Karen Ottoni - Director of Ecosystem for Hyperledger

In this episode, Karen Ottoni joins me as a guest to discuss Hyperledger. She is the Director of Ecosystem and helps us dive into all the cool projects under the Hyperledger umbrella.

Karen Ottoni
--- Twitter: https://twitter.com/KarenOttoni
--- Hyperledger: https://www.hyperledger.org

Feedspot
--- Top 50 Blockchain Podcasts for 2019: https://blog.feedspot.com/blockchain_podcasts/

Transcription

Brandon Zemp  0:00  
Hey guys, it is Wednesday, September 4, I have another awesome guest coming on the podcast today, Karen a Tony with hyperledger. Karen joins me to discuss what hyperledger is the projects that are being developed underneath the hyperledger umbrella and what to expect from hyperledger going into the future. On a separate note, shout out to feed spot for including the block hash podcast on the top 50, blockchain podcasts for 2019. We're at number 13. Thank you guys so much, really appreciate it. As always, don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already. And share this episode with your friends, your family, your colleagues, anyone that you think needs to learn more about blockchain. Enjoy.

Well, thanks for coming on. Really appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time. So tell me a little bit about your backgrounds and how you kind of got into the blockchain space.

Karen Ottoni  1:02  
Hi, thank you for having me on as well. It's a pleasure to be here. I was just listening to an episode yesterday. And it was very interesting. So I'm excited to be on myself. My background is a bit different than maybe the most, most of the guests that you have in the podcast, I come from a completely different industry and completely non technical background. So I studied international relations in college. And that led me to the field of international development, which is complicated to explain and tech space, because it doesn't mean development and such as in software development, right, the development of economies and societies. And so, I worked with various organizations that are donor funded, whether by the US government, or other other donors or other governments, I'm to implement projects, mostly in Sub Saharan Africa. So I worked on projects and related to agriculture, democracy and governance, trade, health, and spent spent about six years living in East Africa as well. Very cool. Very nice Africa,

in Burundi and Ethiopia.

Brandon Zemp  2:25  
That must have been a fun experience.

Karen Ottoni  2:27  
Yeah, it was amazing.

There, you know, Burundi is obviously a place that most people in the country have never gone too much less heard of. With a very fascinating history, very connected to Rwandan history as well. And then Ethiopia is just such a fascinating place. Because it's kind of like India, where you you go and you find out that there's so many reasons, regions and unique aspects to each region, right. Like they have their own language, their own culture. There isn't really like an India, and Ethiopia is very similar. Each region is almost its own little world. Ethiopia is the one is kind of like on the Horn of Africa,

Brandon Zemp  3:17  
right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so I'm

Karen Ottoni  3:23  
in the 80s, for having a famine. I'm, they're really sensitive to that history, but it's actually one of the fastest growing economies in Africa along with Nigeria.

Brandon Zemp  3:34  
That's awesome. Why are they growing so quickly? It was just modern technology coming in, or social change? or What is it?

Karen Ottoni  3:42  
Um, well, a lot of investment. They're both those. Those are both countries. I mean, Nigeria is a little different. They've got oil. Yeah. Um, so that helped. In Ethiopia, it's a heavy agriculture. So a lot of livestock leather, and different kinds of crops. And, with course, so coffee's a huge export. For Ethiopia, you can find Ethiopian coffee at any local cafe that you go to here, and the US, and it's really good coffee, very good coffee. So, but I think what's really making them boom is, you know, these industries have gotten a lot of investment and development from the government. And there's a very large population. So I think you'll be a is has not hit 100 million yet. But I think they're very close. 90 million something people, so also one of the largest populations in Africa. And they benefit from a large diaspora as well. So you know, I'm sure you know about the the large Ethiopian populations here in the US, indeed, DC and Seattle, different parts of the world as well. Are they traveling and spreading out like Ethiopians in general? Well, a lot of people. So history media was very interesting. They had an emperor, Emperor Haile Selassie, he was actually the first first African heads of state to speak of the United Nations back in the 60s. And unfortunately, they he was taken down and a communist regime came into place after that called the Derg. And during that time period, many Ethiopians left. And so that's why there's such a strong diaspora in different parts of the world, because they were leaving that regime. Very interesting.

