by all of us so on one hand it became this massive systemic problem but then on the other hand when you think about how do you actually solve it because it's a massive coordination problem where you need to really bring all these large telecoms and large beims along with you so we realized that it was actually an incentive problem so we set out to create a new incentive layer such that we could actually bring these large providers along with us and build it in a more like pos positive some Manner and not really a zero some manner where on one hand these providers come along and at the same time it is community owned and governed so with that that's basically what you know we are creating with giant protocol where on one hand we are creating liquid markets for bandwidth so that all of us can now buy sell trade connectivity or capacity contracts anywhere in the world and on the other hand we're also making it an investable asset so the two together and what we've managed to do so far is um today if you traveling internationally you can actually buy I sell trade tokenized eims anywhere in the world in over 200 plus countries the way we do that is in collaboration with some of the large you know Telecom operators globally that have this excess capacity or underutilized capacity available like there is actually more than $500 billion dollar worth of capacity that is underutilized on an annual basis but there is no liquid market for it so giant is actually creating that liquid Market which doesn't exist for this unused capacity and so we partner up with these providers help them turn their unused capacity or even future capacity into tokenized contracts so that they act like nfts on chain and these eim nfts can then be traded by investors institutions Enterprises so that they can earn a low lowrisk stable yield which is really coming from a percentage of the provider sales and I'm giving a very very high level overview of how these mechanisms actually work but uh the idea is we get this excess capacity from the providers those are turned into tokenized contracts that are then represented as nfts on chain which anyone can now buy sell trade anywhere and by wordsy of them buying it buying and selling and trading they also now get to invest in a new asset class yeah yeah and then ultimately these contracts are then made available to the consumers yeah so what I wanted to do here though is I wanted to ground the conversation a bit because part of what entrepreneurship is and Venture is really what I call Heaven and Earth right and Heaven is the Grand Vision and the dream and the scope right but obviously Earth has to do with execution right and I think to me like my original question was really on the Earth right which is I just wanted to make it 100% clear that this is a shipping product that consumers can and are buying right and I just want to get maybe some numbers that will help people understand like how real this is and rather it's not just a dream because I think there's actually many many kind of bandwidth dreams that people are selling but I think bandwidth reality is more interesting so I'd love to hear what the reality is this this is the QR code actually everyone can scan this q r code and download our app right now and actually use it anywhere in over 200 plus countries to experience how real it is and we're actually and when you actually use it you'll not even realize that you're using a tokenized eim or it's a blockchain uh protocol it just works as a normal application that would allow you to get get connected to internet anywhere in the world yeah so that that to me is part of what I get excited about obviously is that you know really the Tactical execution and really shipping products right so that's the kind of dream so I'm really excited about that so I guess my question is in terms of road map right so now that you have like really big Partnerships you have a shipping product you have like where do we go from here yeah so that is what um so we would actually like to turn these tokenized eims into cross-chain assets because the way Envision bandwidth becoming an asset is Imagine these tokenized eims now acting like new Financial Primitives so that you could then think about using bandwidth as a form of payment bandwidth as a form of collateral us being able to trade a US Verizon or AT&T contract with uh waterphone UK contract so things of that nature can start be start can we can can start building those applications on top of this new um like digital Assets in the form of tokenized eims that we're bringing on chain which until now was never possible before so that's where we would love to you know invite uh Traders or traders that can actually provide liquidity for these contracts as well as developers that would like to help us turn these tokenized eims into cross-chain assets on multiple different chains uh I'm very interested in your ideal customer profile uh from an end user perspective because one of the exciting things that I'm watching is the development of mobile payments in the African continent right like Mesa and the use of Mobile minutes as a currency right so as Mobile minutes become a cryptocurrency like how do you see markets and how do you see users like what is the future sure so um in our case since we chose to specifically start with eims so we are certainly um tagging along with where the eim compatible devices adoption is so even though of course the goal is for this to be a massive you know Global play but we are