EEA and the Institutional Infinity Garden by Karen Scarbrough | Devcon SEA

[Music] great uh very happy to be here everyone uh once again I'm Karen scarbro I lead the Enterprise ethereum alliance's executive director right now and in my day job I work for Microsoft so I have a very uh good hand on how some of the largest Enterprises are viewing ethereum today and what can be done to uh increase ethereum adoption and awareness in the community so I definitely think it's worth it to go over what exactly is the Enterprise ethereum Alliance and uh if you haven't heard about us before we were actually an organization started way back in 2017 uh at that time a lot of Enterprise use cases were going on private blockchains there was a number of standards and uh technical specifications that needed to be developed in the industry and ethereum actually put together the largest consortiums of uh companies to be able to uh start acting on that activity so we are a nonprofit membership based organization that is advocating for the adoption of ethereum in business and ultimately our goal is to make it so clear for business that whenever they choose to do business in web 3 ethereum and the layer 2 ecosystem is the very clear choice that they choose to go with for where they'd like to build uh invest their time use cases Etc so core parts of what we do uh we host uh events throughout the year that's been one thing that has uh been a a huge pickup this year we want to be right alongside the ethereum community so you'll see us out at eth Denver ethcc uh we had a major event here this Monday with our EA industry day that I'll talk about a little more uh token 2049 and off and certainly online and on uh various digital communities as well we also have technical specification groups and interest groups so a key group that we do have is our defi risk assessment management and accounting group that published a set of risk guidelines for Enterprise this year that's been looked at not only by Enterprise but also governments around the world and we had over 15 uh Enterprise companies collaborating with web 3 companies putting that together we have our cross chain interoperability group that also issued uh their specification this year and has had uh implementation as well among different use cases in Enterprise and to get into a little bit about the renewed momentum that we have because we started in 2017 but uh just like a lot of blockchain projects going through the trajectory of what's moved from uh different Technologies over the year we uh certainly had a lot of interest in private block chains in 2017 now it is a 100% public ethereum based that is our recommendation and our strong point of view to the Enterprise ecosystem is to choose public ethereum for where you want to build um we had new leadership coming this year myself PA Brody from ernston Young that works very intimately with the ethereum community on the whole with the uh Enterprise privacy solutions that ey is building and at the beginning of the year we set out to regain this momentum that we had in 2017 and at the um conclusion of this year at this event I think we've largely achieved what we've set out to do and uh include uh lots of plans on what to do for the next year as well so I mentioned some of the things our groups have done the events we've participated in and uh the number one mission that we do have is fostering this community to improve ethereum adoption and Industry so why would uh organizations want to be a part of EA our membership rate is increasing at a all-time high at this point we have super high quality members um not only uh the likes of Microsoft ey JP Morgan s Tander on the web two side but we also have uh Circle carpat Key Gateway uh ens also joining as well from the web 3 side if you're a web3 engineering team that wants to come to Enterprise join us because we're going to give you the large Spotlight possible to connect you with the right people um you'll see the pictures on the side from our industry Day event this year um which we highlighted a lot of web 3 companies doing work with Enterprise that um is very significant and throughout a lot of different brand names and you can see we brought out 300 people plus to that event with 75 Plus speakers so it was a very well attended um heavy content event that we plan to do more of in the coming years and we have strongly articulated points of view we are are not um coming in with well maybe choose this ecosystem maybe choose that we are ethereum based and want to give Clarity to the Enterprise ecosystem to join us in doing that so if you want to learn more uh I have some QR codes up here about our uh membership and our our website um and thank you for the time here thank you very much for your speech uh we have time for a few questions raise your hand if you have any question I can't see with the lights one here catch um thank you hello um working for Microsoft um just um a question I have is um what do you think their intentions are with ethereum we see ey launching products or trying to build products in that space what is your take on Microsoft uh it's where we want to build I'll I'll I'll put it that way it's the strongest ecosystem to align with for the future of the technology um also surrounded by the largest ecosystem as well um so a agnostic of any technology we want to be aligned in that which is being the most successful that which is solving customer problems and aligned with where the future is so um it and more prolifically if you look at Enterprise Cloud environments ethereum has always been the the basis of which to build there and that's really significant there there's not other l1s that have the oneclick deployment for Enterprise developers uh to build on and um thankfully ethereum has that uh we should have a lot more um the more that you can meet Enterprises where they build the the better thank you uh we have another question over there yeah I guess it's an extension of the previous question um with people like Microsoft and ey building components in the space um like Aztec is a privacy preserving layer too and I know ey is doing privacy things on Main ethereum um are they sort of on equal footing or is there some advantage to say ey being able to incorporate things a little closer or recommend things for Enterprise and I guess a similar follow-up question is uh when you say ethereum are you talking like just mainnet ethereum or you talking ethereum including ler to yeah um so first tackle the second question here the ethereum layer 2 ecosystem so we're not uh directing people to main net activities but building in in that which um uh has ethereum as the settlement layer of the internet uh and then in terms of your other question on you know how do we evaluate uh which companies to go with a good qu uh thought there is we we want to align with projects that have sustainability support and a a clear future road map so um that is something to think about for Enterprise because once something gets in production which not a whole lot of um Enterprise proof of conet get to at this point there's a a release team a maintenance team there's a security team that all have to be in place to make sure that that product continues going for Enterprise um and that's really significant so the more that um ethereum based web 3 ecosystem projects can support that the better because a lot of times um I would say you know Tech is is very important The Innovation behind it Etc but at the end of the day if you can't support the longevity of a product in an Enterprise environment um that's going to be an Achilles heel so thank you so we have one last question over here sorry um yeah uh I have a controversial question here um so what Microsoft did with open AI um taking open source putting into closed Source um do you think it will align with the open source ethos what ethereum is built upon and do think like they will start acquiring startups building Cool Tech and making them U close Source well the way ethereum in this Community is structured I don't think we could be successful even if we wanted to um to to choose an alternative Direction I think the entire success of uh what ethereum is built and cryptocurrency in general is reliant on a open ecosystem so I I'm really encouraged by that our open- source position is uh pretty strong there's uh certainly different business models that uh can be successful around that and uh are Keen to explore that