#citizenweb3

Episode link:
https://www.citizenweb3.com/iris-network

Episode name: 
Harriet Cao, IRIS Network & Hub

Episode transcript:
hey it's citizen cosmos we're sergeant anna and we discover cosmos by chatting with awesome people from various teams and communities join us if you are curious how dreams and ambitions become code hi everyone serge here again and today we're going to chat with harry chao who is the co-founder of irisnet and the founder of bianji ai i hope on pronouncing it correctly and welcome to the show harriet very happy to speak to you hello everyone thanks very much for inviting me to the podcast so it is my really great pleasure to be here together with you all yeah thanks you really you're not a very easy person to find we spent a few weeks trying to find you but we found you finally and very happy to have you you must be very busy uh yes indeed like it is very busy a lot of for development work going on and also ecosystem is expanding and i guess also other thing is i don't check telegram very often i usually do that one saturday so that's why like you might find me delayed by one day in responding sometimes yeah it's a good thing though isn't it if you're busy it means that everything is working so that is a good thing i'm gonna jump to a question straight away i found different information about you before i start asking different questions first question that i have always for people is how did you start with iris net how did the project begin what is the history how did you start to do it what was the idea anything you want to say actually i always hesitate a little bit just talking about myself because for aries net it has been uh more than i think it's more than three years journey altogether and so there a lot of work has been put together by the team from the community it might be easy i can start it from my story and the journey like how we get to blockchain and then how we decided to start on aries project actually before i work for my startup i used to be leading ibm research in shanghai and all my career has been focusing on heavy computing on data and enterprise and how to leverage the data do more smart enterprise applications so i always feel like there should be a better way to support the collaboration among the different parties so by this way we can solve many challenges such as like data privacy the ownership because my past job is all about data so that's why like i got very excited in 2016 when i see like the early version of ethereum so i saw like blockchain is the perfect foundation to support all these requirements such as collaboration and privacy protection so that's why i got excited and also very lucky i got the support from wenxiang blockchain and they were our annual investor we just started a team in shanghai but very soon i guess like if everyone remember 2016 at that time the blockchain is indeed very immature as soon as one we are trying to use that for the real world applications we found none of that really work so later on like i might also share with you more how we found tendermint and so that's why we started to use like tendermint to trying to build the foundation and so we are doing some really interesting work with our collaborators and then later on we encourage it and also supported by many great minds in the field such like jay and also eastern bucky and so we found like some of our foundational work such as the service layer we built could be helpful to other people so that's why we started to do the better productization and to bring like the service layer into the blockchain and then we started to build the arizona i hope that is a short story about how we get started with blockchain and then how we landed on arizona project that sounds really exciting but one question i just understand is how did you get into it personally i mean you said 2016 you said you're working with ibm and i was going to ask you that later but it's good that you already mentioned it but still how did you suddenly because i'm not gonna lie i went on your linkedin and i went to look how what you did before and you had like a jump there from ibm suddenly to blockchain like how did it happen where was the the connection what made you jump from one of the biggest and most promising biggest companies that probably you know where they have good conditions and everything you know and go and do startups i mean that sounds crazy i think to me it is very nature i have already been working with ibm research for more than 16 years and in various positions but i have always been working on the technology field i have to say like i'm very grateful working with all the most smart mind from ibm research and just like later when i get into more senior management level positioning ibm like i was the director for ibm research lab in shanghai and i just feel the urge i want to how should i say like i can see more direct impact of technology to our industry i want to like because being a startup i think the most beautiful thing is you actually can define what you want to do and so that's why like i decided i want to do a startup because we feel like we found a great area we can make impact and then also like very luckily we also got the financial support say like from wang xiang and also from another collaborator i just feel like it's really nice and i want to take the risk and just want to kind of have this opportunity we can do something like we can define what it should be look like and have a more direct impact that makes a lot of sense to me personally and yeah i think it's a big step to be honest with you let's talk a little bit about the differences between corporate and decentralized working environments could you tell us uh how you personally distinct the pros and cons of being in each of one of them well i think like that is really a great question because it is so different in like the corporate of course for the working environment it is very centralized and sometimes of course like you feel it could be it has some efficiency because if especially like in ibm i remember like if