Public Goods Podcast

Bringing Web3 to the US Government w/ Shadman Hossain of CGI & LabsDAO

• Shadman Hossain • Season 1 • Episode 4

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On this episode of the Public Goods Podcast, we have Shadman Hossain, Manager of Emerging Technology at CGI & Founder of Labs DAO. Shadman discusses his onboarding into blockchain,  journey as a startup founder, building blockchain solutions for government, transitioning from private to public blockchains, and a vision for a “United States of DAOs”. 

Shadman on Github https://github.com/shadmoney and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/shadman-hossain/
About CGI https://www.cgi.com/en
Labs DAO Github https://github.com/labsdao
Labs DAO Anacostia https://github.com/LabsDAO/Anacostia-blockchain
Labs DAO First Community Call https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/r/eventedit/copy/NGprdGZvYjlmYjBqaXV0dXFrMGdhczF2ZGMgaG9zc2FpbmNhcGl0YWxAbQ/aG9zc2FpbmNhcGl0YWxAZ21haWwuY29t 

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Hello, everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Public Goods Podcast. Today we have Shadman Hossain which is not only one of my friends in this space, but like a big brother to me of blockchain. We've done a lot of Web3 things together. And this is a very interesting and unique perspective as opposed to other episodes. Before we've had people building funding mechanisms, people building DAOs. And honestly, it's a little bit about an intersection of a lot of these worlds, but... very unique in a sense that Shadman has unique expertise in not only working with the private sector, but also working with the public sector, with the government, who is a steward of many of the public goods in the traditional space that we know and love, like our roads and a public goods funding mechanism, like our taxes. And so, yeah, there's a lot of parallels we can draw to what we're doing at Web3. and a very unique perspective that we can learn from Shadba. So welcome Ramana Nubod. Roma then Mubarak, glad to be here. And yeah, I first wanted to start. I know your journey has kind of been long. Just tell people how you got in to the Web3 and the crypto space and how that evolution came along your career. Sure, I mean, so, you know, I'm a big believer in signs and signs from God and I had three specific chances to get into Web3. The first one was I had a high school friend who sent me Bitcoin back in 2011 and I didn't pay much attention to it and I thought, okay, this is weird and I had it in my laptop, which I don't have anymore and I don't even want to think about how much Bitcoin I had at that point because probably gonna get depressed if I really... think about how much bitcoin I received in 2011. The second time was in 2013 when I saw a news article about some getting mad at him because his laptop was getting hot and he threw it out and that became worth millions of dollars and people are still looking for that Bitcoin in the trash. And the third time was in college when my cybersecurity professor talked about the dark web and how 90 % of the web is the dark web and we are only exposed to 10%. And later that night I go onto the dark web with my curious mind to see Bitcoin for the third time being used for transactions. And that is when I realized the importance and I started taking Bitcoin seriously and I saw the implications after reading the white paper. And I went down the rabbit hole of blockchain, the technology itself, and then I discovered Ethereum and understood the power of smart contracts and how any application we see today can be built on smart contracts. and in a new way that will redefine and reshape the way we live. So that's sort of my journey. And it took me three times to really pay attention, but I haven't looked back since. blockchain at Mason, a club at my university, because there was a big lack of education from my university and professors at the time, you know, in 2015, 2016, nobody really knew about blockchain and not, it was not something that you can take a class on. So I found myself, you know, recognizing this, this gap between academia and, and blockchain. And I decided to fill that gap by starting this club and it grew to over a hundred students. and got faculty involved from all these different departments from computer science to econ to finance to come together and, and, you know, bridge this gap. And then, you know, it grew on from there. We connected with a global blockchain campus, started working with University of Berkeley and universities all across the globe to bridge this gap and start creating educational content, started hosting workshops to educate, you know, the public. and specifically the people around me at the time in my own university. And the need actually came from trying to start my own company in blockchain. And I realized there was a big talent shortage. People didn't even know what blockchain was. So hiring blockchain developers was a big challenge for me. And so this blockchain and Mason was sort of a pipeline to bridge that talent gap as well. And that sort of started my journey. And you know, I learned a lot from my startup. It did not become successful, but when you get burned, that's when you learn the biggest lessons in life. And then I went on to work at the intersection of blockchain and government, starting off at Leidos as their first blockchain engineer and building applications for defense, space, healthcare, use cases using blockchain and all my learnings from teaching blockchain itself. And also another fun fact was I was teaching how to create games to little students and I would say high schoolers and incoming college students on how to develop on blockchain. They taught them how to create voting applications on blockchain and specific games on blockchain. And I found it interesting how the younger generation picked up the concepts of blockchain and decentralization a lot quicker than any adult. And so that's when I realized, you know, Anybody over the age of 30 to 40, they have a really tough time grasping the paradigm shift. And it is a different model, mental model and a different way of thinking. And the younger generation will be the ones that will drive this change forward. And fast forward now, it's almost a decade of me being in this industry and trying to bring in real world use cases