initially focusing on more of developed markets where uh eim eim adoption is already pretty significant and users want you know flexibility in terms of being able to use being able to not be locked with any single provider but be being able to use internet on demand on the fly so our target audience is actually you know um you know crypto Community which is which is very big um on the ethos of ownership and having you know bargaining power and flexibility so that is what giant is all about so our target audience is certainly crypto Community as well as Travelers that are traveling internationally and what want to stay connected on the flight yes and uh in terms of international Travelers do they need to know anything at all about crypto they don't yeah that's great so you know obviously it's open to the world uh how do you see the future of this though like it maybe we can go back to the big dream and the big picture like how do you see this uh growing yeah so when you think about it like when when I think about internet to me it's like I fundamentally believe it should be a basic human right and owned and governed by all of us yet it's a extremely hard problem to solve when it comes to coordinating across all these different Telos so in giant's case what we set out to do is on one hand not only make it you know a liquid uh Market but at the same time also make it an open market such that it is owned and governed by all of us so our vision is to really like on board you know billions of Internet users that are already using internet and just by using internet become owners in this new connectivity economy like we call like like we like to call it true giant where imagine you know just by using internet you get so the way it already works today is that let's say you buy a $10 contract at the expiry of that $10 contract you are rewarded in giant tokens so you get 40% of that back in giant tokens which gets Auto deposited or Auto Stak into a provider pool which is specific to the provider from whom you have bought it so let's say there is a separate pool for AT&T there's a separate pool for T-Mobile so that gets Auto deposited into that pool and from that pool because now you as a consumer become automatically a Staker you're actually helping secure The Ledger as well as well as at the same time you are guaranteeing the delivery of the contract that is why you earn additional 13% apy plus 5% of sales so just by n but just by using internet you automatically become a part of this ecosystem and this economy so our vision is to really um actually make internet owned and governed by billions of Internet users as it should be yeah so this to me is foundational and it connects with the ethos of ethereum and the ethos of decentralization which is that the idea what she's describing is when you really look at bandwidth at its core we're really talking about electromagnetic Spectra we're talking about light that's kind of in the air right so effectively the idea that this is a a public good that effectively can be owned by the people in a decentralized way and that the benefits of ownership include the yield right which is that they become owners of this open spectrum and that the owners actually get the yield from their the benefits of owners ship right which is really truly I think participating in kind of the creation of this uh sort of much more democratized future so I'm very excited about that I guess do you have any closing notes I think we have about a minute left in this session well I would say check out giant please share any feedback you all have you know feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn on on telegram I don't have that there but um my telegram is suuchi GP feel free to connect on telegram would love to hear from everyone yeah fantastic and uh you know I I it's a small crowd so like if any of you uh kind of want to have a chat I'm sure suuchi can make herself available uh over here immediately after this session so uh you know really great to see you all out here uh we do have a really nice sessions here on the coral stage upcoming so you know I think the next session uh you know will will come to you soon uh actually one of the great things is that we have a little bit of bonus time so you know with our bonus time I wouldn't mind actually throwing out to an audience question so uh I we don't have audience mics but I'd love to uh Just sh if you can shout out ah yes so the question was uh is giant planning to be publicly traded on an exchange so I'll leave that one to sir Richie yeah so the idea with giant token is that we think of it as representing a unit of value for bandwidth globally so certainly once there is enough liquidity for the contracts on chain that's when we plan to yes consider listing yeah yes and without letting too many cats out of too many bags there are some fairly exciting as yet unannounced Partnerships that I think will be extremely exciting to hear about so so i' I'm definitely pumped up for this uh I do think that um realizing this vision is actually of huge scope and one of the amazing things that excites me is that there are so many countries with so many carriers and that the number of people affected can be literally billions of people can be affected so you know the scope of this is very very Grand so uh I guess uh you know I'd love to do you have any further comment or should I have an I think we can just ask any other questions yeah let's take another question does anyone have another question uh yes