certain people. i started off by saying this is public, it is reviewable. we can see the transactions. on top of that, we can have privacy or we can close the door. depending on the design interests. we can see the movement of funds and goods. a lot of people are interested in a block chain application related to supply chain tracking and traceability. of any kind, minerals, and try to put a kind of tamper resistant seal on them. they can scanned when it moves through a supply chain. and because the participants in this supply chain which could be

in the dozens, are reporting to a data base without a single owner, they know and whose information is accurate, because of mentioned, they know where goods were when. so competitors, they can't point fingers. there is a common sense of truth as to where this cargo was when -- which can aim in tracking the goods. technology applies cryptography. we have smart contracts, which is the classic computer logic.

however, because we are engage in a peer-to-peer environment. you can set up an arrangement to party a and exchange money to party b. you have a medium sending or receiving information or money that you can set up automatically contracting smart contracts. that is what these are. the way of adding software on to this layer. here are four key features of technology. and depending on the use, we like different features. for my project exploring how these smart contracts can be used to fight corrosion, we really like the transparency feature.

we should be able to see this option. and see the exact amount and any assumption or areas where activity may have happened. of course, this is not a guarantee to reduce corruption. the technology is a tool. we need to consider a lot of design elements and risks and implementation criteria to successfully implement what we want to. for that supply chain that i mentioned, all parties can convene and know that no one else has manipulated the data and point number two, we like, coordination over this. parties can convene and transaction with each other. and no one else. they don't need to rely on one

large supplier and user base or data base who they may not trust. the first transaction in the distributed system, again the data bases are held and continuously sync in computers all over the world. the mechanism for the transactions to happen require a consensus and that takes time. it is always necessarily slower than a centralized system. the launching data base or ledger can do can be done in a centralized manner. however, we are choosing to explore the use of chains for the aforementioned capabilities.

if we have need for these elements. transparency, coordination, censorship orifice hardware resilience. -- physical hardware resilience. because of the data is being logged and synced in computers around the world. thousands or a dozen, depending on how many people are let into the network. there is more opportunity for people to see that data. than if it was in a private

centralized server. access management is quite difficult. we do have not recovery passwords here. we have privacy for signing in. like a regular password. if it is lost, it could be lost forever. and this management of account passwords that are needed to send transactions can be difficult. of course, the technology is quite new. bitcoin is ten years old now. and many other protocols are only a couple of years old. we have new technologies always. the protocols are not very scaleable. they cannot handle many transactions. there are many people working on this.

a range of centralization and decentralization of the data bases. these large chains which are mentioned which are totally publicly viewable and anyone can create an account, you just download and you can participate. we don't know who is participating. we don't know how many people. it is very difficult to know these things. and because there are so many anonymous users, transactions are slow. this is also where we see digital currency. we move over to the other side, in the middle, we have publicly viewable decentralized data bases with access. this means, there is only

certain people can write or add transactions. however, everyone can see this. i can see opportunities and government cases here where you may want the transparency and you may want the public to see something, a watchdog to see the transactions. however, you only want certain people to be able to write to that and make transactions. finally we have private provisions. the lock down system. that certain people are able to write transactions and only a certain number of people see the transactions. this is similar to a regular centralized data base we use. there is no digital currency usually in this case. it is not needed.

the computers to maintain the system when they don't know each other. over here, this could be a couple of companies, or agencies within government and there is no need for the payment of people to maintain the data bases other than be a sponsor of the program. this can work very quickly as well. we have several different types of consensus mechanisms. again, the distributed systems, we have thousands of computers all around the world. this is different than the centralized system that we are

used to where a company or bank can approve transactions and see that they are legitimate. here is the list of consensus mechanisms. no need to cover them in detail. the ones that you recognize at the top is called proof of work. this is the mechanism that bitcoin uses and many other major bank public permissionless -- this is the one that extremely energy intensive and it is also quite slow. this uses a lot of electricity. in terms of environmental implications, we will get into, the harm on the environment depends on how much electricity is being used. of course whether that electricity is generated by clean energy or not. currently, estimates of how much