we want to solve a challenge and if there is an area i'm not familiar with and if i just open up like what we call the blue page it's kind of like i am so a lookup directory so i could always found an expert and then i can connect with them on the im and ask questions so with a big corporate sometimes you feel it is very easy you get a lot of resource and it is just provided by the platform and in working in the decentralized world and also working in the in the startup of course like as a founder i found that it's an immediate switch it was all the certain you need to really find your way in the decentralized world how to leverage the help and as a support but once you are really getting into that then you find the great power of the decentralized world because from the github also from like the community and then that type of collaboration is so different from a big corporate you are now no longer just bound by an organization you are not just working for a revenue kpi so people are tied together by the region by the values they focus on and so then that actually build up a stronger bonding actually enable more efficient collaboration so that is a good part of the decentralization like is so with a lot of how i say like very vivid full of life but of course another shortcoming of the decentralized world is the part i see like a lack of efficiency because people are working for their interest sometimes if there's a big challenge or sometimes like if people lose their interest then you feel like it's hard for the execution efficiency because all of a sudden that people you feel like you want to depend on he or she just disappeared lots of heart like i found um for the decentralized world like so it's really good and bad both aspect but it has been a really very fun journey i really enjoy that and you feel that you can be more self realized in decentralized sphere yeah like you're as a person yes yep so it's cool ceiling exactly i know i know what you mean because i came into blockchain professionally well shall i say professional i don't know that's the correct word in 2016 or something like that at the same time as you 15 16 maybe and i came from a corporation as well from a big corporation and even though i was doing blockchain i wasn't doing it for work i was doing it for just enjoying myself and the first thing that i noticed is the big difference between working for like what you said when you start with blockchains you start to understand that it's a bigger mechanism and an organism that is has so many little things to it and sometimes it's hard to focus i agree sometimes it's very hard to focus but talking about revenues you mentioned revenues there i've read somewhere and correct me if i'm wrong that iris is a non-profit company i'm not the person who cares about legalities i'm one of these people blockchain people who thinks code is the law but still why no profit why did you decide to go for no profit rather than profit ariesnet is a project so we do have aries foundation that is nonprofit and so it is set up like the governance and also by law so it is only managing the resource and trying to use that resource to develop arizona but we do have a technology company uh registered in china so that they can traditional how should i say like equity based company and so that is called benji binji is for profit since like you are quite familiar with cosmos so just think like aries foundation is like icf non-profit but all you beats all are called tendermint inc that is for profit and benji is for profit benji is our current developers they are currently in china because they will need hashing like the social yeah so basically like you need to have a company in china to support them for a lot of social security so that's what we have been in shanghai that is for problem that makes sense now because i've obviously i have a lot of questions about beyonce and i mispronounced it at the beginning but now i understand how it connects and i've been to china before and i've been to china for work and i i can understand very well what you mean when you say about social security and about the legalities even though like like i said i have a very different view i can totally understand that and my next question from this will be in particularly to irish hub because iris puts itself as a hub not his own and lately in cosmos there was a lot of conversations about zones hubs competitions what kind of hub does irish hub want to be who does it want to attract who is its customer what is the product yeah so that is a very good question because i know like we have been asked many times why like they need more hubs in cosmos and actually i want to first answer the question like why we need more hubs many hubs and instead there's one and then i will also explain what the value aries have want to bring to the cosmos ecosystem one thing i really like the tender mint and the cosmos architecture is it's very open design and for customers and actually one thing i feel like quite different with comparing with the other framework or the other project like polka dot it is its open architecture actually just from the design it enables you to build like the multi-hops and multi-roms and so when i first heard this word i think that was in late 2017. so basically i want to say like the irish hop the design of that we got a lot of inspiration from the the members like jay kuan and also like izum baki and zaki and we had a lot of discussion in 2017 and the early 2018. so that was really a beautiful time i really missing that i remember like at that time we all discussed for personals it is a decentralized internet of blockchains and we don't want to have another central just one hub because if one have failed and it's just a single point of failure so that's why from the very beginning there is a vision for multi-hub and the irish hub when we decided the design it is one two exercising to have the multi-hub collaboration and today we're still thinking very hard on the hub economics how to make like multiple hub work together in a good way to secure