Industrial Talk is onsite at IoT Solutions World Congress and talking to Larry Pang, Head of Business Development at IoTex.io about "Demystifying Blockchain for Trusted IoT." Here are some of the key takeaways from our conversation:
Barcelona is an amazing city with two conferences going on side-by-side. One of several large conference venues in the city, and the other is custom-built.
The iot solutions world congress is at the intersection of blockchain and the internet of things, and people are more interested in blockchain these days.
Larry gives his background and what he is doing for blockchain. He was in consulting for five years at Oliver Wyman, a strategy consulting firm.
Larry shares his background in the tech industry.
The psychology of making large changes to tech stacks, and how blockchain fits into all of this.
How blockchain is a way to facilitate trust between people that don't necessarily trust each other today. It's a way for parties to work with each other and give a use case.
In supply chain, there is always someone at fault for something that goes wrong. People retroactively seek the truth, and blockchain is a very proactive technology.
Blockchain is a point solution to areas that lack trust. It can be really enabling factor for removing some of the legal aspects of litigation.
Why trust is the biggest challenge of our generation, and how blockchain is a solution that creates trust.
Why blockchain is already a good use case for many of the enterprise use cases, and what the next step is on top of it.
The concept of a smart contract is a taboo term these days. It's not just smart, but it's also open source.
The data that is put on a blockchain needs to also be verifiable, or else everything downstream the business logic lives at work.
If the temperature dips below zero degrees or goes above zero degrees, issue a 10% penalty to the person who was in possession of it at the time.
Today, blockchain has the opportunity to add incentives.
B2B and B2C relationships, and business-consumer relationships. For example, corporations and the way that people sleep, how they sleep, and how they do healthy activities.
Tamper proof, hardware and software comes into play to issue incentives to issue rewards.
How to get a hold of IoTex, check it out at iotex.io.
Scott shares his thoughts on demystifying blockchain and how it will continue to be a part of the future of digital transformation.
Get more information about industrial talk at industrialtalk.com.
Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2023. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy!
Industrial Academy (One Month Free Access And One Free License For Future Industrial Leader):
Business Beatitude the Book
Do you desire a more joy-filled, deeply-enduring sense of accomplishment and success? Live your business the way you want to live with the BUSINESS BEATITUDES...The Bridge connecting sacrifice to success. YOU NEED THE BUSINESS BEATITUDES!
TAP INTO YOUR INDUSTRIAL SOUL, RESERVE YOUR COPY NOW! BE BOLD. BE BRAVE. DARE GREATLY AND CHANGE THE WORLD. GET THE BUSINESS BEATITUDES!
Welcome to the Industrial Talk podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting-edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go.
00:22
All right, thank you once again for joining Industrial Talk a platform that is dedicated to industrial professionals all around the world. Because you're bold, brave, you dare greatly. You collaborate, you solve today's problems, and you're making the world a better place each and every day. Thank you. Thank you so much for what you do and your continued support. All right. We were broadcasting on site IoT Solutions World Congress, Barcelona and talking to a gentleman by the name of Larry Pang. IoTex is the company and we are attempting and working and succeeding at demystifying blockchain. Let's get a crack. And that's always the same always an interesting conversation to talk about blockchain. What it means, where it's going, how it's important, and how do you link that to this whole digital journey that everybody appears to be on. But it's important. It's absolutely important. And he does a great job, no doubt about it, he does a great job paper pencil, that type of conversation. Look out for him. We're going to have all the contact information for Larry out on Industrial Talk. So if you're not reach out, collaborate, do what you need to do, innovate, educate, you know, you know, the routine. All right, out on Industrial Talk, we have some webcasts. And we're looking to expand on those webcasts. But right now, we have a couple that are out there supply chain, as well as utilities. Both of them are on demand, just you know, go in there and look at them and, and continue to educate. We also have all of the other podcasts that we have been producing from industrial experts such as Larry. So it's all out on Industrial Talk. And if you have an any interest whatsoever, to be engaged with industrial type, just go out there and say, Scott, I'm interested in knowing more. So that's all I'm asking. And let's have a conversation we also have out there, all of the events that we will be attending. And if you plan if you just go out there and you're going, Oh, I'm going to that one. For you need to just look me up and say, Scott, I want to tell my story at this particular event, amplify that message. And just keep in mind you're helPang other industrial professionals succeed. That's the noble cause right there, right there. All right, let's get on with the conversation. Larry Pang IoTex. Is the company demystifying our wonderful blockchain? So let's get cracking. Listeners we're gonna be talking blockchain do not. Do not go away on this one. Larry has guaranteed me that he's going to be able to demystify blockchain and why it's important for us in this world in this digital transformation world, so there you go. How about that? Gonna let us down now. Are you doing?
