Welcome to the Cryptotexty Cryptodinner! Today our speaker is Dean Rakic. Dean was the speaker on BlockchainUA conference yesterday. Welcome to Ukraine! Please tell a bit about yourself what are you doing and how you came to the blockchain industry?

Thank you for the invitation the first and also for recommendation for the conference that held yesterday here in Kyiv. First of all, I would like to say that I’m really impressed about community around the blockchain and the crypto here in Ukraine and Kyiv, probably I will do some more business here in the next period. My involvement in a blockchain technology and industry at all comes something about five years ago. Nevertheless, I’m almost 30 years in a software development industry and in the last five years I was just step by step comes up into the blockchain technology. The first point it was just a research what is it, how it’s working, where could, should be that implemented or is it possible to implement or not to implement and so on. In the last two years I did a lot of public speeches about the blockchain implementation in some different fields, for instance in healthcare and AI held digital healthcare and also in a supply chain in manufacturing and in some tourism and such kind of different sides of the daily life usage.

The topic of today’s meeting we have a Blockchain for health and for manufacturing. Can you say a bit, how do you see these two industries in general are developing and in particularly, maybe there are some interesting projects with which you are working now and that you can make some real-life use cases of these industries?

First of all, maybe it will be interesting to say something about the manufacturing or the production or supply chain at all, because all of those tiny parts manufacturing productions are the parts of overall supply chain. At the supply chain we have as a process in which the business receives some raw materials it should be produced or reproduced or manufactured from some raw material into some values to convert some raw materials into values. That values should be transferred to the end-user or to the customer. The coal process contains so many steps or tiny parts that are involved in that process. That process from supply or from the raw material to the production and also during the process of distribution and transportation lead us to the end customer. There’re so many parts that should be analyzed and find some features, more features, new features or to analyze if there are some obstacles, if there are still happens and still remains. Nevertheless, the digitalization comes also in the world of supply chain. Maybe the needs and the aim of supply chain from the definition should lead us to some obstacles how that happens and what are the needs. The first aim of supply chain is to deliver a one maximum of the value. What that means if you deliver the maximum of the value? From the raw material you have to make at least possible costs of production, of distribution, of manipulation and to give the end consumer the maximum of the value after the production. That lead us to some more needs like our responsiveness, traceability, accountability, security and much more other points that are really important for the complete process of supply chain during the process. For the responsiveness, for example, we need just-in-time production. It’s a really needed point in the complete process and I hope beside the traceability and security, which are already somehow implemented by the blockchain and distributed ledger technologies based on blockchain. The distributed technology responsiveness will be one of the high, I can say top point of top topic for the supply chain management engine in the future.

Also, another topic you have already mentioned is a healthcare. I already did so many papers in the healthcare, because the healthcare is, I will say, hot potato from the implementation side. Nevertheless, we have so many digital parts that already involved in an overall healthcare in the medical field. We cannot talk about only digital measurement of a blood pressure or ECGs everything or some CT measurements or anything. We talk about the data and the obstacles between the data that better managed inside the healthcare process. In the healthcare it’s still remaining a problem about name an interoperability. The interoperability is the process that makes different parties to communicate on a simpler and unique way. Some of the sides from the interoperability has already fulfilled by implementing distribute ledger technology. It’s covered, but most of them are still open to be resolved in the near future. It’s not only about talking every day on a relation patient and physician or a doctor, how the data are transferred between patient from one side the user or also the user from another side the physician or a doctor. We forgot always other parties in that healthcare system. There are also insurance companies. They also need to exchange the data about how the patient, about the treatments, about any kind of party that they involved in that process. They are indexing so many data, they’re producing data and indexing so many data. The data remains also where in the system, they are fragmented inside the healthcare system at all and the fragmentation that happens we can cover with the blockchain technology, especially with the distributed ledger technology not only with the public, but in a combination between the public to the private blockchain technology based on those prototypes.

Yesterday on the BlockchainUA conference you mentioned two German companies Porsche and the Mercedes which are working on the creation of their own coins. Can you tell more about this?

Of course, it’s like a remaining joke because I come from Stuttgart, I live in Stuttgart and this is an industrial valley, because the most important parts of German economy happen in their part of the country, the production and industry are based on Daimler on the cities, and also Porsche, Bosch there. All of them headquarters are Stuttgart based and they are producing most of the other parts or complete products that are on the market today, nevertheless, our automotive industry or electronics. The Mercedes has already crypto coin developed last year and tested on 500 vehicles about correspond ending people and economy inside from the vehicle and to the outside. Also, the Porsche would help it with one company from Berlin has already implemented identity management blockchain technology inside their vehicles and I hope it will be soon on the public, on the road to test it.