by bringing this to the government and making sure the government can adopt this. Because as you mentioned, The public goods, right? Government is the biggest provider of public goods. And so imagine a government that can be trusted and transparent and be held accountable with its decisions because they're leveraging the blockchain. So that's been one of my biggest drivers of me still staying in the DC area and working with the decision makers and folks at the highest levels to make sure we adopt blockchain. so we can have a trusted government and we can bring that trust back to the citizens because I know that trust is a very big thing and it is deteriorating as we speak from data and now with the rise of AI, it is very hard to trust. And so for me, it's very important to fight this good fight and make sure we bring and somebody has to bring this adoption to the government because... I want to see a government that is operating under transparency and accountability. Yeah, that's an incredible journey starting all the way from the dark web into the government. That's an interesting story arc. I mean, also, yeah, very, very similar to how I first became aware of blockchain as well, except didn't end up at the government. So yeah, it's a little bit of the splits, but that's incredible going from there and actually, you know, from the blockchain university perspective, seeing all these interdisciplinary fields come together, as well as just seeing a bunch of different use cases that are really under looked now from gaming to democracy, a lot of things that haven't actually reached mass adoption. You were already educating people back then. And so now you are the manager of emerging technology at CGI, one of the largest government consulting groups. What would you say you've learned like from? trying and experimenting with a lot of different things in the Web3 space and actually trying to apply it on the public sector on an enterprise level. What are your biggest pain points and your lessons from the application perspective? So the biggest pain point was education and making folks realize what the value of blockchain is. There was a time as I was developing out these products, when you have a hammer, you might have heard this saying, when you have a hammer, everything can look like a nail. So blockchain was seen as a magical thing that could be applied to any use case. And that is where I saw the enterprise. is that they all wanted to create their own private blockchains and for specific use cases that had nothing to do with really solving the core problem, which was data sharing or data visibility or data integrity. And, you know, I had a very different take. And funny enough, every time I interviewed at these large companies to get a role in blockchain, I always disagreed with their approach and I still got the job. And where I disagreed on was the fact that they all wanted to create their own private blockchain. And let's think about that for a second. Blockchain means a decentralized database. So now we're talking about private blockchain. Really, you're talking about a centralized, decentralized database. To me, it doesn't make sense. It still doesn't make sense. But I basically had the mindset of, look, I'll still build it. You can still pay me to build it. We can experiment with it. But I had this notion of a hybrid blockchain where you have privacy, but the blockchain inherently is still decentralized. So imagine this perfect balance of privacy and transparency and decentralization. And so I had a very unique perspective that I brought to the industry. And as you can tell, most private blockchain implementations has failed to this date. Even Walmart, IBM, they started it, they're shutting it down. EY has experimented with it heavily. Leidos where I worked, we also experimented with heavily. You know, we proved out certain concepts and we also proved out the intersection of blockchain and IoT and AI, where we had built solutions around a supply chain use case where, you know, you have specific sensors sending data being picked up by an AI and then put on chain. And now we all had visibility on where things are. Now that worked theoretically from a proof of concept perspective, but the biggest challenge was how do you take it from a proof of concept prototype to actual production? And that is where we stopped. A lot of these initiatives never made it to production. They never made it past the proof of concepts. So now my biggest goal is how do I bring a solution that I know can be adopted and used? in production, not just something that you create in a lab and it just stays there. So, you know, that has been the biggest challenge is making folks, number one, understand what the value proposition of blockchain really is. And the number two, how do you build it the right way? Because the strategic approaches was not right. And people were still approaching it from a very web two perspective where you're still centralizing a decentralized system. So for me, how do you... incentives of everyone in the government to come together and then I realized you know this actually has to happen from a policy perspective. It cannot happen through one company. It cannot happen through one contract. It actually has to happen from a government -wide policy adoption where everyone is now incentivized to adopt a blockchain system that is sufficiently decentralized because we don't want to create the same problem again. which is a network of networks that don't necessarily talk to each other. And that's been the biggest problem within the government. And part of the reason why something like 9 -11 happened in the first place, right? Because governments and agencies knew something bad was going to happen, but they were not incentivized to share that data and share it quickly enough. So I think blockchain really serves as that ledger where you can incentivize the government and hold folks accountable for not making the decisions fast enough. Because I think blockchain can be used as a tool to solve and protect against issues like that happening and disasters like that happening. So number one, education. Number two, the strategic implementation to production. And then three, implementing it from a policy perspective with aligned incentives. Those are some of the big points that I've seen in my last decade of trying to bring