Ben Jorgensen on Constellation Network’s data security and Lattice Exchange

0:01i'm ashton addison from event chain for investmentpitch media and fintech news network and today on blockchain interviews we have ben jorgensen the co-founder of lattice exchange and the ceo and co-founder of constellation network ben welcome to the show and thanks for being here ashton thank you man thanks for taking the time to do this uh really great to meet you

0:21likewise i'm excited to dive into these amazing blockchain projects that you're working on and i'd just love to kick off the interview by starting to hear about your background in the space and what got you interested in helping to grow the blockchain industry yeah great question thank you um yeah so i've lived in san francisco for about 10 years and so technology is part of your dna

0:44when you live there and you live in a product mindset um but i built it i built my first company and sold it in 2015 it was all about aggregating digital music and dynamically placing it inside ads so that we had a very unique experience and so um once i sold the business i kind of took my life and said i'm gonna do what they call a search fund what am i as a leader

1:10what is my network like and what is the next big thing uh and as such i uh i came across blockchain as one of the most fascinating spaces uh out there with the potential of of collecting community uh sentiment um i also built a restaurant a fine dining restaurant called gozu in san francisco and really kind of what my thesis was was really about how communities come

1:36together to share new ideas and thoughts and food is a very common thing but uh in blockchain there are these subcultures of families that bind together and never meet each other in the wor real world and there is this kind of unspoken trust and understanding that you're not alone in this world so fascinating things are being built not just from a technological

1:58perspective but also from an emotional perspective um and so i first was introduced to to blockchain by working as the chief revenue officer for a company called exponential organizations which is which is kind of a derivative of the new york times bestselling book called exponential organizations written by saleem ismail that talks about how corporations need to adopt new

2:21technologies like blockchain in order to evolve industry practices and be relevant for the future very cool and yeah this is the growth that we're experiencing right now is exponential and we'll dive into the details here but i want to kick it off for the viewers to get a high level overview of you know people understand bitcoin they understand ethereum there's all these

2:45other protocols that are working on different things can you give a high level overview of constellation network how it's helping grow the space making it more secure and what's unique yeah absolutely a lot of what we looked at were you know how is blockchain evolving today uh and with bitcoin as the first protocol there was really no application uh support for developers developers

3:09can't really build robust applications with bitcoin beyond adding bitcoin to an application uh and so then ethereum kind of popped up and while they were still a synchronous chain the protocol of ethereum uh was more of a communications protocol than than than what we that we then we typically see in technology and so they created smart contracts as the first application

3:35that was a dis intermediary between uh two parties removing that trust uh and programming elements into this contract that when they're met they're executed and so a constellation evolved to said hey we think there's a different base layer protocol so we're this third iteration protocol that's around taking packets of information or packets of data securing that

4:01as it goes from a to b to c in a scalable meaningful way so a lot of our protocol is meant to integrate with existing applications like adding immutability and features and functionalities around auditability in an uber application what happened to my payment process payment that it was processed what trips were did i go on data privacy all these things that are

4:27starting to become a hot topic are all around the data big data narrative and initiative and that's where really consolation saw an opportunity was to create a scalable protocol that could be integrated in any application very cool and yeah it sounds like you guys have really nailed it on the head because consolation network has been growing quite quickly

4:49um you know and even quicker than the space is growing right now which is really fast uh so that's exciting can you talk about the the biggest partners and the funders that you've had and that have helped with this such accelerated growth yeah absolutely we we kind of stuck our teeth into working with the federal government and the reason we focused on the federal

5:12government is we could we spent about a year and a half uh meeting with pretty much every enterprise team that were building up blockchain tech solutions um but what we focused on what we saw was there wasn't a clear opportunity to scale blockchain technology you're you're kind of pitching it to emerging uh innovation teams which don't they don't have typically scalable budget

5:35uh and so a lot of our our focus was to shift to the federal government because they're actually the leaders in the forefront of of innovation right now which is kind of antithetical to what most people think that the government's slow and cumbersome but if you think about the government having the best interest in their country and securing their country

5:58data protection i mean look at what we're going through at the election on ballots and how they're accounted for and who's touching them we're starting to approach a whole new world where the government is actually leading the forefront of innovation so we about a year a little over a year ago we engaged with the united states air force to provide a secure communications

6:22protocol that evolved protocol that could securely take packets of information and transfer it to different agencies in the government as well as to their commercial partners in a very secure way and this actually hasn't been done because every organization in the in the united states uh military in general they're redefining what their data strategies

6:44are to meet the digital infrastructures of today and what kind of the onset of 5g networks have brought on so it's a really fascinating time to to be this third generation blockchain and protocol if you will that's super interesting ben and i understand where you're coming from where you're saying that usually people think that the government is slow to adopt new

