Concordium AMA: What makes it the blockchain built for the future economy?

Sam. Hey, everyone. What's up? How's it going? It's your girl Rachel here. Thanks again for joining us. For another wonderful AMA today, I'm with Benny Eisenberg. He is the chief or he is the chief of marketing at Concordium. Hi, Benny. How's it going, Rachel?

Very happy to be here. Very good, very good, thank you.

Good. Yeah. It's good to see you and I'm happy that you're joining us today. Before we get started, I just want to remind the audience to drop your questions in the chat for. For Benny. Wonderful. Well, Benny, so I guess first question, what is Concordium?

Oh, Concordium is a layer 1 blockchain with an ideal layer at the protocol level. This blockchain has also a native coin, which is called the CCD that got listed for the first time today on Bitfinex and Bitglobal. And Concordium is a very ambitious ecosystem that wants to tackle the issue regarding, you know, a ownership, but mainly also a accountability when it comes to the new economy. We have created, you know, this project a little bit more than three years ago based on the fact that we have identified quite a big problem when it comes to how you can be accountable for what you are doing with the blockchain. And we have created, as far as we understood, a unique solution that does, you know, include everything that is needed coming from Web3 and the new world that is coming and with the important postulates coming from the legacy world.

Got it. Wonderful. So, Benny, in terms of the problems that Concordium is solving, can we just elaborate a little bit more and kind of focus in on those and find out how Concordium is solving those problems?

I think the main problem that we are solving is the concept of anonymity that is coming. It's a kind of heritage coming from web2. I mean, you can do whatever you want to do on Twitter and Facebook and you are not uncount for the insults or for, you know, a bad behavior. We have, we have understood and identified the anonymity as the main problem of our industry, the blockchain industry. And we have decided to trade, you know, this anonymity with, you know, perfect privacy. It means that when you are today transacting on other chains, you can stay anonymous and you never know with who you are transacting. It means that you might end transacting with bad users or you might be transacting with users that are not allowed to transact with you. What we have created at Concordium is something completely new. You are in a position that you must identify yourself when you are using Concordium. I'm not speaking about kyc, this is not what I mean. I mean that you need to identify yourself using one of the identity providers that are plugged in the Concordium ecosystem. And once you identify with them, what we got as a chain is just, you know, using zero knowledge proof a I would say a note saying that you are Koisher for trading or transacting or you are not. It means that we as a chain don't know who you are, we don't know from where you're coming, we don't know what is your date of birth and we cannot care less for these kind of things. We just know that you have been identified with one of the trusted partners of Concordium. When it comes to your identity providing and what we are solving here, it's really the facility, the concept of you as a user being accountable for what you do for the good part and the bad part. Because being accountable, like my dear friend Spiderman was saying, or at least his uncle when with great powers comes great responsibility and the blockchain and the web tree industries providing users with something completely new and new power when it comes to self sovereign, I would say financial life. And with this you need a lot of responsibility and thus we have created this sensible balance between the necessary financial privacy and the necessary public accountability.

Got it right. Are you able to kind of explain some of the main use cases for Concordium? Because I think that would also help us better understand how this blockchain network is actually being used.

So we are all about defi. But by defi I'm not speaking about, you know, apes on an NFT platform or a what I do feel looks like, you know, what we have been living all together in 2017. Meaning, you know, some, some schemes that are enabling users, you know, to sell and to get rich etc. I mean everything related to speculation and ICO back in 2017, what we are trying to, to bring here, it's you know, the new businesses, I mean the new economy. And by new economy I mean it's something that is clearly no different from what we we have. It means that we are enabling businesses, but also entrepreneurs to build another kind of businesses based on community building but also based on the fact that every single user that is using a tool that is built or an application that is built on top of Concordium in a full, I would say compliant way. But the main use cases that you can identify for Concordium are all the use cases that are bringing to the table. The concept of identity, the concept of self sovereign identity and also the concept of, of, of being, you know, able to plug in to the current, you know, financial system. We are working today really clearly with quite a lot around, you know, 50 use cases that are going to be announced now that we are listed very soon. One of them is a clearly something that is around, you know, sustainability. We are going to enable a big company to issue a coin on top of Concordium that will be a given to users that are using only, you know, electric cars. It means that the more you are going to try to drive an electric car, the more you are going to earn in terms of tokens and you are going to be able to buy accessories for your car, to buy a new car. And it's one of the biggest name in the Chinese car place. We are working also quite a lot with green companies to track obviously carbon footprint and we are working also with a lot of charity entities that are looking to create a better environment for their donators to. Because today you know that when you donate funds you never know where it's used. And we are also working with quite a lot of emerging businesses and new kind of businesses where, you know, the community and the user will be much more sovereign and will be rewarded for its participation whether it's on the database or whether it is, you know, on the transaction base. But we don't have any kind of ultimate use case. We are willing to tackle what we call the regulated defi world, meaning the regulate, the rectify. It means to bring the financial world the way that we know today to the decentralized financial world, but using a regulated compliant approach.