electricity consumed is equivalent to a small state like denmark or ireland. and this fluctuates. just this week, bitcoin markets are crashing right now. computers stopped participating because it is no longer worth it for them. because the bitcoin price is quite low. they get paid less. they get paid 12.5 bitcoins to transform a transaction if they are looking to do so in this system. that 12.5 bitcoin is worth less because bitcoin is worth less. so we will see influxes and outflows of mining activities. depending on the price of bitcoin and how much is used. that said, they may have shifted

over to light coin, another technology. depending how quickly and easily they can convert the hardware to operate on the systems. i am not clear if that is a reduction of energy being displaced on to another network. to wrap up, i am not too concerned about this. as you can see, there are 6 other major types of consensus mechanisms and there are other major ones that are listed. and they do not use the same system. they use electricity just like anyone using a computer. but it is not nearly -- you don't have the time to get into -- briefly, the bitcoin system, all the computers use hardware processing power. and they try to unlock a certain

code. and these other systems, the mechanisms are different. so the second one, which is the second most popular called proof of state, the way it works is these computers when their bitcoin -- in the future when there is migration, it depends on how much of that digital currency they own. and when was the last time they -- the money. they are not spending the computer power. we have proof of space or proof of capacity. which is actually where where the computer weighs by how much hardware space is used. it is a bit different. all of these are greener and usually they are faster. and i listed the types of protocols as examples that are operating on them.

again, these are all based on the distributing systems research and cryptography. which was created ten years ago. it solves the problem. i will conclude here. i will look to you as to whether to answer questions. >> next up the managing general partner. we are happy to have you today. >> thank you very much. a pleasure to be here. good evening, everyone. one of the things that often

happens when we have the conversations of bitcoin, cryptocurrency. it is important to understand that we have different -- the most conversation we have is around bitcoin. it is the most prominent crypto-currency so far. have many of you have heard of bitcoin in the context to feel like you wanted to invest or you did invest or you didn't. so the one thing i would say, being in the space now for a very long time, this is very -- there are a lot of people who made a lot of money. there are a lot of people who lost a lot of money. if you go back to the.com boon

and bust, this is the cycle that we have seen before. so the one message i would start with is the system is in the game. this is really good timing that you are bringing the conversation to the fore. there is a lot of time for this. as a city, as a country, we can play this profitability. in the context of bitcoin and as we mentioned earlier, bitcoin is now consuming in a year, energy as much -- you know whwe need t attention. so let's start actually by quickly looking at the ecosystem. we have the crypto -currency.

bitcoin is the most popular. there are a few others. crypto-currency. bitcoin cash, there are a few others, right. and a lot of the speculation has been with the crypto-currency. i am actually a big fan of both. i think they accelerate -- if it had not been the crazy rise of bitcoin price wise, you would not see the attention and money that went into it. and really what we need to focus on, forget the currency trend now, is the chain.

the fundamentals were explained. what we are excited is how it is used, right. and i will give you a very, very quick and simple example that will resonate with you. one of the lowest hanging fruit. providence. how do you know you are you. how do you know the property you have is yours. how do you know the transactions you made around that are valid and stay. about six months ago, i was with one of the largest refugee agencies. red cross is a larger agency. this is from a refugee perspective. 4.5 million refugees. streaming into the camps that they have. guess what, the biggest need is

right now? the general consensus when i asked the question is everything to do with food, water, building, shelter, safety. the biggest need is identity. 4.5 million people streaming in there with no identity. who are they. and even if they had a passport, you don't recognize the state that they have come from anymore. so that document doesn't mean anything to you. and when i was in that conversation, for me the answer was obvious, the block chain is designed for that. if there was low hanging fruit that you want to grab before anything else, it is identity. so there is a lot of incredible benefits of technology that explain how it works. there is a third part to the

whole conversation. the moments when companies have tokens as a new asset cost in these projects and raise the kind of money that is outside the regulation governed by the npc, around the world. and what that it is brought about a capital need to projects that were legitimate. it brought a lot of capital into projects. and what we have seen now with this, the price of crypto-currency and coming down hard is that we are starting to weed out a lot of the companies. the reality is that 90% of the companies whether they were