Brandon Zemp  5:48  
Yeah, I love learning about history. How long were you in Ethiopia?

Karen Ottoni  5:51  
For years, and while I was there, working for US Agency for International Development, and also doing some of my own consulting, as well. And I was actually in Ethiopia when I first learned about Bitcoin.

Brandon Zemp  6:06  
Oh, well, so how did you learn about Bitcoin in Ethiopia, of all places?

Karen Ottoni  6:11  
I mean, it really it was just seeing new stories come up from it, you know, either you have been telecommunications is nationalized, still nationalized. Which means that the speed something to be desired. And and so you know, I was just started to hear I think, around maybe 2013 2014, just news stories around something called Bitcoin and I just didn't know what it was. So I read the Wikipedia page on it. About Oh, that's interesting, but didn't really get involved in I didn't do anything with it. It was a long time before I kind of came back to that that world afterward.

Brandon Zemp  6:58  
Right? Are they using the Ethiopia?

Karen Ottoni  7:01  
At the time? And I don't think so unless you were very savvy and ahead of the curve. And now, I think that there are a few, but it's still you know, it is challenging. For anyone else in in, in those countries, you have to have a smartphone, right, you have to kind of know how it works. So I think it's still feel for people to use it.

Brandon Zemp  7:29  
I know, a while back, there were a number of people that were traveling there just to take advantage of the arbitrage because there are a lot of people that wanted to buy it in certain parts of Africa that just couldn't get their hands on it. So I know a lot of people that would go over there with Bitcoin, and exchange it for like twice the price.

Karen Ottoni  7:46  
Yeah, I can imagine that's definitely happened.

Brandon Zemp  7:48  
Yeah, that's really interesting. It's definitely sounds like Africa's really on the up and up right now.

Karen Ottoni  7:55  
Absolutely. There's a lot going on, if you're paying attention, and

you know, there's a lot to follow, you know, it's got a very young population. I don't know the statistic off the top of my head, but you know, there's a very large percent of the population Africa is, you know, 25 and under. So it's a very young continent. That is growing up in a digital age and once and, and digitally native and sees, sees how they could connect is very much connected to the world and knows what's going on in the world. And using that to solve for, you know, maybe issues that have been have gotten resolved for a long time in their own countries.

Brandon Zemp  8:48  
I know that that's the same case in India, too. I know that India's average population is also very, very young, like early 20s, like under 25. Yeah, they're expected to grow tremendously, at some point, given modern technology, and then leaping over certain Tachyon implementations they just didn't get over the last 30 4050 years. And I know Africa is kind of prime for that. Same with some countries in Latin America. But yeah, it looks like Africa is definitely growing quite a lot. And I've also noticed that there's a lot of Chinese going in and buying up land and developing in Africa as well. Were there any Chinese and Ethiopia?

Karen Ottoni  9:29  
Absolutely. There definitely are I mean, there's there's always been that sort of political connection, ever since meanest regime in Ethiopia was in power. Now it's a democratically elected regime. But the there's always been that connection, and and even more so in the last 10 years, or so 1015 years, a real commercial, part ownership. So the Chinese government is, is doing a lot of major construction projects in Ethiopia and other parts of Africa as well?

Brandon Zemp  10:10  
Or is it mostly like land deals? Or they pulling natural resources out of the ground out of Africa, and then taking it back to China? Or like, what what's their primary reason for putting so much time and money into Africa?

Karen Ottoni  10:26  
I mean, its influence right? We're getting into like political hip head Gemini. So it's, it's, it's, it's really that influence to counter act, the American hegemony. So they're helping build roads, infrastructure, railways, dams, things like that. They definitely do import some of the, like agricultural x as well. But a lot of it is more from from what I understand construction.

Brandon Zemp  11:07  
Very interesting. That sounds like you had quite the experience in Africa, for sure. I don't think a lot of people get that nowadays. How did you get from Africa and your experience there to where you are now? or What did you do after Africa.

