Picks and Shovels 3.0: How is Infrastructure Adapting to a Web3 World? - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2022

hello hello I am I've got a delightfully short presentation for you it is one slide I do have some notes here um and I'm going to walk you through why this is important I think and uh what picks and shovels means in the web 3 world so first I'm going to introduce myself I'm going to introduce BCB group uh a company I founded in 2017 and for which we have some amazing representation here today I I'm going to give you a super simple model I like to use when I think about infrastructure and how it applies to how the uh internet has evolved from a web one world through web 2 web 3 I want to actually put a fine points on each of those give you a little data on what that means and then before I'm having just understand what are the actual picks and shovels that apply to web3 and I'll finish off again with why it's important to me now this is a high levels uh conversation it is not Technical and I've decided to keep it quite simple and quite high level because what I realized hey what I realized when I uh joined the conference yesterday was that um there's a broad mix of people here people of many uh disciplines and uh I heard one person say out loud what is a dow I won't mention names Ian but uh that came up uh the other reason is that it's the tail end of day two of the conference and you're all looking forward to beer o'clock so I'm going to keep it pretty high level about me my name is Oliver from Landsberg Sardi I founded BCB group in 2017 in London uh originally uh to service liquidity in crypto but quickly pivoted into providing essential payment services for companies who operated in this market so this is uh most of the I mean a bunch of the brands that you've seen walking around today um we are lucky enough to count as our clients specifically we provide the payment rails so that if a for example a market maker or an exchange needs to take a deposit or make a payout the underlying bank accounts if you're in UK Europe Switzerland are highly likely to be a BCB group account so uh BCB group then in a nutshell is is that it's payment services we also offer foreign exchange services uh then treasury Management Services which gives you a little pickup on your uh Fiat positions which are doing not too well right now in a negative interest rate environment and in a uh very disturbingly recessionary uh environment um and the basic picks and shovels that we think not we think that we've learned the hard way this Market needs what do web3 companies need and that's kind of what we're going to provide but again winding Back to Basics um the way I view infrastructure a super simple model I think of it as a board a board game so think about the rules this is the regulatory environment I think about the chips or the the monetary tokens so this is the value transfer the value storage value management I'm thinking about the actual board itself so this is the you know it's mapping this to this world is what is running the software uh what is orchestrating the link between software and the real world then there's the story you know where where does information live and how do we manage that information and finally interaction how do the players on this board game interact with each other so this model again it is the it's the rules it's the chips it's the board it's the story and it's the interaction that us as players individuals or as businesses that kind of five-point model as a simplification for infrastructure so let's see how they played out in web one web one is of course way information everywhere it is uh originally highly decentralized ironically uh where any computer could act either as a browser or as a server or as a relay to other servers it was the e-commerce Revolution it was Amazon it was eBay and the disruption that web one offered of course was where do we do business it's uh moving you know moving it off brick and mortar and online so looking at it through that five-point infrastructure model what are we looking at uh the rules are well these are governed basically by real world commercial uh rigs um but starting to test international boundaries in a kind of Internet um which is natively borderless how do we um monitor that so the rules the chips well you're paying with credit card or you're paying with PayPal this is I'm gonna race through this because web one is not interested anymore this is a this is a 2000 Story the board it's the decentralized TCP Network it's with DNS giving meaningful names ah rolling back to the rules quick I mean ah yeah the story I mean the data is on one computer the story of web one is um it's that's where it lives in one computer and of course the interaction businesses are center stage and comms are by email right super simple we move ahead to web 2 this is uh the 2020 tens this is self-publishing this is Twitter this is Facebook making money off your personal data uh this is YouTube Tick Tock twitch um this is lack of interoperability this is hyper decentralization I'm sorry centralization um and the disruption web 2 brought us with us of course who controls the content this is no longer centralized news uh broadcasters the traditional media this is you this this is like putting your own out there and making money off it but not quite enough because if you're streaming stuff on Spotify or YouTube the royalties are getting are are fractional so back to some of the earlier topics on uh alignments and incentives of course rolling to web3 we've got a better model for how to reward content the board of course the board component in that web 2 that was centralized um entities like Google Facebook Twitter the stories of course you know where the data is it's on cloud servers it's still fairly centralized and the interaction of course the user takes to the stage we take Center Stage um any individual can make money from content uh and comms evolve from email to DM WhatsApp insta whatever web3 rolls in ethereum is of course the first to bring standardized data and applications and do it in a super decentralized way everything is open source everything is about composability everything is about creating bits that other cool startups can use and combines to create their own value props the disruption web3 brought us Post web 2 was of course the definition of money this is where governments get a little uncomfortable this is where Regulators start to worry this is where the Power Balance shifts from Central places like central banks to well basically to software engineers