I remember in Frankfurt at the conference where we met, IOTA speaker spoke about this example, which they’d like to repeat, that the car will pay in IOTA for itself for fueling in a streaming mode. How was it developed?

The IOTA is also one of the particular parts of blockchain umbrella at all. It’s a micro payment methodology, it’s also really good based on a mathematical method and I hope it has a future in the next period and especially in the IoT and in the industry field. Is it possible to pay something? Of course, it is possible. If we adopt that as a methodology for a payment, it is not only if it is will be IOTA or some other coins or crypto or any kind, if we agreed that we will use that in our payment day life methodology, we will use it. It’s very simple. It’s still about interoperability. If we agreed to adopt the exchange of our values on a digital form or our assets from any kind of source or any kind of users and consumers, we can satisfy the payment elsewhere not only from IOTA or from any kind of vehicle or from the inside of the plane during the traveling we can also use that. Anyway, we have a possibility to make payment online or to use that.

What was for you most interesting in the yesterday’s conference and the Ukrainian blockchain community in general?

I’d like to make a joke now. I was sitting there whole day and listening some presentation on Russian and I tried to learn Russian but without success, maybe for the next year, for the next conference I will be more prepared and do my presentation on Russian probably.

Many presentations were in English.

Of course, I am just joking. It was really good, really nice. I was mostly on a Product Stage because of three different stages were on conference and I already mentioned, I found the very good community here and most of the presentations were from the community around the Kyiv and they showed the very really deep knowledge about the technology. It’s not only based on PowerPoint presentation and we can do that or it is possible to do with a blockchain or a cryptocurrency, or some other technology around the blockchain. They show some methodologies that are really useful and implementable. You can implement it very easy and nicely into any production. That’s what most part, I would not say particularly this presentation was the best form for my side. In general, I’m really impressed and satisfied that the community is really strong and I’m pretty sure that they are doing right thing for the future.

In your speech you mentioned the particular case how blockchain can be implemented into tourism industry and as I understand that paper was published in some Spanish scientific journal.

It was last year it is published?

Can you tell a bit more about it and is it already working on some prototype or alpha version and how blockchain can be used for tourism?

Of course, it could be useful, because we are trading everywhere with some kind of assets, digital assets. The tourism as the part of industry as a vertical is full of diversity of digital assets from. From one side, we have people that want to travel, they want to produce some travelling guides on their own, they want to travel on some parts of the world, they are researching some parts of route, they are collecting information, changing those collected information with their own minds in some digital values and ask for their digital values, how to get the best price or the best possibility to achieve that during their vacations. From another side, we have tourist operators that are preparing also their offers based on some research or on some offer directly from that field, from the tourist organization elsewhere in the world. And also, in the middle we have some institutions, some organization that doing some verification process between those two parties. I don’t want to tell, to say yes, now we have to remove that middle part that make verification, but it takes too long to make a verification between offer and publication up to the end customer in the tourism. If you want to fly somewhere tomorrow there are also last minutes, we know already for that, but we cannot find it in all parts of the world. There are only simple parts that we can honor: airports or sometime tourist operators that we can just jump in the last minute. Why? Because they have to be verified also from someone. If we put that in a distributed ledger technology or in the blockchain based technology, the central point will be removed, simply removed or transformed into the way of verification body. If we have the verification body inside a cycle of all parties, the verification process will not take so long time to make the verification process and also the costs of the tourist operator and also the benefits from the customer side will be much better.

One of the trending topics is tokenization, even activists who want to tokenize everything and I was just thinking that and interesting to know your opinion, for example, if in manufacturing some new factory is created, let’s say new car factory and the investors can tokenize the stock, so for example everybody can invest in stocks even starting from one the same Mercedes coin and then we will have either the right to buy car on the lower price with the discounts or the right to have a profit as a stock. Do you know, if there are some cases which try to tokenize this manufacturing, let’s say new businesses manufacturing which are created, because there are now many projects which want to tokenize art, tokenize real estates and some projects are working on some skill, how is it like developing in terms of Germany as gred off manufacturing. Do you know some particular examples?

