Edge of NFT Interview With Alex Altman at Davos - 6/10/22

Original Link: https://edgeofnft.com/edge-of-davos-part-4-daniel-santos-corcoles-josh-fahad-woonkly-dre-cool-dre-nick-bilogorskiy-nova-ukraine-jevan-fox-ae-studio-alex-altman-seal-storage-marik-hazan-medical-psyched/

Transcript:

I’m excited to have you. Alex, it’s great to meet you. Why don’t you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your company?

Thank you for having me on the show. It’s exciting to be here. My name is Alex Altman. I’m the Cofounder and Chief Operating Officer of Seal Storage Technology. We’re a decentralized storage company built on top of Filecoin. We have focused as a firm on commercializing decentralized storage. There are a lot of different applications out there. We’re focusing on two at the moment.

The first one is bringing over different Web2 sources of data and large datasets into the centralized ecosystems and turning them into Web3. These things are academic, research, and scientific institutions. We’re bringing that data over and creating that immutability and source of truth that they can use to do their type of work.

A byproduct of that is we have created this amazing ingestion engine that’s got an encryption layer on top of it. What that means in a centralized historic sense is we can take in tons of different data and encrypt it in a good way, which lends itself well to NFTs. Looking at the NFT market, we’re trying to essentially back up and create a safe layer on the existing NFTs out there in hopes of helping to mature the market.

I’m wearing my Edge of NFT hat and Alex was keyed in on that and wanted to make the conversation relevant. Thank you, Alex, for being on point with the name of our show. We can have a broader conversation as well. My first question to you is this. This is my first year at Davos. This is your first year at Davos. We knew we would have good cheese and good bread, but what compelled you to come to Davos in 2022? Why now in 2022?

It has been a long few years for everybody, but when you look at the maturity that has happened in the crypto industry and the overall blockchain industry since 2019, it’s phenomenal in terms of the use cases, what type of projects are developed, and the overall global interest. We’re speaking to different partners that we have and people like Casper, Filecoin, and a number of others who have got large presences here as well as a lot of other different Web3 companies. We thought it was a good year to come, see what’s going on, be part of the conversation, and see where the industry is headed.

I would like to learn more about some of the projects that you’ve been working on, some of the challenges that you think can be solved with decentralized storage in Web3, and where to focus. We have also talked a lot about how you may not need Web3 technology. Focus is key. There are some great use cases. I’m sure you have specialized in some as well.

In terms of where decentralized storage fits, there are a lot of different use cases that are applicable. One of the ones that are topical and is a conversation point outside of the crypto industry but is big in Davos is misinformation. What blockchain can do in that is help establish this chain of custody of data that people could say, “Where did this fact come from? How is it being used? Is it being used in the correct way?” That has become such an important topic in the last several years.

That’s an area that is helpful that we can solve. Centralized storage lends itself to the maturation of the NFTs portion and helps NFTs evolve from what we think of now as profile pictures and digital art onto things of a more functional sense like legal documents, digital deeds, medical records, and things like that. There are these nascent use cases like that where it’s pushing along industries that need some disruption, but there are also immediate applications like misinformation.

In some sense, it’s a preservation of history. I’m interested to learn a little bit more about some of the academic institutions, use cases, and how large these file sets are. That would be great to know.

A lot of it is public. We’re in the process of uploading a whole bunch of environmental data. The value is that you could create this initial set of data where you’ve got a source or a large academic institution. You’ve got a trustworthy source at the end. People could look back at the state and say, “This is the person who put it up.”

You can’t deny, “Here’s what the source was,” in case, for whatever reason, people want to start to hide information at a later date. You can go back and be like, “Here’s a trusted source. Here’s the information.” From an environmentalist perspective, that’s exciting, but we’re also doing other sorts of data in the space industry where people are finding out all sorts of different things about various astrological discoveries in the most recent history.

There are those types of things where there’s a lot of different cutting-edge research. It’s people being able to point to that and say, “This is where I based my research on a go-forward basis.” People understand where the changes were and when they were uploaded. When it comes to sizing, it could be a dataset as small as 500 terabytes. One dataset we’re working on is about 10 petabytes. To give you a reference, 10 petabytes is about 200 times the size of the Netflix library.

NOTE: NFT Market: Blockchain can help establish a chain of custody of data to fight misinformation and help people verify facts the correct way.