Got it, Got it. I'm going to take a quick question from the audience. So I know that when we started you mentioned that the token CCD was launched on Bitfinex and Bitglobal today. So some audience members were wondering, you know, someone said is it tradable from the 12th? And I thought that that came tomorrow. So maybe you can just kind of clear the air there with its launch, it's launched.

It means that you can deposit and you can definitely trade. Maybe, but you need to check with those exchanges because we, we in general don't comment and we don't know how they are, you know, managing withdrawal. But I think that at the moment, because it's the first day of trading, you cannot withdraw, you know, your funds but you can definitely deposit and trade the CCD against three pairs eth, BTC and usdt.

Wonderful, great. So Benny, I know that Concordium Offers, you know, a lot, it has a lot to do with compliance. And so how is it bringing compliance to Web3 platforms? Exactly.

I think that we have three points that are really important for, for us to understand the Web three, you know, platforms are very interesting, but it is requiring us, you know, to be much more precise when it comes to who are that are playing in. So what we are providing at Concordium is a kind of, you know, a ultimate platform that does enable, you know, users to be, you know, self sovereign about, you know, their identification. It means that we as a platform don't know who you are, but we know that you are enabled, you are allowed to transact. We are using zero knowledge proofs at a very high level in order to enable these kind of things. And we are offering a kind of systematic self server and identification for all our participants. And this is the first part of our regulatory compliance readiness by design. And the other part of it is obviously related to the fact that at any moment a regulator can come to Concordium and ask to revoke the anonymity of a specific transaction using a network of anonymity revokers all over the world. So it means that we don't do that. But again, like the identity providers are providing identity, then we have anonymity revokers that are revoking anonymity. And then it means that a court can, you know, in principle revoke the anonymity of a transaction and bring to court somebody that is suspicious to have committed a crime or to have misled or misused the system. So again, we have this again, very sensible balance. If you play by the rules and you are not trying to cheat, then you are more protected than on any single other privacy centric ecosystem. But if you don't play by the rules, then you are accountable for your acts and you will have to give some reports and to be accountable in front of a court.

Got it. So Concordium doesn't involve or doesn't require kyc. But you told me earlier that it does require kyt, which is know your transaction. Correct.

It's not a requirement. It is, I would say, the production of Concordium. So instead of, you know, being centric on the KYC concept that is very much Web2 and the banking system, we have preferred, you know, to embrace the concept of KYT because our users, like I just said, are protected and self sovereign. It means that they can enjoy a very high level of financial privacy, but their transactions are identifiable. It means that like I said, we can revoke the anonymity but we prefer, you know, the concept of kyt, because the user is everything for Concordia.

Got it. Okay, I'm going to take a quick question from an audience member. Matthias is asking when will Americans be able to be approved to buy ccd?

That's a wonderful question. And for now, when it is an official statement, you can quote me. American users, whether they are living in the US or outside the US are not unfortunately, welcomed on our network due to the regulatory situation, compliance situation in the US we are very confident in our solution and we will begin very soon to build, I would say, a new dialogue with the sec. And you can expect as soon as possible, Concordium to be fully legal in the us. But again, as you know, I've been asked sometimes what is a philosopher, because I'm coming from this part of the world, I would say of the business world, and we cannot impose a kind of regulatory compliance to our users without imposing it at first on us. So it means that today using the CCD in the US is not legal. It's not unlegal too, but it's not legal. And until it's going to be legal, users must be protected. And we don't want to mislead them by, you know, letting them use a tool that is today not legal in the US at the moment.