Yes, I’m personally involved in one of them in the production, actually it is about a good quality control. The point of tokenizing the process inside a supply chain or inside the manufacturing is to tokenize or to put in the blockchain all the parts from the very beginning from the production. If we put some small parts of the very beginning, we are pretty sure that somewhere during the transportation or delivery or after the end customer we will have lower costs on many points. For example, I’m involved now at the moment in the project that implement private blockchain or a distributed ledger technology-based methodology with Corda and particularly will be based and focused on quality control directly at the place where the products are produced at the manufacturer side. It is about the production that is held in China, for example, and directly on the quality measurement at the place they put those data into the blockchain and there is no need to wait the process because the end customer will also know at the end where the product comes from and which data they can deliver from the very beginning, but also the producer, the owner of the products from the first part will know which products are really good, which are should be directly at the moment from the early stage of the production replaced with another one. Also, we will improve one more step inside the manufacturing process because of the fraud, the possibility of traceability the product in the line, as it happens that the products are during the process of delivering from manufacturing stock to the end customer are replaced with a fake one. With the blockchain base technology we can trace it, if they are really originated by the producer from their side. I hope this will be in the next few weeks on a test net because it is based on Corda technology. The next step will be a bridging our part that we are already developed and tested locally in our test net with public blockchain to make some hybrid solution because most of the data will be exchanged inside a private network between the producers from the raw material suppliers side and from the manufacturing and the product owner and also the public chain will be some of the data possible to transfer on the public blockchain, so the customer and user can just read us scanning the QR code or a barcode or entering the serial product number and can go backward through all history where the product was established and how the data are updated during the process, because we are always updating the process inside the blockchain from the beginning.  Once the product is established and manufactured and finished in the production the first blockchain, the first block inside the blockchain will be on each step during the transfer updated with the new data, so the end customer knows the list what happens before the moment of the producing and after the moment there it has to use it under their side.

Now, let’s give the opportunity to other participants of today’s Crypto Dinner to ask a question or express opinion. Today we have Eve a Hedera Hashgraph ambassador, Olga – blockchain developer and Victor – crypto trader, analyst.

You said Mercedes is launching its own coin.

Crypto coin.

But I didn’t understand fully how exactly they do it.

Just make it as a test project towards to ecosystem to be fully paid from the customer side, they want to reward their customer with using their system, with some possibility afterwards. It’s not just a payment, we are driving and paying anything we can, just a test. It’s a proof of concept that should be work inside the vehicle and any customer, the ordinary customer can use any crypto with their crypto coin transferring during the drive.

One of today’s topic is interoperability. Do you understand it as a technical problem or a process problem?

Both. Because the interoperability is not only a part of the infrastructure. It is a part of an infrastructure because we have to accomplish all the parts inside any technical cycle to communicate to each other. It’s not only a protocol or a way they are transferring the data. It’s also a semantic part. The parties have to understand each other. They need to know what are they talking to each other, the common language between them is actually interoperability. It’s on the both sides, it’s not only a technical part, it could not be. Once, before or after the one is not possible, it’s just to make a synergy of both of them.

It sounds pretty complicated. Can we just take our existing rules of communication ready, can we just take some and try to translate?

If you have a good methodology or nice consensus methodology, we can transfer it directly into the smart contract or any kind of a way of transferring the data, as it is a part of data exchange process because we are talking now and we are producing some data. The data are oiling our lives every day, it’s oil and without that oil we cannot exchange our thoughts, our mining on a daily basis. If we find always the way how to accomplish them, if you said yeah okay, we have written that rules, and we agree that the rules are part of our smart contract that we will put inside the network, then we can use. Its agreement already done between us and transfer it into digital form. That’s the only part how to transfer it into from asset as a physical object or some objective part into the semantics useful form during the process.

Everything starts with agreement between participants?

Of course. That’s a point.

It is about how to combine the public blockchain and private blockchain. From experience and other businesses, they don’t consider public blockchain like ultimate for investing in the beginning, they prepare something to be more in-house or something they can manage, can deliver, can have some power etc. Probably those combinations with private blockchain are very valuable. When you combine it?

