Building Trust in a Decentralized Environment

[Music] I'm glad to be one of the closing sessions today and I think it's it's uh always good to make it short towards the end of the day but at least unfortunate enough to be talking about a topic that's close to heart which is building trust in a decentralized environment and when we talk about a decentral EnV decentralized environment we're talking about the work that we do as crypto exchanges in this environment now a lot of you have seen over the last year or so a lot of skepticism a lot of doubt being thrown at this industry where is this industry going where's the digital asset space going from my vantage point we see it as growing and thriving but at least don't take my word for it I think if you spent the day today and you've looked all through the panels especially this last one you can see that the crypto industry or the digital asset industry is thriving and growing in the uee specifically you can see that from today you've got regulatory Clarity you've got an ecosystem being built that Fosters the growth of the digital asset industry whether it's in ababi or Dubai the whole country is focusing on how to We Grow the ecosystem does that mean our work is done absolutely not we still have a lot of work to improve this industry and from our perspective building trust is a very key component of that one great tool that we're after to build trust is the concept of proof of reserves a lot of you might be familiar with the concept but let me take it back a step what is proof of reserves essentially proof of reserves is us as a custodian or an exchanging exchange sorry allowing users to verify that we have enough assets to cover their deposits with our platform while remaining solvent is that necessary to build trust again from our Vantage Point absolutely but don't take our word for it take the word of our users our client our customers and now we we're also privileged to have different types of customers or clients we have the retail clients and we have the institutional or more professional clients starting with the lad they're active L asking us about this and the more transparency you give these firms the more trust the more Capital that flows into this space on the retail side we see users voting with their wallets usually their typical criteria would be what fees does this exchange charge what listings does this exchange have but now they're adding trust as an element to that do I trust this platform do I need to trade with this platform and if I trust it it then yes and we see that through our conversations we see that for our clients and we see that social media and we see that with any panels or round tables that we do but how have proof of reserves evolved over time I think over the last year since the critical events of last year the whole FDX events it expedited work around proof of reserves and we're happily obviously we've just published our 12th consecutive report on proof of Reserves but we've done it in a way using new technology zero knowledge proof algorithms ZK Stark in our case that allowed us to do what we set out to do allowing users to verify on our platform on demand without compromising the privacy of others whether it's them or other clients and this is where we think proof of reserves should be at least the pace however we don't stop we continue to iterate and if we see new use cases new improvements that we can put in this we'll happily do that and this is a continuous process that we do can proof of reserves shape future regulation our short answer is absolutely why not this is something that we're embracing this is something that we're not waiting for regulation to dictate on us and I think it's a should be an industry position that should be the same position that we have but we're already seeing it in conversation with Regulators how can we improve transparency and proof of reserves is a key component of that now a key question that comes to us proof of reserves or audits sure audits are a snapshot of financial data of certain financial data of balance sheet data that happens at a certain point of time proof of reserves is a cryptographic report that captures the same kind of data on demand at any given point now that's a beautiful beautiful part of this industry and you've seen in the panel before us on blockchain for good there's a lot of use cases in this industry and having a proof of reserves report is in some cases beneficial more than an audit however we're not saying we're not discounting audits there's both both can coexist in the same ecosystem now lastly if I leave with an ending message what roles for exchanges in shaping the crypto system or what for proof of Reserve can shape the crypto ecosystem it is our responsibility as exchanges or platforms that we raise the bar when it comes to proof of reserves and this is something that we need to all work on together as as us and fellow other clients but we also need to raise the awareness about it to our clients as well now luckily as I mentioned earlier our clients are demanding this from us and I think the next phase over the next year or so is how do we deliver on this new demand for transparency I think we're doing a good job at the moment but I think as an industry we can continue to build deliver an even better job and that's the key ending message that I leave from our side as for you users don't just trust verify using proof of reserves thank you