Moderator:

Olga V. Mack, founder of Notes To My (Legal) Self

Guest:

Jiri Kobelka, CEO & Co-Founder of Tatum

‍

In a recent interview, we had the opportunity to delve into the world of blockchain technology and its potential impact on various industries. Jiri Kobelka, CEO of Tatum, shared insights into the value of blockchain and how Tatum is simplifying blockchain development for developers together with Olva V. Mack, founder of Notes To My(Legal)Self, a platform dedicated to exploring a wide range of topics relevant to in-house lawyers. Olga delves into subjects such as legal career development, practical tips for legal professionals, leadership in the legal field, the future of law, mental health in the legal industry, and also the impact of legal in technology.

Olga V. Mack

Hi, everyone. We have a special guest. We're going to talk about the value of blockchain. I'm going to continue building on the book, I wrote about the applications that I built and the trends that we're seeing. So it's going to be an exciting conversation. Jiri, please introduce yourself.

Jiri Kobelka

Hi, guys. My name is Jiri. I'm CEO of Tatum. I'm from the Czech Republic. And my background is 15 years in banking. That's my professional background. And I have two kids.

Olga V. Mack

You managed to combine 15 years in banking with two kids. I think that deserves a chocolate cookie.

Jiri Kobelka

Well, every day.

Olga V. Mack

Really cool. Well, hello to Czech Republic. I used to visit there when it was ok to travel. It's actually one of my favorite places to travel. There have been a few great blockchain conferences, the right before the pandemic. I was there and it was fun. Tell us more about what you're building and your company.

Jiri Kobelka

It's a blockchain company and what we do, we are helping, we are creating tools for developers. So a normal developer, and any developer can actually build kind of super powerful blockchain apps basically in hours. So in short, we applied kind of the developer experience developers have today in other technologies on the blockchain.

Olga V. Mack

So you're focused on developers. Help me understand why it's important in blockchain to make sure that developers have great tools.

Jiri Kobelka

It's a great question. I mean, if you take a look on blockchain technology as such, it's kind of too early. It's very difficult to use and we all know the numbers, like 90 % of projects fail. Mostly the reason behind is it's so difficult to use and we don't have really that many people who can build something enterprise-grade ready on the blockchain. You need some special frameworks and basically an easy way for most of people and most of developers to build apps in order to make blockchain successful as a technology. You can see this in every single technology. This is happening again and again. So, we are not creating something like super new, it's more like the cycle we have to go through.

Olga V. Mack

Making it easy for folks to live their lives and build things is pretty important. And you get very intimately familiar with harship, with building or even using blockchain in applications. If you have to go through metamask once, it will be an experience that will forever traumatize you and will be so vivid that I think anyone who has done it will really want to see better tools, both for folks who use blockchain and folks who build on blockchain. So help us understand what kind of frameworks and tools you are building for developers to encourage them to innovate in this area.

Jiri Kobelka

So basically, the way how this works is that developers can build apps super fast without any blockchain knowledge. By super fast, I mean, if you are building a project for six, nine months, you can do it in hours or days. There is a lot of abstractions. So they have something we call API platform. So they are just calling simple APIs like create accounts and payments, list transactions. They don't have to do anything else. Everything is working. It's just super simple. And I think the biggest benefit we have there is a lot of abstractions, what means you don't have to know details how it works. You don't have to understand the technology below that much. You just do whatever you need to do. And the benefit of abstraction is you can actually switch between blockchains.

‍Olga V. Mack

So switching between blockchain is very big. And for folks who are just joining, it's very much like electricity. You don't have to know how electricity works to enjoy the benefits of electricity for being part of this conversation. You certainly don't have to know how aerodynamics work to be able to fly on the plane. So all of those benefits could be available to you without deep knowledge of aerodynamics or electricity in the same way with blockchain. You talk about who is developing various blockchains and in what industry. You mentioned your background in banking and financial industry. That's not an uncommon background in blockchain because the roots of blockchain is in Bitcoin and that we're dealing with money here. So there is a lot of interest from that industry. But what industries do you see active in developing applications?