03:33
I'm doing great. Like you said, Barcelona is just amazing city. Got two conferences going on kind of side by side. Have you been to that? I have. Yeah, it's much more like it means the audio visual kind of audio integrated system. Did
03:46
you see that hologram one? I did? Yeah. A lot of holograms over there. Yeah, it is. You just walked by and you're staring at it?
03:53
Yeah. They got some kind of like demos out here where you know, but it's hard to visualize, like connectivity. Yeah, it is visualize data. It is, you know, for audio visual systems. You have all these big camera cuts flashing over there it is. Yeah, and they got lights are everywhere. But it is pretty cool. But it's, it's a it's a heck of a venue to it is. Yeah, you can get lost big time. And apparently this is one of several large conference venues in Barcelona. So you know, there's a couple of conference organizers were in touch with are trying to set up a blockchain conference later and they were just exploring venue after venue after venue. But this one, you know, more traditional, looks like a giant airplane hangar where we're at, but concrete everywhere very nicely. Yeah.
04:37
Okay. Well, you know, and the other thing that they do is that they custom build all of the the spots so they're out there with their saws and nails and hammer and in creating these unique it's an incredible operation God asleep, man. It's one to behold. First time here.
04:56
First time at IoT solutions World Congress. Yeah. For sure, we've been doing a lot of blockchain conferences around the world. You know, IoTex is kind of a at the intersection of blockchain and the internet of things. But, you know, actually walking around here, you feel a lot of people more interested in blockchain. These days, I think like before, pre COVID conference era, it was hard to find anyone that would give it the time of day, but I think, yeah, more demonstrable pilots, more demonstrable use cases going out, starting to become a little more and more tangible for people. So,
05:30
you know, in just a short period of time, I think we were here three years ago, COVID hit. And I can vividly remember the conversations that I were having at that particular time, versus the conversations I've had. And there's been this, again, a massive leap forward in, in, hey, we can collect data over here to where, hey, we've got to make it work, or we got to there's tactical, you know, information there. And how do we do it, and it's far more mature of a conversation to have. The other thing that I find is that IoT is like this miscellaneous file now. It's just It includes anything and everything. Yeah. You know, and that that becomes confusing, quite frankly. Yeah. And I guarantee you, Blockchain fits in there someplace. Somebody said, yeah, it's IoT blockchain. Oh, I don't know. All right. Let's give us the listeners a little background, Larry, on who you are. And then let's get into sort of what you're doing for blockchain.
06:24
Sure. Yeah. My name is Larry Pang. was educated at MIT come from Los Angeles. And before I joined the tech industry, I was in consulting for five years to a company called Oliver Wyman, one of the strategy consulting firms that mainly focused on financial strategy consumers, there are a lot of tier one banks, financial intermediaries, financial utilities, and specifically working with these companies more on digital transformation. So was in the on prem to cloud kind of conversion era. And back in the day, you know, getting people to think about putting their data on cloud was like pulling teeth. Right. It back was 16.
07:02
Yeah, you're just then it's not that far ago. Not that long ago. Yeah, time.
07:07
And the thing that really convinced them that it was safe to start adopting these cloud based systems was one of the regulators, FINRA put their data on the cloud. So that opened the flood. Oh, that was it. Yeah, that was it. So did a lot of the design around that the strategy, the budgeting, the financial planning around these big digital transformation moves that are kind of now just underway, right? There's a lot of planning involved to gut legacy systems. We're working with banks that store data on tape. And these are some of the big companies that a lot of people put their money on, you know? Yeah.