sir I'm sorry say that again bigger current providers and partners bigger current providers and partners yeah yeah yeah yeah so I think he's asking to for us to list the providers and partners uh I do think this is that it may be it may be okay okay not like we don't want to pre-announce any major Partnerships but you I think you can talk about the networks that people can connect to in the app sure so in the app if you go you can you can already use that in over 200 plus countries and when you actually look at every contract that is available there is the network name U Already listed so the underlying provider that you would be connecting to whether it is whether it's T-Mobile or whether it's AT&T is actually listed so um the way we managed to do that was through some you know large collaborations with uh key partners and now we're geing up to actually announce some very very big Partnerships as moo mentioned can't announce them just yet so um you'll you all will have to stay tuned but certainly massive Partnerships which aren't easy to pull off so yeah it's very uh it's definitely an exciting time uh I think one of the things that's really amazing has to do with business timing so I'd actually love sui for you to comment a bit about the timing of this and kind of like what is your view about the timing of the Readiness of Telco partners and kind of how how is the industry receiving these ideas right so I think uh even two years back when we would have when we would have talked about this idea of turning bandwidth into a new asset class nobody was getting it but now thanks to of course you know um the real world assets space picking up tokenization of real world assets already happening when it comes to BCG putting out this report that6 trillion worth of assets are going to be tokenized by 2030 and of that about 40% are going to be previously illiquid markets so there is obviously industry support that is now starting to um become available and and at the same time particularly for bandwidth why I think it is right now this unique moment in time and history for it to actually exist is because of several like you know um four or five reasons like number one is that as we started like bandwidth already has massive demand it's like trillions of dollars are already spent by more than 5 billion of us on an annual basis that's number one it already has a huge demand second second is that that it is durable unlike a lot of other assets it's actually backed by physical infrastructure third is that that it actually has limited Supply so in the short term it is limited in Supply so it also has scarcity scarcity value the third the fourth is that that in the long term though it is elastic which is also a good thing because it can be expandable and you know you can increase it from medium to long term and then lastly thanks to eim it is for the first time now becoming digitally possible to transfer and track bandwidth contracts so there are these key reasons and of course thanks to blockchain tokenization nfts defi all of that but it's certainly these key reasons that actually make turning bandwidth as a new asset class the right timing at the moment and we see it as a massive real opportunity to go after at the moment so one of the really interesting implications of turning bandwidth into a onchain real world asset a digital asset is really the extent to which telecommunications companies that are the providers effectively become almost government level and almost Bank level in the sense that they're the producers of the asset right so they effectively mint bandwidth right as well as the ability for them to monetize and Supply monetary Financial Services to their own customers right so I'm really curious your perspective on how Telos can view themselves as Banks and you know what's going to happen to effectively banking a class of individuals who may have a phone but they may not even have a bank account right so I think that was one of the key things that we had to actually crack which was hey when we are talking about creating this new incentive layer how do we actually bring these large Telecom operators along and so that is where we saw this opportunity of there being massive underutilized capacity in the form of you know about like more than 25% of um capacity on an annual basis is underutilized which is about $500 billion worth of capacity that is underutilized and at the same time they are constantly building that capacity for which also capital is required so that's why um the the model that we created was hey you already have this excess capacity and then there is also the future capacity that is available how about you made made that available to us we can you know then tokenize that capacity in the form of digital assets and then make it make it liquid and tradeable so that was one key piece of the piece of this where now this uh passive asset that was on their books actually becomes a tradable asset which means they can actually get paid for that Capac it lot sooner than what they would otherwise make so so one of the questions that I have is that you described bandwidth as a durable asset right and obviously tokenized bandwidth has the quality of durability in the sense that you can transfer the tokens right and then you can effectively like redeem them right so the idea becomes if you're banking a token let's say you're banking 10 giant tokens right so maybe when you travel you can spend them right so you spend them elsewhere so the TR the