Watch the Video of my TEDx talk in Lausanne in Mai or read the transcript.
“I was recruited by the NFL. The National Football League, the one that plays the “Super Bowl” every year. The one with these monster athletes!
Well OK, I was not recruited as a player, but to run the fan development and talent scouting department in Germany.
Probably now you are asking yourself — am I in the right talk? Isn’t this supposed to be about Blockchain technology and this guy talks about Sports?
I will talk about Blockchain Identity in a very personal way. Not technical, more in a way that relates to the world as you know it.
When I was hired by the NFL it was the first time someone — Marshall Happer — hired me for my experience and not my certificates, as I had none that relate to this job. But I had something more important. At that time I was coaching a junior team in Germany and managed to attract a lot of young talented players. That was what the NFL was interested in. What I had accomplished. They trusted me because of my track record because they could see the results of my actions. These results gave me reputation.
The reputation I had built gave the NFL the trust that I would be the right fit for this position. It got me this job and let to great results. I created a program that helped get 5 German players into the NFL, playing professional football.
Two simple words with a big meaning — trust and reputation.
In 2007 the League in Europe played their last Championship Game. After 11 years working for the NFL, I was unemployed for the first time. I had just bought a house, my daughter was 4 years old.
I was devastated.
What did I have to offer a new employer?
I was great at scouting players and preparing them for a football career. But who needs that in Europe, where soccer is the No1 Sport?
I didn’t even try to go to the US to get a job. My reputation as a European coach would not be strong enough to get me a job in the US.
After one year of applying to many jobs, I finally found a position in digital marketing. Jochen Bohle, the hiring manager, believed that my reputation, even if it was created in a different context, was still helpful for the position he was offering. It was a reference letter from the NFL that made Jochen believe in my sports background and that my coaching ability would help lead a team of online news editors.
I started to work as Product Manager for T-Online. After working with athletes, it was a huge change and challenge to work on virtual topics all day. I learned a lot and was able to bring my coaching experience from the NFL into this new world. Jochen was right! With my skills, I managed to align a team of editors, and we exceeded every goal that was set for us.
In 2014 after 6 ½ years working for T-Online, I was looking for a new challenge and moved to Switzerland. I had built up enough reputation now in different industries, that I felt confident I could fit in a new role. I became the Head of Sales working for a FinTech startup in Zürich and that is when I learned about Blockchain.
Blockchain, finally he mentions it.
Roberto Barbosa a developer took the time to explain to me the technical novelty, but most importantly he taught me the philosophy behind this new technology. This really opened my eyes, as blockchain philosophy had two fundamental elements that I had found so important in my career.
Trust and reputation.
A Blockchain is actually just a database. The beauty though is that the outcome of every transaction is stored in many different places at the same time, which makes it impossible to change in a fraudulent way.
If we take the word transaction and delete the first part it leaves us with action. So every action I do on the blockchain is stored and unchangeable. As I explained before with the NFL, reputation is based on actions.
A blockchain gains more reputation as more actions get stored, just like the more positive outcomes I show in my career, the more reputation I create in my job.
It is important to understand that a Blockchain is digital.
Digital means something is either 1 or 0; there’s no other possibility. In case of reputation that means it either happened and therefore can be proven or it didn’t happen.
Reputation on a blockchain is not like a rating system that you see on many websites today. It has no sentiment attached to it. It is objective and therefore we can compare one person’s reputation with another person’s reputation.
Let’s jump into the future, say 10 years from now.
Almost everything we do is fueled by Blockchain technology.
Transportation is mostly done by driverless cars, taking us anywhere we want and we pay the vehicle directly with a cryptocurrency. These cars don’t need an owner, they receive the payment and use it to pay for the electricity that fuels them, and to pay for maintenance themselves.
We buy on digital marketplaces, directly from the people that produce goods. These marketplaces only provide the infrastructure for users to interact, they do not influence the business itself. Something different affects the price, reputation.