blockchain to the government. no, that's an incredible perspective. There's a few threads I want to pull on on that perspective. I mean, firstly, in terms of you have the startup perspective and then you had the government perspective, the agile three to five person teams that ship straight to production. And then you have the government with like the waterfall method and taking a long time to iterate. But then also a compromise between. the two now that from launching a private blockchain where you have these kind of permission nodes, launching a public blockchain in itself is a very difficult feat. So I kind of want to pick your brain on like what are you bringing these kind of new agile software engineering methodologies to the government? How does that happen like in terms of like the day -to -day operations of shipping this code? Oh no, absolutely. So, you know, you think that the government, you know, is, is waterfall, but now everything that we do is agile. And it's been that way for the last several years. Um, the government has shifted from this waterfall method to this agile method. So everything that, um, at least personally with my teams, we've been moving in a very agile way. And to be honest, it's actually feels like a startup where, you know, I have a team of four or five engineers building out this prototype. We're creating a demo and then going out and engaging with the customer within the government and showing them, Hey, look, this is the value that you can get out of this, out of adopting this. And we've had some success with that approach. So I think taking, you know, having a lean team that really understands web three from not just a code perspective, but also the UI UX and the design. I think that was a massive leap. You know, how do you abstract wallets? How do you abstract transactions? So having to do those things on the backend and also make sure the UI UX and taking a human centered design approach following the agile methodology. And that's something that I've done at Leidos and I'm also now doing at CGI. And I've had really good successes in terms of creating these proof of concepts, getting to a demo, creating a product that is then being demoed out to a bunch of customers. And they're not only just learning about it, but they're seeing the value of Web3. and what it means to have a human-centered design approach to Web3 applications. And as like you said, Agile right now is the way to go because of the speed of change that we are seeing in this industry. You can't have one mindset and just adopt one way with being very picky or stubborn about one specific blockchain or one specific tech stack. You have to keep an open mind and still be flexible enough to adopt two specific new technologies. So, you know, one of the approaches that I've taken is building with modular architectures. Everything should be plug and play. Everything should be flexible. Nothing should be in a monolithic way. And you should be able to adapt as technology changes, as needs changes. You have to be able to adapt and that all falls down, you know. team that moves very slow, you know, and usually that's only with products that's already established already in production. So that is a cool part about being in a large company, but in an innovation sort of lab where you get to move fast like a startup. And I actually like to compare it like a Seal Team 6 type of approach where, you know, we are very specialized at one skill and building a thing. And so imagine bringing in a small team of five to six people to build that very special need that nobody in the company can build but your team. So it's been great to have the backing of a large company, but operate like a startup. Yeah. And then going kind of off of that, there's a lot that startups need to kind of make compromises with, especially when developing a whole stack, especially when deciding for a public blockchain. I kind of wanted to pick into that. You mentioned different primitives like meta transaction or like paymasters and account abstraction and even identity and privacy on there. And there has been kind of this new meta, especially to launch an L2 or even to launch a new generation blockchain, although it's not a private blockchain, it is a public blockchain, all those primitives are needed to be built. So how do you kind of like look at it from a, if you have the resources of, you know, a multi tens of thousand people company, like why not build a blockchain or versus using an existing blockchain and what are kind of the primitives that you really look for to making this happen? Yeah, I think that's a great question, right? Because when you're a large organization, you sort of tend to think that you have the firepower to go build something on your own, which is certainly true. But we looked at the whole landscape and then asked this question. And this is a question I like to ask myself is, can we hire a team of 10 to 20 engineers that can compete against the open source and open source developers like in Ethereum or Cosmos or Polygon? And... answer is no. It does not matter how many smart engineers we bring on board, you know, a team of 10, it will be very difficult to compete against the open source world. And, you know, as you know, open source is eating the world. Even Google engineers are now worried that they're not moving fast enough in their verticals compared to how fast open source moves. So, you know, the mindset that in the perspective I look at it from is, you know, can you compete against Linux by building your own Linux, right? Blockchain to me is almost like its own operating system. And so if you have an internal company and you're trying to build your own operating system it It will take a lot more effort than you first initially Realize right and guess what in within CGI the first two years before I arrived we did exactly that You know, there was a team of six Engineers building out their own private blockchain writing out the read writes and all the crud operations from scratch and Then when I came and I looked at it I was you know, and the first thought I had was why are we building these things up from scratch? Because you don't realize the fundamental blocks, you sort of have to rebuild it if you're trying to build it for the government and build it in different ways. And can that compete against open source? Within two years, by the time they were done, the world has already moved on. Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric and these specific components already... We're way ahead. And so now how do you catch up to that? And you also have to worry about talent, right? What if some of your smartest engineers leave after two years? As you know, a person stays at a company for no more than two years on average. So now the core engineers that have built this private blockchain with their documentation now left, it is very hard to bring on new talent and onboard them and make them understand how they built it from scratch. So, With that perspective, I think that is the reason why private blockchain implementations have failed because by the time you finish and now you have to go public from a private blockchain, it's very hard to make it public because you built things in a certain way. You had certain engineers have specific proprietary knowledge that is not easily transferable. So that is why, in my opinion, open source always wins. And so if now with that perspective, I had to rebuild everything from scratch. And then I realized, asked myself this question, do I do the same thing? Do I repeat history? Do I rebuild exactly what they rebuild, but from scratch with my own new team now rebuilding a private blockchain? And to me that didn't make sense. And that is where I started adopting Ernst and Young's EY's perspective of really betting on privacy technology on public chains. Because... Blockchain, the decentralized ledger already exists. Bitcoin is the best one. There's Ethereum, there's Polyon, these layer twos. So leave the decentralization on the public to the public. And how do we build privacy technology on top of the public chain? And so that is where I started having a very different perspective on an approach to bringing this to the government. Because for me, you know, The only way I would say a government blockchain would work is, as I mentioned before, through policy. If there was a mandate to say every government agency needs to adopt blockchain and we have our own US government blockchain and every agency is running their own node, that is the only way I can see a private, public, or semi-hybrid blockchain being used within the government. So now the perspective that I'm taking is, you know, the advancements in zero knowledge and fully homomorphic encryption, you can now add privacy to your public blockchain smart contracts. So there are things like from the team of Zama, who's built out fully homomorphic encryption and encrypted and confidential smart contracts. Now you can actually have fully encrypted variables onto smart contracts where you can hide token balances. you can hide certain variables. Now, to me, we are at an inflection point where this actually makes sense. The vision that I've had of privacy on top of public chains is now here. And the adoption of it will also come soon and will soon follow. And that is a different approach that I've had for the last five years, but the technology just was not there. The technology was not caught up, but now, it is and I've seen a lot of layer twos adopting FHE, fully homomorphic encryption into their networks. And I've seen actually two or three other layer twos or layer ones actually building on top of Zama and their team on building these privacy preserving blockchains that are public but can hide certain elements. And to be honest, that is the reason why you know, government and enterprise want to launch private blockchains because they want privacy. Without that privacy, you will never see adoption at the government level. Now, if you can guarantee that privacy with these encryption schemes like Zero Knowledge and FHE, then I know for a fact they're a lot more receptive to adopting it. Yeah. And having those primitives available, like again, this wasn't a reality up until like recently, recently, even Solana with their new token standard, they've implemented private transactions actually for the balances as well. I don't think they use FHE, but this is something that they've been in the works for years. And even, I remember over a year ago, seeing Azama's pitch deck and hearing first about FHE. And it, yeah, it was, it was even all these like real use zero knowledge applications. Like we have. for our identity solution, you know, powered by a hall of name, government ID, and to be able to verify your phone number and all these primitives are coming together. But personally, I'm still kind of skeptical. There is now, you know, ZK Sync, I think with Clave or Clave or whatever you call it, they have a really good onboarding and, you know, wallet experience and a paymaster's experience as well, but... from my perspective, especially when we first started using Polygon years ago, that was a fraction of a fraction of a cent. And all these layer twos, even with the new DaneCrew upgrade, it's still a couple of cents. So yes, there is a bunch of primitive building blocks in there, but do you truly believe, given the current technologies, that it is ready to scale for microtransactions and for everyday use? How are you looking at that and what the applications that you can actually... think that is a great question because, you when we say privacy preserving primitives, right, how do we really know that they're secure? And I think it's not even, you know, scalability, I think, will come, but I think we need to convince that the security is up to with what the claims are. And one of the biggest gaps that I'm seeing is privacy preserving definitions and benchmarks for these new primitives. I don't think I've seen anybody come up with definitions and benchmarks for what does it mean to really be secure with zero knowledge? What does it mean to really be secure with FHE? We just throw these words around, but how are we really testing these cryptographic primitives? And the concern with any new primitive is, you know, have all the hype of new technology. You have everybody in a bandwagon adopting this, but you have to look at the other side and from a security perspective, because that's number one, you know, imperative and priority for the government is security, not necessarily scalability. Government does not really care about scaling as much, but they do care about security. So for me, it's not even about transaction costs, scalability. Government