JB Carthy: 0:01

Welcome to Helios Horizons, episode 18. Today we're chatting to Mark Paul about transforming the data economy with Web3 and NFTs. Welcome, mark, how are you today?

Mark Paul: 0:15

Hey everyone, thanks for having me. I'm doing well. It's a bit early so my voice might be giving away that I just woke up. Great to be here. Man Always happy to talk to the community and talk to projects, and especially guys like Helios Always appreciate the opportunity to talk and collaborate.

JB Carthy: 0:35

No, we appreciate you coming on and having a chat man Coming in from the other side of the world. Have you been watching the Olympics?

Mark Paul: 0:42

I have, I have, but that's not the reason why I'm actually, uh, sounding so sleepy. I was watching it last night, but, yeah, I'm usually like a night person, so I work late at night and then, um, you know, wake up a bit later than usual, but um, but yeah, olympics has been great, like I'm I'm actually based in australia right now, so following up all the action, you know, following all the athletes and the sports, so it's been great. How about yourself? Have you been watching it?

JB Carthy: 1:07

Yeah, no, well, over here in Ireland, I'm an Ireland man and it's been exciting for us, so we had a gold medal in the swimming.

Mark Paul: 1:16

And we actually had a bronze medal.

JB Carthy: 1:17

Yeah, no, so unusual for us Like we gold medal in swimming in years and we have a person running in like 400 meter final, a girl running the 400 meter final and and that's exciting for us over here a boxer won a gold medal and kelly harrington like yesterday, and so, yeah, like people are excited about it over here. Olympics are always great to watch. It's just great to see people kind of pushing like the levels of what they can achieve and like see the boundaries that get broken, um, like every four years when it comes around. It's just it's so like great but it's so cruel at the same time.

JB Carthy: 1:52

Like you know, I was watching actually a race earlier and there was a guy it was a 400 meter men's and the guy was leading like 399 meters and like just got pipped at the line and it's just years of work and then it's just that moment of like, maybe agony, but I suppose when he reflects on it he'll probably appreciate still what an amazing achievement it is to even be at that level. But it's just amazing to see people pushing themselves. Maybe amazing to see the level of competition. Australia tons of like nice swimming medals and I actually watched, um a medallion, the discus for Australia there and a lady win a pole vault gold medal. So Australia, I think they're third on the medal table.

Mark Paul: 2:32

So these are killing it. Yeah, I mean, swimming is like an obsession here, right, like almost every kid can swim ever since a young age. So I'm not surprised about the swimming and I think, yeah, the other parts have been pretty great as well. But just overall, man, it's such a you probably picked this up such a close and competitive games like every competition is like really close, like the 100 meters was effectively a bunch of guys and girls were like extremely close to each other. It's insane how competitive it's become awesome.

JB Carthy: 3:03

It's incredible. I think actually a great moment was the 100 meter women and I don't know if you saw, but the girl from san lucia and alfred, that was awesome, amazing man, like a population of like 180 000 people and it's just. She actually won the bronze and the two or the silver in the 200 meter as well. But like I saw videos of like the scenes over in san lucia and it was just absolutely like mental, like the joy and the profit was insane, man, um. But moving on, man, in terms of maybe a little bit more of a discussion about, like, the reason we're on here having a chat and maybe a few for people who aren't familiar with yourself and your background in space, and give us a little bit of introduction about who is Mark Paul and what are you doing in the space, man, what are you building in your history? Yeah, let's have a little bit of a story time.

Mark Paul: 3:57

Yeah, sure. So firstly, thanks to all those who joined. Not sure where you guys are from, I can see is that a boogers, somebody with a boogers uh nft cover or upcoming cornish.

JB Carthy: 4:09

Cornish is here all the time nice, so welcome all.

Mark Paul: 4:13

Uh, I mean I'm sure that's more who joined. I'm not sure what time it is for you guys, but, yeah, hopefully it's not too bad. Um, so a quick intro about myself. Um, so I'm Mark, of course. I've been in, I guess, in tech generally, tech and product, for over two decades now. In Web3 specifically. I've been around since about 2018 also 2017, 2018, very into the tech.

Mark Paul: 4:44

Right from the beginning, since Ethereum launched, I was kind of hooked on this whole thing and it was very obvious to me that it's going to be the future version of the Internet. Yeah, and then, I think about two or three years ago, effectively, we brought Ethereum out as a Web3 data protocol. As a Web3 data protocol, ethereum has been around for about five years and it used to be a Web3 product, a data analytics product, and then it moved on to being a Web3 sort of product, and the reason we did that was, you know, effectively we were trying to tokenize data and enabling you to trade your data like you would any other asset, and that's only possible with blockchain. So we've been at about three years doing this. Uh, so, yeah, I mean I'm I'm one of the founders of ethium. Uh, we've got a, a great team, heavily skilled team. It's pretty much the same team working from it from day one.

Mark Paul: 5:37

Um, yeah, I'm personally I'm like super bullish about the whole blockchain space from in the long run. I mean, it's it's so volatile, and I think that's what hits many people Like you know they, they get into it and they're like, oh my God, this place is this? This space is insane. But what I love about it and and and why I'm so involved in it, is that it's, you know, just like what we were talking about the Olympics. It's the only thing that's global.

Mark Paul: 6:04

Crypto and blockchain is the only thing that's global. Right, you can work with anybody around the world. This is not possible in regular sort of industries. Right, you are siloed, you are controlled by centralized corporations. You are not allowed to do certain things, when in crypto, we are truly global. I can work with people around the world, collaborate evenly, have community members from like every part of the world.

Mark Paul: 6:28

So this is what I really love about crypto and um, yeah, it's um, it's always a struggle, especially because it's so volatile and and everything, but overall, I mean, for me, it's without a doubt in my mind, it's the future version of the internet, and we're almost there, right. It's without a doubt in my mind it's the future version of the Internet, and we're almost there, right? So it's always going to be volatile before it becomes smooth. So that's me. Personally, I'm heavily technical. I'm very into architecture, so I design a lot of the stuff that we build at Ethereum, but, yeah, it's just not the tech. I also love the partnerships and community and all this kind of stuff. So, yeah, that's me in a nutshell, and hopefully that gives you some insights.

JB Carthy: 7:11

No, 100%, man, and I think two key things you touched on there.

JB Carthy: 7:14

So it's obviously we'll dive a little bit into your background in tech, maybe, and how that influenced or what conclusions you saw or what things you saw that made you realize that maybe blockchain and Web3 was the way forward when you came across it, maybe from some of your experiences and some of the problems that it solves.