7:05regulations or new technology but when they do adopt it they've decided that it is worthy and you know it's something that will pave the way for others to adopt it very quickly because a trusted organization has adopted this adopted this and i think it is really the key time as you mentioned you know not just the ballots but everything to do with secure

7:25communications and just cyber security uh especially at the government level is is needed to have the utmost security in that technology so congratulations on on that and you mentioned enterprises yeah go keep going yeah yeah i was gonna say it's really fascinating to be at the forefront of these conversations because they're redefining their standards for

7:44how we send data in the process for collecting transferring in a secure way the government's been very open around using micro payment payments for for licensing of software and using that uh using cryptocurrency as a as a means to account for uh usage-based software so we are actually building some really cool things that incorporate not just alternative networks but also digital

8:10currency there uh and they're they're moving faster than the enterprise space which is which is really mind-boggling you think that that enterprise leads innovation um but i would say quite the opposite um and so it's been fun to kind of work between both worlds now we do work with many enterprise organizations we're actually working with a group called space isaac

8:33which is a space consortium built by lockheed martin an aerospace dedicated to identifying threat vectors in space between commercial and commercial and public sectors so private public sector and how they use data from satellites uh we're also part of the moby uh initiative that we're the ones creating a standard for how autonomous vehicles share data a lot of

8:59data is collected around lidars lidars are used to kind of create spatial awareness and then they feed that in to kind of analyze how an autonomous vehicle works so we're actually working across not just the federal government but many partners uh both enterprise and public very cool and there is definitely a lot of enterprise adoption going on right now

9:20and institutional interest and investment in this space throughout 2020 which is i think bringing a lot of extra legitimacy and you know by now everyone knows everything in here uh that where there is value to provided to services like government organizations is legitimate but people that at first were are still sitting on the fence now are sort of jumping into this

9:40technology to try to take advantage of it as well and because of the growth of the industry uh this year in bitcoin alone but also in the d5 space which is where the exponential growth has really has really kicked it up you know it's done a 10-fold increase in the value locked into these decentralized finance applications just since q1 of this year and that is

10:04almost unheard of in any industry to grow that quickly and i know that constellation network and your team's also working on building the lattice exchange which is a d5 app if you could talk about what you've done there and how you've really capitalized on these opportunities to bring value that would be great yeah the next steps was lattice exchange we just released

10:27our our token right now and we are proud to release it on uniswap as we truly believe in the decentralized um space and you look at centralized exchanges as having just so many um you know lack of transparency and so you know the highlights of the space around automated market making algorithms are coming to the forefront as people just don't want to deal with

10:54these centralized exchanges governments are cracking down on ceos because there are shady policies being done and it makes me prouder than ever to be building meaningful technology that brings value uh to people in this space and so our focus over the next six months is to deploy um our platform uh our our platform will release and be beginning to december um early next year

11:21we'll introduce the the governance of our network which we are pushing to be truly decentralized and owned by uh by the community that own uh lattice tokens uh we want them to be the ones responsible for creating value in the exchange um so that we kind of shift what it means to be a part of this crypto trading world and give that ownership back to people as such we'll be

11:49introducing uh improved uh features around zero trading settlement fees all things that are plaguing the existing d5 space right now so that we can make it easier for retail investors to build predictable businesses on top not having to worry about dynamic and volatile um gas fees so all these things are really kind of

12:16the features and stepping stones to bridging traditional financial world with the which is the digital asset cree ecosystem very cool and if the viewers are looking to learn more about the lattice exchange or get involved as a community member and also learn about constellation network what's the best way for them to jump in and get involved yeah i would say um if you're looking to

12:39get involved and build your own application with constellation we're early in those days and we're building out uh a funding arm called the stardust collective where we're kind of looking at unique uh ideas uh around ways that support uh data privacy uh and build robust applications on top of consolation so constellation network dot io we're also in our telegram i jump in all the time

13:06and give diatribes on the state of the union and conversations and engage with people one-on-one lattice.exchange is also the lattice website where you'll get info on some of our incredible backers such leaders in the space like gsr one of the best market makers in the world and liquidity providers all the way to gda fbg capital and alphabet fund so you can learn a lot

13:35there and just reach out to us in telegram sounds great i'll leave those links in the description box below for the viewers as well thank you so much for taking the time ben you guys are really working on some really interesting stuff i'm wishing you all the best moving forward with both lattice exchange and consolation network and let's follow up in the near future

13:54addison thank you so much for the time and i really appreciate the great questions this has been fun man hope to see you soon you