And so, Benny, where is the token? Where can it actually be used right now?

So the token has been defined by the Swiss regulator. We do work under the Swiss law, has been defined as a cryptocurrency and as a payment token. It means that you can exchange, it's a mean of exchange and you can, you know, pay for stuff that are being done on the ecosystem. So it means that if you want to run a smart contract, for example, that does exist on Concordium already, you need, you know, to pay and to fuel the smart contract with the ccd. If you want to create some stuff and some application, the CCD will be the transaction fee, currency. But you can also today, for example, go to a very nice cafe in Copenhagen, one of the best in Denmark, and you can pay your coffee with ccd. You can exchange goods with the ccd. And tomorrow, like I said at the beginning, you will be able to buy cars with ccd.

That's awesome. That's an exciting announcement. I can't wait to hear more electricals, Rachel. Electricals, Right, Right. Yeah.

Cool.

Well, that's exciting. Let's talk a little bit more about compliance, because I'm curious to know what Concordium is doing to ensure compliance within the nft. Space, I think, was there an announcement there around something called Space 7 with Concordium.

Okay, so Space 7 is one of our use cases. It's the first one today that is bringing quite a lot of value to the ecosystem. It's a wonderful tool that has been developed by some very close friends of Concordium based in Ukraine and today it's the first NFT platform that is built on top of our layer 1 blockchain. By providing regulatory compliance by design, we have offered a Space seven and also platforms. There is another one that is coming which is called Victory. The capacity to build within a regulatory compliant environment. It means that when you buy on Space seven, you know, a, an NFT using the CCD or when you buy an nft, the transaction is, you know, expressed with an identity object on top of our chain. So it means that every single transaction or every single NFT that is minted as an identity object that is fully protected using zero knowledge proof, but where its anonymity is revocable if this is needed. So it means that what we are trying to do here is that in the NFT market, with a lot of volatility, but a lot also speed, you never know who you are selling to and you never know who you are buying for in Concordium. And using a Space seven to more Victory, you will never know also who you are buying from, but you will know that you are buying from somebody that is legit. And this is the main difference.

Got it. So basically because, and I've written about this as well for Cointelegraph quite a bit, wash trading is, you know, a huge problem within the NFT market today. So I'm assuming that this solution is going to also solve something like wash trading then.

I mean I invite, and really this is also an official statement, invite all those, you know, bad actors that are dealing with a wash trading to try us. They are going to be very well welcomed, if you know what I mean, because we will be able to help any kind of public authority to find who they are.

Got it? Got it. Okay, cool. I'm going to take another question from the audience. See, first of all, Lazado Ball is asking, are they electric cars? Did you mention that they're electric cars? With that you could buy electric cars eventually.

We are working closely with one of the biggest car manufacturers in the world and they are thinking definitely about issuing what they call a green token or green currency on top of Concordium. And it will be a reward for all the users of their cars if they drive more electric cars. They will get rewarded and they will be able to buy accessories or to buy a new car with those rewards. So we don't issue any kind of car. We are software house. I mean, believe me or not, I mean this is complicated and building a car, it's completely crazy. But we are not a car manufacturer. We are layer 1 blockchain a software house and we enable others to build, you know, the new economy. Cool.

Okay, I'm going to take one more question from the audience real quick. Exponential, Exponential. P is asking, what are some of the POCs we can hope to see from people building on Concordium? How do you begin to build in the world of reg defi in the ID layer?