legitimate or the intention was right and wrong will disappear. sometimes it is because the timing is wrong. sometimes the execution is wrong. you decentralize google and facebook, it is really, really, significant for us to pay attention because it would not have been the world we live in it if not for the dot come boom and bust. the companies are foundational to what we are today. which brings us to an interesting aspect we look at carefully. that is i think in the conversation that you have going forward, it is going to be relevant which is the

environment. ... how they treat the block chain and fundraising for it. there are leading positions on how we address the clauses and one of the byproducts of that, in the u.s. we don't have a coherent approach. it has been stepped in and stayed these things are not okay and we will come down hard. we do not have rules to say this is how we treat the block chain or the service providers. we are seeing access to money -- so somewhere, around the way we will have to find the right balance between making sure we

have sensible regulations and that we don't lose what made the ecosystem so unique. the problem with treating regulations with the same brush strokes as in the past, in all of my conversations whether they are with folks on the regulatory side or folks in congress, in many ways, there is a technology gap. you need to explain to us how block chain works so we can regulate it. i say remember the gap, not just the technology gap. it is a gap of philosophy. it was not born out of nothing. if you look at where the greatest numbers of adopters of crypto-currency are, they are not in the united states. they are not in the u.k. or in

germany. they are not in scandinavia. there is something in common in all of the places. regime or countries, where there are high legislation in venezuela. it is where you see the most movement. the philosophy around this was some kind of battle against centralized authoritarian rules and regimes. we have to be very careful that when we come up with regulation, at a federal state, city, council level, we think of the philosophy of why decentralization came to be born. (please stand by)

. . passed on november 4 three

interesting laws and these were not laws passed by the regular laytors, but by the congress and these are laws of the land now. the first is to regulate crypto currencies. you know exactly what you are investing in and know the rules of the land. the second is the way to regulate the underlying technology and here is how blockchain will be regulated so we know. the third is how to regulate service provider, especially fiduciary service providers, exchanges, banks, anyone dealing with the fiduciary side. so they have a very clear vision of what they can provide and who they can provide it to and how they can provide it. and we really, really need to get there. the thought that i have this picture and this is the president and a very interesting

talk with that dinner and she spent 30 seconds on the regulations and the prime minister of the country is the main architect behind that and what she said what i am really interested in is how is this going to make the world a better place. it is interesting because she focused on people and focused on people's rights and this is is what countries are thinking about and i am grateful that we are doing this in pedestrian. we need to do this to the top. have you ever thought of alexa in that way? where she is kind of alive. because she is, right? the privacy issues that we are dealing with in the world that we live today and where you have

the devices that are listening all the time, and data that is essentially being sent to centralized powers, right? and we make the naive assumption that, well, these are all good actor, right? i call the general classification of companies google-apple-facebook, alibaba, 10 cent and we make the general assumption that these are good actors. they're not bad actors. they're commercial actors, right? they have to do what is right by the commercial needs and for the shareholders and your privacy rights might not always be their priority. the blockchain provides a very interesting model for us to build privacy in. ashley covered a few point there is and decentralize the data model. data, you probably heard before s the new oil, right? this is the new currency of the future. and if that data belongs to eight companies, then we have a

huge problem. and potentially one government, right? we're also heading to a point where largely because of a.i., my background is in a.i. and i have been head of an a.i. company for 12 years. it's actually going to trigger a lot of not just blue color, but white collar job losses and estimates show close to 50% of the global work force with a.i. and thinking about how to leverage the decentralize the data and the blockchain and create economic incentive where is people can earn an income from the daily activities and from the data they produce is going and that allows us to solve. and finally, coming to our conversations around the environment, there is a lot of interesting work that we're seeing already with different

companies that are trying to target environment in general, environment issues across different solution points and i want to go into -- i won't go into anything in detail right now. and we can talk about it in questions or offline, but there is various different models around this. energy, of course s the most common one that we have seen. a lot of companies are decentralize energy and decentralize energy markets and create peer to peer markets so that people can start generating energy from their own solar panels or their own miniature windmills and allow others to buy into that. pluck into the grids and we're seeing the same thing happen with carbon credits. so there is a whole bunch of different models that are being played with right now. the good news is coming back to what i started with, we're really early in the game.