07:39
And then they were they were struggling with putting it in the cloud, and they're on tape god, yeah,
07:45
this is pre Tableau. And yeah, I think that really encouraged them to do this is they realized they couldn't run any analysis on this data on tape. So having these cloud mechanism just right, yeah, exactly. So interesting, what the psychology of making some of these large changes to tech stacks looks like. But now I think everyone's looking forward to what's next. But our talks about IoT AI blockchain, and they need these concerted strategies not just to implement one at a time, but how these things really matter.
08:16
Our reality is, it's here, and it's gonna happen. And we've got to do a, we got to do our best. And that's what this sort of venue is all about. do our best to be able to do it correctly. Yeah. So the there's a lot of misinformation out there. A lot of hype, but I think that I think we're getting real now. Yeah. So how does blockchain fit into all of this? This is IoT. How do we how do we start demystifying that? Yeah,
08:42
d IoT platform got started in:
09:55
Give us a use case. Take that, that trust A concept or it's not a concept at that reality, give us a use case that brings it on home.
10:06
I think one interesting place and, you know, this is kind of where the enterprise is really looking into these days is around supply chain. Right. Supply chain has so many different types. Yes. From distributors, to manufacturers to service providers, right. And, you know, when you think about supply chain, there's always someone at fault for something that goes wrong, right? And the way that people find out who's at fault is they kind of retro actively seek the truth, right? even think about like automotive recall, who is at fault for the airbag not deploying, and to to have to recall all these rights. There's a lot of investigatory action and like legal action that needs to be to be had, right. It's almost like finding the needle in the haystack. Yeah. But if people were proactively submitting their data to a blockchain throughout the entire process, almost kind of like cover your ass insurance in a way, right? Then the answer is already there. If you're not doing anything wrong, you want to submit your data to a blockchain, and that blockchain can verify that, you know, timestamps, this is what happened. You have a real history of every stakeholders actions throughout a process. And that's the way to build trust amongst
11:19
Yeah. See in the in the world of supply chain, that is definitely in the forefront of a lot of people's minds. Yeah. And there's been some a lot of stress, a lot of tension, a lot of problems with it. Right. Have you in that use case? Have you approached companies? And have you had some sort of success? Say, Oh, I get it. But everybody in the in the world of logistics, you know, the, they liked that complexity to a certain extent?
11:47
Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's important to think about blockchain not as a panacea, it's not a silver bullet, that's going to solve everything. But in instances where, you know, you look at some type of end to end workflow or some type of end to end process for areas you think lack a little bit of trust, inserting blockchain into that as a point solution first, before it kind of gutting your entire legacy system and replacement of blockchain. That's not I think, where we're headed right now. But if you add blockchain is kind of a point solution to areas that lack trust, it can be really enabling factor for, you know, removing some of the the legal kind of litigation aspects of things that are more retroactive blockchain is a very proactive technology. In my mind.
12:29
Yeah. The the thing that stands out, I think trust is key. And that is just with anything, right? We, we've, we've spoken to many in the IoT, a AI, augmented reality cloud, whatever edge we've speak of spoke to many. And, and those are great service providers. But if I'm a user of those solutions, I need to trust even that interest is powerful. Yes. Because I want to go down this road. I need to trust that you're going to, you know, facilitate that journey, so that I'm not frustrated. Yeah. And so I think that if blockchain is truly, there's a solution there that creates trust, I think that's important.