JB Carthy: 7:32

But I think, in terms of touching on the volatility, I think something that hasn't really been fully understood in the space or with the technology is that the price isn't necessarily the technology, is that the price like isn't necessarily the technology and like in terms of the volatility of the prices and the volatility of the markets and what like the technology is valued at, valued at or the assets that are built upon the technology is valued at.

JB Carthy: 7:55

I think that, like that's going to be volatile for a while and until maybe it's the at the digital assets, there the value proposition becomes a little bit more clearer, a little bit more defined, a little bit more ingrained in like maybe traditional value flows, like you know, until we start using the infrastructure regularly for things like payments and other kind of financial transactions and medium of exchange and store of value and people recognize the technology for what it can do rather than just trying to use it as a speculative asset. But in terms of, like, the technology itself, you were talking about having a background in tech and then maybe coming into around, maybe seeing Ethereum come to fruition around like 2017, 2018. What was it you saw that got you particularly excited about what was being built?

Mark Paul: 8:44

2018. What was it you saw that got you particularly excited about what was being built? Yeah, so my background in tech, you know I started off as an engineer. I worked a lot in like my early days, I used to work with Microsoft Network, so I worked a lot with, like messaging protocols, like MSN Messenger, messenger and even things like hotmail and stuff like this.

JB Carthy: 9:09

Msn is a throwback man.

Mark Paul: 9:11

I know it's all this. Uh, you know I remember playing.

JB Carthy: 9:15

I remember playing like the games, the games on MSN, yeah, it was.

Mark Paul: 9:20

It was insane, like I mean this, this was like literally 15 almost you know 15 years ago when I was involved with it. In fact, we were the first my engineering team was the first to port MSN Messenger onto our website Because, if you remember, it was like this client on your desktop and it was like a normal program. And then MSN Messenger released a version that could be run in a website and we were the first to build it and ship it globally and it was the first time that you could visit a website, chat with your friends while you're reading and then move to another site and continue the chat. So I mean, this is kind of where I began, like I was just an engineer in that team and then I kind of totally got hooked on this whole thing and then I started getting a bit more into, I guess, back-end engineering. I really wanted to learn how data systems work and how distributed systems work and scale. So yeah, I mean, I was also at a broad for a broad period of time. I used to work with digital broadcasting as well. So I used to work with hardware devices that were distributed around the world. These were set-up boxes that you might have if you're watching digital TV, and how they were distributed around the world and how you deploy software into these set-up boxes. And it was really cool. We used to use satellites to deploy software instantaneously around the world, right. So these were like kind of like my sort of background when I really got into broad, wide scale distributed sort of systems and, um, yeah, and I think it's around this time when I, when I kind of first uh about Ethereum right and this concept of a world computer, to me it was like okay, that's far-fetched, the idea that you could have a world computer, that every sort of moment in time it's like picking on and then everything is synchronized. But I kind of understood that it could be possible with distributed computing. I was not very confident it would scale, but I kind of understood it could be possible and I kind of started following Ethereum.

Mark Paul: 11:34

And then I got in my personal sort of web tool career. I got very involved in data systems as well, like I used to at one point work for the Australian health system where we were dealing with, like during the COVID surge. We built systems that could scale to check the eligibility of everyone who could get a vaccine, and this had to scale to every citizen in Australia, so heavy backend data engineering systems. And to me the point like when I was doing all of this sort of heavy tech stuff in Web2, I was following all the stuff happening in Web3 tech. And to me the point like when I was doing all of this sort of heavy tech stuff in Web2, I was following all the stuff happening in Web3 tech, and then the moment it went off like a light bulb was when Ethereum first started and we were like, okay, data is an actual asset.

Mark Paul: 12:18

It's no different to like Bitcoin or Ethereum, which is like a financial asset, but data in fact is an asset, you know. And I was like, okay, we should tokenize data, because if we tokenize data and I wasn't even thinking about like trading data, I was just thinking, oh, if you could tokenize, for example, your health record, you could very easily move it globally very quickly, especially if you like have ethereum, that was like this world computer you could instantaneously move my health record from like australia to like ireland. And I was like, okay, this could be what? Uh, what's the future of data is right, and I think at that point everybody was talking about about the future of data. You know the terms. Like you know, data is the new oil will be thrown around.

Mark Paul: 13:02

And I was like, okay, I think this is where it all converges. And yeah, and then kind of built the first version of Ethereum. We actually built it like on day one on the Ethereum, which was a tokenization platform for your data, and we were focusing on health, so you could actually take upload like your health record, tokenize it and then you could trade it in our data decks. Yeah, that was the point. It all converged. And you know that, uh, initial prototype, we submitted it to a bunch of hackathons and we just started winning like every hackathon and then we kind of realized, okay, man, this is this, we have to take this to market.

JB Carthy: 13:37

And that was kind of how dm was born now it's a great story and I suppose, like maybe coming from that point where you start to realize that distributed computing, like decentralized networks and no center point of failure, people being able to like truly own their data and like a tokenized format, like no one else, like having custody or ownership of it, one else like having custody or ownership of it, and but then maybe where were the limitations or what were the challenges at that moment of seeing ethereum and building that sort of solution on ethereum?

Mark Paul: 14:13

um, yeah. So when we first started, it was, um, and it's purely data tokenization, right? So if I simplify what that means, it's, basically let me think of an NFT. Right, like you guys all know what NFTs are. It's a tokenized art in its current form. Right, like everybody's familiar with NFT. Because it's tokenized art.

Mark Paul: 14:34

Somebody drew something really nice and you converted it into a token. Now, for us, the art is just data. So you could like tokenize anything in the same way, and that's what we did, right? So the first version we had was okay, tokenized data, it's your art, it could be your music, it could be your health data, it could be gaming data, it could be anything, it doesn't matter. So the first version was just that how do you take something, you upload it and then you get a token data NFT in return. That was the first version we built. So, I mean, ethereum worked pretty well for that, like, we launched it.

Mark Paul: 15:09

And then, of course, that's when the realization hit that, okay, if we are trying to enable people to tokenize stuff, they shouldn't have to pay, like you know, $5, $10 to do it. That would be a barrier to entry. So it was the gas fees ofereum, that kind of first initially took us starting to think of a new sort of blockchain to build on. We did then move to polygon. So we did replicated the same technology in polygon. The good thing was, because we built it on ethereum, which is evm compatible, we were able to just very quickly move into polygon deploy. There we came forth in the global polygon hackathon.