Karen Ottoni  11:23  
So after spending six years abroad, I really, I really wanted to go back to school. And I've seen how public sector projects work abroad. And I really wanted to see how I could get involved on the business side of things. So I went back to the US went to grad school in North Carolina Duke University, got an MBA there. And it was during my MBA that I started to get exposed more to blockchain, that I started to hear about it. RR University actually offered a class called crypto ventures. And I unfortunately didn't take the class. But

I really wished I had taken it later.

But it was it was when I was looking for an opportunity after Business School, that I connected with a former student from my school, who was working at Tata consulting services. And he was telling me about his work and how he was working on this technology called blockchain and helping companies understand what it is. And I found that really interesting. And I just, it really sounded more exciting than a lot of the other opportunities that were being presented. And so I applied and join the Tata team here in New York City, and join his team. And, and that's how I got my entryway into the blockchain space. I started working on what what started off as an innovation team, and became kind of the early blockchain team at Tata consulting services, where we were in. I started joined in 2016. So they had already started working on this maybe in the year before. And we were putting together workshops to, you know, that was early stages, still for enterprises. And so we were helping enterprises understand the opportunity understand what this technology was about, and what the use cases were, that were relevant.

Brandon Zemp  13:47  
Yeah, that's, that seems like quite a pivot from what you're doing into blockchain. And yeah, that's really cool. It was

Karen Ottoni  13:53  
it was it was definitely a pivot and was kind of unexpected. Um, I've always sort of followed, what I found was something that resonated with me was interesting, but does connect in the sense that what drew me was what I saw this technology could do in terms of social impact, in terms of how I saw it could help the environments that I had just spent living in abroad, help people have more agency transparency, accountability, and inclusion as well in the global financial system.

Brandon Zemp  14:36  
What what are some examples of what like, how you see that making an impact in terms of blockchain?

Karen Ottoni  14:44  
Yeah, so, you know, I think the the first use case is Bitcoin, right? And is basically creating a global currency. And I think that's, that's like the first step, the first example that comes to mind, and that really, you know, existed, and I think the idea of their be of it being just easy to send money across border to people that, you know, I mean, just that, you know, is is is huge, because there's such a significant premium that's, that's put on anyone who tries to do that right now with other mechanisms. And so, you know, it's, it's obviously not there yet and widely adopted in a way in which we're all doing that. But I feel like that's, that's the first glimmer of where things could go as as Bitcoin or maybe other internet, you know, global currency adoption happens, but I really feel like it's probably going to be most likely Bitcoin or some close iteration of it. And then there's a lot of other projects out there that are exploring things related to identity, things related to supply chains, that I think could bring a lot of benefit as

Brandon Zemp  16:12  
well. Do you think that the future of this industry will mostly be permission lyst, or like, permission double? So I know there's a lot of decentralized projects out there, obviously, there's tons of different crypto, we've heard all the different blockchains. But almost seems like some of these big companies like the big fortune 500 companies aren't necessarily on board with a decentralized blockchain. And for good reasons to, they might want something that's more commissionable for IP reasons or for privacy or for like, inter company stuff. Do you think we're going to see permission level or permission? lyst? blockchains really kind of go mean, mainstream? First before the other?

Karen Ottoni  17:01  
I first of all, I think we're going to see both in terms of which goes mainstream first? Um, I don't know. But I really, I really think we're going to have both, I think the world is just going to need both kinds. It's not an either or, it's really a spectrum of needs and requirements. So like you mentioned, you know, there are certain entities or situations in which you just need to know the actors that are involved, or you need, you know, privacy on the more privacy on the transactions. And there's a lot of research being done on privacy with your knowledge proofs and, and other mechanisms. And those will be useful in many cases as well. But I don't know if it's, it's eventually going to replace all privacy, its use cases. So. So yeah, I really, I don't see it as either or I, I, I find that that dichotomy kind of not useful. I think it's just sort of a distraction. It's, it's let's keep the development going and work together and see what makes sense for the situation at hand with the existing technology that we have at hand.

