Clifford Smyth on Pruf's NFT ownership and asset provenance

0:22provenance with real world items as well as digital items and nfts and i'm really excited to dive into how you guys are solving some of these problems that are in the blockchain space right now and i would love for you to just kick it off for us with you know focus on the focus of proof and how exactly you're solving these problems okay great yeah at its core

0:44proof is a privacy first chain agnostic nft based protocol for token for the tokenization and the management and verification of both digital and physical assets you know it's it's kind of an important distinction as a protocol we're not an nft platform or something like that so we're not like in competition with platforms we're actually tooling to build platforms on

1:11and specifically for brands and artisans and artists and curators and collectors to extend their extend their brands into the nft space in a in a sort of a brand centric environment because it's a white box solution so they can you know be brand forward and not be having their products displayed alongside of either competing or contrasting products

1:35sort of maintain their on-brand messaging and things like that to preserve the value of their offerings and we you know we solve problems both in the as you said both in the digital and the physical space so i'll start off with sort of the bullet points for physical stuff for physical items we solve problems involving provenance we managed and we

2:01managed that with privacy unlike some other solutions that well obviously proof being on the blockchain is transparent we still can serve privacy so that although you can prove that you own something no one can look you up to see what you own for example it's sort of a one-way a one-way door we handle proof of authenticity so manufacturers

2:25products can be verified to be authentic and not fakes or copies like i said proof of ownership other aspects of supply chain management in the physical good space in the digital good space our focus is on authenticity and proof of origin which is a big issue on existing platforms where the trust of you know this is an original and not a copy is just

2:49The records or database that the platform may have and really isn't very transparent to the end user or a prospective buyer of a token for example and we also deal with data permanence which is another big issue that we see in the space and as i was sort of talking about the white box way that we are are designed to be used the branding and presentation

3:14in the nft space so that so that you know higher end brands or marks can can can enter the space without diluting their brand value or image because they can incorporate our tooling directly into their existing web presence that's that's good overview i think yeah definitely yeah clifford and thank you for that extensive intro and you are working on

3:37a bunch of different things and supply chain management you mentioned there is one of seems like the strongest use cases for blockchain technology some of the earlier blockchain projects have been working on supply chain management for a few years now integrating blockchain is do you see something in the industry a kind of friction in why more real world assets have not already

4:01been integrated into the blockchain and are using asset provenance using this kind of technology you know how do you break down those barriers to entry to get adoption of that more quickly okay in the supply chain management part there's quite a bit of friction honestly in that in that area because companies are are used to handling those

4:25things with their strictly with in-house record keeping and things like that so it's it's not blockchain at that point is offering transparency and you know global accessibility to that information and you know frankly that's not a huge priority for all companies so i think that there's some maybe some limitations on that segment except for in certain cases you know

4:49what we've really focused on there is places where we can sort of compartmentalize larger systems into subsystems so that a large a complex piece of equipment for example it can be is separating the subsystems each one of those subsystems can have separate separate tracking and tracking of their of life cycles and reuse and different things like that where

5:17those where that information can feed back and then become valuable to customers for strictly supply chain management like materials and things like that you know like you said there's been there's players in that space already and they're doing a reasonably good job of handling that where we really do something different is we bridge we bridge that forward into the consumer

5:39space so basically when something has has been tracked from the supply chain out to retail and then it moves forward into the consumer space now it continues to have utility with the asset management features at that point and proof of provenance where individual consumers then can can prove ownership of their items and if they go to sell them they can say

5:59yeah this is registered to me it's not like stolen or something like that so there's there's a lot of a lot of ways that extends using proof into the consumer space that's i think i think our main innovations in the in the supply chain space come from come from that from sub component management and the bridging into the consumer space basically

6:20definitely and i agree clifford and on the digital side you know the consumers the consumer endpoints that you touched there on the supply chain that sort of makes me think of you know the creators and the curators of nft platforms and you mentioned how you're not trying to build an nft marketplace because there are a lot of marketplaces that are

6:39just popping up and you know it's something that isn't really needed in the space there's lots of marketplaces but there are still a lot of artists and other kind of users that are looking to be able to create nfts is there a gap there that you think really somebody isn't nobody's doing what proof is doing in terms of having that access door for

