Justin Banon on Boson Protocol connecting smart contracts to commerce

0:01i'm ashton addison from eventchain for investmentpitch media and fintech news network and today on blockchain interviews we have justin bannon the ceo and co-founder of the boson protocol justin welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time to be here uh thanks ashton and great to be here i'd love to start by understanding more on the boson protocol

0:22i know it integrates real world data into commerce but can you explain exactly exactly what it does and how it how it integrates the blockchain into the real world sure um so if you take uh commerce or e-commerce currently there are a couple of ways in in which you can enable and coordinate those transactions so you could use a centralized intermediary

0:47such as ebay or amazon um and and that comes with a host of problems such as you know not to mention trust but cost and and friction so if you wanted to to enable decentralized commerce so commerce without an intermediary how would you do that and the existing architecture would require you essentially to have some sort of an arbitrator in case of disputes so you'd escrow

1:14payments and and if if there was a problem with a quality or a reversal or refund that the arbitrator would adjudicate on on that but that again still adds cost and friction so the question we ask the problem that we we we address is is it possible to to enable commerce in a decentralized way that is autonomous that doesn't require that human arbitration and and that's

1:44the problem that uh that goes on addresses that's great and with the you know the lockdowns earlier this year and it seems like less people are going out like e-commerce has grown exponentially and people aren't always you know happy with what they get and sometimes they need to get refunds and it seems that you mainly have to go through amazon or protocols like this um so i would say

2:09the scope of this problem seems to be growing exponentially right now as well you know are there other platforms that are trying to do something similar and have you found a unique function for the boson protocol in solving this problem yeah so we aren't a marketplace ourselves we are the underlying um like the basic plumbing if you like and so we we do two things we

2:35we coordinate the commercial transactions using game theory to reduce the requirement for any human intervention or arbitration to an absolute minimum so that means that other marketplaces or you know decentralized projects or digital platforms machine to machine commerce a whole host of use cases can plug into us as a component and we will just enable

3:02you know you know frictionless low friction low cost low trust transactions in a completely automated way so that's one side of what we do we also then um we we also then aggregate the commerce data so this very very valuable data set of matching customer customers preferences so what customers what products different customers would

3:29like and we then monetize monetize that data the difference being that the value that is that is created from the coordination of commercial transactions and the monetization of data instead of that going up to jeff bezos or to me that is then recycled within the community via the boson token so that value is distributed in a fair and equitable way

3:56interesting and when i first looked at your website it talks about putting real world information into the blockchain so that you can make these transactions and that sort of makes me think of you know like an oracle like trying to fit real world information into a smart contract sort of like what you know chain link is doing and that project has grown

4:16exponentially with with the fact that they're creating all these oracles is that a part of the boson protocol as well that it uses oracle's or it is an oracle to actually put the information into the smart contracts yeah i mean that's that's another way to think of of of bozon protocol um so you know the classic oracle problem is the the data oracle problem that smart

4:39contracts can't trust real world data and and uh projects such as chain link you know kind of provide a really good solution for that but there is there is another oracle problem which um it's like the physical asset oracle problem and that is if you asked him where to tokenize your car and sell me the token that's great i've got a token representing your car but

5:04how do i get you know how do i actually get the car um and it's tying that that kind of that tokenized asset to the car and that's a that's a really hard that's a you know problem to solve actually we work around that problem so instead of trying to tokenize the car itself what we do is you and i would would tokenize a commitment a type of futures contract that we would transact and

5:31exchange some uh you know some digital value for that car a future point in time and and those deposits both put spin it skin in the game and uh incentivize us to con to go through with that transaction to a agreed upon level of quality so that is our our solution for the the physical asset oracle problem and that i mean we we focus on commerce but

5:59i mean that could be any any commitment that is made that executes in in the real or digital world um boson has sold for that's super interesting yeah i mean i guess an example of that could be a kind of a bit more of an out there example is that if if if our avatars were to meet in in a you know kind of metaverse like decentralized decentraland for example

6:24and we wanted to do a transaction um between two kind of virtual avatars um it would be very difficult to be able to trust that that that transaction would execute in the real world however with boson we we provide the trust assurances that you could exchange your you know digital value and then that transaction would either execute um as agreed in the real

6:49world or that the buyer would get their money back yeah no justin that's super interesting and that's a major problem is you know tokenizing real world items and you know being able to transfer them easily but then having that real world commitment where you actually have to prove that the item got to the person who bought it so i really like that and i think that's why right now

7:10a lot of these marketplaces that are decentralized marketplaces at least throughout 2020 have been focused on digital assets like nfts you know non-fungible tokens have become super popular throughout this year and well pokemon cards as well interestingly enough are in a huge surplus right now but nfts and nft marketplaces seem to have taken off uh and you don't need to settle the real

7:36world art because it's usually digital art or some digital asset right so has boson protocol already started working with nft marketplaces or that's in the works and and how is that going that that's in that's in the works um so yeah at the moment we are we're we're finalizing the development of our uh prototype which is essentially is going to to um

8:04be a live app that you can transact peer-to-peer but that also um gives you a view on the game theory and explains what explains how how that works but but absolutely um we're in conversations with a number of those those marketplaces and um yeah we will you you'll be able to sell the boson non-fungible token vouchers on those marketplaces

8:30and have assurances that you will be able to redeem um in the real world or get your money back that's that's interest that's great and i guess another question is you know part of the reason why these marketplaces uh haven't gotten to the size of centralized marketplaces is because they're harder to use and people don't really understand the technical aspect

8:51of non-fungible tokens or you know holding your own wallets and how the smart contract actually settles it for you with the boson protocol i guess you're really just the underlying technology but is there any extra knowledge that is needed for people or is this going to be able to be input into a marketplace where layman's can can use it and they don't

9:12need to understand blockchain technology in any of the underlying tech that's that's a really important question so boson protocol itself is the underlying technology and some of our initial partnerships will be fought with for example exchanges and crypto credit cards and the reason for that is is there's multiple reasons one is that's where you've got large aggregated

9:40pools of users that are interested in crypto and at the moment crypto is pretty sparse across the general population um so it's a there's a pool of users there second crypto exchanges and crypts of credit cards have already solved for having you know kind of user experience and an interface that we can plug into that that that the users know how to use

10:02um so so that's really important and and thirdly um in the same way that i mean i i used to to run a sort of billion dollar platform um that that sold to mastercard and and and visa and crypto rewards solutions um and these sort of financial services products are the the underlying product is pretty similar and so therefore they all need to differentiate

10:29so but offering real world products and services is a is a a very desirable way of doing that so so our initial strategy will be to plug into crypto exchanges and credit cards to it to enable a crypto native way for these products to differentiate themselves yeah now that makes total sense and you mentioned that you're working on the prototype right

10:54now i'm curious what is your roadmap for finishing out 2020 and you know the first half of 2021. um so we're at we're actually refactoring our roadmap because we've had such demand from customers that what was previously a kind of sequential road map we're now having to parallel and we're we are kind of beefing up the development team and actually recruiting

11:20a a very senior vp of engineering to sit alongside uh my technical co-founder and cto so we are yeah we're in acceleration mode at the moment that's which is good yeah that's great and um what's the best way for viewers to follow along with the progress of the project and and see it implemented in the markets so um our website uh bozon protocol dot io

11:49is is is a good touch uh point and um our telegram channel which is uh boson protocol is a great way to keep up up to date with the project and join in with the community that sounds great justin i will leave those links in the description box below as well for the viewers thanks so much for the time speaking about boson protocol and all the best moving forward and

12:11let's follow up in the near future thanks ashton it's been a pleasure