IEEE Hong Kong Blockchain Group Zoom Webinar 2023 https://www.ieeehkblockchain.org/webinar-2023 22 September 2023 17:00am UTC+08:00 @ IEEE Hong Kong Blockchain Group Zoom Webinar 2023

1. Edward Tsang
OnDemandWorld
22 September 2023 17:00am UTC+08:00
@ IEEE Hong Kong Blockchain Group
Zoom Webinar 2023
Scaling Up, Scaling Out:
Strategies for Blockchain
Growth Beyond 2024

2. About Me
• Blockchain and AI projects since 2016, BTC mining back in 2012
• Recently been building STO, NFT and OTC solutions
• Previously in Mobile apps (over 25m app downloads in Travel, Education,
etc.) and B2B web systems (Business Banking)
• 20 years in the UK and 13 years in Chinese Mainland, recently moved
back to Hong Kong
• CompSci degree from University of Oxford; MBA from Tsinghua University

3. Agenda
• Scalability is the next biggest challenge of blockchain?
• Current state and how we got here
• What is being done and can we solve it?
• What’s coming in 2024 that can drive up Blockchain adoption?
• And beyond…

4. Blockchain Challenges
• Scalability, Energy Consumption, Security, Complexity and Interoperability are
common topics(Forbes)
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
• Crypto is still the biggest use case of blockchain so far, also tried DeFi, NFTs,
GameFi but all failed to take off.
• Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake used to be the hottest issue, the Merge (6th
Sept 2022) solved it?
• Scalability is the next key challenge?
Scalability Trilemma: balance between decentralisation, security, and scalability

5. Current State
• BTC: 512.34 GB as of Sep 20 2023, ~897.39M tx in total, 552k daily,
around 7 TPS.
• ETH: 1219 GB as of Sep 21 2023, ~2.1B tx in total,1.013M daily, around
15 TPS.
• They have all been gunning for 24000 TPS to rival VISA (Mastercard
claims to be around 5000 tps). ETH2 been aiming at 100k TPS.
• Comparing to: Nasdaq: ~1150 TPS, ~200B value, 27m Tx a trading day.
Estimated the whole U.S. Equities Market is around 3000 TPS.

6. Scalability Fixes in 2024
• Bitcoin, each release is still pushing ahead with optimisation, but still been
avoiding the elephant in the room, PoW. Relying heavily on other 2nd layer
solutions to scale.
• Ethereum next upgrade “Dencun” will be focusing on Danksharding.
Another step in pushing towards the 100k tps target.
• Fabric v3 will have new Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) ordering service
aiming at scalable decentralised usage.(Hyperledger)

7. Scale Up, Scale Out
• Fastest database tech out there can (claim to) achieve well over 1m TPS; NoSQL:
ScyllaDB; Cassandra, MongoDB, Couchbase, and even the good old SQL, Oracle,
MySQL. “Shouldn’t compare with DB?”
• FPGA acceleration; In-memory processing (6TB RAM for AMD EPYC™ 9004); and
other Big Data & Large-scale Computing tech.
• Pursue of TPS is well overrated, but the simplest to misdirect attention. We have
largely been looking at the lowest common hardware for blockchain.
• It's the economy, stupid :)
• We need high usage, critical mass; scaling out doesn’t mean having 1000s of
blockchains tech around.

8. What is digital asset?
• An asset is a resource with economic value that an individual, corporation,
or country owns or controls with the expectation that it will provide a
future benefit.(investopedia)
• Digital asset can be any permutation of Zeroes and Ones satisfying the
above.
• How to price something that is easily replicable? Good old supply and
demand? Scarcity? Pricing of Trust was already difficult previously, 3
trillion valuation helped.

9. What is coming in 2024?
• BTC Halving. 4th one expected to be around April 2024.
• Regulated Fintech products using blockchain for retail. ETF in US.
Regulated VATP in Hong Kong.
• Generative AI Content/Asset.
• AR with the Apple Vision Pro.

10. BTC Halving
• BTC Halving. 4th one expected to be around April 2024.
• All three previous halving lead to bear market for crypto.
• Will supply and demand be enough? Now that many mainstream credit
cards and banks are limiting crypto purchases?

11. Regulated FinTech Products
• Regulated financial products using blockchain for retail.
• ETF in US. Imminent approval? How long before SEC are compelled to
draw the line.
• Regulated VATP in Hong Kong. Expecting a wave of regulated
exchanges? Can it help to address the public concern about crypto?
• There are many other countries that are warming up to crypto. Breaking
the US lead in cool tech? Or are they just carefully staying away?

12. Generative AI
• Already here, but will have much more of it after the rise of ChatGPT.
• Directly integrated into our most favourite work app of all time, Microsoft
Office.
• How will it be regulated? How to track it? Can blockchain play a part?
Enforce all generated content to be watermarked and registered?

13. AR - Gateway into Metaverse
• Next Gen AR/VR, another step towards the Metaverse.
• Apple Vision Pro, concept been in development for 16 years.
• Apple is not known to be early to market, but likely revolutionise it.
• Getting top class reviews so far. No latency, intuitive UX, close integration
with other Apple platforms.
• Digital Assets can be much more widely used in a digital environment.

14. Closing notes, and beyond…
• BTC started on 2009/01/03 (14 years ago), ETH started on 2015/07/30.
Crypto peaked at ~3 trillion dollars of “value” so far. We are still looking
the next killer app after crypto? (Wasn’t dApp, DeFi, NFT). Not likely to
from within blockchain or tech industry itself, but application into others.
• Just as HTTPS was a late afterthought of HTTP, blockchain is likely to be
key role to digital asset value chain. “Data is the new oil”, blockchain will
be the trusted pipelines and oilfields.
• AI over trusted data on blockchain can be very powerful, but it takes time
to build up these verifiable data pools.

15. Some interesting links…
• Searching for the world’s fastest database - Matthew Tark
• A Deep Dive Into Blockchain Scalability - crypto.com
• What Is Transactions Per Second (TPS) - Jeffrey Craig
• EarthWeb: How Many Blockchains Are There in 2023?
• Ethereum Core Dev Explains Why Proto-Danksharding Is a Big Deal

16. Questions?
I will be sharing these slides on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwardtsang/
or write to: edward@odw.ai

17. Thank you