Provenance Summit

Held on Nov 18 in Sebit Seom exhibition center Seoul, Provenance Summit is an itinerant blockchain community conference for developers, entrepreneurs and industry leaders.

Topics of presentations and panel discussions are specific to blockchain product development cycle. Speakers are vetted by the team and are from companies, institutions and entities having blockchain solutions. Attendees come from design, development, management roles within a startup, enterprise or governmental related council/associations.
Provenance Summit policies are gender neutral:

no women in tech tickets — no need to get females just because of their gender. women attend because of their leadership and front facing roles, equipped with the knowledge to be in the industry.

HuiChi Man, Provenance Events Director, opens the conference, explaining why they decided to hold the event in Seoul, Korea and wondering if blockchain is still a technology solution looking for a problem. Several projects, such as Jesuscoin or adult content related ones, remind the evolution of internet at its inception, when most contents online were fake news or porn and the first global online scams were proliferating.

According to a Chinese research, 241 (0.24%) out of Alexa Top 100,000 websites and 629 (0.21%) out of Alexa Top 300,000 websites are deploying JavaScript code that mines Monero using the users’ CPU power, most of it without the user’s permission. Cryptojacking scripts are known to be efficient when loaded on sites where users spend a lot of time, allowing site operators to take full advantage of the user’s computing power. (“Half of All Cryptojacking Scripts Found on Porn Sites”, Feb 2018, Bleeping Computer).

Graham de Barra, Festy Founder and human rights activist, speaks about “Promoting private payments”. Festy is an Irish startup allowing contactless crypto payments at concerts and conferences with a NFC enabled wristband and Festy smartphone app.

Prof Hyunok Oh, Hanyang University, introduces zero knowledge Succinct Non interactive Argument of Knowledge (zk-SNARK), explaining current and prospective use cases of this proof of concept: Zerocash cryptocurrency and a voting system the Korean government is currently testing.

Riccardo Spagni, aka FluffyPony, Monero Core Developer from South Africa, presents about open source projects funding, payment privacy and Monero features.

Matias Furszyfer (aka Furzys) and Fuzzbawls, PIVX Core Developers, explain their open source, MIT licensed, blockchain based cryptocurrency, programmed to be with ultra fast transactions, low fees, high network decentralization and Zero Knowledge cryptography proofs to guarantee industry leading transaction anonymity. PIVX is runned as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), all full time developers and core members are part of the community, compensated in PIVX, but there is no legal entity, office or headquarters behind the team.

Panel discussion: “Taking control over personal data: zero knowledge proof, blockchain and privacy”
Moderator: Ruben Somsen (Seoul Bitcoin Meetup, Founder), Graham de Barra (Festy, Ceo), Riccardo Spagni (Monero, Core Developer), Hyunok Oh, professor (Hanyang University, Professor Department of information systems).

Patrick Bowen, Status UX Research Lead, and Hester Bruikman, Status UX Researcher, speak about “A holistic approach to data-drive design with blockchain”, sharing the lessons learned when realizing Status wallets user interface and user experience.

Panel discussion: “The future of entertainment industry”
Moderator: Monika Rofler (Korea Crypto Social, Founder), David Doepel (Demand films Ceo), Patrice Poujol (Lumiere, Founder), Andrew Kolodyuk (Divan Tv, Founder), Jack Cheng, (Singular dtv, CMO Asia).

Panel discussion: “Revolutionising traditional industries with blockchain”
Moderator: Ameer Rosic (Blockgeeks, Ceo), Alex Cynn, (Ethereum Enterprise Alliance), Sami Mian (Hedera Hashgraph, head of Japan and Korea), Lisa Hong, (Geoblue, Global Marketing Lead), Jacco Zwetsloot (HMP law, Director business innovation).

Benny Giang, CryptoKitties cofounder, presents the homonymous most popular blockchain based virtual pet simulation game, which allows players to adopt, raise, and trade digital cats. A decentralized crypto Tamagotchi, breeding cats instead of chicks, through sophisticated genetic algorithms and smart contracts. The kitties in CryptoKitties are non-fungible, because each kitty is differently programmed using bio inspired operators like selection, crossover, and mutation. A more detailed explanation of the coding, market place, Ethereum blockchain gas consumption can be found in BlockGeeks blog. CryptoKitties received two weeks ago additional A seed funding for sixteen millions USD from a pool of investors and venture capital funds, bringing the total funding to twenty eight million USD. Boldly but sensibly, in retrospect, CryptoKitties decided not to proceed with an ICO at the end of 2017 and pursue traditional venture capital seed funding, as explained in their blog.