the internet of blockchains so that is the value proposition i think like irish hub should bring in really to be a good i see like the citizen that is the name of our podcast so we want to be a good citizen of the internet of blockchains and we want to work together with other hubs to provide the enhanced security to the network and also besides we also want to provide unique values to the ecosystem and that part what we feel is our students in building the complicated distributed business applications which involve the heavy computing is not only just can be solved by on-chain logics in many cases it involves the computation you have to tie in resource from off chain from like the other blockchain so that is why like the iservice that is the unique layer irish hub provides it actually becomes its value and its power has been realized by more and more people these days so that's why like we started on irish hub the value we want to bring in i definitely agree i personally i don't know if this is correct but this is just a personal opinion i think that at least the way i imagine it is like a galaxy and each galaxy has its own let's say purpose right maybe one galaxy is for healthcare and another galaxies for ai and and so on and so forth and all these zones they will find the hub that they're looking for could you just highlight maybe in couple of words the differences between hubs for the moment how you see that so as i mentioned besides of the role trying to collaborate with cosmos hub and just trying to like even like to support and cover each other if anything gets wrong that is just only one purpose but the other more important part is for example the application blockchains in asia pacific or like in china they will find it it is easier to work with aries hub just because like we are in the same geo and even like for different hubs for example for ice hub we decide we want to provide a lot of support to heavy applications so we have additional modules such as service layer and such as like the coin swap and multi assets and all these things and sometimes like it is very difficult say like if we only have one hub and then for the governance for people agree to take all those capabilities but for the separate hub then it is always easier we can try out the different focus and iris have want to focus on to support the distributed business applications and also want to support asia-pacific so that's why even today a lot of our collaborators it is in asia pacific yeah thank you so for the moment i welcome only pacific asia region projects or every project welcome to come to your hub and you will happy to see another project actually i think like the beauty of blockchain is open and we are very open to every collaborators from anywhere with any background as long as we feel there's mutual values it can establish through the collaboration focus on the asia pacific is only from like the ecosystem development part so if we have to get into a physical meeting then sometimes like it is easy for some project in china but these days with more and more the virtual communication way people all get familiar with well indeed we're also working quite globally for example we had the discussion with kava team training team and so we are actually very open to work with anyone yeah it's definitely a beauty of blockchain yeah and we don't want to set any limits or like constraint we want to be really very very open we also know like what is the things we can do more efficiently and the better but we always want to keep an open mind and we want to try best find a good way to provide value to other projects and also trying to find the value how the other things can bring to the interchangeable system this i think why we all here in the first place race to make it all as big as we can the big universe the centralized universe but i have a slightly different question for you uh i have one question about ai because obviously well first of all beyond g is beyond gai and you obviously were focused on ai right now there is to calculate good algorithms we need a very high output and the problem is with on-chain capabilities are still very limited how do you see this connection of blockchain and ai right now do you think that because i'm not gonna name projects i will ask you instead because there is about what like eight projects that are to do with the eye and out of those eight maybe two seem a little bit promising but anyways to me every time i look at it i think okay guys but you have all these calculations and somehow we only have all this much capability on chain capabilities so what do we do what do you think we do have the ai in our company name but these days actually when we're branding the the vengeance we usually just call the first part bienji i want to share why like we're doing that when we started with bnj as i mentioned my background is on ai and i was trained to be a ai practitioner like i actually started the robotics in carnegie mellon so originally i saw like i would just use blockchain to do the distributed data exchange and analytics so that's why we had ai in our company name but later on we found like we have to do really a lot of work for the foundation instead directly jump into the higher level application layer today we are still doing a lot of data related application blockchain applications indeed like benjie as i mentioned it is profit company so we we have our business actually in two parts one is iris net provider technology development and also we are developing consortium blockchain for our customers and those projects involve a lot of data processing and privacy computing so in terms of ai and blockchain i feel like the easy way for ai and blockchain can work together it's actually started with application specific blockchain actually that's really a long story i'm not so sure if i i want to get into that so i would think like ai if you want to really make it work you have to get it to work with the domain problems there are many reasons for that and also you need to work very closely with the data so that's