creation of a digital asset for bandwidth makes it durable but it's really durable in a virtual sense right because when you think about the underlying asset the underlying asset is effectively perishable right because if the you know if someone has an undersea optical fiber cable right then they're either using the cable or they're not and if they don't use the cable they're they can't redeem the money and get the usage back in a time machine right like it's gone right so it's similar to like a hotel room right where the hotel room if it's vacant right then the hotel doesn't make money right so in a sense I guess I'm wondering how you look at this distinction of kind of durability and impermanence so I think um the durability aspect of it is what makes it interesting when it when it is is compared with just with other assets where it's like uh we talk about lot of assets where is there you know real value there so in this case because it is backed by physical infrastructure it just makes it lot more valuable from that standpoint because it is backed by physical infrastructure now in case of the impermanency you're right that yes this capacity is available if it is actually not utilized then it is then it is just lying in there right it is ideal and the interesting thing from a from telco's point of view is that the marginal cost for them to actually like distribute or make another gigabyte available is lot less so in fact they would rather you know be happy with being able to sell as little or as much as possible of this ideal capacity and today it is just made available through bspoke contracts and there is no open market that is that is uh available so in a sense us making that open market uh for you know this idal capacity is just um accretive yeah that's exciting I think it makes a lot of sense right which is if you have like one of the foundational things that I've learned about things like Bitcoin Tech is that basically energy of any kind including Financial energy doesn't want to just sit there right so this idea of having a store of value like storing it is fine but as soon as you store something it kind of gets itchy like it wants to move around right so in a sense the idea becomes that if you've banked mobile data right now that you're just sitting there it's kind of burning a hole in your pocket right like you kind of want to spend it right so if you're on an airplane and all of a sudden it says oh do you want to connect the airplane Wi-Fi it's just going to cost you some points right you may just choose to do so so I think that the idea that this asset is a creative and it's just additional and it's sort of it's there to be used right so I think that's an exciting uh propensity it may change the behavior of users definitely and in fact today also in our case when we are making these contracts available when you're when anyone is buying that contract they actually have 180 days to activate so meaning at any point in time in the 180 days you could trade it you could transfer it you could also use that as coll Al so there are all these additional you know use cases that become possible so you may now consider you know buying this capacity lot sooner than what you would otherwise do if you were only buying it for consumption purposes so that's that's where of course from a Telos point of view they're then able to make more money by actually making it available on the platform yeah that's exciting and I guess one of the things I'm wondering about the road map at the risk of being a when token guy is what is the time frame for uh sort of a publicly available token so I think you know in our case we've been very very focused on actually uh making sure that we focus on the right things which is bringing liquidity for the contracts first and foremost once we reach T of millions in liquidity for the contract after that is when you know um we would consider answering the question of when token I like that so right now we focused on bringing liquidity for the contracts itself yeah but I do think that it's a very exciting mindset right because ultimately the thing that I love the most about entrepreneurs who kind of have felt the pain themselves is that they're really focused on Building Solutions and I really feel like you know in a sense that's one of the most important things for our space which is that the more we go into the world and we solve real problems for real people the better our industry becomes right so really I think you know we really need Builders like suuchi who kind of are not necessarily thinking about this as kind of a you know a token money grab but really thinking about this as like how do we solve real problems for people right and how do we prevent people from being called stingy because they want to connect to the internet uh any closing thoughts well I think um I had a lot of fun having this conversation with you Miko thank you to all of Y all for actually joining coming wa like this early to actually attend the conversation so thanks thanks a lot for that looking forward to seeing all of you all using Giant and actually sending sending feedback and you know critique as well please do just open to hearing everyone's thoughts and hopefully you know some of you all also help turn this into cross chain assets across different chains thank you so much for the time yeah big hand to sui giant protocol thank you so much you guys have been awesome yep all right so uh I think we're actually moving on to our next session so we do have uh