Mark Paul: 15:44

At that point when we pitched that and yeah, and again, at that point it also realized if we are going to build this as a data protocol, it would be more than just data tokenization. It would have to be. We had to build a data marketplace. We had to build some reputation tools to make sure people can prove their reputation on the blockchain without doxing themselves. So that was a reputation module. So we effectively knew we were building infrastructure and if we were going to build an infrastructure layer on top of a blockchain layer, we had to align with a blockchain layer which had very strong technology principles scalability, pricing and all that kind of stuff. So that's when we were introduced to somebody in MultiverseX or LRON as we were called then, and we started building on LRON.

JB Carthy: 16:36

Yes, no, absolutely.

JB Carthy: 16:37

And I suppose similar to what you touched on where you were saying initially you were in the health sector and managing some of those pieces around how to like um make data accessible, like trying to deal with what a lot of the time was like a pandemic with COVID-19 and trying to help everyone have access to the same data and the same databases so that, like information could easily be transferred and acted upon um in different places at different times and during a probably a very time sensitive period.

JB Carthy: 17:05

Like I suppose it's probably your experiences there having the inner, like the understanding the inefficiencies that some of the traditional systems or traditional technology had in terms of that data management, that like ease of transferability, speed of transferability, and then probably coming over and building like on the decentralized technology and then understanding that, okay, the cost of this technology may be a little bit of a maybe a little bit of an obstacle if we're to like implement it at a global scale, and then coming to the conclusion that like having to build on um scalable, secure, fast infrastructure because, like um, would you be bit, because would you be big into DeFi yourself in terms of, let's say, would you explore DeFi much?

Mark Paul: 17:53

Yeah, yeah, of course, man. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of how my fascination with blockchain discovered Ethereum, read the white paper, totally hooked on the tech of the world, computer man, like. So I started looking at brit you know, this was, I think, 20, was it 2021? When was a lot? 2017 bull market? I came in, like everybody else I I looked at, you know, bitcoin price going through the roof, it's all these people making a lot of money and I was like, okay, you know, I understand the tech, I should get into this as well. Uh, and I'm generally not like that, I'm not into like just kind of like trading. I wish I was, but I'm not. But I got in and I was like, okay, I understand the tech, I clearly know this is the future. So I got into like fully researching all the products coming out at that time. So I used to look at not just Ethereum, I used to look at all these DeFi protocols that were popping up everywhere, all these layer ones that were popping up in Asia. There was a lot of layer ones popping up in Asia. I was reading all the white papers but I was totally into at that point. I remember there was a phase when I was fully into DeFi and I don't come from a finance background, I'm more the engineer data side of things, so I didn't really understand the finance part of things. So that was for me like eye-opening, because when I looked at like rb and stuff when they first came out, I would like not just look at the tech, which I was kind of blown away by, but I would like understand the finance, the primitives of the finance, financial principles behind this thing and and I would like really get into it. So defy I I kind of got almost like learned it from scratch and I and that's actually one of the cool things about crypto nobody doesn't realize is that everybody's coming in. Let's, let's be honest, they're all trying to make some money, which is which is fair enough, and they are like forced to learn about financial primitives which they would never learn in school and stuff right. So they come out of it and then suddenly they are becoming like financially savvy because they need to understand how how dex's work, how lending works, how leverage trading works, all this kind of stuff. Even they don't they might necessarily not call it that, but they are exposed to it and then maybe what they're actually developing is a new skill set that they don't know about, right? Uh, so, yeah, I'm just like everybody else.

Mark Paul: 20:21

I went into the whole thing, got fully hooked on the defy stuff and effectively, what we wanted to do then was bring um I mentioned this term data defy. Okay, how do you? If you look at defy, it's just all token based assets, right. So we're like okay, data, this is no different. How do you do data defy? How could you like convert your health data and then trade it with somebody else around the world who wants it? So you're solving two, two things there the inefficiencies of healthcare data or any other data. You're making it portable and all this kind of stuff and you're solving that web 2 problem, but at the same time, you are also making some personal income by sharing your data. So for us, it was that, effectively, how do we converge everything and make it seamless?

JB Carthy: 21:06

no 100, and actually the reason I was drawing the parallel was because I just saw like and like say from your, your own, maybe, chat here and chatting about how you're trying to implement and the management of data or the ownership of data on chain, and then talking about, like the journey of DeFi and like how we talked about Ethereum and how, maybe when DeFi was built on Ethereum initially or when products were built on Ethereum, just talking about DeFi as one aspect of it, and it was a proof that, like, the decentralized model worked. Like you know, the decentralized model worked. Like you know, the decentralized model worked, but like things like speed, cost, user experience and then maybe the lack of reliability from like not having been like battle tested were limiters and there were hacks, there were exploits, there were all these like little like setbacks along with it, like maybe a poor user experience in terms of speed and cost that maybe held it back from getting like like what more widespread adoption at that moment. And then it was like OK, moving into like the second era of like the technology, if you want to call it, where people go OK, this decentralized model works, like we chatted about, where you were saying building on Ethereum initially and going OK, now we need to find out how to make lower costs, higher speed, better, better user experiences. And, okay, we're learning from how to in terms of on a product, on a product level, we're learning how to build more robust products, better smart contracts and less leaks in the bucket, and more users are starting to come in. And now we're probably going to see okay, now we have the proof of concept, now we have the technology to distribute it and now we're just going okay, how can we build really valuable things on top of it?

JB Carthy: 22:49

And I think that it comes into, like, where you guys are coming with ithium, because data ownership is just a very touchy subject at the moment in terms of people are very worried about, like, how their data is being used and where, like where it's being handled, how it's being handled, who has access to it and some of these things, and I suppose Ithium are trying to use this technology to give people back ownership of their data, both on an individual level and then to be able to leverage on a collective level, not only to own it themselves, but also to be able to benefit from it in the form of things like data DAOs and these sorts of things. So it's a very interesting arc and I don't know how you feel about that yourself or feel about that kind of analysis of things, or where you think the space is at in terms of where the new users are going to come from and where the products that are going to be built are going to get users on-chain, if that makes sense.

Mark Paul: 23:45

Yeah, I mean, it does make sense, man. Yeah, so for sure, right, If you just break it down and if you look at blockchain, I'll use the words blockchain, crypto, all of this interchangeably, but I'm talking about the same thing. If you look at, yeah, no, 100, 100 yeah yeah.