which is a pretty cool shift in power uh infrastructure for web 3 what does that look like so in general terms the rules well now that we're starting to make Regulators worry about uh the definition of money the shift in Power Balance from civilized organizations to effectively software engineers and anybody participating uh Regulators take notes regulations Advance um at different Paces in different parts of the world but a core infrastructural uh uh lens here is uh you know that affects everybody at this conference is Riggs today and and how they evolve the chips of course the chips are tokens these are tokens on uh on you know the layer one protocols as the your Bitcoin ether Solana this is uh stable coins as well this new medium medium transfer that is on a blockchain but is one to one hopefully uh with with a fiat currency and of course Fiat itself um part of a web 3 world this web3 world people wouldn't be able to pay their bills or attend this conference in general if they if there wasn't a Fiat component somewhere in that value chain so it's tempting to think of web3 as everything crypto but you know Fiat is an essential component it is an essential unit of um a value there the board these are the decentralized nodes these are running uh this this is the this is a this is the this is this is uh all the all the good stuff that's come out since uh 2009 all of the cool layer one protocols all of the layer twos that build value on those later layer ones um these are Market infrastructure protocols these are decentralized markets like are they compound and my secret favorite uh mango uh and Banks again when we think about web three we kind of think it's a it's an all crypto world but banks are as an essential part of the board component of that model uh where is data well data is uh very redundant it's on the blockchain it's everywhere um and what is the interaction well in this web3 world we vote either with electricity in the case of Bitcoin uh or we vote with money proof of stake in in ethereum latest iteration um list Etc all the kind of consensus protocols um and the F yeah so so what does this mean what are the picks and shovels and why is it important it's um obvious we're not going backwards it's obvious this that this is um we're past the point of no return we are in a web 3 world some people are starting to think what the hell is where four are going to be all about but for me the long term value that's interesting to me to build and to invest in is uh is that infrastructural play it what what are those businesses building core components that map to that super simplified model that are actually going to take us through the next through the next few Decades of progress so on the rules side reg Tech is obviously Center Stage this is chain analysis to understand where crypto value is moving from into this is the likes of elliptic chain analysis and and similar this is transaction monitoring on the Fiat layer like Napier like crypto compare sorry compliant Vantage and it's onboarding and kyc where which is obviously the uh a lot of the screw the scrutiny is um from Regulators right now uh and you've got providers there like some sub on Fido jumia a whole bunch looking at the chips part of the two part of the kind of five pillar model whatever the hell you want to call it uh what are the infrastructure components there what are the picks and shovels well of course where do you keep it this is the custodial and wallet Tech this is uh platforms which also then aggregate those wallets in their Tech like fire blocks and like copper um this is bank accounts and Fiat payment services but again an essential part of web three and uh you know often emitted from a web 2 conversation this is where BC group comes into play this is where silvergate bank and Anchorage as a kind of I guess another layer up this is a moonpay and centralized markets bitstamp um Gemini decentralized markets like uni swap didex platforms for options and Futures that manage the risk that manage the spot risk this is um FTX they're a bit uh Etc the board these are blockchain interoperability platforms like Cosmos how do we get blockchain speaking to each other these are the wormholes between uh one and and the other this is decentralized Computing like divinity two talks ago the story component where does data live uh well we have the pixel shovels on the data side are what is the price of what we're looking at so crypto compare as an example of a a benchmark that is uh that is observable or on blockchain oracles like chain link for off-chain data or like the OG price prediction uh uh protocol auger um what are we talking about we're talking about shared storage like file coin we're talking about internet of things uh where blockchain Tech meets real Tech um stories like helium for iot data and finally interaction how are we communicating with each other um well first of all in web3 World your name I mean your your in web One World your name is your email address in web 2 let's call it your username and web three it's your uh it's like it's your it's your wallet's address and you don't have to go and remember your zero x 54 characters you've got Unstoppable domains that can go and compress that into your own identity and map it to whatever blockchain so first of all on that comms piece who are you that's the um the kind of the new name Service uh picks and shovels component and um yeah what are you communicating you're communicating data data or a communicating value or Community communicating an nft uh browser wallets like metamask and Phantom these are your new DMs um so look not a super uh complicated message um I think it's useful to attempt to simplify what infrastructure means in a web 3 world because that's where the long-term value is to be built um I've attempted to distill that model into a kind of a board game analogy where we've got uh the board we've got the story we've got the chips um how we're interacting with it um and and of course the rules and uh it has been a pleasure to have the opportunity to introduce myself and to introduce BCB group a core infrastructure partner for so many people here and we're so grateful to have you as um our infrastructure clients and um this is how we're going to build the web 3 world it's understanding those picks and shovels and it's getting involved uh in every project that can bring us closer to transitioning this world from a an analog inefficient world to a digital decentralized much more interesting space that's all I have for you and thanks uh thanks for your time and go enjoy beer o'clock [Applause]