Jiri Kobelka

So recently, gaming, NFTs, all that, it's huge. I can tell you right away that if you would ask me five months ago, we had exactly zero developers building anything.

Olga V. Mack

That's a very good round number.

Jiri Kobelka

But today we have something between 60 -75 % of developers building on Tatum, games and in-game assets, NFTs, so it's kind of a huge step and we also see even the biggest companies in the world, gaming companies that are wondering and trying to learn more and trying to find actually how it works, how they can leverage NFTs and all that, but also we see more and more physical item digitalization and besides that, we also see more and more interest from the retail companies and military. Military is kind of a good market to be honest, because you know, decentralization is kind of very good way how you can work in a military.

Olga V. Mack

Very interesting. I've written a book a few years ago, and NFTs actually very prominently mentioned there. And at the time, you know, the beyond the sort of attractive pictures, there is a functionality beyond sort of financial industry that to me seems very interesting and applicable across not just art, and the gaming and entertainment, but across all kinds of places. So I personally, after an NFT conference got super excited, talk to many people who've been at the time unknowingly building stuff in NFT and got really psyched. I rarely get psyched. And so that's what kind of inspired for me to write a book because I do think that this will be very instrumental. But you know, you said something very interesting around big companies and retailers are kind of embracing this technology and building on it. What kind of things do you see people build?

Jiri Kobelka

So, when it comes to retailers, we see more and more projects about identification of goods. So basically, they produce a lot of, for example, pharmaceutical companies, they are producing drugs and they would like to have the ability to validate that goods are not some fake, for example. I mean, the most common projects are still some combinations of wallets and exchanges.

I will share one project from the military if you like. So, one country actually has those UAV drones, which is kind of huge planes. And what they are working on. You have some person who is piloting this UAV drone and they are trying to figure out how to make it autonomous. So they're using AI. The problem with that in AI, if you have a swarm or pack of this 15 or 20 UAV drones. They're flying all together to, monitor some area or attack some targets and if there is just one leader and if someone shut down the leader, the others are basically useless. I don't know if they're using blockchain right now. They intended to do so, but we refused the participation on the project because we don't like this kind of projects in military.

Olga V. Mack

That all make sense. That's actually really interesting with any technology, I think, and that's something for all technologies. And I really did question for lawyers to ponder as you advise your clients, you know, is your technology used for good? Because, you can use sharp knife to kill, you can also use it to cure. And, when you are in the beginning, when you build the technology, and I think you have some sort of responsibility to do the right thing. You always have that responsibility, but most certainly in the beginning of this industry. So actually, good thought, and very interesting how you guys came out and thought through this.

Jiri, you mentioned, blockchain is combinable with other technologies. And I think that definitely, you know, it's a historic trend in technology. Blockchain is not an industry, it's a technology. Most technologies are combinable. And that's in the end with a bouquet of technologies, what makes our experience as humans better. I usually give a futuristic example of a self-aware car. I like to pause here, because very few humans are self-aware yet they are building self-aware cars that will combine old technology and new. So, the old technology being the of wheel, combined with, of course, phenomenal leather seats, also combined with great software.

Today, most cars are basically software and wheels. They increasingly have AI. So, for example, if you are in the accident, the car will be able to determine what happened, what damage, and then this is where the blockchain comes in. You can use blockchain by the time you get home, your insurance will give you a check for the damage automatically using smart contract application. So, this is an example of how technologies will combine all the new to give you a more seamless experience with the object and that you interact in the life you lead. And that's why what Jiri is doing and the tool he is developing is so important to make sure that we have proliferation of this technology to be part of our life.

So question to you, do you see the mass adoption of this technology anytime soon? Because, you know, the technology been around for like well over a decade now. It's definitely been improving people like you building tools. There is financial applications that are a little bit more advanced. There is a school stuff with NFTs that just looks great. But the mass adoption have not been here yet. Are you expecting it and when are you expecting it?

Jiri Kobelka

Well, you know, I do expect it, but I think we are not there yet. That's for sure. I mean, if you would ask me before COVID, I would say, you know, 2028, 2030, maybe.

Olga V. Mack

Wow, you're not very optimistic.