Mark Paul: 24:02

So if you look at adoption, man of of of crypto, right like it's, it has to be. Like not non-forced, right like it can't be like, okay, you got to come in here. Like it still seems a bit forced. Like you have to come in here, you got to do this. You want to do a specific thing, you got to do this. If you want to do a specific thing, you got to get a wallet. It feels like it doesn't have the UX needed yet and it's significantly improved, of course, but still it's not there. And that's the first part, right. And the second part, of course, is the use case, like what We've learned a lot like in the last three years of you know, we are about tokenizing data and data ownership. But surprisingly, you know, everywhere we go, we actually ask. We kind of ask the first question like who here? Like, if you're talking at a conference, one of the questions we ask is who here is concerned about your data being exploited? And you'll be surprised how few people actually care about this thing. So we then kind of figured out okay, so we are trying to tokenize data. For us, it's, without a doubt, the future is tokenized data, right, just like how BlackRock spoke about the future of securities is tokenized securities. For us, it's without a doubt, man, the future of data is tokenized data. Right, future, yeah, so, and it's just whether we do it or somebody else does it.

Mark Paul: 25:21

So we, I think we have a a good head start to it, because we've been working on this for a while, but that doesn't mean that adoption for this technology is going to come right now. So we have to think on our side. What we have to do is okay, how do we build something that people are going to, are going to use now, rather than speculate on for, like, in five years from now? So this is the biggest challenge we have. Right, like, how, how do we build something that people use now that's commercially viable, that's uh, that provides them some value? Um, and yeah, that's the thing that we constantly battle with. Our foundational principle is always the same we're going to tokenize data, give you ownership, you can trade it and earn some passive income because your data is valuable. That's always our mission. But how do we practically do it now is the thing that we're always evolving, and this is the same for everything. Right With DeFi.

Mark Paul: 26:18

People are into DeFi because if you understand it and you are lucky and I say you have to be a bit lucky you could make a lot of money, right. So more than you could in any other industry. If you come in at the right time, you see something pumping, and you get in there early and you are able to leverage and all this kind of stuff, you can make a lot of money. And people understand that if they educate themselves, they come in there, they put in the effort, they could get lucky and this could happen to them, right. So it's that's where crypto is at the moment. Now it's people I guess everybody around the world like trying to get in and um, creating a sort of a scenario where they wouldn't in their everyday lives, and I think that's something we could try to improve, like going beyond that and then building something that you use it because you like it. Maybe that's where we would suddenly get adoption.

JB Carthy: 27:12

No, 100%, and maybe let's touch on so obviously. Maybe the future is going towards the tokenization of data, people being able to own their own data and leverage it for their own benefits or at their own choosing and collect it themselves and have custody over it. But maybe a little bit about yourself like why is true data ownership? Why is like individual data ownership so important?

Mark Paul: 27:39

why is, like, individual data ownership so important? Yeah, I mean, for me it's the you know, because I was involved in this whole space. Right Like, I started off working in Web2 social networking. I was in health companies and I could see it every day. Right Like, the value of all of these companies was not their tech, it wasn't their product, it was their user base, and the value of the user base is that they were harvesting data. It's bottom line man, like I think this is the realization. It'll hit us at some point that every product that you use right now, including this space here, everything is built on our data. It's harvesting our data at every single microsecond and it's building ad platforms for you. This is how the entire internet is working on right now. So for me, it's like when I understood that because I was working on these systems and then I suddenly realized, okay, hold on. I mean, it can't continue like this.

Mark Paul: 28:37

Right, europe's probably the leading sort of from a legal point of view. They are trying to stop this. Right, like with GDPR and all of that. They're trying to like balance the power between, but at some point it has to kind of reach a place where we are more active owners of our data because it's valuable, right, like we generate something and it's valuable. That's one thing. The second thing is the fact that all our data is taken from us also very negatively impacts a lot of us and we don't realize it.

Mark Paul: 29:13

As an example, if you are on a social media platform and you are feeding it with your preferences and your likes and all this kind of stuff and they match you with some ad-serving platform and this ad-serving platform lets somebody push an ad in front of your face constantly for a week, it can actually change your reality, right? It could. Maybe, as I made one example, maybe it kind of pushes you to buy something that you can't really afford, like maybe a new car or a new house, and you go ahead and it's constantly being fed this ad and you eventually give into it and you buy it, and then maybe you have financial difficulty. Now, this might sound far fetched, man, but this is actually what's happening. If you go behind the scenes and read how these ad engines work, they can effectively they know you're interested in a new car, as an example, and they can push you into making that purchase when you wouldn't make it otherwise.

Mark Paul: 30:14

Now you take the same scenario and apply it to politics. If there's elections coming up, they could make you vote for somebody who you might not vote for. Look at health. They might make you drink or eat something that's going to cause you some chronic disease in future, because maybe that thing doesn't agree with you. So when you start thinking about this man, then you start to get a bit angry, right? The fact that we are being manipulated and the fact that none of us really know this is happening to us.

Mark Paul: 30:42

So for us, the solution to all of this is that active data ownership is, whenever you're producing something, you take active ownership of it and you understand who's using it and you understand how it's being traded, how it's being traded behind the scenes. Yeah, so everything Ethereum is doing right now is not something new. It already exists in the Web2 world. It's called the data brokerage industry. It's like a $300 billion market. So we just said, okay, it has to come out of the darkness into the light. As you can see, I'm super passionately into this thing. But, yeah, it's something that has to be solved. And then, what Ethereum solves? We want it to be solved.

JB Carthy: 31:24

No, 100%, and I suppose what you're talking about there is like, or to summarize it maybe is that, like people brands are like, or companies or whatever are using the data they are harvesting to understand people's deeper motivations and then condition them to making appealing to those deeper motivations without people even realizing it, and getting them to make decisions that are not really authentic to themselves, because they're just being almost manipulated and based on, like, this understanding of them that someone else has, that, this abstract entity has that, and they don't aren't even aware that it exists yeah, that's absolutely happening in every, every platform that you use right now.

Mark Paul: 32:13

It's it's everything is driven by ads, right? So there's no way you can use a social media app for free. Like the cost of using, of running this infrastructure, it doesn't make sense, right? So they're obviously making a lot of money. And what are they doing? What are they selling? They're selling the ability for people to put an ad in front of you and to convert that ad.

Mark Paul: 32:36

Right, and the only way you convert an admin is if they serve you an ad that you, maybe for a new car as an example. Again, it means that you were thinking about it at some level of buying a new car. So now it's just a conversion game, right? Like, how, why do I serve you and at what frequency and at what angle? And what I mean by that is you know, they, they have access to your friend network too, so they could, you know, approach you from that angle as well. So maybe on your, your, you're chatting with a friend and you see an ad for a car. Now you're, like, emotionally manipulated as well. So they this is I'm not making this up and this is like you read up of how these systems are, and I'll actually tell you.