Brandon Zemp  18:28  
Right. Totally agree. And in terms of the development, you guys are doing a lot of development at hyperledger. How did you start working with with hyperledger? And kind of what is hyperledger?

Karen Ottoni  18:42  
Yeah, so I, after about a year and a half at at TCS, I shifted to the hyperledger team, I joined their ecosystem team. And so for those of you who don't know what hyperledger is, what we are is a open source software defined project, we are hosted by the Linux Foundation, which has been around for 16 plus years, fostering the communities around open source software development projects, I'm sure many of your listeners know about Linux, right the original operating system. And, and so that was the beginning of that. And since then, Linux Foundation has really sprouted more than 100 projects that relate to different technologies, whether it be cloud computing, networking, etc. And hyperledger is one of those projects that focuses on on blockchain distributed ledger implementations that businesses can use,

Brandon Zemp  19:51  
right, I've actually looked at hyperledger quite a few times, try and try and understand it, but it's just such a huge umbrella of projects, which is really cool at the same time. So it looks like a lot being developed.

Karen Ottoni  20:03  
Yeah. It's a strength. And also it also, it also makes it hard for people to kind of get a broad sense of who we are, if they're, if they're totally fresh. So um, so we A lot of people think that hyperledger is one ledger. And it's not, it's actually several different Ledger's and several different tools. So an umbrella, or, as we like to call it a greenhouse, is is really what hyperledger is, where projects are seated, and allowed to grow and incubate and, and develop into production projects that can be used in a variety of use cases. So most people are familiar with hyper ledger fabric. That's one of our frameworks. Because it was one of the first ones that was contributed to our project by IBM and digital asset. But we also have hyperledger sawtooth, which was contributed by Intel borough in DE ro ha, I'm, as other blockchain frameworks that exists within our greenhouse as well.

Brandon Zemp  21:26  
Yeah, you guys definitely have a lot of frameworks and tools under that umbrella, you should almost change the name from hyperledger to like, hyper umbrella or something. So that's not

Karen Ottoni  21:37  
well, you, you should post a message in our open source community and, and, and make that suggestion, that's everything. Every that and that's what's I mean, I'm joking, but you know, that's what's really cool about our community is it's completely open to participate in. So if you really want to get involved, you can start joining the mailing list, and the phone calls, and the chat rooms of our technical steering committee, or, or one of the specific projects that I just mentioned, and start joining that conversation contributing to that conversation. Because everything that's done is is all in the open. It's part of our anti trust policy. So every call public and, and April, April for anybody to join. And so you can join that conversation and start, you know, providing input, or providing code or helping draft a white paper, etc, whatever it may be

Brandon Zemp  22:44  
at that group is working on, what's the most active place to like, submit feedback or like how to engage with the community?

Karen Ottoni  22:51  
Yeah, there's a few different ways. So if it's, if it's about kind of getting feedback for a specific framework or tool that you worked with 30 questions on each community has a wiki page on our wiki.hyperledger.org. They have regular calls, right, a mailing list that you can join, and a chat room. And a lot of times the chat room and the mailing list or the most or where you would kind of put that provide that feedback or ask questions. But that's where the community lives. And so if you want to get in touch with them, that's what you would do.

Brandon Zemp  23:29  
Okay. Yeah, I'll definitely dive into that at some point.

Karen Ottoni  23:32  
Yeah, the maintain are on those lists. We're actively building the code. Awesome.

Brandon Zemp  23:37  
Yeah, I'll definitely check that out. We don't have to go through like all of the frameworks and all the tools, but like, what are like a few of them, that you're well aware of and how they work that you think are probably the most prominent at this point?