Jiri Kobelka

It takes some time for the technology to go through the cycle. And I think we kind of speeded it up a bit. So, our estimation was that, for example, smart cities will be the thing in 2025. And we see already a huge interest in at least some sort of smart city features using blockchain more and more. Actually last year, it was a huge topic and even some governments were thinking and doing POCs and how to do, and different things on blockchain. So maybe that would help in the U.S. case of presidential elections.

Olga V. Mack

That's a thought. I don't know what you're referring to. I think everything was just desperate. No, I did not notice anything.

Jiri Kobelka

Just to be sure.

Olga V. Mack

But I want to follow up with you, Jiri, on one thing you mentioned that I think is very interesting. And I'm not sure if listeners heard that. Your tools allow seamlessly going from one blockchain to another? So to say from, I don't know, Ethereum to something else, right? So give me examples of, you know, what kind of things, what kind of tools you build to allow, you know, what kind of actions. And then most importantly, why going seamlessly from one blockchain to another is important?

Jiri Kobelka

This is actually more and more important topic recently. And what we have built is basically something we called “code once, deploy everywhere”, which means as a developer, you can actually build app, no matter on which blockchain you want to run. You choose which blockchain you want to use and Tatum actually will do everything below and down there, and it will work. If you think about it like today, I mean, Ethereum is basically very difficult to use. It's slow, it's expensive, and for most cases it's not basically, you cannot use it anymore. A lot of projects are struggling at the moment because it's very difficult to switch to another blockchain. What they do in our case, if they're running on Tatum, they just switch in a configuration that they want to switch from Ethereum to Binance Smart Chain or to Flow or to Polygon for Mermetic, and it will just work.

Olga V. Mack

So you mean like they press a button. That's how hard it is. I love that.

Jiri Kobelka

They have to switch in configurations.

Olga V. Mack

Okay, the equivalent on the backend. Okay, a little bit more complicated than pressing a button. But okay, very interesting. For those folks who may not kind of understand the beauty of doing the equivalent of pushing the button on the backend to do that seamless switch from, say, Ethereum to, I don't know, anything else that you just mentioned. Why would you want to do that? Why do you want to switch? Why is there a benefit to do it quickly and easily and seamlessly?

Jiri Kobelka

If your business case, if you have built an app and your business case is connected to money, which most businesses are, then if your costs of transactions increase 100 times over a year, then someone has to pay that. And either it's you as a business owner or your customer who will probably not pay you that much anymore. He will just go somewhere else. If you want to continue to run your business, you will most likely switch to something else. I mean, Ethereum, the cost for transaction, it was even, I don't know, $25. And if you would like to create NFTs, we should have seen NFTs where creating an NFT costs between, I think, $100 and $1,500 per one NFT. If you will go to Binance Smart Chain or to Polygon, for example, it will cost you a fraction of that, it will cost you a dollar or less.

Olga V. Mack

You know, you probably have heard about fluctuation in price of say things like Ethereum. It takes what's called gas to make transactions on Ethereum, given that the price could be high, that transaction makes it, pretty expensive, whether you pay for it or your another business owner pays for it or another person pays for it, that basically slows down the commerce. So there is a benefit to for speed and for cost to be able to switch from network to network and to effectively make blockchain networks talk to each other. What Jiri is explaining is the benefit of building bridges. I like to think of blockchain networks as a series of archipelago islands, kind of like Japan, you have lots of islands. There is a benefit to connect them. So when you have an ability to switch from one island to another, you can definitely have a lot of flexibility and seamless commerce activity that you won't be able to do if you kind of stuck with one island.

So that's a very important functionality to seamlessly switch from one blockchain to another, because various, so to speak, islands give you different benefits, and there are different reasons why you would use them for sort of technology optimization purposes, but sometimes you have to take into account costs and all kinds of other things.

So do you see folks take advantage of that seamless switch from one blockchain to another and when primarily do you see them do that?

Jiri Kobelka

Actually all the time. It's also the benefit if you have kind of interoperability between blockchains, which is very important, especially for bigger companies and, you know, different consortiums and so on. Then there is a feature which is called cross-chain, which basically means you can talk to, between blockchains kind of.