JB Carthy: 33:17

So this man, this is like you read up on all these systems, no, no, and I'll actually tell you. So this is actually again. This is like you know, like people would probably think it's made up and like let's say it's like, oh, that couldn't possibly be true, but there's just so many aspects. Like I was, I was like chatting this thing called high rocks, which is like kind of this fitness trend and or these fitness competitions and they're going on around the world, and I was chatting about he was saying he was going to set up a little business and with ice baths and and saunas and like I'd never seen an ad before on my on instagram for like this saunas, like, and the first thing that comes on when I open my phone next time I open my phone was, first thing, high rocks, like training plans and the second thing was like ice, like they're called.

JB Carthy: 34:10

I can't remember what they're called. They're called ice coolers or something, but they were. They're essentially like things to like help you make ice baths or make ice baths cold, and I I was like that is incredible, because I've never like it's just how coincidental is that? Because it's obviously not coincidental that we were talking about these things with the phones in our pockets or away to the side and next time you get on, get on social media or get on these apps and like, ultimately, you know, like you say, there's no, there's no, no, no such thing as a free lunch.

JB Carthy: 34:39

And whenever you hop on these platforms, you know everyone always skips through, as I do, as everyone does skip through the terms and conditions, and it's like allow notifications, allow microphone, allow these things, without ever really probably fully understanding what it is they do because they're it's almost like the price of entry for using them, because if you, they make it so inconvenient, because if you press don't allow on any of those permissions, your experience of using the app is significantly diminished.

JB Carthy: 35:05

So it's kind of clever, like you know. It's like oh, you can use this, but you know, if you don't let it do this, it can't give you the good experience, and then we don't know what, like you said, data it's harvesting's harvesting. So it really is kind of a strange, a strange like time to be living in, a strange thing to think about, and I suppose then you know, ultimately it is like fiction or it's like screenplay or drama or whatever you want to call it. But I don't know if you ever watch netflix and things like black mirror and some of these like kind of science, science fiction shows or futuristic fiction shows, about these kind of dystopian realities, about like how people, how technology essentially people become slaves to technology and how it's used to control them and manipulate them and essentially make them all behave in a certain aligned way. It really is, um, a strange time to be, think, to be, to be living in.

Mark Paul: 36:00

I suppose you guys are tackling a very important kind of problem in that regard uh, yeah, man, yes, I mean there are, like I've noticed instagram, like it's it's really good at this, like the, the ads that it serves. It's almost like mind reading, right, like it kind of knows what you even though, even if you don't disclose it, man, I mean it kind of knows right Now. There's two ways to look at it. Maybe one way to look at it is oh, that's great because it's personalized ads. Like you know, this is something I need. That it's kind of because it's personalized ads, this is something I need. So maybe that's true.

Mark Paul: 36:35

If you're looking at something like a new shoe or a new dress or a new jacket or something like this, it's not good when they can manipulate things that are bigger than that, that could impact you financially a new car, a new house, something that maybe and if you constantly see something, then the chances are you will, they will convert you and, like the, then the dark side is, if there's a election coming up and they're able to manipulate you and again, this is not made up, this has happened multiple times in the past and it's been proven um, that is the dark side, but yeah, it's a problem that has to be solved. So the question is, how would you solve it? Regulation is one is one like GDPR and stuff. It's very clearly explaining if you're collecting data, if you're collecting cookies, if you're doing this thing, clearly explaining what you're doing. But just think about it man who has the time to go to a website, read even if a cookie disclaimer pops up and who's reading these things? Who really has the time?

Mark Paul: 37:31

And one of the things that Ethereum is trying to do it's still doing is we want to delegate that responsibility to somebody else. So the idea being, if you're using an app or you're using a website, when you log in, you are not presented with 10 pages of cookie disclaimer. Instead, you're saying that this website is managed by this DAO. We call it Data Coalition DAOs. You just accept that and that's a token in your wallet. It's one transaction bank. The DAO is actively managing that responsibility for you. It's looking at who's using your data, why is it using it, and it tries to broker some trade of your data, right? So it's like a middleman and its responsibility is to look after your best interest, and then it still allows the data to be traded because we all want that personalized app experience, but it's something in between and it's going to look after your best interest and if your data is traded, you get a cut of it. The DAO gets to keep a cut of it.

Mark Paul: 38:34

This is an interesting idea. It's not something that's unique to Ethereum. There are some other data DAOs that are out there but I think this might be one solution to it, like the ability when you log into an app or a service or whatever it is, you align to a data coalition DAO and then just let that thing look up to your best interest. If your data is traded, it makes a cut, but if your data is being misused, it notifies you. So it's like almost a push notification that hey, your data is being exploited right here. Do you want to get out? So I think that might be. Uh, probably where the the adoption of data ownership technologies get get more adopted and used no, it's an.

JB Carthy: 39:13

It's definitely an interesting thought because, like you I think you touched on slightly earlier and you were saying okay, sometimes the algorithm is good, you know, like gives, gives me like funny cat videos and like memes like that I laugh at for like a few minutes on end.

JB Carthy: 39:26

But other times it's not so good when, like, there's a more sinister element of like, maybe manipulating and manipulating your behavior. Whether it's not so good when, like, there's the more sinister element of like, maybe manipulating and manipulating your behavior, whether it's like your consumer behavior, your social behavior, or influencing like your are appealing to your deeper motivations without you even fully realizing it. And I suppose what you're talking about today with the data coalition dows are like a slightly more transparent um or a more transparent form of like data management, and data um, like ownership maybe is the wrong word, but data management where it's like, okay, like your data goes through us, we're going to make sure it's managed pretty like, pretty well or in alignment with, like, the wish of the day or the wish of the members of the day, and then it's okay, like there is that like middle or there is that like kind of security layer, or at least we know somebody, or there's a group of people who are looking after each other's aligned interests and not simply just being exploited mercilessly by data harvesters.

Mark Paul: 40:29

If that makes sense, yeah, so if you can imagine how the Data Coalition DAO would work. It's if you join an app and the app is linked to a Data Coalition DAO, you join it and the Data Coalition DAO has some people who are actively looking at how your data is used. In what context were you notified? But not just that right like it also could mean that, like the million other people who joined the data coalition doubt, maybe one of them discovers something that is a bit suspicious and they can now notify the rest. Like you know, wisdom of the crowd sort of concept, um, no, absolutely, unless oh, sorry, go, go on no.

Mark Paul: 41:11

I mean, that's kind of what I was kind of getting at, like I think the only last point was, but the question still comes right, like, do we care as a society enough that our data is being exploited or not? And that's, I think, a pretty big question, right, like, yeah, if you want adoption of these things, there has to be a tipping point, and that's what we are always battling with. Like, do people care enough that their data is exploited to use technologies that prevents exploitation of their data? So that's, yeah, that's one thing, man. I think.