spends... hundreds of millions and billions of dollars actually on inefficient solutions that don't necessarily scale, but they're very, very secure. So for me, we need to fill the cryptographic primitives definitions and this gap of not having benchmark tools. And in fact, that is why I started LabsDAO and the specific collective of decentralized community that can help come up and shape these definitions. And so that is actually... one of the grants that we are seeking from NSF to specifically focus and do research on these cryptographic primitive definitions. Yeah. And that's also been working with different people implementing ZK on their application level. We can't even find auditors. There's maybe Zokeo and Zellick, but there is, there's only a few in the game that even advertise that they audit ZK proof, not even FHE. And then coming into that intersectionality, there's only a few of those people that even have the security clearance to be working with the government. So that, that in itself is a huge feat. You talked about, you know, regulatory and. policy or more policy than regulatory. And then you just mentioned you were founding a DAO. So looking at the current regulatory landscape, like how, why are you forming a DAO versus just a traditional government consulting firm? I think that's a great question for me. Innovation is tradition and what better way to show innovation than live it and read it and actually execute it. So for me, my thesis is that DAOs will be the fundamental way the companies of the future will operate. And if that is my thesis, then what better way to learn and test that thesis than to start one yourself. And that is where I started evaluating the landscape. and how can I run a DAO within the US, within the confines of the regulatory limitations? And that is why, where I ended up deciding to launch this DAO under the state of Wyoming, because they have the most, I would say robust, DAO LLC laws. And so, for me, if I can prove this out through this DAO, I think this will start, this will serve as a standard for the US government. If I can show that I am running a company under hyper transparency and accountability, and I'm running my operations, I'm running my invoicing, I'm running my decision -making through this DAO on chain that is completely auditable and verifiable, and that is exactly what the government expects from the private industry, well, we can flip the switch and say, look, we are now serving as that standard. of a DAO operating and working with the US government. And now you can see this DAO as a standard for the government itself operating as a DAO. And this is a very way out there vision that I have and anybody I shared it with calls me crazy. But that's exactly how I know that I'm on the right track. Because if I wasn't called crazy for mentioning and having this vision, then I know I was in the wrong path and I'm not dreaming big enough. And so my vision is, you know, how can I make the United States, I want to make the United States of Dows. Imagine every agency, every state to me, actually the United States is the most decentralized country comprised of 50 states coming together to make a decision. So for me, decentralization is the solution for a lot of our problems in the sense of we have the most resiliency, right? If you are decentralized, if one or two or three nodes fail, you are still resilient. So that's why the United States to me is the most resilient country because we are comprised of 50 states. Now you extrapolate this into a DAO concept, a decentralized autonomous organization. Extrapolate this from an organization to a country level. What does a decentralized autonomous country look like? And that is where, you know, I live in the future and, you know, be me being in the position that I'm at, you know, in my role in emerging technology, I always have to be thinking about the future. What does the next five, 10, 20 years look like? And for me, my 20, my 10 to 20 year vision is the United States government running as an operating as a DAO. And so if that is my vision, I had to take a step back. And now at a ground level, what can I do today to set that standard up? And that is what led me to start. LabsDAO to serve as a standard operating model for the government, starting off with working with the government and then eventually bringing it to the government and adopting that standard across the United States and eventually the globe. Yeah, that's an incredibly bold vision. There is a lot, you know, to do and a lot to even consider when first kind of creating a DAO. I've been involved in a lot of like DAO tooling and like even ran the near DAO builder groups for a while. And then part of DAO is honestly in a bunch of jurisdictions as well. And so how do you look at it from a building perspective? Like we talked like before about building your own blockchain. There's a lot of building a lot of DAO primitives. And essentially how we like to describe DAOs is a business on chain. And every business needs, like you said, operating and invoices. They need some type of identity and membership. They need some type of onboarding. And so how did you begin to look at this landscape and where do you kind of find yourself building new things versus using already existing tools? Yeah, I mean, it started off looking at the whole DAO landscape and I've been following this DAO landscape for the last three years. And so seeing it evolve and seeing the tools come together now, I would say, you know, we have the DAO stack, what I call the DAO stack. When you, when you launch a company, you have to figure out what is your communication tool? What is your accounting tool? What is your invoicing tool? Right. And I've seen this. DAO stack sort of mature to a point where I now don't necessarily have to build any DAO primitives per se, but rather integrate with these existing tools, these DAO tools that have come about. Like for example, you know, leveraging tokens, leveraging snapshot, collab land. and bringing it together and just experimenting with it. And then also like if it doesn't work, we can easily switch to something else. And so having that flexibility within the DAO stack, you know, the word modularity, I'm going to say this again, the DAO stack also has to be modular. How can you move from one application or DApp to another? And that is something that