13:14
Yeah, you bring up a really important point, which is, you know, we live in an era today where, who to trust and why to trust is probably like the biggest challenge of our generation, right. And, you know, this is where open source technologies as a starting point, really come into play, right? Where people can understand the algorithms that are powering their solutions. That's, that's step one, right? Then you create data from these algorithms. And if you're able to trust that this data was created, in a trustworthy way that not only you can verify, but even other people, even third parties can verify that, you know, deterministically, that, you know, this algorithm produced this data. That's kind of the starting point, on top of which you can start to layer on additional business logic on top of that data that everyone else can verify. We see kind of how this chain kind of strings together, right? So blockchain is a ledger of trusted data is already a really good use case, right? A lot of the enterprises we talked to you today that, you know, want to collectively decide, hey, we're gonna put our data onto the blockchain this morning, talking about the private like consortium blockchain use cases, you know, collectively decide, hey, we're gonna put all of our data together so that if something bad happens, we can collectively understand who's at fault or you know, how to remedy the situation and like to clear fashion. That's already a great use case, a lot of enterprises we talked to just want an immutable compliance friendly, audit friendly database of data that they can go back to, for whatever kind of reason, right? But I think the next step on top of that foundation of trusted data is you add trusted applications that can act upon that data, but also in a completely trustworthy way. And this is where the concept of like a smart contract comes in, right? smart contract is kind of a taboo term these days. It's not just smart, but it's also open source. So if you have data that you know, has been generated in a trustworthy way, and you apply business logic that anyone can verify, then again, you can kind of even go back and retrace the steps about how you came to this endpoint. Right? And that's what verifiability means to me. Things. Yeah,
15:26
it seems to me and correct me if I'm wrong, if it seems big. Is there a way to be able to deploy it's sort of a blockchain structure that creates that trust, but it doesn't have to be huge and can just be a starting point. Yeah. Because just like many, just like many in that are in manufacturing and industry, they just need to start small. Prove it. Right. Let's let's do it, prove it, move it, and expand upon it. But can we do that with a sort of a blockchain type of approach?
16:06
I think so maybe, you know, let's, let's think about like a traditional service level agreement, right? Going back to a supply chain scenario, maybe, you know, it's just point A to point B, and maybe there's a few stakeholders involved in getting something that it needs to be below freezing temperature from point A to point B, right? This is kind of where like a trusted hardware trusted device, you know, consider like an asset tracker that measures GPS temperature, and has a secure element that will sign this data. So people can also verify, right? This is also an important prerequisite to using blockchains is the data that you put on a blockchain, it needs to also be verifiable, or else everything downstream. The business logic lives at work. Yeah. Fighting junk to junk. Yeah, that results gonna be junk, right? But assume that you have some trusted trackers that are reporting the truth. Right, right. This is a piece of hardware that anyone can verify. It's just doing his job and is doing his job in a trustworthy way. Right? Then you can create a simple kind of service level agreement, smart contract to say, if this than that, right? If the temperature dips below 00 degrees, or goes above zero degrees, if it's not meant to then, you know, issue a 10% penalty to the person who was in possession of it at the time.
17:23
And then that scenario that that scenario does say, Hey, okay, we've got the logic in there, we've got the parameters, we've got the the, the agreement that there will be a penalty if it goes above 10, whatever it might be, yeah. But it automatically delivers it. And it's his trustworthy, it's like, Hey, you got the device, we all agree to this device, and then went above 10, or whatever it is. And that's why you got this this, this, you know, whatever penalty.
17:55
Yeah, yeah. And we're, you know, one thing that's also really interesting to think about for blockchain is that, you know, we live in a penalty based world today, blockchain has the opportunity to also add incentives for Yeah, that's not good. But great. Yeah. It's kind of like your job. Yeah, if you do a bad job, you know, your employer has the right to fire you, right. But if you do a great job, then you're going to get a bonus and a lot of people what they hang on to, right, so going back to that service level agreement example, yeah, you know, if you go above zero degrees Celsius, for something that's not meant to be above freezing, then you're gonna get penalized, right. But if this is something really, really valuable to you, you want it to be not even close to zero degrees, then you can say, hey, I'm gonna give you a 10% bonus, if you keep it below five degrees Celsius. And if you're between zero and five, then you know, you're gonna get the standard kind of payments. But all of that can be encoded, and parameters can be collectively decided by the people that are operating this blockchain all without some type of intermediary or service provider that you have to pay for this service. Right? You can kind of coat up these service level agreements, smart contracts in a way that, you know, is very user owned. And I think this is like a different way to think about
19:16
traveling because you could theoretically, if you're in the business, and you're cutting these, these contracts, why don't why don't you try one that is in sort of a blockchain structure? Because you can do it right. Yeah. And country. Just do it. Yeah.
