Many companies are in a catch-22 when it comes to working with blockchain. On the one hand, organizations are fearful of doing nothing with blockchain because they know how, in the hands of a clever competitor, distributed ledger technology could be used to disrupt their businesses or industries. On the other hand, those same organizations also know blockchain laws are coming but not when or in what form. Meanwhile, regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have embarked on a startling wave of enforcement activities against blockchain-related projects. 

At NFT.NYC 2023, a conference dedicated to the many use cases of non-fungible tokens, two Washington, DC-based crypto attorneys from Perkins Coie LLP—Jamie Schafer and Valerie Dahiya—were on hand for a panel discussion to offer sound advice on how to move forward as safely as possible on blockchain projects given the current regulatory climate. 

Following the session (which was standing room only), Blockchain Journal editor-in-chief David Berlind caught up with Schafer and Dahiya (who was once an attorney for the SEC) and looking for more specifics on behalf of reluctant enterprises that want to move forward with their blockchain initiatives. Two significant takeaways were (1) to take note of laws surrounding corollary precedents that already exist and (2) to bring a lawyer with you if you decide to take any regulators up on their open-door offers to meet with "industry."

Only a few weeks before this event, David interviewed CFTC Commissioner Summer Mersinger (https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/cftc-commissioner-mersinger-invites-nervous-enterprises-come-chat-about-blockchain/) who, in response to the same line of questions about moving forward amid regulatory uncertainty, advised businesses to come in for a chat. Said Dahiya, "They are not your lawyers." In other words, do not necessarily take a regulator's advice as legal advice.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/use-nonblockchain-precedents-a-guide-selfregulation-say-perkins-coies-crypto-lawyers/

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a-SX8Flr5I

Use Non-Blockchain Precedents As A Guide To Self-Regulation Say Perkins Coie's Crypto Lawyers

As buzz phrases go, "the NFT is the new cookie" is getting some traction in enterprise blockchain circles because of the incredible shrinking usefulness of cookies; bits of data that, when allowed into a user's desktop or mobile web browser, make it possible for web sites to build more personalized user experiences. But, as with many technologies that involve end-user benefits, cookies are a double-edged sword that can also be used to invade a user's privacy.  Such invasions have led to privacy laws that have eroded if not fully stripped the cookie of its utility. Unlike cookies, however, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are by their very nature permissioned. In other words, users are never unwilling recipients of an NFT the way they are with cookies or spam. As such, NFTs create new opportunities for high-fidelity relationships with customers. But seizing those opportunities is a different story.

To make NFTs work in this capacity, enterprises must first understand the role that blockchain plays in both the minting and ownership assignment of NFTs. As enterprise workflows go, the process is nearly as complicated if not more complicated than the way cookies work. The reason cookies experienced early success is that end users played little to no role in cookie engagement. Similarly, for businesses to unlock the promise of NFTs as the new cookies, they'll need to be friction-free from the customer's perspective.

According to Niftmint founder and CEO Jonathan G. Blanco, "As with any form of industry revolution, it's all about how things become more simple. It's not like 'We created this new industrial revolution and now things are more difficult' so productivity is more complex." While at the NFT.NYC 2023 Conference in New York City, Blockchain Journal editor-in-chief David Berlind had a chance to speak with Blanco shortly after he finished his presentation on what it will take to onboard the first billion users to blockchain. One thing it won't take: is friction.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/niftmint-looks-take-friction-out-enterprise-nft-deployment/

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e90hw-tqbo

Niftmint Looks To Take The Friction Out Of Enterprise NFT Deployment

When it comes to concerts and professional sports, two of the biggest brands experimenting with NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are the National Football League (NFL) and Ticketmaster. NFL Sr. Director Emerging Products Daniel DeVece and Ticketmaster Director of Product Management Joe Aiello were on hand at the NFT.NYC 2023 conference in New York City where they, along with Dapper Labs VP of Partnerships Brittany O'Hagan presented a session on how NFTs are powering fan engagement. Following the session, Blockchain Journal editor-in-chief David Berlind took the opportunity to interview O'Hagan to better understand how Dapper Labs is working with the NFL and Ticketmaster and how other enterprises and big brands should be thinking about NFTs and the opportunities they create. 

One thing that O'Hagan made clear is that the three organizations — what she calls "the three-headed monster" — do not yet have all the answers. The applications of NFTs to fandom and big brands is such a new area for many organizations that the three-headed monster is still "in the depths just grinding" on new ideas. But what the three organizations do know is that they are moving forward with blockchain and NFTs. The first outcome of their collaboration is called NFL All Day; a brand involving NFT-based digital collectibles that will feature NFL game highlights on the Flow public distributed ledger. 

But according to O'Hagan, there's more to come. During the interview, O'Hagan talked about using the individual brand powers of the league, team, and player to unlock new levels of fandom that are currently unavailable to sports fans in real life. But in terms of applications that are transferrable to other industries and enterprises, one major use case that the three organizations are looking into (especially given Ticketmaster's involvement) is the idea of NFT-based ticketing for events like concerts and big league games (Dapper Labs is also working with the National Basketball Association; the NBA).  

