Avatars are becoming increasingly popular in the virtual reality world and are capable of taking on any digital appearance that the user prefers. The only caveat is that investors and individuals are solely responsible for protecting and safely storing their own funds. Moreover it is critical for users to understand that transparency is crucial for data privacy protection. This episode of Diving into Crypto features Vikram Bhushan, co-founder of Hypersign, who discusses about securing data profiles and much more.
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Transcript
Securing Online Avatars - Hypersign
JP
Okay, with that, ladies and gentlemen, we can begin our program. Let's get started without further ado. So welcome welcome welcome to the next edition of Diving Into Crypto. This is JP speaking to you from AdLunam, Inc. Talking about Web3. On our show today, we have a special guest who I'm going to bring up in just a second. Ladies and gentlemen, keep in mind and remember that all views expressed on this program belong to those of the speaker and any information shared is meant for education purposes only. That being said, welcome back to another episode of-.
Vikram
This opportunity to talk. Glad, really happy that, y'know, at least you found it worthy to call me on stage and always happy to chat about security in general and data privacy. I think avatars also revolve around that because now we are working, trying to build solutions which are user centric and everything would revolve around private keys. So very excited to be talking today or learning from you-.
JP
Because most of us find ourselves in for a very large part of the day. Right, Vikram, very briefly, can you tell us a little bit of what drew you to this online space and actually more importantly, what drew you to the Web3 space?
Vikram
Yeah, so both of them are like two different these are two questions actually. And I'm sure it's the same for every founder out there who is working in Web3. That was the problem statement that drove them. And the second one, what's their Web3 journey like, how they got into Web3. So I will try to be-.
Vikram
Always, there is a slight distance between the father and the son in India. It's how it is across Asia. So we did not ask him initially. We just kept on accepting his Facebook request, but six times was too much. Went back, when went back to our village, I asked him why he is creating account. He said, I just keep forgetting the password. Instead of resetting the password, I don't know how to reset password.
Vikram
All I do is go and create a new Gmail account and create a new basically Facebook of the Facebook account. Yeah, this was our journey in getting into identity and online avatars probably. And in Web3, because we wanted to decentralize it, we didn't want it to go the centralized route. So that got us into building around Web3 technology.
JP
Well, that's certainly an interesting story and I'm sure that many of us can relate not only in terms of sons and dads, but I'm certain even mothers and daughters. Let's not limit the geography only to the subcontinent, right? I'm certain it's rampant all across the world that people who are not familiar.
Vikram
In the west, at least people are aware. Across Asia now we are coming onto the internet like, india and in Southeast Asia still we have not achieved the mass, actual mass that would come onto Internet.
JP
You wanted to bring geography into focus and that's kind of where we lost you. Yes.
Vikram
Okay. Yeah. What I was trying to tell is that definitely, y'know, literacy is important, right? About being how do you behave yourself online or not just behave like how do you use Internet? This education itself, at least in all across Asia, it's still not there because many people are not even on Internet. I am looking at a time when we reach in our continent, we don't even know that these things exist. Right? Suddenly everybody is coming online with the help of mobile devices. With this I see we need to be focusing more on educating people or building technology, which is by default privacy preserving. Which is why I like Web3. Honestly. Even though it is bad thing or a good thing. But if you use it in the right way, probably we will have a better solutions. So anyways-.
JP
People being online and yet at the same time those that are online or those that have adopted an online nature also seem to have the issue of not being secure while they're there online. Right. So that is an interesting thought, Vikram. Thank you Fish, for illustrating that for us. That also leads us, however, to a very interesting situation is because now that we've identified that, hey, this is something that is an issue, what are some of the latest or the upcoming trends that you see in your niche, in your space that are technological advances that are about NFT?