why i feel like application specific blockchains rather than generic ai plus blockchain framework and with that part said use iris sdk and iris code base to build this type of application is very convenient because that is what we are doing today uh when we are doing those heavy data processing project we have all this data crunching work as the off-chain processing service and for aung chain we just use that to collaborate and to coordinate the results and make like the interaction can be trustworthy so that's how we are doing that that does actually answer a few of the questions ahead apart from that but you did mention the word consortium and i have read one of your interviews about iris and it had the words iris service consortium hub i more or less understood but i would like you to expand on that and maybe to explain to everybody who's going to listen to it what does it mean i would say like for a lot of our blockchain practitioners you are all very familiar with the open public blockchain but today still for the enterprise actually consumption blockchain also address many important requirements for example like the security and also the governance requirements so consortium blockchain makes a lot of sense and we are actually building parallel products like aries hub aries hub is the open interchange service hub and they we are also building another consulting blockchain product or by the way we are also doing like more branding because we don't want to just give a separate name to all the application we build right now i just rebrand like all the for example the interchange service consumption blockchain that is also a part of a [ __ ] so we actually call our enterprise version of the sdk and also the platform product like get that into the arena so basically it's just aries hub and also arita arita is kind of like the irish hubs underpriced version and that is the consulting version and that one it has a lot of enterprise required feature for example the id management the certificate authority and also the privacy computing we build the edge server and also we already built the the pre pre server so by this way like the the storage can be managed in a secure way and can protect the data privacy so all these things is in a [ __ ] and for arita like one example i want to use to show like why consortium blockchain also has its value i'm not so sure if you read the news about china blockchain service network yes of course yeah seems like that is infrastructure in china and it's going to target for many domestic users so consumption blockchain is going to play a very important role and also like i don't know if that is good or bad but in china for the applications of the operator and user kyc is needed so that's why like ca and all these things and of course for arita we are also building like several layers of security of course on the network layer there are black list and a white list but i remember these days we should call it the other name so we probably shouldn't use blacklist or wireless or something i understand what you mean so go on so for the consortium blockchain just for the enhanced security there we built several layers of configurations so it can be customized by the enterprise requirements so that's why bsn currently is working together with us we are going to build a consortium interchange service hub and so by this way all the service providers and service users they can work with the certificate certificate authority service and also they can work with the data service for example like the oracle service provided by chain link all these type of things but so you can think like aritha it's just like an enterprise version of iris this kind of opens up a lot of questions i don't know if we obviously have the time for all of them but this is up to you but the first question i have from this because you talk a lot about specific cases and and i think that's correct because obviously we've seen uh from information technology to everything is that modular environments work much better and blockchain is a good example so the obvious question that i have to ask what are the use cases today who are the users of iris sdk today is there any maybe ai projects or healthcare projects or someone who is already developing on iris as the kind not on cosmos sd card yeah so so i would say like arita is build using like i have to make it very concrete indeed we did a soft fork of cosmos sdk just because we want to add many more capabilities and of course we're also working with 10 minute team trying to upstream it for like those useful models and hopefully like that can be back to the cosmos sdk and everyone can use it but anyway like on this soft fork of cosmos sdk we're adding more things like the service and also like for example like those modules for privacy computing and for the id management and those things they also been used to build a [ __ ] and also we use that sdk build many applications like one example is uh health care data exchange we build with four sun fossen is one of the biggest health care conglomerate in china and they have a subsidiary company called health link and the blockchain actually is built by nas when we use the iris sdk build that because involve a lot of heavy off-chain computing and i service play a very important role there we also like worked with the manufacturing company to build the supply chain finance blockchain and for that one like the account payable and the invoice and they can be created on the blockchain as a non-fundable asset and that non-fundable asset can be then have this liquidity to help those small smb to do the to do the long application so that is another example like we are using the iris sdk this sounds good because i think it doesn't matter if somebody who is listening to us is uh i don't know if it's correct to say the word investor but okay whatever if somebody is an investor into iris or atom or both i think it's important to understand that we have a growing ecosystem that it's not just because obviously we have a project as well we're obviously doing