And we actually saw one bank. That's a very nice example. So they started with Ethereum. They then realized it's basically not good enough for their purpose, for their use case. So they switched to XRP. I mean, the reason behind is, it helps them basically to be future-proof. So if they need some features, because if you are a bank, you have some awareness about blockchain, but you don't really know what exactly you need. And also what will happen in a year, how your business will move in six, 12 months. This helps them to be kind of, as I said, future-proof so we can actually change your database, your blockchain, you are using to something else, once you realize you actually need some better features, better performance, whatever. Multi-chain strategies, that's something all wallets or all exchanges are using, but you know, for years, but you know, today, I mean, they don't have to do that manually anymore. They can just use it in Tatum, like super easy and we are working with a lot of them.

Olga V. Mack

Easy sounds good. I mean, you don't have to talk me into twice to have an easier life than a harder life. I'm not talking about you. Just tell me it's going to be easy and I'm going to be game any time. Look, I mean, there's a lot of wonderful applications, you know, you mentioned the couple, you mentioned sort of the tracing, the sort of verification of origin, you sort of automation. All kinds of wonderful applications and all kinds of industries.

Are we at the point where anyone can build a blockchain application? I mean, I can't say that I'm really eager to start coding, but tell me, even with the tools that you're building, how close are we to somebody who's, you know, technical enough like Olga can sort of look at her business and say, oh, I can benefit from this and this function and automation and tracing and authentication and kind of snip it all together. How close are we to that dream?

Jiri Kobelka

Well, it depends how technical are you.

Olga V. Mack

Oh, you just gave me a legal answer. That is my job to say. I'm not yours. Let's be very clear about our functions here.

Jiri Kobelka

For normal developers who can use a standard development stack they are using right now. It's very possible, at least if they do, I mean, there are some good projects. They can do it actually now. I mean, I think it will get way better in next 12 months. I know that because I see what is coming. I cannot share that really, but we see a lot of incoming projects and we know what they are building. So I assume that in six, 12 months, everyone will be surprised what is happening around blockchain.

Olga V. Mack

I love it. And I love how you manage the expectation that it's going to be a positive surprise. Surprise is only good if it's a good surprise. So you predicted a surprise. I just want to make sure everybody heard that. That yes, there will be a surprise at the end and yes, it will be a good one.

Jiri Kobelka

We actually see projects coming and I can tell you that just one project, if it will go live, all the existing projects running on all blockchains, it's like 1 % of what this project is about to do. And it's a huge company. It's a multi-billion company. So they have the potential to do that. So let's see.

Olga V. Mack

Really cool. This has been a wonderful conversation. And I love kind of the future we're predicting and I like the easier building and more accessible and really including this wonderful technology in the technology we already have and make an improving in our, you know, the quality of our life, the way we live our life, the way we go about it and have careers and really improve.

So thank you for that. I want to make sure I give you an opportunity to give you a sort of parting thoughts to the audience that is, you know, kind of in the beginning of thinking about blockchain applications and the value or maybe somewhere in the middle, they've built something and want to do it better. Do you have any kind of parting thoughts for folks?

Jiri Kobelka

What is important to understand that blockchain is kind of almost normal database. So you can use it for storing data and reading data.

It has some principles which are different from existing databases, but I feel like there is a kind of misunderstanding and a huge fear of blockchain. And that's what I think is not helping in adoption of blockchain itself.

So I would like to encourage everyone to not be afraid to really try. If you are considering building something, feel free to reach out. You will see more and more coming and depending how early adopter you are. You will join sooner or later, hopefully.

Olga V. Mack

It's a great thing to do. Jiri, thank you so much. I really appreciate your contribution to the community, building the tools, explaining this to us. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. I am with Jiri here. The future belongs to builders, and builders come from every background, every profession, and every continent. It's never too late. Now is a good time to learn more about blockchain and contribute to this wonderful technology and be a builder and really build a brighter tomorrow. Thank you so much for joining. Thank you so much for your wonderful participation and questions. We are learning about blockchain, blockchain applications, and blockchain while used together. And that is the best way to learn.