19:33
And, you know, another crazy example is that we're talking about kind of b2b relationships, right? But there's also like business consumer relationships and one example that people seem to like, and I guess I'll share it, it's gonna sound stupid when I say, okay, preface it Brandon here. It's kind of around corporations and the way that people sleep, right, or the way that they do healthy activities. So you know, back in When I was in my consulting days, you know, corporate my Corporation gave me a wearable for Christmas, like a wearable health, health. And they said, please use it. But there's no proof that, you know, I was using this to actually track my health or track my sleep and make that even better stick it on your dog. Exactly. Or just shelf it right. A lot of people I know just, you know, got that as a gift, maybe flipped it on Craigslist, flip it on eBay. But what if you're a corporation, you know, invited everyone into some type of like, open kind of blockchain scenario, right? Where they inserted some incentives into it maybe in the form of money or in the form of some type of token or points and said, Look, if if anyone anonymously can prove that they got seven hours of sleep on a Sunday night, and got into work fresh on a Monday, then they're going to be able to claim these rewards. And the most important part is, it's almost like a anonymized way to do this, like an opt in mechanism, right? So if I got if I was out partying on a Sunday night, and I don't want to share that with my employer, then I don't have to opt in to share that information. But if I did get those incentives, I don't even have to share my name, right. You can kind of use these anonymized identifiers to say, you know, employee XYZ got seven hours of sleep, and they're using their wearable to prove that to the smart contract. This is kind of where the concept again of tamper proof hardware and tamper proof software comes into play to issue incentives. Maybe not as stupid when I say no,
21:31
no, no, but no, it I don't I don't have a problem with that. I yeah, I like working out. So I don't have a problem. That's an interesting use case. Okay, here comes Larry. He's got that dog on Fitbit on. Yeah, never mind. He's going home early. Yeah. He's he's fighting for the incentive. Come Monday. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, that's just see, there's just so much. I find if if we can do it incrementally if we can just because in the financial world, it's pretty. It's been huge. So that's, that's, that's good. They do it. If it's in the financial world, we got to bring it here in the end and industrial world and be able to do that there. I think that that would be a way to go.
22:16
Yeah, yeah. It's only when you know, the use cases start to get a little complex that this starts starts to break down, right, which is why, you know, the simplest types of things that are really taking off in the public blockchain world, which is more like, you know, the Aetherium. And like, cryptocurrency aspect of things is, you know, the most simple type of interaction is lenders of money. And borrowers are fine, right. And traditionally, that's done through a bank. But people will be surprised to know how many intermediaries are taking one basis point two basis points. And by the time you know, they're taking a whole percent of that transaction for just relaying data. And that's like a very, you know, protectionist type of ecosystem that, you know, is not going to change unless we invent kind of a new car. Yeah. So these kinds of facilities,
23:07
nobody's gonna get rid of that early. So because they're gonna they're gonna fight. tooth and nail. Yeah. Big time. Big time. Yeah. All right. How do people get a hold here?
23:17
Yeah. So IoTex, checkout? IoTex.io. And yeah, well, you got a lot of different use cases across consumer across enterprises. Yeah. So checks out, for sure. Got
23:27
Larry making it demystifying blockchain. I learned a little bit more, but I still can learn a lot more. I'm not there yet. But I like it. I think it's, it's gonna happen, right? It's just this. All right. Listeners, we are once again, broadcasting from IoT solutions, World Congress, put it on your bucket list. Great to get to meet people like Larry, who's helPang us succeed going forward. It's all awesome. All right, we're gonna wrap it up on the other side. So you're saying yourself, Scott, I want to get a hold of Larry. It'll be out at I Industrial Talk.com. So fear not, it will be there. So get a hold of him because you will not be disappointed. Thank you very much for joining. We will be right back.
24:08
You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.
24:18
All right, said, You need to say it to yourself, you are better because of that conversation. You are more educated because of that conversation. And you're saying to yourself, Scott, I want to connect with Larry and find out more Industrial Talk, reach out all the contact information is there blockchains here, Blockchain is going to continue to be here. Digital Transformation is here. There's gold in that data. And everybody's talking about it. And if I had a nickel every time says, somebody says, Scott, we need to get the data. I'd be rich so but I'm not. So but anyway, data, is it data skiing, and getting that trusted, trusted data you is really important. Again, go out to Industrial Talk connect with Larry. We have webcasts. We have events. We have podcasts, but it's all about educating, collaborating and innovating to succeed. Going forward. Do that at Industrial Talk.com All right, people will be brave Daring Greatly hang out with Larry and you will change the world. We're gonna have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned.