is also very important to the DAO members. And so... You know, I don't necessarily make the decision myself. This is not a dictatorship, but rather a collective decision amongst the DAO members to pick the tools that they're familiar with, that they want to integrate with. And so we collectively make that decision to come together. And so, you know, it just starts with testing and trials. So for example, two weeks ago was when we had the first DAO transaction for invoicing, where we paid out a specific... um, dial member through a request at finance. And so we're, you know, that was one of the tools after evaluating three or four, we just decided to go with that because it had the most, um, uh, most, uh, usage and it's been around the longest. So that's the other thing that we're evaluating is just because a tool is new does not mean that we are going to use it. We're going to test it out, evaluate it, but usually it's. You know what, which. which of these tools have a track record, which of these tools have been used by other DAOs successfully. And then we make that decision based on the history of that tool being used. Because as you know, a lot of these protocols, all these companies, you start and you then adopt it and then the company can go out of business. So once it goes out of business, what do you do? And so you have to have a lot of factors play in into your DAO stack. You do not want to pick. something new and shiny and then next thing you know, you're so tied to it that if they go out of business, you are also at risk. So it's about choosing even within this new emerging field, some of the tools that already have a track record of operating for several years now. And that's sort of how we're deciding and what we're leveraging within our own DAO stack. Yeah, and we've had that, you know, our underlying infrastructure get rugged on us before. It's really hard when you're building a startup on top of other startups. And just a little bit of background context, so like based on the tools you're using, it seems like it's obviously on Ethereum, you have collab land, which lets you, you know, easily have badges on your discord on your roles. You have snapshot, which lets you build a whole gasless composable, you know, governance framework on top of your ENS. Request finance, it's a whole financial stack. You know, people use it generally for invoicing and they even have their own, you know, grant system and easy way to integrate. So I think building with this composability in mind is very key and very essential, like kind of like Uniswap hooks. I think, like you said, like Snapshot does a really good job at that. This is how we're thinking with our funding stack, how if, you know, if this contract gets compromised or... If no one can no longer maintain it, how do we have like on -chain version controlling? How do we have it? So people can plug in different registries, different identities, different distribution mechanisms, different engagement systems. So yeah, that's, that's something I think a lot of people. Like you want to build an MVP when you're, when you're launching something, but at the same time, people often like compromise this composability and then it results in them creating everything from scratch. So it's great to hear that. not only with creating a public blockchain, but also creating a public DAO. A lot of these primitives now are here that are easy to plug into. And so another thing I wanted to ask about is like you mentioned, you mentioned like at CGI, you're in not the blockchain space like you were at Lytos, but you're in emerging tech. And so can you kind of differentiate like your definitions of blockchain, web three and emerging tech and how that overlaps? Sure. So, you know, when I joined at Lytos, I was hired as a blockchain engineer. And when I came on to CGI, I was also hired as a blockchain engineer. And what we started to see is this massive shift to the word Web3. And at the time, you know, I started pushing towards that narrative of, hey, you know, blockchain is a lot more than just underlying tech. So for me, blockchain was a umbrella. You know, Web3 is umbrella term that encompasses blockchain. So blockchain is a small little component within Web3. And so the definition of Web3 today, it's still not defined by anybody, right? But I tend to follow the definition of Coinbase as one of the most trusted Web3 blockchain companies within the United States operating under the regulatory bodies of the US government. You know, I think their web three definition and the metaverse definition of, of, of Coinbase really resonated with me personally. And that is where I started pushing that vision of web three within CGI. And I got a lot of backlash. I'll be honest at first folks are like, what is the web three? This is such a new thing. Nobody within the government is asking for this. So why should we adopt this term web three rather than blockchain? So for me, it was how do I. How do I get this company and the enterprise to realize there's more than blockchain? There's a lot more here. It's not about just a ledger. We had digital identities being put on top of this ledger. We had zero knowledge coming on top of this ledger. We had all these other cool innovations that necessarily was not captured by the word blockchain. So for me, push towards web three was to bring in digital identity. that is anchored on a blockchain. So, and you know, those conversations eventually started getting accepted. So at first I really was told, get the word web three out of, out of my mouth. And now I have executives using the word web three to describe it as a revolutionary technology where AI is an evolutionary technology. And so, you know, for me, it was incrementally diversifying my skill sets from blockchain to other areas. like digital identity, like zero knowledge, like homomorphic encryption, which is not just blockchain, it is way more than blockchain. So from web three, now I'm finding myself looking at the intersection with AI and privacy technologies, such as homomorphic encryption and zero knowledge. And that is how I got my role as I've evolved out of blockchain into more categories and looking at the intersectionalities of these technologies. So. you know, looking at from the perspective of using blockchain to bring transparency and auditability into AI, as you know, AI is a black