Communicating Utility to Grow a Blockchain Network

[Music] welcome back we just finished the session on defy and we continue with more stuff we have the honor to have jordan edelstein today he is chief marketing officer officer at the stellar foundation and he has prepared an amazing presentation on how you communicate utility to your network jordan a pleasure to have you thanks so much daniel really appreciate it and it's great to be here good morning good afternoon good evening depending on where you are i'm jordan edelstein uh chief marketing officer at sdf um i've been with scf for about two years prior to that actually spent most of my career in consumer marketing and actually even the last 15 prior 15 years in video games and as fun as it was working in the gaming industry uh i joined sdf after talking with our ceo danelle dixon and jed mchale of our founder there are really two reasons one is i really believe in the mission which i'll talk a bit about and then secondly it was really thrilling to hear people talk about blockchain with such passion and they really made me realize as much as people tend to talk about the promise of blockchain and its impact uh about what blockchain will be able to do its impact in the real world use is already here people are using the stellar network to build amazing things and that's really what i'm here to talk about which is utility and how we communicate that in our marketing to help grow the network just a very quick word about stellar so our overall are our we aim to sort of unlock the world's economic potential by making value more fluid and markets more open and in people more in power it's stellar is a decentralized open source blockchain network it connects the world's financial infrastructure and what we really envision is a new global payment standard that enhances rather than supplants the existing financial system we are not looking to replace sovereign fiat currencies with crypto what stellar is is a really good example of how blockchain and tokenization of real assets onto digital rails can make money and value move more fluidly and on blockchains like stellar dollars can interoperate with pesos which can interoperate with mobile money in kenya which can interoperate with remittance services uh remittance providers in the ukraine and so this idea of moving money around is really what we're focused on a few stats on seller we have more than six million accounts on the network in q3 of this past year we had almost 30 million payments actually executed on the network and the number of real relevant assets on the network which are assets that are tethered to real financial instruments like a dollar or a peso grew more than 300 percent in the third quarter so we have a lot of momentum and blockchain is making money move better for everyone um including populations that are not traditionally well served by uh traditional banking and that's really just a quick word about the stellar development foundation which is sdf for sure that's who i work and we are a non-stock nonprofit corporation we have no shareholders or owners or profit motives we do pay taxes we're not a charity um founded in 2014 and we exist solely to support the development and growth of the open source stellar network the foundation helps maintain the code base we support the technical and business communities around stellar and provide leadership to regulators and other stakeholders in the space and so everything we do at sdf is aimed at making the network as a whole succeed and the way we do that is we focus on sort of three pillars one is ensuring just the the core robustness of the technology supporting existing and future use cases on the network the second is being the blockchain people know and trust and this is about increasing our visibility and participation in international conversations around blockchain to support the growth of stellar and then lastly this idea of fostering sustainable use cases and that the products and services that are built on our network that contribute to long-term growth and sustainability of the network and we want to grow those use cases with ultimately a goal to focus on scalable network effects and all that work really drives us towards our mission and that mission of ours is really interwoven into our marketing it's our goal is to create more equitable access to the global financial system and so i'd like to play a short video that highlights this and really kind of encapsulates why we do what we do [Music] the world is full of tensions and that is exactly where we see change [Music] ah a change that enables all the financial world has to offer to anyone anywhere the stellar network a universe of opportunity so i think that video really kind of shines a light on how stellar is solving problems in the current financial system by using blockchain and digital asset technology to empower both individuals and businesses around the world with a more interoperable global financial system that's really what we focus on and this video kind of is leveraged off of a couple of real live use cases that we've seen on the stellar network and so a core operating principle principle of sdf is openness and transparency and this idea really cuts across how we nurture our really wide range of audiences um the range of audiences that for stellar is incredibly diverse and you know reflecting on my career in terms of working on a video game on lots of video games you know there are people who are really excited about a video game a year or six months before it comes out they want to know every little detail every new feature and then there are people who will say hey i'm going to wait until christmas until the game comes out what should i buy and so you have a range of all of consumers who uh might be interested and want to play uh your video game but you know they're all kind of hovered around the same idea around yeah i want to play something fun and so whereas the range of audiences for stellar you know our community crypto enthusiasts blockchain enthusiasts fintechs enterprise companies policymakers that range of potential audiences is kind of staggeringly diverse and so this idea as an open