That's a very good question. So the PoCs that you are going to see are not going to be POCs, they are going to be more real use cases. Because we've been around for quite a long time and we owe you guys. Not a poc, but real use cases with tangible tractions and not some wishful thinking or wannabe stuff. What you can see on Concordium and you will see this year, you know, values series of use cases from charity donation, for example, where you will be able as a user to track your donation, but also to trigger the release of the funds to the right guy that must get it and you will never be fluid again. You know about these kind of things. Like I said, we are working with the car industry to leverage the capacity of the users to be rewarded for their good practice. We are working also with Freewell, which is a Middle east company listed in the nasdaq. And what they are trying to solve is, you know, the problem of publishing public transportations for women in the Middle East. And as you know, this is a big problem in very crowded cities like Cairo or like Amman in Jordan. And they have built a concept of mini booths where you can book like, you know, with Lyft or with, with Uber, you can book a place. And we are working with them, you know, to make sure that this mini boost with those users are going to be seen as a kind of dao or kind of community. You will be able to delegate to the driver, you know, your tokens that are is going to mine and create blocks for you and you will get a reward. So we are trying to work with them to create a kind of circular virtue based on our technology, but based on their use. You will see also very soon an interesting platform that will track carbon footprint. We are very strong in this part of the industry. We are taking very seriously our Responsibility as a technology provider. And that's why we want to fix a little bit, you know, the way things are done in the technology world when it comes to sustainability. But in, in general, everything that is related to identification and everything that is also linked to financial privacy will be able to be seen. You will see also atomic swaps on top of Concordium very soon and you will see taxes, you will see peer to peer transactions, but everything in a regulatory compliant environment.

Right, Benny? So I'm just curious, I think that this is a topic that we should dig a little bit more into because identity is such an important element of Concordium. Let's talk about zero knowledge proofs and what that actually means and how that actually ensures, you know, user protection for their identity. I guess to keep everyone anonymous but still known in a way that's pretty.

Pretty much what you said. But I would say, you know, to keep people private and not anonymous and to be safe. A zero knowledge proof is a technology. Let's speak about the technology and what the technology does. It enables users the capacity to prove that they have the right rights to use a system without showing why they can use the system. If you want to, you want to go to a club in Miami City, you need to show your ID to prove that you are not underage. Zero knowledge proof does enable you to prove that you are not underage without showing your data. And that's very, very important to understand. I invite all of you guys to read about Zero knowledge proof because really this is something that is mind blowing. And what it does at Concordium, it means that we don't identify the users. We are using a network of identity providers and what we get from them. It's just one thing, yes or no. So it means an account is created on Concordium from the Concordium app, whether it's a mobile wallet or whether it's a desktop wallet, you must identify with of those identity providers that is returning to Concordium, yes or no. And if yes, you can transact and you can use the system. If no, you are invited to leave. So this is really simple to understand. We don't see anything. We cannot care less for who you are, what you do from where you are coming, the color of your hair or your gender. We just want to know that you have the wall authorization to be able, you know, to transact and use the system. So it means that we don't keep any kind of data, we don't have any kind of personal data kept on chain or outside the chain. What we know is that a specific address is enabled to transact or not. That's it.

Got it. Okay, so let's. So touching on that, which was a great explanation. Thank you. I'm going to take a question from the audience which I think also kind of touches on what you just said. So Exponential P is asking, can you expand more on the concept of freedom with accountability and what that means for Concordium?

I love that. I must, you know, give kudos to my friend and our, and our, you know, co worker Ernest is the father of the Davix Initiative. We'll speak about that maybe later today. But we have created this concept of free, thus accountable by free. We don't speak about free of charge, we speak about freedom. We do understand at Concordium that financial privacy is a basic human right. And this is a part of your constitution if you want to reach individual freedom. But like I said a bit before, you cannot enjoy a form pure, I would say, you know, freedom without being accountable for this freedom. And it means that on the other side of the map, when you get so much power, when you get so much, you know, sovereignty about what you are, who you are, what you do, you must be also accountable. This is the trade off of being free when you live in a free society. And I'm certain that there are some people that are listening to us today that are not enjoying living in the US or in other kind of country. They will understand what I'm saying. When you get freedom, you need to be accountable for your acts. In countries where you don't have any kind of freedom, you are not accountable, but it means that it is the path for anarchy and this is not what we do. So again, freedom means for us that you have the capacity to be self sovereign, but with great powers, again comes very great, you know, responsibility.

Right? Yeah, that's another great explanation. Thank you for that. Now, I did notice there was a question earlier from an audience member asking about who Concordium's competitors are. And actually I'm curious about that as well because obviously this is a very unique blockchain network. It's a very unique solution. And so are there any other people or any blockchains doing something similar to Concordium that you can mention?