Space is fascinating to me. There have been a lot of breakthroughs or at least I feel like it has been in the news more both with discovering black holes. The aliens have come up in conversations quite a lot. It seems like maybe the government is finally fessing up about what they knew. Who are you working with on those types of projects of these independent research institutes? Are you working with NASA? I’m curious how that type of research comes together on the blockchain in storage.

I would love to work with NASA. That would be super cool. I don’t know if they’re quite there yet in terms of wrapping their heads around blockchain. I’m sure many of the people who work there understand it in terms of being able to push that through.

If they confess to the aliens, they’re probably likely to be down for some blockchain technology soon.

If there are any NASA researchers out there who would like to store some data in Web3, let me know. I’m happy to help out there.

Who are you working with within the space world?

In terms of who we’re working with, we have an announcement coming out at the Austin in Consensus with a very large university that we’re doing some space work with. Unfortunately, a lot of the different institutions, it’s the same thing with NASA, wants to see the actual product work, see this be uploaded to Web3, and feel the benefits, and then they’re comfortable releasing their names. There are a number of different sources. We will put some announcements out as we wrap up some of these projects.

It seems like there’s probably an educational component of it when you’re going and talking to some of these B2B customers. What are those conversations like? What are some of the hurdles that you have to overcome? What does implementation look like?

A lot of the people we speak with at these types of institutions are innovators. They understand the potential benefits of Web3 and decentralized storage. That’s why they’re so eager to try it out, but when it comes to being able to publicize a lot of these things, you are dealing with a lot of institutions that are, at times, hundreds of years old with thousands of people. We’re dealing with a single pot of people within that ecosystem. It’s being able to prove, “Here are the benefits that we said there are.” It’s proving the innovators within these institutions right and moving through the motions there.

When it comes to actual deployment, it’s getting and bringing the data across whatever different lines they have. Moving large sums of data is not very easy. It’s crazy. You think that taking data into Web3 is going to be this innovative process, but at times, you hire a truck. They show up, plug into the dataset, and drive over to you. You have to plug the truck back in again. We have used FedEx or DHL to get drives sent to us. It’s this old way of doing things. It’s an interesting hybrid.

It’s interesting to visualize the reality of such a high-technology concept and the practical implementation. You mentioned healthcare medical records. That’s an interesting one with HIPAA and all the other privacy regulations that are in place. What are your thoughts on the more intense regulatory environments like the healthcare industry and how decentralized storage fits into the mix? How are you all looking at those segments of the industry?

When it comes to highly-regulated items like that, particularly healthcare and anything else, even GDPR in Europe, or I mentioned legal documents before, there are a lot of different regulations that you have to adhere to and different types of registrations that you need to do. To do that, there are a number of different things that have to happen within the industry, particularly from a technological perspective. The technology still needs to mature a little bit for people to understand how we can use it and where the applications are.

It has to be easier to use. A lot of these medical institutions don’t tend to change particularly fast. The technology they use is outdated. However, decentralized storage and the broader Web3 ecosystem have great opportunities in the medical industry. The reason for that is there are a lot of different times when it’s difficult to access accurate medical records. A lot of the time, it’s on paper or old software. It’s highly protected. That can have real-world consequences.

If you don’t get somebody’s accurate medical records, you prescribe the wrong drug or you do the wrong thing. You don’t know if they have had the right type of procedure. You could cause significant harm or even death to somebody. Having a point of accurate trustless information that could be easily accessible from a global perspective is something that Web3 and decentralized storage can add to the ecosystem. What decentralized storage does is turn large-scale datasets or any type of dataset and make that what essentially is a blockchain asset.

The trustless component of it, trying to think about how that information is being accessed and who’s accessing it, and having that transparency around it seems like a great use case for decentralized storage. I’m curious. What are some of the biggest and most exciting datasets to you out there? Which ones do you want to tackle and bring onto Seal?

I want to ask you that question too, Jevan. You are doing some cool stuff at AE.

For us, it’s the way that the ecosystem works. We have the opportunity to go after all sorts of different datasets. The ones that we’re going after are cool. It’s all this high-science stuff.

Let’s get geeky.

We’re looking at dark matter, neutrinos, particle physics, environmental data, and sorts of things like that. It’s this cool experimental stuff. We’re trying to figure out exactly what’s the next phase of science even if some of this research ends up not being true. The fact that people are doing it and we’re able to store that, facilitate it, and let people analyze it from our systems is so important.

In my former life, I did geospatial data analytics working with 28 different federal agencies. I got into the heat mapping data that’s out there and all these interesting visualizations that can be done with data that people don’t even realize. It gives you an entirely different perspective. I’ve been impressed working with the AEC, a team. In their breadth of analytical horsepower, they have over 30 data scientists. I’m sure this is a topic where if you’re a data scientist who is eavesdropping, maybe you’re pretty excited about the conversation we’re having.