the same thing and sometimes a lot of people ask us okay you have a lot of ideas but what is the realization and i think it's important for people who who get into this ecosystem to understand that there are realizations that are real use cases the next thing i want to ask you maybe the last working thing and i have a couple of more questions is obviously a hub is not just about sdk and everything else there is also the governance part and i think that you obviously noticed that lately in in the cosmos hub we've seen proposal 25 proposal 26 which have both been proposals to the community spend and our original ways of trying to use the community pool now i have the same question what is the plans for irish hub here is iris hub does it have a community pool if yes how does it work can projects come and say hey i want to build on iris or i want to build something for whatever how does it work with iris i would give a lot of also credit actually back to the cosmos for the iris net we learned a lot actually from the design of the cosmos hub like for example like the governance and all these things so of course like irish hub also has the community pool but uh because of if we have to look into the price of the aries so then the worst of the pool is not so big because we we do have the tax and also like for example like foundation's delegation all the new block provision the foundation get we actually donate that directly to the pool so aries hub has a pool but besides of that there are even another nice thing things like irish hub is designed later than cosmos hub so for the token economics design from the beginning we actually reserved a big portion we have about i think it's 35 percent of the aris token that is for the community development and so if like people will publish the address on aries foundation's the home page so the governance for that parties the token from the community development portion can only use unlike the to support the related application development or community development so nobody should never for example foundation cannot never sell those tokens those tokens is really there for the developers for the community builders and we haven't do a good job to spend like a lot on the community fund portion also like we do have a few like grant programs such as the validator support program and also the community builder program and also like for the application we actually funded a couple of applications already and we're also very interested to working with many projects together and people can all apply for we have a lot of aries talking in the in the ecosystem community for that portion and we want to use that to build areas we already talked a little bit about specific of pacific asia region and you mentioned that kyc is necessary what other features of pacific market you can highlight for the moment could you tell us a little bit more about this right so anna i think you'll get a really a very beautiful point like this is really a quite diverse and a big world every region they have their different characteristics and for china i think there are many things so it's hard to say it's good or bad but there's a reason it is there and we are trying to use the technology to make sure to support since going to the good direction to really help people and support people and in china like of course for the enterprise all these applications as i mentioned they are required like kyc because by this way the good part of that is then the whoever is providing service on the blockchain and also for whoever is using that service you know very clearly who is behind for that by this way then it is easier to if there's a bad guy or whoever like they're just enhanced layer of for safety and security so that's why in china like the consumption blockchain and i think like all the applications the internet applications they will all need to have the kyc so that's why like we have id management in the but consortium chain all need id environment because enterprise they want to know like who is using that service let me try to think about any other specific requirements in the especially in the china i think the biggest part is really on this id management and of course i have to say like token less in china blockchain has to be token less although i will give no comment if that is good or bad but there's a reason behind of that and i'm very optimistic so we want to be the builders think like we just need to give more patience and then when people understand the technology better and then they will be more open to adopt it so i'm very optimistic over the growth but at this moment it is all tokenless yeah do you feel that blockchain is one of the technologies that supported in your region my region if say like i'm currently in china and i would say i'm very happy actually the blockchain gets the support from many many layers and so that part allowed us to see the fast development of the technology so it really get our support and so those things are really good because in the past without blockchain there are just so many areas it is so in transparent you don't know what is going on and there might be bad things happening there might be something like it's just manipulated by power but with blockchain even like it's still a consulting blockchain it's starting to add in more transparency and efficiency into the interactions i'm very happy to see that adoption of blockchain in china it certainly is changing things that is true because when i was like i said when i traveled to china i think last time in 2018 i think 18. and i was in different cities i went in beijing in shanghai in guangzhou in different places and there was a lot of especially i think in shanghai and and guangzhou it felt like a lot of blockchain but it was very specific it wasn't like everywhere else it wasn't like in europe it was a little bit different it's a different vibe but i can definitely say that one thing i did at least felt is that blockchain is more supported i don't know if it's good or bad but definitely blockchain in south asia region to me