It's a very difficult question and I hate saying that. Unfortunately, there is no direct competitor to Concordium. It's, and believe me, I'm a marketer for the last 20 years. It's more complicated when you need to fight with nobody. Because actually at the moment we are talking, nobody's providing what we are providing. But we do feel, and I don't like the concept of competitors. I prefer to see the concept of challengers because we challenge each other and we are good friends. We do see a, in Polkadot, in Near, in Solana, because all of them are coding in Rust also, but also in Hyperledger and Arch Recorder. We do see our direct, I would say challenges because they are layer one blockchains, because they are trying, you know, to do the right thing in the blockchain and this industry. But at the moment we are talking, unfortunately, nobody is tackling the concept of identity at the level that we are tackling it and with the science that is behind us to tackle this.

Right. And Benny, so what I think is interesting also, I've known you for, you know, years now, and I've known about Concordium for years now. And I remember, well, obviously this is a public blockchain solution for enterprise type use cases. And you were one of the earliest blockchain networks doing that before it kind of became a thing. You were kind of in that space with everyone building on private networks for enterprise, but you were always about public. So could you elaborate a little bit more on that? Why, you know, the advantage of a public blockchain network like Concordium for these use cases that we're talking about?

Well, I would say that the first level of, of my, my answer will be on the ethics. I would say level. It means that the world that we are now, you know, entering in is a world. The web3world is a world of publicness. It's a world where opacity, the way it was done by the Web two actors are not, is not possible anymore. So we definitely have identified at the beginning of our history a kind of request coming from the enterprise world to discover the capacity or the possibilities that are hiding themselves behind, you know, the concept of public blockchain. We are open source by definition. And being public for Concordium is not a marketing trick, it's not a marketing gimmick. It's even not, I would say, a technology thing. It's more an ethics. It means that we believe that what we are trying to build must be public. And by public, we mean that it must be reachable by everybody and for everybody. So it's more, you know, kind of mark of guarantee of our democratic approach than anything else. That said, the second part of my answer would be about, you know, what we have identified coming from the business world and the people today that are thinking the metaverses, because they are not there, is not only A metaverse, but a couple of them, I would say at least. And the people that are thinking the economy of tomorrow are thinking about, you know, this concept of publicness. And the people that are building the unicorns of tomorrow cannot think about building in a closed source and cannot think building. While they need to give, you know, access to their technology by themselves. It means that it must be done as a kind of self service, I would say, you know, approach where everybody, no matter what is the color of, you know, of his skin, what is his gender, what is his level of, of technology savviness or whatsoever, can do something with our chain. So we are very proud to have been the first disruptors of the disruptors because we have opened our chain for businesses while everybody was working in a closed source. So it's a very, I would say political democratic, but also technology say and statement that we are giving now.

Right? Yeah. Wonderful answer. Just want to remind the audience, keep your questions coming. We're getting a lot of good ones coming in, so we appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you guys. Benny, I wanted to also ask you a little bit about the token ccd. How is that token being used across the network and what are the advantages there?

So the token is a. Our payment token is the fuel of the network. So the validators and the finalizers of Concordium are getting their rewards expressed in ccd. And this is, you know, the main concept of the ccd. It means that you can definitely, you know, stake it. We are proof of stake by nature. And you can stake it and make a passive, you know, income based on the level of security that you are providing the network with. But you can pay also, obviously, like I said a little bit before, you can pay a coffee today in one of the best coffee in Copenhagen and tomorrow you will be able, like I said, to buy cars. But the CCD mainly is our payment token. So it means that we pay our transaction fees when you reuse the system using the CCD the same way you use Ethereum to pay your transaction fees when you do something in defi that is built on top of Ethereum and tomorrow the sky is the limit. So it means that you will be able to do mostly everything based on the fact that in the token itself you have some primitives related to your identity. And this token is by definition something that is the closest expression of a regulatory compliance.

Got it. Okay, I'm going to take a quick question from the audience. Jordan Unknown is asking how, how is Concordium going to work out? Baker Node Rewards.