Vikram
People are getting started using NFTs but nobody realizes that the type of people who are coming on board into Web3 because of NFTs, by whatever reason, it can be their own personal reasons to come on board. Like they are an artist or they are somebody else. These are not technologically literate people and we are giving them wallets to manage where they have seed phrase mnemonics which is anyways complicated for a normal person. Like even literate people who understand wallets. For them, if we give them solutions like wallet or mnemonic seed phrases, they are artists, man. Like we are asking artists to use wallet. They are going crazy. I have so many. I have minted a thousand NFTs. How do I manage it? It is very complicated for to understand for an artist. I was involved in one NFT launch and I could see as a developer, I understand, but the artist doesn't understand what is going on, how these NFTs are stored for him.
Vikram
Right. And this is the type of people would keep coming into Web3 because the whole idea is that new people who don't have access to Web3 should be able to come on board, right? That's my point of view. Who then they can move into wallets. So I'm just giving you an example. That is how probably we can as a developer can think of these things while we are building solution. I feel mnemonic and seed phrases are one of the biggest problems right now. Why we are getting hacks is because people are sharing it.
JP
Okay, and that's again, once again, thank you. Vikram. This is another paradox, right? You're looking at the solution becoming the problem and we're wondering if that is also going to become another solution. And the cycle is going to keep continuing. So-.
Vikram
We need to still do more research in Web3 to make it accessible for normal people.
JP
Right. So we're still early stages yet, right? We're still early stages yet. We've begun to identify what used to be thought of as solutions are now having more innovative problems that are making them bigger problems. The solutions are being negated in that sense. That's interesting. While we are on this theme of being more protected online right.
JP
We seem to see that the same kind of behavior- I was just trying to summarize, I was just trying to summarize, I'm sorry. I was just trying to summarize the same thing you were saying in terms of where you have your phrases left at a place where somebody can steal them or hack your browser or you've shared them with somebody.
JP
If I draw a parallel with that to a situation where you're in a crowd, right, it's the same as having your wallet or your purse stolen because you've either left it somewhere or because of that many people being around you in a place where-.
Vikram
People were coming on board to Web3. The challenge is you want to educate them first for wallets or you want to focus on building the technology that you are building. Do you understand, as a startup starts comes on board like he launches a gaming application in metaverse, y'know, but he's stuck educating people how to manage wallets because that is very important. That's the whole core fundamental is the wallet itself used to increase the user centric. But right now this becomes like a tough place for-.
JP
Us and looking at thought leaders, experiences and insights for the sake of our audiences to understand. Vikram, you've again hit on a very interesting point. Where does a developer or where do these solutions and those that are working towards these solutions, where should they focus on energy, right? Should they focus the energy more on education and awareness or should they focus the time on developing smarter solutions? That's an interesting observation and I'm sorry but I'm really greedy for more. What other insights are there in that mind of yours that we can think of where it hit the like button? We do this program every week at the same time at AdLunam, Inc. Please leave us a comment and hit that like button. I'm seeing very little likes come so far. What I'm going to imagine is that everybody is so engrossed in this conversation that you all are forgetting to hit it okay?
JP
So at the moment welcome back, Vikram. Welcome back. The point we're trying to draw is that in this entire metaverse, right, you've shared with us a lot of insight, but I'm greedy for one-.
Vikram
They were building so many box-like games, but some of the algorithms which was developed for the games later on got adopted inside bigger technology like maybe in payment infrastructure or things like that. In my opinion, gaming is where the most advanced research happens for any particular technology. Even here now, you can see from last two years, a lot of new games are coming on board. When you say games like now we are getting into three dimensional, right? Like 3d games, this is a huge problem in gaming industry if you see overall only challenge is that the gaming difference between a Web2 game and Web2 game is that in a Web3 game all the assets should belong to the gamer itself right? They should hold the assets in some or other form in their own wallet and nobody else should have that access to it. Right. This is the philosophy and which is why they use any extension wallet extension or wallets, for example.
Vikram
Now it becomes you did solve your problem like you games before. But it has to have all the features that Web3 wants to provide, like being noncustodial, being privacy centric up to some extent. Right? We solve the adoption problem for games example.