Mark Paul: 41:49

Just a quick parallel to draw is I guess, you know, before the financial crisis the last one people didn't care that, you know there was exploitation in the banking industry until it impacted them. Right, like, they lost their houses. So there's always that event when you're like, okay, I've had enough. And then Bitcoin was won, right, and you can't dispute that. It's always that thing, right, like before you could, you could use, you could. Uh, everyone like just trusted their bank that there's doing the best thing in their, in, in their interest, but in reality, it wasn't. And it's the same now, right, we trust our social media platforms that it's doing the best thing, but it's not so.

JB Carthy: 42:30

It's that point, man, when I think, when something bad happens, maybe like an event where you know one of these big clouds that are exploited or hacked and pretty much a majority of the world's identity data is stolen, something like this would like just tip it over and then we will be like, okay, that's enough no, and I think even like you were touching on earlier, you like you know there's obviously around the world there's these like there just seems to be like a lot of maybe like discontentment and social unrest and like a lot of division and a lot of conflict and conflicting opinions and like people having like like vastly different perceptions of like reality or like events.

JB Carthy: 43:12

If that, if that makes sense, and it's like it's kind of hard to understand fully like where these, like where these like vast differences in like perceptions of reality, um, are coming from.

JB Carthy: 43:27

But then I suppose, like when, when you touch on things like okay, how, ultimately, social media is an attention economy and how people are just fed more of what they like, and it's like OK, if people and if I have this kind of core thought or core perception and this other person has this core thought or core perception like social media is just going to keep feeding us like more and more information, more and more content.

JB Carthy: 43:52

Media that reinforces our already our previously held opinion doesn't force us to challenge our perspectives, challenge our views and rethink. It just reinforces and gives us this confirmation bias. That is almost like driving people further and further away from each other, where it's just telling everyone. When they get on their phone, everyone is just being told you are right, you are right, you are right, you are right. And it's very hard to reach a common consensus when everyone is just constantly being told they can just open up their phone, flip open the screen and it just gives them almost an unlimited well of information and rationale as to why they are right all the time.

Mark Paul: 44:31

Yeah. So that's a good point, and I think, just to extend in terms of maybe, where the adoption for data ownership or technology might come in is and all of you guys are probably experiencing this as well. So now you're logging into your social media platforms. Now this whole ad manipulation is happening. Fine, we know that's kind of happening, but now there's content manipulation as well, because, thanks to AI, which you know, it's so easy for us now to produce fake content, whether that be images or text, or videos, or graphics or sound or anything.

Mark Paul: 45:05

Right Now, we are being manipulated at a scale that's beyond comprehending, right. That's beyond comprehending right. Like it's basically saying we can now manipulate you with fake content, which was not possible, like maybe just three years ago. So, like you see this, like I see this a lot, man, when I'm on social media like I'll be like is this? Like you read something or you see something, and you're like now, for the first time in my life, I'm like questioning is this even true something? And you're like now, for the first time in my life.

JB Carthy: 45:33

I'm like questioning is this even true? What I'm seeing? Yeah, 100, 100 it's. It's mad, like you know and I suppose don't he. Sorry, I actually just have to say this because it's so it's so, it's so apparent. But I actually saw a video of like joe biden the other day and he was like it wasn't actually joe biden, it was just like an ai generated video of joe biden and it's just like. It was just so. It was just like.

Mark Paul: 45:53

The only reason you could definitely tell it was ai was because it was just so ludicrous that it was like it's obviously ai and people are laughing about it being ai, but someone could easily try and pass that off as like not being ai yeah, and there's another whole series, like you probably have seen this, you'll see Joe Rogan talking to a guest and it's actually a real video of him in his podcast, but they have manipulated the voice and it makes it seem like he's promoting a product. There's plenty of these videos, man, and people are watching this man that you could hardly tell that this is actually an ad. So now this AI manipulated the content that's promoting ads. So now we are being exploited at a level that's beyond acceptable. So the reason I'm saying this is and the reason ETM launched ETMv2, which was data for the AI era was maybe the adoption would come not at like sort of this retail layer where people are going to come and tokenize their data and trade it, because it's a lot of effort if the adoption comes at and like an implementation and like a regulation layer where you have to prove that this piece of data is authentic. And this is something we are heavily looking into. We recently partnered with Numbers Protocol and, for those who don't know who Numbers Protocol is, they have technology that, if you take, they actually have this app, which is like a camera app you take a photo and it embeds provenance data into your photo which could be proved to be authentic and you use blockchain for it. And we discovered they can do this when we work with numbers as part of another initiative called C2PA, which is effectively a provenance layer for data to protect it from AI manipulation. And C2PA is like an open movement. You guys should check it out. It's really interesting.

Mark Paul: 47:56

C2paorg Open AI is using it. Sora uses it when you generate content. So maybe right like the Ethereum V2, is that right Like we are thinking now commercially, how do we get this out? Broader scale, adoption-wise right? Sure, you can still come and tokenize your music and all these things on Ethereum, but if we want to take this as infrastructure globally, it has to solve a very real problem. And maybe all the things we discussed right now man is like the convergence of manipulation, of us starting with ads, now AI manipulated ads coming, coming and at some point, man, it's going to be like okay, you have to prove that this is authentic and you know that's the infrastructure we want to build no, I like, that's a like.

JB Carthy: 48:43

I'm massively interesting to me anyway, I'm massively interesting and you and massively useful. I would go beyond useful like just vital um service in terms of like allowing people to prove, or proving to people what is real. In an era of like, what it seems like is going to be almost unlimited generative content, and it's not. The generative content is bad in and of itself, but it's like how generative generative content is used and like helping people at least just understand and be able to decipher between like what is real and what is not, and what is true and what is not. Um, or at least like what things, what things are. So it's like if you see a photo or if you see a video or if you see an audio clip or hear an audio clip, that it's not like okay, using AI to produce those things is bad, it's just that okay, understand, this was actually produced using AI, if that makes sense.

Mark Paul: 49:43

Yeah, ben, that's actually in fact happening, right?

Mark Paul: 49:47

So if you use some of this new platform that integrates C2PA metadata and if you produce a video from Sora, which is the OpenAI video model, and you use a social media app that can understand C2PA, like, when you get this video thrown at you, it immediately uses blockchain behind the scenes to show you that this is actually the original piece of content, that's not-manipulated, right, and it's seamless, all right, and I think people have started integrating c2pa into their apps now.