Karen Ottoni  23:53  
Yeah. So you know, if you're looking for blockchain, Attorney General Purpose blockchain framework, you want to look at fabric, you want to look at sawtooth, and Roja. And those are our blockchains that are going to be able to fit every use case. They'll just have different styles, different ways in which they were built. And so it can be sometimes a matter of preference, or just really familiarity. That brings someone to one project or, or the other, or other frameworks, we have hyperledger nd, which is very specific. It's not a general purpose blockchain framework. It's a digital identity framework. So it's specifically designed to be used for digital identity use cases. And that's a really exciting one that one's been used in, in projects in digital identity in Sierra Leone, and also with the Government of Canada as well. And it's, it's, it's been a cool project to follow that I personally enjoy hearing about what they're doing. And then hyperledger borough is a smart contract if you're in virtual machine, so they're not a general purpose blockchain framework. They are specifically focused on smart contracts. And but what's really cool about bro, is there the permissions if you're in virtual machine, essentially, and, and they collaborated with the sawtooth community, and with the fabric community to allow for both of those blockchain frameworks to accept Ethereum transactions. So because of borough, fabric and sawtooth can handle ether introductions.

Brandon Zemp  25:54  
That's interesting. How do you make I assume that the permission nimble Ethereum virtual machine with borough is private? Correct?

Karen Ottoni  26:06  
Yeah. So you would be setting up a network with known actors?

Brandon Zemp  26:12  
Would it be? So would it use a theorem or ether for those contracts?

Karen Ottoni  26:17  
Um, you wouldn't need to necessarily, um, if if your contracts don't have a financial component to them, which may not need they might may not in a permission setting. But you could

Brandon Zemp  26:35  
is, is borrow something that could be used by basically any company that wanted to utilize that or only the companies within like, the umbrella of the project or that are involved with it?

Karen Ottoni  26:50  
Yeah, no, absolutely anything, anything under the hyperledger umbrella can be used by anyone that code is open source. Anyone can just use the code and never even tell us about it. That's the hard thing for my for me and the people that I you know, our team, our staff, is that you don't have to tell us there's no permission to use hyperledger technology. And so we are always trying to learn about how is it being used in different parts of the world? And we're always fascinated with how, you know, there's, there's, there's so much going on? As a result of that. It's hard to keep up with?

Brandon Zemp  27:30  
How would How would a if you were a small business, or an SME, and you wanted to utilize some of the tools or the frameworks? How would you go about? inquiring to learn about that? Would you have to have some third party who's knowledgeable of the code and the software? Or can you go like directly to the hyperledger? team? Like, what's the avenue for that?

Karen Ottoni  27:52  
Yeah, so it depends on that person's or that company's level of knowledge or comfort and familiarity. If, if they have someone who's who is experiencing blockchain experience in, in in that technical area, then they may feel comfortable, just go ahead and in grabbing the code themselves from GitHub. So the first thing you would want to do is go to our website, or wiki, go to that projects page, and then you'd have all the links and where you could download the code. They're all on GitHub, essentially. That's also where you would get the documentation. And if you're comfortable with, you know, reading through that documentation yourself and figuring it out yourself, then that's how you would do it. Of course, a lot of people aren't at that level. And so do need some help. Do you need some guidance? The community can do a little bit of that for you. But understand that these are all everyone in the community are our own volunteers. And so there isn't a like a hotline that you can call for hyper ledger fabric. You can connect to the community, and there's definitely a lot of people who are there to help as open source communities work right to help people with some issues, they have starting up a network questions they have, but it's going to be there, they're going to expect that you've done some of your own reading, you've done some of your own homework, and you're not asking, you know, some real basic questions that could be answered that way. Right. Right. So but if you really need that sort of service and hand holding, then there's a lot of companies that provide that, right. There's big news. And there's a lot of small companies out there as well. So we have a vendor directory on our website for that reason. Our vendor directory has companies under Resources, our website, and it has a companies that are listed there that provide different kinds of services, product offerings, related to hyperledger. They're all members of our consortium as well. And that's another thing that I haven't mentioned, in addition to being an open source community, where the technology is built completely in the open, we are also a consortium of about 275 members and growing. And until with membership, there's some benefits, for example, you get lyst, you can get listed on our vendor directory on our website. And so that's it, that's a way in which you could find, find someone to help you spin up that network if you need it.