According to O'Hagan, ticketing on a big-event scale is definitely the next phase of how NFTs can and will be used.  But in order for blockchain-based ticketing to really work, it will not only take a lot of fan education, it will also depend on how easy it will be for big brands to bridge their existing fan and customer bases to Web3 experiences where there's still a fair amount of onboarding friction.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/big-event-ticketing-is-next-phase-how-nfts-will-be-used-dapper-labs-ohagan/.

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVs_PqTbldA.

Big Event Ticketing is the Next Phase of How NFTs Will Be Used: Dapper Labs' O'Hagan

Here in the halls of Blockchain Journal's virtual offices, we've come up with a name for an unsolved blockchain identity problem for which no scalable, technological solution exists as far as we know. We call it "The William Shatner Problem" because, back in July 2020 when a bunch of William Shatner-approved NFTs were posted for sale on Wax.io's NFT marketplace, there was no technological identity standard in place such that buyers could trace any so-called William Shatner NFTs back to the actual William Shatner himself. 

As far as Blockchain Journal can tell, this important element of transactional provenance remains technologically unsolved which in turn means that less scalable non-standard workarounds must be applied when such provenance matters in order to avoid fraud (for example, when purchasing digital assets from a seller that's truly authorized to sell those assets). Those workarounds, which do work but are not inherent to blockchain technology, are currently the basis for much of the trust in the world of blockchain today.

So, when Blockchain Journal editor-in-chief David Berlind was invited to interview the co-founder of Wax.io William Quigley (who also co-founded Tether) at the NFT.NYC 2023 Conference, he jumped at the opportunity to see if maybe the technological solution existed but was evading the BCJ team. 

According to Quigley, as far as the decentralized ethos of blockchain is concerned, it still remains an unsolved problem. In the interview, Quigley says "One of the challenges with NFTs is understanding the provenance of the item because, while anyone can go on and buy a William Shatner NFT, they would rightly want to know 'Well, did William Shatner actually approve this? Is this really his?'" 

Quigley also points out that technologically speaking, this problem tracks closely to the identity problem that was solved in the Web 1.0 era by Certificate Authorities saying "There are third parties that validate that a company is who they say it is like Verisign for example." But reliance on such central authorities or registries to establish such trust is contradictory to the decentralized religion of distributed ledger technology (DLT). As such Quigley also pointed out that "The goals of blockchain [aren't] where [they need] to be. There's still some trust you have to place in the system. You hear 'trustless' a lot but there are very few things that are trustless. Decentralization is a path and not something that someone has fully done yet." And until standards for technologically assuring (a) the authenticity of an identity and (b) the provenance of digital assets that are connected to that identity are developed, Quigley says "non-blockchain forensics" will be a part of the buyer-beware process. 

Towards the end of the interview, Quigley tells David that NFTs have all sorts of magical properties and applications that are not widely understood and that the buying and selling of digital art, music, and video are just the first of many applications to come.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/decentralization-trust-still-not-fully-solved-blockchain-says-cofounder-tether-and-wax/

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8y_jrQMmUc

Decentralization of Trust Still Not Fully Solved by Blockchain says Co-Founder of Tether and Wax

One of the biggest conversations in the blockchain industry that tends to fly below the radar has to do with the custody of digital assets. It's so important that the word "custody" has actually become a verb and you'll hear it come up in questions like "Should an enterprise self-custody its cryptocurrencies or should it custody those and other digital assets with a trusted third party custodian?"  

The idea of custody is as old as banks. The reason banks exist is because of the dangers involved in the self-custodianship of cash (eg: keeping all your money under a mattress). But currency isn't the only valuable asset that you may not trust yourself to protect. For example, art museums often act as custodians of private art collections on behalf of the owners of those collections. 

Another prized collectible among the Gen Zs and Alphas are rare sneakers and South Korea-based MetaZ is looking to capitalize on the growing interest in collectible sneakers by offering a service that not only custodies the physical sneakers in a vault (where their pristine condition can easily be preserved), they issue a digital twin NFT that represents a transferrable certificate of ownership (in the same way that many other NFTs can be sold in the secondary markets). While MetaZ doesn't exactly fit into the enterprise blockchain category that Blockchain Journal likes to cover, it's not difficult to imagine a large apparel company that's already working with NFTs (eg: Nike) getting into a similar business where, instead of sending a physical collectible sneaker to a customer, it just sends the digital twin NFT for that sneaker instead and then the manufacturer custodians the sneaker as a service to the customer.

While at the NFT.NYC 2023 conference in New York City, Blockchain Journal editor-in-chief David Berlind took the opportunity to interview the MetaZ co-founder and platform lead Kim Kim to learn more about how the service works.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/metaz-will-custody-your-collectible-sneakers-a-vault-and-issue-nfts-certificates/

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt6C_hQ-Q7s

MetaZ Will Custody Your Collectible Sneakers In a Vault and Issue NFTs as Certificates of Ownership

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