If the person buying has a high reputation he is more trustworthy, which means a deal is more likely to go through without trouble than a deal with a person with no reputation. Trust between the two parties buying and selling is based on their reputation. A greater risk (or less trust) will cause a higher price for a good. Just like your credit score influences your interest rate.
In this future, we don’t say we have to “go to work” anymore because we can work from anywhere and for anyone. People no longer need to have one employer and sometimes don't even know who they work for. We accomplish tasks, which are based on agreements. In the blockchain world, these agreements are called smart contracts. This is a computer code which defines if this happens then do that. It replaces our employment contract. Smart Contracts even include the payment process as they are directly embedded in the blockchain and connected to cryptocurrencies.
We choose tasks that we want to work on because we have the skills requested in the task. The task motivates us to create the best outcome.
If the result is as expected, we automatically get paid out what was agreed. If the result is not as expected the smart contract has rules on how to deal with that situation. Because these smart contracts are based on a blockchain they are transparent and cannot be changed once accepted.
As every product you use is based on a blockchain, all your actions will also be stored on the blockchain. You will be constantly generating reputation.
And your identity is the sum of all the reputation you have built over time.
Blockchain identity is what now allows people to trust each other. They know that it derived from actions that have really happened. These actions can be easily verified.
It is possible to gain the same reputation through actions as it is through studying at a University. Maybe we will even trust a reputation built on actions more than the reputation built through studying.
Nobody has met the creator of the Bitcoin Blockchain personally, we only know him as Satoshi Nakamoto. But people believe in him because, in the beginning, he had proven that what he wrote in his whitepaper can be built.
Vitalik Buterin, the inventor of the Ethereum Blockchain, dropped out of college. If he would have applied for the job to invent a Blockchain nobody would have hired him.
If I am looking for a job again in 2028, most likely I get jobs offered based on my reputation. It could look like a matching engine that shows me all the offers that match my skills. The skills I have shown to be real because my actions stored on the blockchain prove them. The employer sees people that match the skills and can choose the most appropriate person, which is represented by the best combination of reputation and price.
Maybe we are not even ten years away from this. This is not as futuristic as you think. Today a lot of Blockchain projects are open source. Meaning the code that is developed is openly accessible. Developers that join these projects believe in the vision and even accept payment with the project’s cryptocurrency. Their benefit is that if the project creates value for the users, the value of the Cryptocurrency will go up. They found the project and are inspired by the vision it wants to create. This creates a culture of like-minded people.
Compare this to the hiring process as we know it today.
- A job description is posted.
- The HR Manager receives many, sometimes hundreds of applications.
- These need to be looked through and a very rough filter comes to play: Has a degree on one side, has no degree on the other side.
This takes 2–4 weeks.
- Next step is that the line manager gets the approved pile and looks through, filtering by very subjective criteria.
This takes another week.
- Finally 5–10 candidates are invited for interviews….
Well you know the process I believe…
So this takes around 2 months until one person gets hired. Now this person has to create value and fit the culture of the company. But guess what many people that apply, actually train for the application process. They may not be the right fit but they are outstanding at mastering the application process. It will take 6 months to know if the candidate actually fits the position and the culture. If the candidate does not fit, that’s 8 months time lost.
Remember Jochen Bohle who hired me at T-online because he trusted a reference letter. He could have been totally wrong and I could have simply forged this letter.
Most of you I assume are not involved in a Blockchain project or your work is not open source, or community driven. But you should remember these three powerful messages that this new technology has incorporated:
- Reputation is built from your actions.
- Your Identity is the result of your reputation, which is the sum of your actions.
- Trust is built on your reputation and it really helps when you know this reputation is immutable and therefore real.
Today you believed me when I said I was recruited by the NFL. In the future, this can be easily validated.
The next time you hear someone mention Blockchain, you will know it has more to offer than just the financial value of Bitcoin.”
About the Author:
I am a former Advisory Board Member of the Ethereum Foundation, the CEO of Old School GmbH, Business Hive in Swarm City and Advisor to a few Blockchain based Projects.
I like to simplify things. Nothing written in my blog posts is scientifically researched. I use naive logic and have come quite far doing so.
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