feels more supported on different layers of the state so again i'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing but i definitely understand now i have a different question now because we do want to understand a little bit about you and before you run away sounds like you're very technological it sounds like you you had experience with ibm with the blockchain and with other things that i've seen how did you choose technology why not doctor why not a politician why not a lawyer i mean actually i'm sorry to single you out but i want to understand the story i mean why did you decide this yeah actually you know what like my parents they always wanted me to be a doctor and they are trying to get me into the medical school but actually i backed out at the last moment while i'm filling in my application because i just always loved math and i love physics and i was good i was very good with that i was not very good with english not very good with chinese like all this uh liberal arts and also uh history so i'm actually my mind is actually more like engineering oriented so that's why i really enjoyed so much like my college study in qinghua and in carnegie mellon and also my career in ibm i really enjoy like all the building process and the engineering process and also i'm extremely happy i'm currently in blockchain technology it's such a fun area so many challenges you can solve did you ever regret not becoming a doctor did you ever think that oh my god i would want to be a doctor i would be happier than doing this the only regret i had is if i was a doctor then maybe at this time just all my experience already how should i say like because in the technology field you always need to keep on learning and they're just every year every month like the new thing come up sometimes like you feel like okay if i was a doctor maybe i could just take a vacation and i don't need to but i still enjoy the process of learning all these new things and also especially building the seasonal work so that's the part i really enjoy so i but what about your parents i mean are they are they happy they wish i could be a doctor because i think now they're getting old like the health care service i would say like it's always scarce scarce resource i wish like at least anything we could do for example from technology side if we could help the health care system and that's the part i want to do although i was not a doctor myself but of course i think parents they want their children reduction they can get better health care support but they are proud they are very proud of me so i'm happy for them so and do you have any specific plan for your kids no actually my kids they are quite different from myself and my husband like both like myself and my husbands are all kind of like engineer and my boy he's definitely a very good techie engineer he's so good with robotics and so i'm amazed with like the robot he built i'm very proud of him so he's probably will go into the engineering route but my daughter she's an artist she like joined she likes singing so i think we want to give them just the flexibility and we want them to do the things they they like they would enjoy for their whole life so i think like kids they're just so different with so the other they are coming out from the same parents but my boy and my girl they are just so different but i'm very proud of them they are all very good kids very sweet thanks for answering this because you know i think it's cool to understand a little bit about the person i think it opens up people to the project as well personally and for before we let you go i have a somewhat of a traditional one last question to ask you a traditional question you've obviously been around blockchain for a long time as well so the traditional question is what is the three blockchain projects outside of cosmos ecosystem not top coin market cup that you are excited about you don't have to say three but at least some projects that you think are interesting i think it's probably there are many many very brilliant ideas out there and exciting projects there so i'm going just to say i feel like i'm more familiar with and just because i got the opportunity to interact with the team member more for example sonana they are consensus the design i think that has new innovation and i really love it and also for near like the high performance and also the so that project i also like and also i like platinum platform i'm not so sure if many people heard about that and it focused on the privacy computing we had a many discussion with them and i'm quite looking forward for their progress and i want to integrate their privacy computing as a service so many other blockchains they can just use that and instead of for all trying to spend a lot of resource and so they can all focus on building new scenes so those are the three things i really like but i think there are definitely many other things just because i just didn't have the opportunity to get to know the team yet but i want to learn more thank you i think it's it's very interesting from what i've noticed to a lot of listeners to listen to the opinion of people like you who make big projects who are founders or or developers of big projects and it's interesting that actually a lot of the people we talk to name the same projects and it's very it's very ironic because it means that you know we all think on the same line is there anything you want to add that we didn't ask you maybe i really enjoyed this podcast because like we got a chance to discuss many things not just on technology but also unlike i think on many aspects so i really enjoyed this discussion i really enjoyed this podcast it's so different from all the other like panels and the interviews i did thanks for coming on and we really did enjoy having you and we will hope that maybe sometime in the future we will have somebody or you again from iris and see how the progress has been over the the year or so thanks everybody for listening and thanks everybody for tuning in and i hope you guys join us next time and goodbye from us you