Blockchain Week 2018 NYC Take-Aways

Bluzelle Team at Ethereal Summit & Consensus NYC

Ethereal Summit

It was an intimate, targeted, and really well-managed conference. The selection of companies that sponsored here were of high quality. Instead of setting up a traditional conference booth, Bluzelle hosted a large lounge with sets of sofas, coffee tables, and televisions, which allowed people to interact with the Bluzelle team in a relaxed and directed fashion.

At our lounge, I and two of my two team members (Mehdi & Isabel) showcased our Lovelace Beta product, and demo’ed how a developer can get up and running with our database in under 10 minutes. People were intrigued with Bluzelle’s developer environment, and amazed by how we have achieved so many partnerships and milestones after our token sale.

We were thrilled that most attendees who came to our lounge were already inquisitive about what Bluzelle does or knew about us. We had lots of engaging and specific conversations with different types of people. We also gave away our stickers and our renowned “Carl-Nikola-Isaac-Neil” shirts and people loved them!

The team were engaging with people at the Bluzelle Lounge during Ethereal Summit NYC

Consensus

Consensus was a fast-paced event with a large number of sponsors. It appeared that the theme centered more around companies that facilitate the management and exchange and trade of tokens and cryptocurrencies, vs utilities/services that were powered by a token. There were many exchanges, companies offering the tools to build an exchange, fund and asset management companies, companies offering a means to launch your own blockchain, and then the more uncommon companies offering a product/service centered around a token (such as an infrastructure product).

We met lots of amazing people in this space. (From left to right,) Amir from 0x, Antoine from Enuma Technology & Brian Lio from Smith & Crown

Interestingly, due to the enormous interest around Consensus and the high level of attendance, it was also a great value and efficient means to connect with the industry people I was looking to meet.

Apart from Consensus, a lot of companies took this terrific opportunity to host meetings and events after the conference, which added more fun and diversity to Blockchain Week.

With Bluzelle friends & family — Zilliqa, ICON, RightMesh & Indorse

At Token Summit NYC

Overall, people were excited about Bluzelle’s decentralized database.

More specifically, interested parties were able to quickly grasp what we do, when we described it as a decentralized key value store. Even better was what one developer exclaimed: “Ah… a decentralized Redis!” The typical questions were asked, including why to use the Bluzelle database instead of SQL Server or Oracle or MongoDB. Other questions included why not to use IPFS or Storj. These are common questions I am typically asked at speaking events. Once I got into explaining the Bluzelle database as a decentralized key value store, with a clear and concise explanation along the lines of security, scalability, consistent performance, and reliability, all was understood.

People were particularly excited when I talked about more “human” aspects to what makes our database not just better than other database’s along the lines of the four aforementioned metrics, but disruptive in a way other database’s can’t possibly be. These included the idea of people owning all the data they give to a service (like a social network like Facebook, only decentralized) that is built on top of our database and therefore, transferring the “ownership” of data from the hands of the social network (as an example) to the owner of the data itself. The idea is to give people a “switch” they can flip that literally denies access to their data to anyone they don’t want to share it to — cryptographically enforced by Bluzelle itself, with the ability to permanently remove the data at will (ie: the right to be forgotten). The fact that Bluzelle is a mutable database (unlike blockchains, where the data remains forever) really resonated loudly with people, especially in light of modern day privacy concerns and regulations such as GDPR.

The second aspect that was very positively received was an idea I have come up with, centered around expert data publishing. People were excited knowing that not only will they be able to earn Bluzelle tokens by being a farmer (which does appeal to many people who want to use their hardware to earn tokens) but now, there is another powerful channel by which people can earn, by curating valuable information (like restaurant data or GPS data or recommended sugar substitutes, for example). This data publishing paradigm creates an ecosystem where the data on Bluzelle is of higher quality. Data publishers are now incentivized to offset the cost of the data they published by curating valuable datasets, that will get used by readers (who pay for the reading of that data) and where the cost of that read data (paid for by the reader) will now be shared between the farmer and data author. It opens up interest in Bluzelle’s database to a whole new “population”, where people can now capitalize on valuable information they publish by deriving revenue whenever said data is consumed by readers.