no one here needs to panic about how far behind we are. but we need to act. and so there are models in place and there are companies that are already doing this. some very successfully. some not so much. some will survive and become the blueprints for how we go about to do that whether at a government level or the private industry. there is a couple of examples that i will share with you quickly. we can go into a lot, many more details later and happy to send you a list of all the companies in the space if you have interest in going through them and seeing what makes sense. power ledgeer is one of the earliest companies in this space that the australian company raiseded a lot of money from the model that we talked about earlier and can be done to get

people rich and they have shown to be very responsible. they have great leadership. that is something we look at very carefully when we bring companies into the silicon valley blockchain society. bill ty who many of you may have heard of here, he is considered one of the top venture capitalists and is our local lad from the bay area. he's the main advisor to this project. and basically creating a peer to peer trading microgrid decentralized platform. the energy web foundation is very interesting. they are a u.s. entrepreneurs who going back to my conversations about regulation decided that they're better off building what they are building in europe. and this is where i often ring those alarm bells when i talk to our regulators and anyone in government. these are not the kind of companies that we can afford to lose because we're trying to figure out what kind of regulations we're going to put

in place to prevent the i.c. scammers, right? let's not cut off our nose to spite the enemy. they are building an open source platform that will allow the energy sector to build their own solution. and when there are conversations that you are willing to have around the strategy forward, these are the companies that i would like to bring in and introduce to you to piggyback off the lessons already learned and some of the open source platforms that they have built. i will skip this impact because they are focused on carbon credit usage and decentralized that platform. i will end with a quote that i really, really love that basically says people don't have

ideas. ideas have people. and we've come to that stage now where we went through the cycle of 2015, 2016, even 2017 being first time founders trying to build this new, sexy protocol and most of us in this room probably don't understand what that is. 2018 has been about experienced founders trying to solve problems, problems that have to do with society. and we see, i would say, about 30% of the companies that we see are founders trying to solve problems that exist in society and make humanity better. that is very, very exciting. so i will end here. happy to take questions.

>> what excites me about this space is if i am going to pay money for something, which i won't do because we are commissioners up here together, but i am going to pay you money something, i have to give it to you and technically speaking you and i am going to vinemo and send it from my bank to your bank and all that is happening is the bank is saying i sent you some money. nothing happens. not like they are moving it from one bank vault to another bank vault, radioit? but we are relying on the bank to be the middle person, the middleman who will tell us what it is. if i want to buy something at the store and know it that's fair trade or it's organic and i want to know that the wheat that was grown was organic and i want

to know that the sugar that went into it was organic and i want to know that it came through sort of the processing plant that followed these things, i have to rely on all those middle organizations and also to do that. and if i want to vote and know that my vote is being counted, right, i have to rely on middle organizations to do that. i think that the excitement around this for me is the decentralized piece of it. the fact that there is this ledger where i can give you the money and if everyone up here just says, she got the money from heather, then we all just agree that the money went to you, right? instead of having the bank say that the money went to you. so that to me is the exciting part of this. and i guess on a very pointed level, would like to say specifically around things like -- i have heard you say a couple of things about carbon trading. can you talk to us about the ways that this distributed ledger system is being applied there? and kind of walk us on that kind of a level through how some of that could work?