JP
Okay I think that was a very well illustrated point and certainly as an example that's something that our audiences can take back from you've done an excellent parallel in terms of. You have one more thought? I'm sorry, go ahead.
Vikram
No, all I am saying is that the speed at which you can research and implement in the gaming industry you can't do that with DeFi stuff why? Because in DeFi you have to be careful. Like you are managing others assets, right. And you want to play around with mnemonic, with whatever XYZ technology that people are coming up with, like multiparty computation, zero knowledge proof, and decentralized key generation. But before it reaches DeFi, it will get heavily tested in gaming because that's where the huge need has suddenly come up, right? No problem so what I was saying is that in gaming industry we can experiment faster, quicker and at a scale compared to any other industry because the risk is lower right? It's just game you know you are going to f***ing lose the money if you lose the game for example, so the technology can be tested in scale and the other side of it is that you know that now metaverse has come like it's coming, we can't stop it.
Vikram
If Facebook wants to go there, then the same parallel of it in Vector would also come features like noncustodial privacy preserving and secure. So I mean, all I'm saying is that because of metaverse and gaming, we are now able to try solutions like these in scale. There is a demand for it. Before it wasn't because before everything was around having privacy. And, y'know, like you have to be very careful how you are managing somebody's assets. You have to be very careful how much of it you can actually make it easy. Like when you start making something easy, that's where the challenge-.
JP
In helping us get a clearer picture about how to secure our online avatars. Right now I know that we are short on time, so I'm going to open the floor for a question from the audience. If anyone does, please raise your hand and our host will be able to unmute you so you can ask questions, any of our listeners that are coming in, right, okay, or Nadja. Do you have a question for our speaker today? Our guest speaker today become a dear friend.
Vikram
How avatars would be secured in future? Is that what you are saying?
Nadja
Yeah, I deliberately meant the question to be as wide as possible so that you can interpret and even go into whatever direction of your choosing. I'm just wondering in terms of NFTs in general, the conversation is shifting around the utility that it used to have back in this period of intense hype and now it's moving more towards utility. So what do you see the role of NFTs being in the space that you find yourself in, especially in terms of access control?
Vikram
Yeah, got it. I will always give two types on Web3. It has two sites. One is the asset is in your wallet and the second one, the asset is staked or, y'know, stored in the marketplace. To make it very simple, you have an NFT marketplace that is where also your asset would be there. The asset is in your wallet. Like the NFT is in your wallet. The security and everything revolving around the security, now it has two folds. The first part, if it is in your wallet, that's a different security paradigm. Like how do you secure your even though you can claim it back. Now it depends rely on the security of the smart contract. What I'm saying, the security is always there are wallet security and then there is security around all these smart contracts that we are using. If you go one step deeper right, like I was thinking, I was talking to another founder in another session like this, he has another angle because he's working on the protocol level.
Vikram
He's saying your smart contract security works on how much amount of tokens are staked. Meaning if you are running a proof of stake blockchain. Now the whole secure. You can secure your wallet. What type of security needs to be placed on for the wallet? Literally in all these different paradigm, security needs to be taken care. And then we say something like this is why Web3 is hard to build, because you have to as a developer, you have to think in these three different angles to safeguard somebody's assets. I don't know if this was not the right answer for you, but I just wanted to give you this perspective, which I learned by talking to some more people.
JP
Certainly a loud round of applause so you can hear it wherever he is. That was Vikram from Hypersign, ladies and gentlemen, sharing so many thoughts and insights indicating us today. Not just today, but this is also going to be shared across our channel. Many people who listen to this are going to be able to read it and they're going to be able to hear it and enjoy every second that you and I have, along with Vikram from Hypersign. Vikram, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here today.
Vikram
Thank you, everyone, for giving me the opportunity to talk and hope to see you again. Thank you and buh bye.
Narrator
Thank you for tuning into this week's episode of Diving Into Crypto proudly hosted by AdLunam, the first Engage to Earn platform with a Proof of Attention model and dynamic NFT investor profiles.