They like big datasets as well. You brought up something precious. Is the information or the research correct? It’s there. It’s something through an evolution that we will continue to figure out what the truth may be. It’s taking that approach of being the provider who can bring the data on, make it accessible, and enable people to be educated. That’s powerful stuff.

We have been doing a lot of fun things. We partnered with Protocol Labs, which is cool. This industry always continues to get smaller every day. We’re about a 160-person team based in Los Angeles doing large implementations on the Web3 side for Fortune 500 companies. Distributed storage is surely a need and a requirement in some cases. I’m happy to make some introductions for you as well.

That would be fantastic. We’re always around.

This is not the first time that we have done some co-creation on the show live. It shows people how open and innovative this space is. There have been incredible conversations in Davos that we have on the street while eating some sausage and some Fritz and enjoying this beautiful mountainous landscape that we’re in. What have been some of the highlights for you? What are you looking forward to accomplishing while you’re here?

Davos has gotten started. It was quite exciting. There are a lot of different panels, exciting speakers, and events to go to. I’m seeing all sorts of different people and getting to meet a lot of people that I’ve spent years talking to at this point. I feel like I know them well. Getting to speak to them in person has been the most exciting part so far. I do think there are a lot of amazing people that are still arriving. In terms of what we’re looking to accomplish, it’s to see what’s going on in the industry and where our best fit is and meet like-minded people who are interested in getting involved in what we’re doing.

Try taking a step back and talking a little bit about the NFT side of things. We will get back to that. I would love to hear your perspective on where we are in the maturity of the NFT market. People ask me this question all the time. There’s been a bit of a slip in activity and a decline in some prices. There are some projects that are holding value or even increasing in value. I would like to tell people that it’s much more than the projects that they’re seeing on OpenSea. The building has just gotten started. Hopefully, don’t let that bias your perspective. Where do you fall out on this?

NFTs, as it sits, had a very interesting run in terms of being able to exemplify the technology, show off a use case, and get people comfortable with the idea of using that. There’s this initial hurdle in blockchain, “What’s a wallet? How do I buy things? What are gas and all these kinds of different features that are unique and bespoke to blockchain?” NFTs did a fantastic job in their current form of showing that and getting people there.

There’s still a lot of work to go to unlock what the potential is for these things. At the end of the day, it’s digital providence or a digital piece of individuality that you can move around. It truly belongs to you. It’s also some of the areas that I discussed before. There’s changing over a deed to a house. There’s no reason it has to be a physical piece of paper that sits in your lawyer’s office.

It makes a lot more sense that it’s an asset on the blockchain that can be easily transferred and that you can see its history. What were the prices? Who were the previous owners? You can easily move it from one custodian to the next. Even a will or a basic contract is where all this stuff is going to go. That’s the potential. It’s not quite as sleek as some of these pieces of art and profile pictures that we have, but there’s a significant amount that you can do with this technology that makes everyday life a little bit easier.

A follow-up question there would be in terms of the market of users and getting to mainstream adoption. What are the important points that need to occur to broaden the number of folks with wallets and increase adoption and use cases that are readily available or appreciated by a larger audience?

Where we have been focusing is trying to allow people to feel the benefits of Web3 without needing to deal with it. That’s where I’ve seen a lot of the most success in NFT projects. They are people who allow for payments with credit cards and don’t necessarily need you to type in a wallet or have certain functionality that people are used to. Society doesn’t change that fast. People don’t necessarily love to learn how to change, but they’re willing to try new things if it relates to something they’re comfortable with and they already understand.

People and projects need to be able to find a way to get people the value of that Web3 element but make it accessible in such a way that they’re comfortable using it. The largest innovation, at least when it comes to the internet in the last twenty-some-odd years, has been the cloud. The vast majority of people don’t touch the cloud, but at the same time, their lives are significantly impacted by that. That’s because of companies like Amazon, who have done a fantastic job in creating tools and making them so simple for people to develop. We get all the benefits of that, but we never touch it.

If folks want to learn more about you, Alex, and your company, how should they look for you on the internet and stay in touch?

Our website is SealStorage.io. You can always email me at Alex@SealStorage.io. We’re always happy to field any questions about decentralized storage or actively work with NFT projects in terms of backing up and restoring. I’m always open to talking to anyone.

Thanks for joining me. I appreciate your time.