So We are proof of stake. You need to run a node in order to be a baker or validator. Let's call it, you know, this way we call it baker because we like the concept of baking. And on the other side of the map you have also, you know, finalizers. Concordium is one of the sole chains that does, you know, provide it's, it's weird what I'm gonna say. Real and optimistic, you know, finality. So when transaction is final, Concordium no rollback and it means it's done in a couple of seconds and you cannot roll back. And it's not depending on the level of, you know, of a load balancing on the network. So it's very sharp, it's very quick, etc. Etc. So in general we have an emission, a capped emission, you know, but we have also inflation. That's, that's our business model. We are the first year with 10% of inflation means that we mint 10 on top of the current circulating supply. The second year it's going to be 5% and from the third year and then it's going to be 2% for those, you know, 10%, 85% are going to bakers. It means that every, every single block that is minted, 85 of it is, you know, going, are going to the baker, 5% are going to the finalizers and 10 are coming, coming to the com. To the, the foundation to cover our operational cost.

Got it, got it. And Benny, I just wanted to go back to something you mentioned when we were talking about the CCD token about the transaction fees because that's used to cover the transaction fees. But I mean one of the benefits of Concordium is our low transaction fees. So can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Yes, they are very low and that's very important. A and they are not dynamic. It means that at any point you will know in euros because we are more a European, you know, company, how much you are going to pay in terms of transaction fees. Our transaction fees are stable expressed euros and they are very, very, very low. So it means that regarding your previous question about the business world, no business will be able, you know, to transact on chain without knowing how much it will cost it. It's impossible to think about something like that. And we think that we have found a nice solution by bringing in your. Those table transaction fees low expressed obviously in Europe.

Right? Yeah, well you make a really good point there. I mean, how are these enterprises going to want to use a blockchain network when they don't even know how much the transaction fees are going to cost them. So that's really an important point here.

I think definitely it's a direct user benefit for our users. They will know and they will stay in control. When we speak about self sovereignty, we mean it. It's not again a marketing gimmick. We are here for the users and we want to empower them as much as possible in a regulatory compliant way.

Right. And also Benny, you mentioned about the transaction finality. That's another important point here with enterprises, right.

I think it's essential if not capital to know when we you wire a transaction, when you broadcast a transaction, there is no way for you to see it back or to seeing glass because I don't know, the blocks were too numerous because you know people were using platform to buy something on Ethereum, I don't know. But you cannot, you know, as a business, you know, take the risk that your transaction will not be finalized within a couple of seconds, not wait one day. I do remember a business case that I dealt with, you know, seven years ago. I was already a bitcoin miner but I was very much a Web2 guy and I do remember that the deal was that I need to send some money to buy something until a certain amount of time and I was using obviously the SWIFT system and the transaction was well bad because the other part was not accepting it and I lost the deal and I lost a lot of business power because of this deal. When you use a financial service you want to trust it. So you need to verify and you need to trust but you need to be to know that when you do something it's going to be respected as soon as possible. If not, you cannot trust it.

Right? Yeah, great answer. I'm going to take another question from the audience. We're getting a lot of them coming in so thanks guys for that. Exponential P or Exponential IP is asking how can you contribute to the Concordium ecosystem you start building.

So we have a grant program. Let's begin by that it means that we have a grant program that is very ambitious. We have allocated 6.5% of our total, you know, emissions circulating supply. So sorry, not circulating supply, our total supply. So 6.5%. It's quite a lot if you, if you ask me. And we are open to every single use case but mainly we have also what we call a shopping list. We have have a wish, wish list of things that we would like to be done and you are more than invited to come to concordium.com to discuss with us. In a public way. It's done on GitHub, so there is no tricky monkey business there. And if your your offer and if what you are trying to provide Concordium with does make sense, it's a done deal and you begin to work. And you will be enjoying a unique experience because you will be accompanied by our tech teams that is led by Tobin Petersen, which is the father of the Pedersen commitment, one of the most beautiful cryptography piece on earth, which is used today by Monero, zcash, Green and bim. All of them are privacy centric coins.

Yeah.

And the father of this protocol is our cto. And you will be enjoy enjoying the capacity to speak with one of the rock stars of the crypto world.

Oh, wow, that's awesome. Very good to know. Okay, I'm going to take another question from the audience. I really like this question. I think it's a important for us to discuss. So Gimple is asking the real question is why would enterprises want to use blockchain to begin with? Not everything needs to or should be used on a blockchain. It's not practical for most applications. So what are your thoughts on that, Benny?