source product our transparency and everything that happens on the network kind of cuts across all those different audiences so for example our mandate which is you go to stuller.org and see this it details how we allocate our funding it's posted on our website you can see here all the different funding mechanisms that we have for companies and people who are building on our network and how much how many how many lumens we have for that we host um every we host every quarter of quarterly call where our leadership anyone can join uh our leadership reports on activities from the last quarter we said we were going to do this what did we get done here are the metrics that we're seeing on the network people can ask questions and so this kind of open transparency interaction we have four times a year and then on the technical side the sort of relatively uninteresting zoom picture on the right hand side is actually an open protocol meeting so this is sort of the technical leadership of sdf in fact in the upper right hand corner is david messieris who's one of the founders of the and creators of kind of the stellar network um we have this meeting discuss upgrade proposals anyone can watch and changes to the stellar protocol are discussed and then voted on publicly so this idea of transparency and openness really is at the core of how we communicate externally and all the technical updating and innovation that takes place on stuller it's all tied to making the network more functional so a core component of our marketing is shining a light on this work the technical innovation that goes into the stellar network it's all done with utility in mind and probably the best example of this is we just recently added uh automated market maker i had referenced in the prior section uh session amm functionality to the network which was our most significant protocol update this tower in its history and what we did was we shared how the feature was actually developed and rolled it out really differently than we have in the past so normally we update the protocol and then we say hey ecosystem here's how here's what's here here's how it works this time we actually shared along the way here's how this thing is going to work here's how we think it could be used and so we use blogs and press and events all focused on how amm functionality was being added to the protocol and what we thought it would do for the network so then with the network upgraded on november 3rd and post that launch we continue to trumpet this and we'll see because because we're seeing in-market usage of the feature by our ecosystem and our users and it was all done to improve liquidity on the network and that's what we're seeing and so our channels in general are loaded with telling the technical story of stellar which even when it gets very heavy technical content always includes kind of the explanation of what problem is ultimately being solved another key aspect of us demonstrating the utility of stellar is how we highlight our highlight our ecosystems of companies building on the network and their use cases there is an incredibly wide range of companies that are building on stellar this map just snapshots a few of them and we incorporate their stories in our marketing in a wide range of ways and so it's all focused on how they are innovating in what they are building on stellar and so i'll walk through just a few instances of that so one example is moneygram so big huge public company in our recent work and really get to the core about what we talk about in terms of fostering sustainable use cases so moneygrams integration on stellar is going to be a transformational effort to bridge digital assets and local currencies for consumers it's going to revolutionize settlement flows by facilitating near instant settlement in usdc it's going to be easier than ever to get money on and off the blockchain and all do it well really importantly without a bank account so you don't need a bank account in order to leverage the ability to sort of put money on and off chain using moneygram and so our adult you know when we launched announced this uh that this was happening we obviously leveraged press we have a pilot that just for moneygram and sdf employees showing that hey here's how this works and so during uh we we have an engineer here in the middle demonstrating here's how this actually works let me show it to you live we leverage obviously our executives and this upper right hand corner is the ceo of moneygram alex holmes and our ceo danelle dixon talking during our conference blog content and so the idea that sort of we can feature a major enterprise company that is built on stellar's open source blockchain network for us is a great example of showing hey here's how this can work it doesn't matter what size company you are and then it's going down the chain a little bit flutter wave which is an african fintech uh it's incredibly active and we've been working with uh with flutter wave for some time just recently we announced some new payment corridors between tempo france which is a money transfer operator in europe and flutter wave to two countries in africa and this idea these payment corridors being set up it's really poor to our vision around the blockchain for payments so obviously is something where we leaned into press but another example is you know we have we for the big fintech conference uh in north america money 2020 we actually integrated flutter wave people into our content so in the middle of the the image in the middle on the left hand side is jimmy coo who's the head of us growth for flutter wave and so we integrated them into our content to have them tell their story like explain why they flutter wave chose to build on stellar what would the rationale what was that experience and so these cases really showed the utility of stellar and blockchain overall being used today and that's really kind of the critical piece now another example of how we showcase utility is case study content so we do that with written content we do it with video content i'll show a snippet of a video that highlights vibrant which is a wallet that's actually been developed by a subsidiary of sda stellar