Brandon Zemp  30:47  
How does like a company become a vendor or partner, or contributor to hyperledger.

Karen Ottoni  30:55  
So in terms of getting on our vendor directory, just have to be a member of how ledger to become a member of hyperledger, you just have to express interest in joining. If you are a nonprofit, government institution Association, you can join for free, that's our associate membership. And, and we ask that those kinds of institutions contribute back to the community in a very specific way, since they are joining for free, and then we have general and premier membership. And those are paid. The fee schedule is on our website, we're again, like a totally open book. And it's based on number of employees. And so that's how you become a member of hyperledger. But that's absolutely not how you contribute. Or the only way you can contribute. Remember, hyperledger is contributing to the project because it allows for a staff that helps facilitate that community that helps nurture, grow, support and promote the hyperledger community. Right, it's what allows them to do what I do. But in terms of contributing, you know, code, or contributing technical knowledge, none of that requires membership, that's part of the open source part of hyperledger. And so you if you have a bug to report, we'd love to have your help with that. If you have codes to contribute their ways, you can do that as well. Or if you just really have some, you know, technical knowledge that you want to share and connect with others on we have working groups and special interest groups that you can join that are either technical topic focus, like architecture, performance, scalability, or sector focus, like Telecom, supply chain, public sector, etc. that you can join as well. And that has nothing to do with paid membership.

Brandon Zemp  33:05  
What if you were a, like a consulting company that worked with a bunch of smaller businesses that necessarily don't like, understand tech like this, and you work to like, bring them the tech or explain them? How it works are facilitated for them would accompany like that be able to be a member as well?

Karen Ottoni  33:24  
Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah, you can join hack lunch as a member you could get in and then once you do, you would get listed in the vendor directory. And then there's a lot of other things we do with our members. So we have an annual member summit. And that brings that that, you know, exclusive group together to network and collaborate and share what they've been building on hyperledger. We just actually had that event in Japan two weeks ago. And then we also attend about a lot of events, like, you know, we're at consensus every year we're at him, which is a healthcare focused event or an open, open source summit, we're at silos. And when we attend those events, our members are welcome at our booth to do demos, and to speak with everyone who comes by as well. We do case studies on our members as well. So if you go to our website, you can see that we have case studies on healthcare on supply chain on different examples of projects that are in production phase that are are pretty advanced projects. And and we explained, you know, what it is that their, what their value proposition is what their impact has been.

Brandon Zemp  34:42  
Okay, very cool. Yeah, that's awesome. I'll have to check that out some more to, and I know, kinda like everyone works together, like in this space and whatnot. But this hyper ledger have, like any indirect, like competition in terms of like, development and being an umbrella?

Karen Ottoni  34:58  
Yeah. So you know, it's, it's funny, a lot of people. And I think, I think we've gotten maybe a little bit past that, hopefully, I feel like last year, a lot of the, you know, kind of panel topics, or,

you know, just meet up topics that you'd see around there were very, like hyperledger versus x, you know. And the thing is, is a lot of people see hyperledger as being competitive with Ethereum with our threes corrida, with Corum. And in some ways, it is in the sense that these are definitely other examples of widely known blockchain distributed ledger frameworks that are somewhat general purpose for some of them and are

available for enterprises to use and experiment with and choose from, right? The way really kind of not competitive, is that, like you said, it is we are an umbrella and we and we're here to provide whatever is stable, secure code that's useful for enterprises who wants to take advantage of this technology? And so if there's something interesting that's happening out there, there's no reason why it can't come into our community. Case in point, you know, if the theory of transactions, right, you can't really say hyperledger versus a theorem when several of our frameworks are compatible with the theorem transactions. And you know, like I said, we have hyperledger Pearl, which is a permission smart contract EBM. So, you know, if there's something interesting that's happening out there in this space, that could be useful for enterprises to leverage blockchain technology. It there's no reason why it can be be absorbed into our community, if it's something that's useful, and if the people who are knowledgeable about it want to contribute it to an open source project like ours, where it can grow and have the support and the governance that the Linux Foundation provides.