I would say that if you are looking in the past, you are totally right. I mean if you want to deal with a business of selling, I don't know, goodies online, a DLT will be enough. I mean a distributed ledger, you know, technology will be enough. You can use quite a lot of existing things. But we are looking toward the future and toward, you know, web3 and the metaverse and there, you know, something that is public, something that is immutable, something that you can trust, something that is without middleman and something that you are, you know, in control as self. So end user is really needed in order to clean the toxicity of Web2, you know, technologies. So I would say that, you know, for the past, you're right. It is really, you know, interested, interesting to see how enterprises are going to be able to not do, you know, what we have called, you know, 20 years ago, the digital transformation. But they are going to do the decentralized, I would say, you know, a transition and to use blockchain not only for the great way of storing, you know, data, but also for the governance features that it is offering your users. What I can tell you is that I'm not young anymore, unfortunately. And I've been there 20 years ago with the Internet bubble. And at this time I was asked the same kind of question. Not every single businesses need a website. And in 26 and 28, not every single business need and needs, you know, a mobile app. And guess what? Today every single business has a website and has a mobile app. So it's a question of literacy, but it's more also a question of, of targeting the right needs of business to be able to answer in a proper way. So we don't aim to sell blockchain as a technology. We are not believing in blockchain, we believe in technology. And if blockchain is the right technology for your business, showing very fine. If it is not, you can use other kind of technology. We are not the believers of this blockchain religion, if you know what I mean.

Right. I mean also I think Benny, a good point is coming from the enterprise space because I've been in that space since 2017 is blockchain is just going to be another part of the tech stack. It's not going to be like, oh, you're using blockchain, why are you using blockchain? But it's going to be just kind of an obvious choice for, for, you know, companies to use.

And what I can, it's a very good point. And what I can tell you is with those endless meetings that we have with a lot of businesses and system integrators, the big force, for example, we are talking with them, they know that they need to understand blockchain and to use blockchain, they still don't know how. So it's very early. But the new businesses that are, you know, coming today, that have no anchorage in the web 2 or in the past are all about blockchain. Not because this is blockchain but because this is enabling them to do something that was not done until now when it comes to decentralizing, you know, the mode of governance, but also to when it comes to pure social justice and fairness.

Right, yeah, very good points. Audience members, keep sending us your questions. We still have about five more minutes here with Benny. Okay, I just got a few questions come in, so let me take those. I've noticed this question a few times, so I'll just ask it. Benny Jordan Unknown is asking what other exchanges does Concordium have lined up?

I cannot answer this question but we have secured every month earliesting so you can, you know, definitely expect the next one to come, you know, a the end of this month, beginning of next month. We are planning to work with a. I don't like the concept of tier one exchanges because it doesn't mean anything in a non regulated world because you can manipulate everything there, which is the case with most of the platforms that we are working with, as you know, users of the blockchain, but we are working with mainly with exchanges that are sharing our vision and mission. And this is the most important thing. We don't want to send users of Concordium to. I would say, I'm going to say that not, not compliant exchanges because there are very few of them. But with people that are not, you know, believing in what we believe, it means that we believe in something that is a little bit greater than us, a collective way, I would say.

Great. Okay, wonderful. Another question from the audience. Exponential P is asking how is Concordium environmentally responsible, responsible? What parts of the technology make it environmentally sound? That's a great question, A fantastic question.

Two parts of my answer here. When we speak about sustainability and being green or being close to zero emission, we forget about the source of energy at Concordium. We think that we have understood our mission. So it means that we are reducing as much as possible the necessary computing power that you need in order to run a node, to bake blocks or to finalize transactions or even to use, you know, Concordium. And we are going towards zero emission, which we are going to never reach. It's impossible to reach zero emission when you are dealing with softwares. But what we can do and what we are doing at the moment, we are looking, you know, to, to give priority to partners that are helping us to reach this point. It means that we are going very soon to issue some partnerships with big, I would say cloud platforms and we are going to invite our users to use those platforms and those servers only when the energy that is coming or fueling those servers is green. So it means coming from the water, it's coming from the air, it's coming from the sun. Because if you ask me, you can have, you know, a very low level of carbon footprint. But if you use fossil energy, you've done nothing. I mean, you still are hurting the planet. We have chosen the proof of stake, you know, a consensus mechanism for this purpose. Also I'm a bitcoin maximalist that treat themselves. So I used to be a bitcoin maximalist. So I used to be all about, you know, proof of work. And I did co founded also a beam privacy which is, you know, a proof of work, also a coin. But for this specific project we have understood that we need to take our responsibilities. Proof of stake is way better than proof of work when it comes to a carbon footprint. But the other side of the map must be also responsible when it comes to the source of energy. And we invite our users, we cannot enforce this but we invite them to use only legit source of energy when it comes to what they are going to do with the network.