Mark Paul: 50:20

So you might have like a version of instagram or tiktok or whatever it is and they're like scrolling through, but every piece of content that's that's like shown in front of you would might, as soon as it loads, it might have have a green check on the top and the green check appears when the CTPA metadata is verified against blockchain and therefore show that this is undampered. So at least you know. Like that Joe Rogan example man, like, if I go in and view this, you'll get like a big, maybe red X on that, proving that this is actually two or three different videos that have been merged in and then the AI has manipulated it. Now I'm informed, right, whether I want to believe that Joe Rogan is selling me something or not. I'm informed that it's an AI-manipulated video, and then I can still buy it if I want to. But at least I know and I've been made informed very quickly, right? It's not a difficult thing to be told that, yeah.

JB Carthy: 51:14

A hundred percent. So, while I'm just going to, we're going to touch a little bit on man, if that's okay, like Ithium V2 and maybe what solutions you guys see or like what direction you guys are taking with that. But, like, while we touch on that, I'll just open it up to anyone in the audience who has any questions or wants to hop on and ask a question and request the mic, and then we will. We'll bring you up, ask mark a question and you definitely won't want to ask me a question like I won't have any answers. But it's like, and but while we're at it, man, or while we're waiting for someone to come up, and yeah, like, maybe touch a little bit about where ethium are going with ethium v2, because it definitely sounds very exciting, the direction you guys are taking in terms of tackling, um, kind of like data, data verification, data ownership in an ai age yeah, I mean that's.

Mark Paul: 52:03

It's a. Basically, ethium v2 is a um. It's a convergence of everything we learned in the last two years or three years of building data tokenization. Right like we begun ethium v1 by by act. What three years of building data tokenization? Right, like we begun etmv1 by by act, what we call it active data tokenization. So you need to do some active work to tokenize your data. So you're a musician, you actively created some music, you tokenize it and you trade and it. You know we've had some good, good usage of it. Uh, we've had. Yeah, so you.

Mark Paul: 52:31

But then what we actually have learned is that we can't just focus on such a niche industry. Right Like, active tokenization doesn't work. We have to move broader. And that's passive tokenization, which means you can be playing a video game and we take your data and you don't even know what's happening. Right Like it's going back to the idea that we can take your data to be taken from you. So, hey, give it to Ethereum and we will broker this data through Data Coalition DAOs and you get a cut of it. So it's passive data tokenization.

Mark Paul: 53:01

We launched, we're launching, gamer Passport today. That was the alpha I was going to drop, by the way it's basically, if you're a PlayStation gamer, in two steps you can tokenize your PlayStation gaming data. So that's going live today. Later on today on Solana, so that's the first product we're actually first launching into Solana purely and then growing it into Multiverse X. So that's the first thing. So we want to move to passive data tokenization.

Mark Paul: 53:29

Second is what I just mentioned, right, once we can unlock bulk passive data, it's proving the verification and the authenticity of this data for the AI era, because that's what we spoke about for the last hour, right, we are manipulated with data and now with AI-generated content using our data. So building the provenance layer which is using our data, nft technology, c2pa we are actually in the technical working group of C2PA, so we work with them on the standards as well. So that's the kind of adoption of this at an infrastructure level around the world to solve a real problem. And once we do this, then also it's commercially creating new opportunities for us, right, because now we are just a regular tech infrastructure to solve a real problem with AI. So that opens up a commercial doors for us as well.

Mark Paul: 54:18

That's ETMv2. In a nutshell, it's passive data tokenization, like starting with gaming data, which we are launching today Multi-chain. So we are on Solana right now. We are on Multiverse X, but we already started thinking about the next chain, probably base or something like this. That is to, and the reason we do multichain is we need the user liquidity. If we want to grow our protocol, we need users and that's the power of Web3. And when you have a token is you can tap into user bases. So we need a broader user base. So it's one of the reasons we went to Solana. Now we're going elsewhere. And the final piece of ethereum v2 is creating uh infrastructure layer for data verification for ai, which is data for the ai era.

JB Carthy: 55:04

So that kind of sums up the three points of ethereum v2 that I'm very interested man, so we'll have a couple more, a couple more minutes. I won't hold you too long, but like and as long as you have to discuss some of these things. But first thing is, like, the gamer passport, what exactly does it allow? Like you know, as an avid FIFA player back in the day, like I'm interested to hear kind of what data is collected like from this gamer passport.

Mark Paul: 55:27

Yeah. So the user journey is like this you go into a website just check out our ETM Twitter. Today we will announce it. We'll integrate with multiple gaming console platforms, starting with PlayStation. But the next box of Steam and all this is coming.

Mark Paul: 55:46

In one click, you prove your ownership of your PlayStation public username. In the second click you link a Solana wallet and you don't even need to use a wallet. You can use a Google account and it generates an in-session wallet for you. And the third click is that's pretty much it. And then what happens after that is we have a week on a daily basis, grab your behavioral data. That's happening on PlayStation. So what that means is what games you're playing right now, how long you're playing it for, how active you are on PlayStation, and we benchmark that every day. So it's called longitudinal data. In other words, it's a benchmark of your gaming snapshot every single day. And what we do then is now we are onboarding many gamers, so we have a target of 500 gamers. Once 500 gamers join in, we have the benchmark data every day.

Mark Paul: 56:43

We're going to bulk this and we're going to create a data coalition DAO that can sell this bulked PlayStation gaming data. So what you can experience today is you can go to this app. It should be under exploreretmio, so if you go there you can see a banner. Connect your PlayStation account, create the Solana wallet using a Google account and then in like about 12 hours, your data gets snapshot. We're going to obviously speed that up, but in 12 hours if a snapshot happens're going to obviously speed that up, but in 12 hours if a snapshot happens, and when you go in tomorrow you can see a snapshot of your current is a gaming data, but then, yeah, man, like, once we hit our goal is 500 gamers, once we hit 500 gamers, we're going to bulk the data set and then we're going to trade a bulk subscription to this data and you get a cut off of whatever we we get no, that's amazing.

JB Carthy: 57:36

That is amazing, man. That is amazing. Especially, integrate with such like uh, integrate with such like a widely held and just like, exactly like you said, passively used. So it's like no active steps that need to be taken or no substantial active steps that need to be taken to benefit from passive data collection.

JB Carthy: 57:54

I think I was chatting to you like the the active, the active versus the passive piece is like massive, because I know I chatted to you like maybe a few months ago, like you know, and it was just that was one of kind of the obstacles, and it's just like, coming from a health perspective, you know, we we chatted about like maybe a few months ago, saying like okay, there's the economic impact of like obesity and people being overweight. I, I think by 2050 or 2060 it's set to um essentially cost 3.3 percent of global gdp to deal with like obesity related diseases and medical conditions. And it's like okay, if we know that it's going to cost this much money to deal with this problem. Anything under anything underneath that, in terms of incentivizing people to not like to maybe participate in behaviors and actions that are more aligned with a healthier lifestyle, is money well spent. If that makes sense, yeah, and it's okay. How can we, biometrically, how can we incentivize people to engage better with like actions and behaviors that align with putting less stress on the health care system and like saving more money, like in terms of like costing less to the global gdp and to individual countries and these sorts of things?