box. So that is where I had to upskill myself in AI with the explosion. So now my brand and really what I focus on in my team is applied research in three specific areas, blockchain, AI and privacy technologies. And so anytime any of these topics come, within any RFI RFP and anybody within the government that's looking for anything with blockchain AI and privacy tech or this intersection that comes to me and my team and I specifically help respond and come up with solutions and develop prototypes at this intersection because to me it's not just the isolated technology but the convergence of these technologies with other tech that is also emerging that you can really find interesting use cases and unlock value that you have not seen before. So that is how I got my title of being a manager within the emerging technology practice. And specifically within that, the applied research division, because now I'm having to read research papers, take away ideas that are way far out there that are not necessarily proven yet as five, maybe 10 years out and make it a reality and bring it home and start. creating proof of concepts and prototypes. So it's been an amazing journey because now for me, my job is a lot more interesting because I'm not looking at it from one dimension, one perspective of just blockchain and web three, but I'm looking at it from an AI perspective. I'm looking from privacy perspective and making sure we can, you know, I can provide as much value as I can to my clients and my customers, you know, being in the U .S. government. And so I think that is part of up-skilling, as you know. Uh, with AI coming, really we start questioning our own value. How can we provide value if an AI can do my job? So for me, it's, it's upscaling myself and looking at the convergence and connecting dots. And so for me, I'm a dot connector between these emerging texts. And that is why, you know, I'm no longer just a blockchain guy. Now I'm also a blockchain AI and privacy guy. Sometimes even IOT, you know, sensors and, and, and specific machines. leveraging blockchain and AI. So it makes, it makes, it's made my job very interesting to say the least. Yeah, and you picked on a few threads throughout this interview. So you mentioned IoT. It's been a long time since we were researching about IOTA and DAGs. And I think this even got rebranded to deepen decentralized physical infrastructure network, which is an incredible pivot. But to me, that was the IoT, the Web3 IoT of things. You mentioned even stuff in space. And now there's an emerging field called dSpace with like Moondow sending people to the moon, even Lockheed Martin's involved. You mentioned confederated DAOs across the United States. There's this concept that Balaji is really putting forward with network states. And even in here, in Austin, we're about to do a network state event. There's ATX DAO, there's even a DC DAO forming. There's Zuzalu with these pop -up cities. So how are you looking at these kind of far out different trends? Because they're not just these three identity and things that you mentioned, but they're... there are these whole new concepts and fields. So how are you paying attention to that? I think that's a great point. And as you mentioned, all these emerging trends are coming together. In my mind, D -Pen is being rebranded from IoT. And then the idea of network states and specific DAOs forming for specific use cases. So I'm keeping my eye out on all of them. But right now, I have to basically focus and have a brand that is focusing on the intersections. of these specific things. So I'm sort of looking at the convergence of using these technologies as a building block to affect specific industries. So imagine the combination of blockchain and AI being used in space, that fundamental technology can also be used on earth on the ground for supply chain and visibility tracking when combined with IoT. So. That is why, you know, the umbrella term of emerging technology is so valuable to me because now you can't just say one or two or three things. You have to really look at the whole landscape and have an open mind about, you know, the technologies that are coming together and convergence. But for me, you know, all of these things are super exciting, but what really stands out is the intersection of blockchain and AI. I think that convergence of those two technologies are, is, is. so disruptive that I don't think we as a society have articulated the true value that could be unlocked from the conversion of just those two things. Of course, now you combine it with machines, autonomous robots, you now enter a whole different realm. But I think there has to be a technology adoption curve one step at a time. You can't necessarily boil the whole ocean. Right. You have to have a certain focus. So that's why within my emerging tech umbrella, I'm specifically focusing on few things. I would say is of course, DAOs collaborating using the blockchain, but the conversions of AI. And that is where, you know, LabsDAO actually open sourced a public goods tool called Anacostia blockchain, which specifically allows you to do machine learning operations on chain. And that is truly to unlock the AI black box. How do you audit AI and its decision making and its bias using blockchain? And also, IP, protection of your IP as you experiment with AI. So that is an area that I'm really focused on and I would like to invite the community and anybody that's listening to really look at that tool and how you can leverage it. And this is something that... The DAO is also trying to bring on two big organizations and government agencies because it really is a public good. We're not trying to necessarily make money out of this protocol. Eventually we want to turn this into a protocol. But the biggest thing is adoption and experimentation and feedback on the implications of what we've built. And we're open sourcing out to the community. And that's what we did at ETH Denver. We, you know, built this proof of concept of MLOps on chain and we put this out to the world and in hopes of getting adoption and feedback and just have thought provoking questions on what else can we do? But going back, it's emerging tech. I'm no longer just a blockchain focused person. I'm just looking at the whole world and society and looking at what emerging tech will disrupt the way we live. but also what