Brandon Zemp  37:17  
Yeah, I, it's interesting, because there's like, slight, like indirect competition in a lot of ways in the space. But I mean, for the most part, everybody works together. I mean, everyone's sharing the same goal and whatnot. Yeah, it's cool to see what hyperledger is doing and where it's going, and how it's kind of bringing all these companies together under this pseudo umbrella, and developing all this stuff. Before we kind of wrap up in a few minutes. What are like the future? What's the future outlook for? hyperledger? What are the goals that hyperledger wants to reach?

Karen Ottoni  37:52  
Yeah. So, you know, I think a lot of what hyperledger set out to do is, is what I kind of just mentioned is really be a home for where enterprises can go to find the right technologies that work for their use cases, and be sure that those technologies are being built in a, in a structure that's, you know, got good governance around it, and isn't dominated by one company or organization and therefore has potential future stability and sustainability. There's also been a lot of talk within our community about components ization. So allowing having having less they're there be there be less sort of wholly formed projects, that are our have all these different features that just live in that project. And instead kind of breaking out those different components so that it can be used across different projects. And so that kind of portability, or into into profitability between our projects is something that really is a future goal for the organization. And it's something that we're already starting to see. So one of the latest things to come out of hyperledger is a new project called hyperledger, transact. And transact really represents this continued evolution at hyperledger. Towards this greater Come on components ization, that allows a more rapid and responsible adoption of new blockchain technologies. And what it does is it's this platform agnostic library for executing transactions with smart contracts. So it's sort of decoupling the smart contract engine from the distant distributed ledger.

Brandon Zemp  39:43  
That's really interesting.

Karen Ottoni  39:44  
Yeah, so usually, you know, smart contract. So execution is tied to the specific deal t, which limits the ability for you to reuse the code and that smart contract. And so what transact hopes to do is to reduce the development effort, cost difference distributed, Ledger's by providing a standard interface to execute smart contracts that's separate from the actual DLT. That's a new one, correct? Yep. That's a new one that just launched this summer.

Brandon Zemp  40:14  
Very cool. When can people look forward to seeing more about transact, or it's called transact craft

Karen Ottoni  40:21  
called transact. So you go to our wiki hyperledger.org. And it's one of the projects that's listed there. And like with anything, hyperledger they've got a wiki page, a mailing list, a chat room and regular phone calls. I'm on our website, hyperledger.org. We also have a blog, and that blog announcement really go kind of does a good explanation of what it is. So you can get a good idea of what it is from that. But if you want to actually kind of get involved, you want to go to the wiki.

Brandon Zemp  40:54  
Okay, do you guys have like a medium page? Or do you guys just have a blog? Like on the website? Like, what's a good?

Karen Ottoni  41:01  
on our website? We don't have a medium page.

Brandon Zemp  41:04  
Okay. Is that a good place to get like information on like, what's like, new with hyperledger?

Karen Ottoni  41:09  
Yeah, so our blog, and our Twitter, um, will always be where we announce new projects, where we announced new members that have joined events that we're attending that we're going to be at, that you can find us and meet us at. Those are definitely the good places to look on our Twitter and our blog as well.

Brandon Zemp  41:31  
Very cool. How can the subscribers follow you and hyperledger on social media? Or where can they follow you one more?

Karen Ottoni  41:42  
Definitely, the hype, the hyper ledger account is the best way. So at hyperledger. I'm on Twitter as well. I'm at Karen, Tony Ott Oh, and I but I to learn about hyperledger better to follow

Brandon Zemp  41:58  
the hyperledger go. Awesome. Karen, thank you for coming on everything and taking the time. Really appreciate it. I definitely learned a lot more about hyperledger as well. It's quite, quite a project with a lot of projects. So yeah, thank you

Karen Ottoni  42:15  
Thank you so much for having me on. It was a pleasure speaking with you.

Brandon Zemp  42:18  
You're very welcome. Anytime! Have a great day and talk to you soon.

Karen Ottoni  42:23  
Okay, bye.