7:04more artists and other users to be able to create nfts in the way that they want or really what's your competitive advantage that you're really going to be able to drive home and on the nft part for proof okay sure that's a that's a that's a great question a good example i think a good illustration of one of the problems that we're focused on in that space is let's just say

7:26that i've got i've got a fine art product that i that i say okay i want to it's either let's just say in this case it's purely digital it's purely digital there's no physical asset to it if i go on to an existing platform you know basically i'm presenting my goods or my art there alongside a wide variety of different quality and great of

7:50of different products so it's kind of hard to it's kind of hard to say well this is this is worth this because i made it and it's sitting right alongside of you know a collectible baseball card or something like that it's just it's just kind of a it's kind of a jarring experience as a consumer it sort of feels like that i'm sort of in lego world when i go into

8:13those places and there's nothing wrong with that certainly that has its place but what isn't really out there let's just say that some collector or a curator wants to set up their own their own you know nft nft offerings they have to basically create their own space they're not going to just want to put their stuff up alongside of everything else they have a

8:37whole brand image especially in the art world and the you know fine art photography and things like that images everything i mean it's just absolutely everything so what we what we provide is a turnkey solution basically all these places have web presences already they already have some web development going on we provide a turnkey solution where they

8:58can integrate the proof protocol and proof enhanced nfts into their existing offerings or and into their existing platforms without doing any blockchain development and with minimal web 3 stuff it's mostly packaged into our libraries so that's you know sort of one of those places that we're that we're inserting ourselves there and one of the big advantages is for

9:21example if they were going to do a traditional nft marketplace or offering you know then they have to they have to figure out how they're going to store this did these digital artifacts and then realize that they're saying okay i'm going to sell this for a hundred thousand dollars let's just say and does that you know how long am i going to keep this server

9:42online you know how how can i really guarantee that's going to be there in 20 years in 10 years in five years next year so what am i really selling you know i think that's a big problem with a lot of offerings is that is that they're just they're not really thinking about what happens farther down the line i mean everybody's really excited in the space

10:02it's exploding in popularity but we're thinking a little bit farther down the line definitely and i think that is going to be necessary for the long-term success and the widespread adoption of proof and having you know people stick around and not just having that curve where you launch and you have you know great adoption and then it sort of curbs off you know like clubhouse

10:25something like that's already you know or pokemon go and it's popular for a short amount of time but then after that you know the popularity fades and yeah so that's gonna you definitely need to have that you know stick around factor and so you know you're fairly early on and i'm glad that you have this long-term vision but i'm curious in the earlier

10:46steps of proof in the launch for nfts for early adopters do you have you know incentives or how are you going to get the early adopters to stick around and in terms of the marketing of it are you going to partner with any you know curators or artists to help bring awareness of that you know the platform is an early stage and it has competitive advantages and people should

11:07be using proof absolutely yeah actually that's a big part of our strategy we're we have a grant program basically an outreach program where if you have a project or a an nft product or something like that you want to launch you know we're providing we're covering all the cost to set that up as far as all of the node costs and some proof to

11:35to utilizing the system extensive developer support and library support so basically will handheld handhold their web dev team through the process of getting this set up and getting it and getting it getting it operational for them actually it's pretty simple so we found with a couple of small projects that we've been working on a pilot basis that it's

11:59pretty turn key for most people but we're still providing that sort of first tier support and handholding for that process because you know a lot of a lot of web developers aren't really familiar with the web 3 thing and it's really intimidating to a lot of people actually and right now especially in the space i mean just try to try to hire a team to

12:19write some contract code or do some do some web 3d development it's it's it's pretty crazy out there right now definitely it is and you know on top of that you know integrating blockchain and cryptocurrencies and trying to have that in there but not you know in your face with all of these technical barriers to entry you know making it easy for

12:40end users and layman's to be able to use the platform is going to be i think key in having widespread success as well but and you do have the proof token and i want to touch on that you know before before we end the interview about how does that integrate into the platform is it easily usable by the end users and the developers and you know how does it just create a sustainable