has this wide array of assets low fees and the easy tooling that's necessary to build an app like vibrant as an app vibrant allows you to load value in the form of a argentine peso stablecoin called arst issued by our on an off-ramp partner in argentina called settle users then are able to swap that arst on stellar's decentralized exchange or usdc and protect themselves from inflation stellar's ecosystem standards provide these standardized ways for wallets and for on and off ramps to integrate as well as perform compliance we had access to asset issuers like settle and its arst token which allows us to spin up an on and off ramp in argentina right away at vibrant we've seen some exciting growth we've seen a 10x improvement in conversion rates and a 60 month over month growth in average balances so we have a longer form of this work that actually includes actual users of the vibrant product in argentina we use these kinds of clips in our digital media these video case studies really show vividly the utility and impact that blockchain powered innovation can have today and it really you know we kind of live by the maxim of show and don't tell stellar has this wide array of ass once is probably enough um and then to accelerate further kind of our ecosystem growth and new solutions what we you know one of the key pieces for us is engaging and supporting supporting the kind of smaller kind of nascent ideas from an incredibly passionate community of developers and entrepreneurs and one of the way we one of the ways we do that as a foundation is via the stellar community fund which gives people from all over the world a chance to kick their kick start their stellar based projects and connect to a really thriving stellar community so people apply the ideas and proposals are voted on by the community and then there's monetary prizes to support that and one of those projects that's come out of the stellar community fund is a project called lightning and so lightning is an nft marketplace it's built on the stellar network and it enables creators to mint nfts on stellar in less than two minutes at incredibly low fees which is obviously on that topic in the nft space right now so lightman again was a stellar community fund winner and they positioned themselves to win users in scale through really deep engagement within the stellar community so the stellar community fund is a way to kind of just for us to nurture those smaller opportunities or smaller businesses and then we talk about lightman in our marketing in terms of hey this is the kind of thing that can happen on stellar and hey the stellar community fund could be a vehicle to help you get to help get your business going and the last area i'd highlight is different one which is demonstrating utility more around blockchain overall and less even about stellar in particular and communicating with the broader market and in particular policy makers to understand the potential of blockchain this is a real focus for us and we want to build our presence and voice within the blockchain space just to help blockchain overall and so in the u.s we actively participate in the discussions around legislation around blockchain policy so last week our ceo executive director janelle dixon was one of six executives to testify for five hours in front of the us congress about stable coins we generate op-ed content around key legislative discussions which have been happening in the u.s over the last six months more broadly we're also then really active in discussions around the world as it relates to cbdc's we have a white paper we just recently issued on the subject we've got another one coming in the first part of next year we regularly participate in panels uh related to cbdc's we work with government agencies around the globe we're exploring the technology so again this is just to kind of help the world kind of get there on blockchain and we're active participants also in international organizations that are looking at blockchain applications as they relate to financial inclusion and so the world economic forum in particular is one we've spent a lot of time working with them just helping them understand participating in the work that they pulled together for that and this is all work we do for the good of the industry so to close uh you know look marketing blockchain is challenging it is complicated technology it has an incredibly diverse complicated intricate audience map and throw in some regulatory landmines and uh it's a tricky one um and so what we really lean into is showing that stellar and blockchain overall again is being used today as opposed to something that's only in the future and that's what we believe kind of allows us to grow along with just in keeping with our own open source technology and open source mentality a degree of transparency that um you know is different than how sort of private companies i think work and so with that i can take a few questions thanks so much for your time oh i see a couple hi jordan yeah sure yeah time flies right yeah yeah we almost over we out of time to be honest okay maybe we can i i saw three questions there around for example what uh what uh what are some use cases for stellar i think you mentioned a few maybe you can quickly 30 seconds because we actually out of time completely okay yeah sure i mean i think in terms of real-life use cases the the ones that we really see that are exciting for us are kind of the remittance for remittance quarters right so instead of paying sort of heavy duty fees uh through traditional remittance systems and we see like this tempo flutter wave channel corridor that i mentioned where someone can go uh send money from europe to senegal and it takes uh 20 minutes and the fees are practically zero and so i think that for us is what we see as a great use case in terms of where blockchain can help move money faster and more efficiently thank you jordan yeah as i said the the time is uh up but jordan and his team have a beautiful booth in the in the conference so you can reach out to them and ask more questions if interested so thank you once again jordan for being here and yeah so let's move to the next session thank you [Music]