Interview with Rob May, CEO & Co-Founder at Talla, conducted by Jason Manolopoulos

Botchain by Talla provides a distributed ledger that enables trust and wider adoption of AI agents. The need for internal auditing of AI bots and agents to maintain effective governance, risk management, and control has been emphasized by the Global “Institute of Internal Auditors”. Botchain aims to provide a solution that will allow for universal registration, identity validation, and an immutable event ledger. The BotChain token (BotCoin) will provide the underlying currency for all bot transactions, from identity validation to collaboration and decision hashing.

We had the privilege to interview the CEO and co-founder of Talla, Rob May, to find out more about the future of Talla, Botchain and AI auditing solutions.

ABOUT ROB MAY

Can you tell us a bit about yourself, your background and what you were doing before Botchain?

Rob May (henceforth RM): I was originally a hardware engineer, moved into business development then general management. In 2008 I started a company called Backupify that did backup for cloud computing applications like Google Apps, Salesforce, and Office365. We sold that in 2014. In 2015 I started Talla to focus on building digital AI assistants.

Given you have exited a business, what drives you to travel the arduous path of a startup again?

RM: Great question. I think it’s a bit addictive. I thought about retiring for a while, or going into venture capital but, I like the challenge of early-stage company building.

What was the inspiration behind launching Botchain?

RM: My head of product and I were discussing that, soon, bots would communicate with each other and these communications should be stored independently so they can’t be erased or forged, and blockchain would be a good solution for that. Then we met a blockchain expert and Ernst and Young who pointed out that in the near future, all bot activities, not just communications, will be audited, and we should store every bot transaction on a blockchain.

How did it come about?

RM: From there we started talking to potential early partners and trying to understand what the market wanted, which of the many problems Botchain could solve should be done first. There was a lot of enthusiasm, so it was an easy decision to start moving forward.

BOTCHAIN

What is BOTchain all about?

RM: Botchain is a protocol for AI identity, compliance, audit, and reputation. With much more to come long term. For example, we haven’t announced it publicly yet, but we are working on smart contracts that are specifically designed for AI interactions.

What issue does it solve?

RM: Botchain solves several issues. Today, most software is rules-based. That means if you interact with it on January 1st, and then again on June 1st, it does the same thing. But that is changing. We are moving to intelligent adaptive software that is run by probabilistic models. This means if you interact with the software at two different times, you may get slightly different answers. Bots and AI processes are going to be everywhere. Their usage is exploding, yet they can be unpredictable. Botchain helps identify them, audit them, enforce compliance, and helps them grow and improve by sharing skills and data between them.

How does it work? What information will you store onchain?

RM: For the bot identity, we will store some information onchain. For audit and compliance use cases, it is just a hash of the inputs.

What will be the initial use cases?

RM: The first two use cases are identity and audit.

What are the business model and monetization plan?

RM: Botchain will be a completely open source product. Talla, Botchain’s parent company, will be an early user and will monetize Botchain by selling extra features on enterprise contracts related to Botchain. We also will build new services on top of Botchain that aren’t part of the chain itself and will run a validation service for bot identity on Botchain.

Why does this need to be decentralized?

RM: Enterprises need the immutability of a decentralized system. Otherwise, as we know from history, they will delete/forge/hide things when something goes wrong, and it has to be auditable.

How do the token economics work?

RM: As an ERC-20 token, we mostly inherit Ethereum’s token economics. But for additional issues, we have some small situations where tokens may be burned, and the supply stays limited; there is no mining. Otherwise, it is for network transactions.

How do you balance the diverging needs of the initial investors/funders of the network, versus the future users?

RM: I think just making the token divisible to many many decimal places solves that problem.

What happens if the token price rises too high, thus dissuading usage?

RM: The providers should switch to pricing in their local fiat currency and using the equivalent fraction of a botcoin as payment.

This is a utility token which the SEC is against. What are the risks here?

RM: The risks are that we have to re-incorporate in another jurisdiction if the SEC ultimately rules against utility tokens.

Business Plan execution

What is the go-to-market strategy?

RM: We hired a head of partnerships early. He has done a great job of signing up partners. We already have reached 50,000 developers, 400 million end users, and over 1 billion bot transactions, if we follow through and get Botchain deployed with the initial partnerships.

How will you scale?

RM: We will most likely have to move off Ethereum by mid-2020 if it doesn’t increase TPS.

Reflection

What have been your proudest moments since you launched Botchain?

RM: PWC was excited about the project and gave us a quote for our very first press release. We are probably the only ICO with a Big 4 accounting firm quoted for support.

What have been your biggest mistakes?

RM: We registered Botchain in the U.S., which has slowed things down. We probably should have done it abroad.

What experiences can you share about doing an ICO? Any lessons learned and areas to avoid?

RM: The service providers in the space who help have dramatically varying levels of quality, and because the space is new, it is tough to distinguish who is excellent and who isn’t. There is no long-term track record. So, be careful.

BOTS

Which verticals will first see disruption due to bots?

RM: Things that are most easy to automate. In chatbots, that is customer support, marketing engagement, and healthcare queries. In RPA, it is back office work like insurance claims.

How will society adapt?

RM: I think they will want some monitoring and control over these new entities, which is why we need Botchain.

We saw Amazon Echo starting to laugh by itself recently. What are the risks of the rise of the Bots?

RM: All new technologies get spoofed, abused, and used for spam. Hopefully Botchain mitigates some of that.

When will reputation systems be ready for bots? What are the significant challenges credible rating systems to be achieved?

RM; It mostly requires the ecosystem to agree on a reputation standard. We hope that Botchain can lead the way there. Merely having users rate their engagement with bots, or making it easy to flag scam bots would be a good start.

What is the risk of Bots being hacked?

RM; It’s the same as any other system from a technical perspective. The thing I worry more about is social engineering of chatbots. Could you ask a series of related questions that, when the answers are all disclosed, allow you to piece together the information you shouldn’t have?

CRYPTOMARKET

The market is in a bear market: What is your outlook for 2018? Bullish/bearish/why?

RM: I attend enough events around the world to know that this is just getting started, so, I think we will end 2018 on a bullish note.

What are some of your favorite smaller companies/Tech projects?

RM: I like Cognate – trademarks on the blockchain.

Ethereum has dominated the issuance market: Why did you choose Ethereum?

RM; Picking early technology winners is difficult, but Ethereum seemed the safest bet for now, while we work through use cases and implementations.

Are you worried about the scaling issue?

RM: Yes but I think in a few years moving blockchains will be more comfortable.

Do you think other Issuance platforms can overtake Ethereum? Stellar/Qtum etc.

RM: I think they can and they will. I think token generation will ultimately become disconnected from the underlying blockchain, and many token systems will be cross-chain.

CLOSING

What is your vision for Botchain for 2023?

RM; I would love to see 1 Billion daily bot activities that require Botcoin to trade hands, and seeing the early groundwork for a full AI based economy where Botcoin is their currency.

Where will the crypto-market over the next years?

RM; The worst stuff will get flushed out, and the healthy stuff will inspire new entrepreneurs and innovation. This is the first inning of a long game, so I am very excited.