13:00ecosystem overall for proof okay well the proof token is really kind of key to making a lot of this work the proof token fundamentally on a business model case is used to align incentives within the system to make a sustainable and prosperous ecosystem basically depending on the choices that the node operator when i talk about a node

13:26operator that would be like somebody that's if we're going to stay in the nft space here talking about it somebody that is going to be minting nfts on their platform so the node operator then can can choose to monetize different operations with their nfts in most cases i think for most business use cases they're not going to they're not going to be monetizing

13:50things like transfers or anything like that they're going to keep that pretty much industry standard but certainly there might be certain types of transactions or collateralized loans or auctions or things like that they want might want some commission on anyway those the proof token can be used to pay for and is used to pay for

14:11layer two or network costs and within the proof infrastructure and it can also be used by node operators in some cases to pay for layer one or like gas costs they can actually use that to pay for gas costs if they choose to although i suspect that a lot of operators are probably going to be choosing to pay for gas costs themselves in the ecosystem the proof token is

14:34burned to mint node so when you want to make you create a new minting authority proof is burned in order to create that authority it can be used as a unit of commerce for asset transfers like you put something up for sale it can be sold for the native token on the blockchain like in the case of ethereum that would be ethereum or you can choose to sell it

14:55for a certain number of proof tokens and that's part of the built-in all built-in revenue generation systems that we have built into the infrastructure and it's also used to stake on nodes for d5 revenue sharing basically the idea there is it's sort of part and parcel of the distributed governance of the network where nodes that are profitable

15:18people can stake on and they earn a share of revenues sort and by doing that they're actually giving extra voting power to those nodes so by doing that it incentivize it incentivizes nodes that are generating revenue to operate in the system and that's a description basically the native staking or the basic staking that we're doing

15:39now obviously as the system is first being built out there's going to be not nearly as many nodes and for that we're offering we've got a bunch of tokens set aside for early opportunity synthetic staking basically just staking a straight return staking return contract to sort of incentivize stability going into there but we've already got some fairly

16:03interesting interesting partners lined up we've got an announcement coming up i don't quite want to blow it just yet but suffice to say we've got some some really prominent people from the from the fine arts side of things you know these are these are people that have exhibits in the smithsonian and in the getty and they're wanting to move into the nft

16:23space but they're extremely image conscious they want to have control of the process and that's something that only proof offers so you know we're trying to bring basically what we're really trying to do there is bring legitimacy to the space you know to make it to make it not just is this real or is it not real you know so we're trying to make it so that there's

16:42actual lasting value generated when when you when you tokenize a piece of art or something like that in the art space obviously with physical stuff it's sort of a different a different goal a different process but basically the same mechanics definitely and i completely agree clifford and i'm excited to follow along for that announcement and hear about these these artists and

17:05these curators and you know we are running short on time on the interview but for the viewers if they're looking to follow along with these upcoming announcements or if there are curators and artists that are looking to you know have their nfts verified and created through proof's technology and also the staking sounds very interesting as well for people that are

17:23interested in all of the you know technologies that proof can provide what's the best way for them to learn more about all of this and to get involved with the community okay i would start as far as figuring out and learning more about it i would start you know with our website at proof dot io that's p r u f dot io and if you want to know what

17:45we're up to what we're thinking about we publish that routinely on our medium as medium articles and that's a prufio.medium.com so prufio.medium.com and then you can see that you know basically what we're thinking about the things that we're working on long term we typically write articles about the subjects and post them there other than that following along

18:09with the community or getting involved in the community and there's you know there's always opportunities we're always having contests and there's you know bounty programs and bug bounty programs all kinds of stuff going on our telegram group is the best place for that's t dot m e forward slash proof talk and then the events it would be t dot

18:28me forward slash proof events on telegram and then of course there's always our twitter and it's a twitter.com forward slash proof team so those are all fairly fairly easy to find you know that's probably where i would go for information really the website's really informative we've got there's the white paper there of course we've got some user stories and some

18:50examples of you know our vision of a proof enabled future and i think that those things are really helpful for people to understand where they can where where this technology can take them definitely and i will leave all those links in the description box below thank you so much clifford for all this information all the best with perf's platform moving forward i will be

19:09following along and let's follow up in the near future all right fantastic it's great to be here thank you very much