JB Carthy: 59:14

And a really interesting one to me is like okay, how could we? Because everyone has these health trackers these days and going like okay, it does your HRV, it does your heart rate, it does like your activity levels and it takes like lots of data that you you kind of have to then actively like go about, like using yourself, if that makes sense you have to actively take interest in. Okay, how am I going to action this data and how am I going to use it to be beneficial for me? And there's actually no real point to the data except just going oh, I want to, I want to be healthier. So, like, I'll just kind of like try and make my rest and heart rate lower, try and make my hrv higher, try and get a little bit more steps in the day and try and like eat, eat a little bit, like like less food or try and eat like healthier food or whatever it is.

JB Carthy: 1:00:01

But it's like, okay, what if, like, there was a way of like through the through, maybe deep in and through some of like the biometric trackers that are available, going like, okay, if you have, if we passively collect this biometric data and it's like, okay, we passively see your hrv is on a certain level and your heart rate is within a certain um criteria and your daily activities within a certain criteria and your dietary activities when it within a certain criteria and it's like okay, this is passively collected, it's biometrically like, linked to you as in.

JB Carthy: 1:00:34

Like you have that proof of provenance that it's come from that person, then they can go to things like insurance providers and go okay, I'm I'm objectively less of a burden on the health care system because I take these actions and I have these outcomes, and it's okay. Now I can have an individually adjusted insurance premium based on, like the say this, my, like my cost efficiency to the health care system. If that may and I think that's a massively interesting route that could like that would be a personal interest to me. That like could be very well suited to this sort of like data, if that makes sense. Combining like all those parts of like, we're probably going to get to the point where ai is like analyzing what we're eating through some sort of implanted chip.

Mark Paul: 1:01:20

Like yeah, I mean for sure, man like um, I think this is a much bigger discussion. I think we should kind of have a separate session. I can give you so much of alpha on this, but effectively, what you said, man, is what we have done with the game password. Okay, but we're focusing on gaming. But you can take the same thing and apply it to any industry, if you look at it. You mentioned collecting data from, like, a healthcare device.

Mark Paul: 1:01:45

Well, in our context, a gamer password, that's a hardware device which is a PlayStation console. So we passively collect it, we bulk it, we get somebody else. Like the biggest burden is people don't have time to understand themselves. So when we passively bulk it, there would be a DAO, that is the Data Coalition DAO that's actively looking at things for you from this passive pool. You just plugged in. All you did was literally in two steps, you plugged into the we're calling it the ETM data realm and it's basically everyone just plugs in.

Mark Paul: 1:02:18

Now, the other cool thing about the gamer passport is that not, you just plug in and your data is collected every 24 hours and it's going to be bulked and somebody is going to actively try to trade it for you and share the value with you. But the other cool thing, though, man with the gamer passport and we believe that has to happen with all such things is it also has to give you some immediate value so you can actually log in every day, see your gaming snapshot and we're doing cool things like you can maybe compare yourself to another gamer. You just log in and say, oh, I'm playing fifa. There's this top 50 gamer who's also playing fifa and this is what he's doing, different to me. So you also get some like some sort of incentive for you to keep checking in.

JB Carthy: 1:02:57

Okay, so can you. Is it going to go to the level of like? Is it going to go to the level, whether it is now or in the future, of even like in-game strategy like?

Mark Paul: 1:03:06

It could like. The idea is we get you plug in and then you start collecting your data, but it doesn't end there. You can then then, for example, come into the gamer password app and you know, first thing is we're going to let you compare yourself to a top 100 playstation gamer, so that kind of gets you hooked as well, because now we're giving you some additional sort of value. But it can go much further, dude. It can even end up as a social network where you could like interact with these other gamers. You can see what they're doing different. You could interact with these other gamers. You can see what they're doing different, you can chat with them and, if you really think about it, what's happening is you're ending up with a very Web2 sort of app, but you are passively collecting your data and it's being traded and you're getting a share of it. So it's kind of the future we all want, right? We have fully personalized Web2 experience where we're interacting with people, we're generating data. Personalized web 2 experience where we're interacting with people.

Mark Paul: 1:03:57

We're generating data, but my data is not exploited and that's kind of what we're doing.

JB Carthy: 1:04:01

I'm super excited and I think, like you touched on, we probably will would need like another session to discuss all the possibilities and all the possibilities, all the thoughts that emerge from this.

JB Carthy: 1:04:12

But, like, all I can say is I'm super excited for what you guys are building, super excited to see how it turns out, super excited I'm not huge playstation player at the moment, have been in the past and but super excited to like try it, hopefully and like, like you were saying, all the other verticals and industries that, like this sort of like model could, um, help benefit, like both, help benefit the industries, help benefit the, the individual and, and, yeah, just the benefits it could bring on so many levels. Just super excited for what you guys are doing. Thanks so much for coming on and sharing and sharing like what you guys are building, sharing like what you guys are thinking, and it's always great to see people pressing forward and building cool and innovative solutions to like real world problems. And it's clear that you guys have obviously thought through and are trying to chat, trying to build solutions to some of the biggest problems and at the moment, like you know, yeah, man, awesome Thanks for having me.

Mark Paul: 1:05:11

Definitely I think we need another session. Awesome Thanks for having me. Definitely I think we need another session. I have always enjoyed my conversations with you, jb, because we kind of go a bit deep into the actual benefits of this right. So I think another session maybe, where we can kind of dive in specifically on this, what it actually means to everybody, what we're doing and with that ownership. So thanks for having me, man, I'm sure it's late at night for you guys. It's early for me. I'm going to take the kids to school in about 10 minutes, so I'll leave you guys now. So thank you all for joining as well.

JB Carthy: 1:05:41

Sweet man, listen, have a fantastic day. It's actually I'm going the opposite direction, man. I'm going to bed because it's like 10 past 11 at night over here, but no pleasure.

Mark Paul: 1:05:57

Thank you very much and I hope you have a great day. My friend Likewise. See you guys. See you Bye.

JB Carthy: 1:06:00

This was Helios Horizons, episode 18. Today we chatted with Mark Paul of Itheum about building a Web3 data economy. We touched through some of the challenges that users are facing and individuals are facing in terms of how their data is managed by big corporations, big industries, and some of the innovative and creative solutions that Ithium are building to help tackle these challenges. Thanks for listening and see you next week.