emerging technologies provide us the most value. And so, you know, the rapid change of innovation, you really have to keep an open mind. You cannot become a maximalist in one thing or other. You know, I like to have a saying that you can be stubborn with your vision that I've laid out for myself in the next 10 to 20 years, but you have to be flexible in the details and the process on how you get there. So for me, I'm very stubborn on the vision that I have for the governments of the world and enterprises, how they should function in the next 10 to 20 years, but I'm very flexible on the details and the process. So it could be a combination of blockchain, AI, IoT, DePIN whatever word or narrative you want to put out there, but having that flexibility is super important because you rather be on the right side of history than wrong. And I plan on being right. because I have been right with a lot of my predictions. And so that's the reason why I'm very stubborn on the vision, but flexible on the details and the technology. Yeah, that's incredible. And I think it's incredible to see even on the public goods note, like that as a private classified working on technology, you guys are very dependent on the open source technology that people are building. And then now you're forming an open process and open coordination tool using a lot of these building blocks to build open source software in itself. And that's a beautiful thing. I know people at open source observer and drips network and get coin who track this. are trying to quantify that value of how enterprises are impacted by open source software. And for those who want to get involved in labs that were the work that you're doing, you mentioned the repo, what is the major call to action? Is this, and you mentioned a DAO, I worked in a lot of DAO, and DAO, is this something that if porous and individual contributors can get into, is this something that product labs and different researchers kind of join? Like how do you get involved? with labs down and who are you looking for? Yeah, I'm truly looking for partners in the vision that I've shared, right? So like I said, I'm flexible on the details, but stubborn on the vision. So if you share that vision that I've put laid out of, you know, having a world that is operating under hyper transparency and hyper accountability, I invite anybody to join and connect with me personally, first of all. And then second of all, you can follow LabsDAO on GitHub. And there's a LabsDAO organization. Look at the repo and... download the repo, fork it, start contributing there, and then connect with me personally on LinkedIn or on Telegram, Shad256, or specifically LinkedIn, I would say, would be the best way to connect with me. And I'm inviting anybody that is sharing the vision of a world where we are truly holding our governments accountable, but also we're bringing that trust back. with the citizens of the world, trusting its government, trusting the data, and just creating a better world and a better society. So that would be my call to action is connect with me personally, follow LabsDow, its accounts, and go to the GitHub. And we will be having a community call on March 29th with some of the LabsDow members. And I'll also invite everybody to join that call and the meeting details will be shared on LinkedIn. for folks that want to contribute to learn about the architecture, about what we've built, how we built it and where we're going in its future. And I would invite everybody to join that call as the initial DAO community kickoff call. And that will be March 29th. So I would say connect with me, follow me on LinkedIn and keep an eye out for those details. Yeah, and forking is one of the biggest forms of flattery in this game. So definitely, definitely get involved in the GitHub and LinkedIn. I'll share that in the show notes. And yeah, this has got me inspired. You know, I'm, I vision the world where the amount of taxes that we pay give us voting rights to how the budget is spent. And if you could do that, yeah, if you you. And that's part of my vision of me saying, you know, radical transparency and radical accountability. And I'm a hundred percent with you. Imagine if we knew exactly where our tax money is going and us allocating that tax money on things that we care about. And that really is my vision for the future of the government, you know, 10 to 20 years from now. And funny enough, I actually did a video with CGI. this past week talking about government 2030 and that's also On YouTube now I can share the link with you later on but that's me talking about how I envision the government to look like in 2030 adopting blockchain and privacy tech and generative AI all combined to unlock various use cases to get that trust back So this is something I'm pushing for it professionally outside of my work, you know personal life It's sort of all intertwined together to make this vision happen Awesome man, this is a beautiful vision. On a more positive note, do you have any words of inspiration for the younger versions of yourself that are getting into the game and getting into web three and just her government, DID, DAOs, how would you recommend to keep that passion to the younger audience? I would say dream big and look for no's. And one of the things that I have realized about me is, you know, these no's will give you the resilience you need to become successful. And I think that if you face bunch of no's, you are on the right track because my whole career, I've been facing no's. I faced no's at George Mason when I wanted to start the blockchain club. I faced no's in my startup. a face knows within the corporate world trying to bring blockchain web three and through the nose, eventually I got the yeses. So for me, you know, we as we as as anybody knew, we're very afraid of failing. You know, what what would the what would the world say? What would society say if I fail? But I've actually made my successes out of my failure. So don't be afraid of else. Eventually you stack your L's into W's. So that'll be my message to anybody coming in, is look forward to the pain, look forward to the L's, turn them into W's. Because I'm living proof of pain. our amazing, amazing session. Thank you so much for coming on, Shadman. And yeah, till next time, everybody. Thank you for having me.

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