That’s right. The first point when I want to start to talking about, start thinking and talking about the hybrid blockchain solution was actually in the area of the healthcare. Because nowadays we are producing so many data, especially in the healthcare. There are also images, some textual data some findings from the physician side. The patient should that care elsewhere from one hospital to another hospital. Hospital also produces a bunch of data. Other institutions in the live insurances and so on – so many data. In the public blockchain we have no possibility to put all those data inside the block, or inside one transaction or more than one transaction. It should be also fragmented, that is not the solution the blockchain should deliver to the end users. That belongs to the party of scalability. The public blockchain has no possibility to scale on that level, to complete content put inside the blockchain. Therefore, is much convenient to put some of the data, of the asset into the private blockchain is free to scale, it’s open to scale and also is easy to trace inside the different parties and just the one part that is for Identity Management, for example, or some part also from responsiveness should be put inside the public blockchain and a bridging those two we can put all that processing in a real success. Because if you put just a part of data in the public blockchain, not enough data, that a patient comes to his physician or in the hospital without data. It’s not enough. We have to have all data from the patient history. When you came to the physician, they ask you: “hey what papers you have, what you have from your history?”. It’s not only to make examination at that moment, it’s ok but what’s about happens previously? “I want to see that if some happens, if you have some surgeries or some injuries or anything.” All those data should be placed inside the private blockchain in some crypted or encrypted or decrypted form, anyway. But the connection with the public blockchain, with the private keys between should be like a delivery method. That’s from my point of view it’s a really huge step forward also making an interoperability between different parties using the hybrid blockchain solution. Because they all under the same umbrella, it’s not something different.

Maybe another reason is also security because the private blockchain is known as a less secure than public and when you combine both you can get this security.

Of course, because the main data you need about the identity will be based on a public blockchain and with some private keys connected to the content data. If someone broke or took the part of the content without identity or without some special parts that should be defined inside the process the data are useful, they cannot use it.  For instance, if you broke my data that are placed in the private blockchain without the insurance number or my identity or somewhere that the physicians two years before has written something during my examination which is not relevant data, maybe relevant but most of those data should not be relevant without its identity, because that’s the point combining those two parties from one side. Very strong identity and big content is also covered with some kind of security and I suppose in the near future also the private blockchain should publish some more secure content inside because we are still in involving phase. We are on stage of implementing blockchain, it’s not totally completely covered on all parties inside the industries and different verticals. We have still to put that in the way of working.

One more technical question. What do you use exactly to store data on this private blockchain?

At the moment we use IPFS combining with Corda and Hyperledger. It’s working really good. Three different technologies, three different vendors but one part is on IPFS we store the data, also the big chain DBI is a part of one, different solutions gives the possibility to involve different technologies to implement that, but IPFS in my opinion, is really respectable technology for the near future.

Legal question. Everything is connected with a data and in the European Union it is hard regulated, especially personal data. How do you work with that?

Based on GDPR. The European Union has already proclaimed many points of the GDPR that should be fulfilled inside any use of personal data and blockchain gives the possibility to fulfill that. More or less it depends on a technology that is used, but I have already seen some useful, I don’t want to mention the company, they are already on the market, they already did a solution for instance with the Hyperledger, how to make Identity Management with completely covering GDPR all the points. In the first moment was enigma hard to do that, but early after the proclaiming the GDPR, they just did it very quick and its already solutions for some banking or some trading platforms, their technologies also involved and based on GDPR.

The last question for today. You travel a lot to different blockchain conferences all around the world. We met in Portugal, in Frankfurt, now in Kyiv. Kyiv is one of the major blockchain capitals and you plan to travel to some more conferences this year, maybe you can name some, so our viewers can follow your recommendations and what you see the general trend how is the industry moving forward?

This year, next month I will be on two conferences in Berlin and Amsterdam also based on e-health and healthcare innovation technology. I will speak about the e-health models, how to put inside e-health the blockchain technology. All of them are based on DLTs. I can say that the distributed ledger technology is the umbrella that will cover all other verticals. Inside that umbrella is also a blockchain itself with all possibility that it gives. Most of the industries are not still ready for completely openness, there is no still solution that could be supplied as open technology like a real blockchain. We have still to combine those two. Therefore, I am proclaiming the hybrid solution will be in the next period something that will be most in the focus of conferences and talking about the implementing blockchain or distributed ledger technology at all. That umbrella will be covered with more, inside that umbrella is blockchain, the cryptos, the digitizing processes and much more.

Thank you, Dean for very interesting conversation. Thank you everyone, we’ll meet somewhere in future in the next trip to cryptobreakfast or cryptodinner.

Thank you for the invitation and for your questions!