Yeah, wonderful answer. Thanks Benny. We have a few minutes so obviously audience keep sending us your questions. These are really great questions by the way. But Benny, before we end the ama, what's in store for Concordium next? What can we expect next?

So we have a big milestone that is coming, you know, right after, you know, our listing campaign. It's going to happen in the beginning of May. We have our second biggest protocol upgrade that will include quite a lot of incredible stuff that we are developing at the moment. Our delegation to a pool mechanism will be deployed in May and all our staking infrastructure will be deployed together with a lot of other super cool things. But what you can expect with us is, and I can, you know, commit on that it's every single week you will get your, you know, a news that is not just an announcement. Oh, we are partnering with X or we are partnering with Y. But you will see a real announcement with a real, I would say POC or prototype about a real thing, a tangible in a product that we are building together with those use cases. Our mission today is to tackle only one thing the be the world we want to be built on top of. And we want to provide our builders with the best experience when it comes to developing and we are working very hard to reach this point.

Got it, Got it. I'm going to take one more question from the audience. We do have a lot coming in so thanks guys. Jordan Unknown is just asking as Concordium cmo, what plans do you have for marketing in the future? I guess, you know, we're excited to find out more about Concordium. So how do you plan to market it?

So we are going, you know, to play quite, I would say pragmatically we don't want to create any pumping or dumping. We are not, we are not on this part of the world. What we are trying to do is really, you know, to gain in brand awareness for based on meritocracy. I mean we don't believe in artificial, you know, pumping and we don't believe that we, we shall, you know, belong to the top just because our beautiful eyes, which we don't have by the way, as you may see. But we belong to the top because of the meritocracy of what we are doing. So the more we will be used by builders, the more we are going to be known for our usage. We don't we, we don't matter as a layer and block blockchain. What matters today on top of Concordium is what you can do with our technology, what you can expect from us. It's quite a lot of branding approach and you can tell with our new website that we have changed. We changed completely the way we are tackling these kind of things. You can expect quite a lot of things done in the metaverse or for the metaverse and we are going to speak about that very much and you are going to see us, you know, with a lot of mainstream, I would say, you know, outlets, etc, etc, because our mission, it's not only to convince you guys, the crypto, you know, people, newbies, etc, to come to us, but our first and early mission is to bring the non crypto people and non blockchain people to use for the first time a blockchain and a crypto because they can. Now, since we are providing a regulatory compliance environment.

Right, Definitely. And we have some great coverage on Coin Telegraph as well. So obviously you guys need to check that out. Benny, we're running, we're basically out of time. So if the audience wants to get in touch with you for more questions, what's the best way to do that?

Twitter. You can follow us on Twitter, you can go to Telegram and to Discord. The best way to find all those addresses is to go to concordium.com very easy to understand. You can join us. We are very, very open to discuss everything but trading, because we cannot speak about trading. That's the first rule of the fight club, as you know. And the second rule is the same, but you can definitely talk to us. We are very reachable. You can talk with our CEO Lonnie Fan Strada, you can talk with our founder last year, Christensen, and obviously with your humble servant and the world tech team that is behind us. Cool.

Great. Well, I just want to say thank you to the audience for joining us. It's been great having you guys. Thank you, Benny. It's been a pleasure catching up and to chat with you again. It's always good to see a familiar face who's been in the space for a really long time. And just want to remind the audience to please subscribe to our YouTube channel. We're going to be doing more AMAs, so join us for the next ones and yeah, we'll see you guys later.

Thank you, Rachel and thank you to everyone. It was amazing. Thank you.

Bye. Thanks everyone. Bye.