>> so think of the example you just took and you explained that really well. the proof that you gave the money to debbie. think of carbon credits in the same context, right? today the carbon -- first of all t carbon credit ecosystem is really convoluted and you are relying on a third party to prove that the carbon credits were properly earned an were properly applied, probably assigned to you, and that you can use them in the way that you are intended to use them, right? and so you go back to the concept of providence. how do you know that you earned those properly? how do you know that those are yours to have? and that those are yours to spend and you spent them in the right possible ways? right? and so a decentralized carbon credit platform allows for that to happen using the same context and the same concept that you explain for the money.

that there is a consensus mechanism to prove on a public blockchain system that the actions required to earn the credits were made and based on that, the credits were then assigned to the party. and there is roof that happen and no one can dispute that later and the distribution of the credits and the application of the credits and again happens on the same blockchain. so it's a public blockchain. that is what companies like veridium are creating. there will be for every company that we see doing something like that, there's five, six other projects at the same time. we're really happy right now so it's not going to be a winner takes all because it's so early on. this is super early. and carbon credits is one aspect. the underlying energy web foundation approach of saying, look, let's build up the decentral tiezed infrastructure

and then -- decentralized infrastructure, and anyone can take that and we want to use it and it's open source and are not making money on the understood lying platform and we can apply what they want to use it for. that would be an example of how carbon credit trading would work with a system like this. thank you. i have so many questions. so i have the philosophical question and then the super concrete question. i will start with the philosophical one. when i think about where sometimes industry goes wrong with new technology and introducing it to the public is g.m.o.s, genetically modified organisms. for a long time we had no idea

what that meant and it was an obscure thing in a lab, and monsanto did this, i think, disservice in a way by the first publicly understood example of a g.m.o. was roundup ready corn. so the first time that the lay people saw what a g.m.o. could do was something that for us was no value. in fact, it was the opposite of value. it was horrendous. it was the ability to use more pesticide because the crop wouldn't die. so you could use unlimited roundup because your crop was resistant to roundup because of g.m.o.s and that as that first example of something that people could understand has really colored the world of g.m.o.s. i am not saying they are wonderful and there are a lot of problems, but there could be beneficial uses that are now -- we went way back because of that out the gate.

so when you talk about that there is the companies that want -- that 30% of the companies want to do the right thing. that there is this problem -- the problem is not technology, but philosophy. so i feel like we could repeat that same mistake because bitcoin is what we think about with blockchain and we don't know how to separate. it feels like it's the same thing, and that is where the energy use is, and i have so many questions about your examples, sorry, ashley, about where bitcoin is needed an when it's not, but i just wonder how for us as a commission on the environment and as thought leaders in a place like san francisco, we might use our collective interest in the planet to influence a company and help a company get out in front so that the examples that are concrete for us look helpful and not something that is just bitcoin and making a few people rich who understand it.

>> i could not agree more. history may not repeat itself, but it definitely rhymes. and i think in many ways we are going down the same path. so the same mistakes as 2008 are being repeated. we just have to be more cognizant and we are trying to do that as much as possible. push the companies that are focused on doing the right thing, doing it responsibly, focussing on making society better. and getting capital their way. so if there is a way to support these kind of companies, right, both from a private perspective and the government perspective, then we should be doing that as priority. >> that is my invitation to both of you is what we do, and what you saw earlier this green roof ordinance, for example, that is an example of the city of san francisco sending signals to the marketplace that you, the

people, the companies who are ready to develop green roof technology, living roof technology, you will have a market here. and we're going to give you a signal that two years from now it's going to be mandatory, so there is an economic benefit to being ready. so as my invitation to you is to help us think, what are those companies that might have an idea that we can develop legislation on and that shows that it's the intention of our procurement office or our legislative policies that would send a signal that that's the right way to go? and i don't know what those examples are yet. i am intrigued by some of the things. >> i have a comment. i would invite you, director, and government organizations around the world, to send a signal to the market and pick a project yourselves using employee blockchain technology for good that is one of the best

ways to show public use that's beneficial. that is the chicken and the egg thing, right? i need to understand it well enough to know what that is? so i am ready to do that. i just need your help. we don't need to wait for the private sector, right? many good signal cans come from government employment and what you can do is put out an r.f.p. or r.f.i. to develop something and think of a good way to screen that or explore and choose the best technology providers without having and develop it yourself. >> very quickly on that, there's some interesting lessons to be learned from what the city of munich is doing. i actually advised the bavarian finance ministry, and the city of munich is basically doing just this a.i. and blockchain and it's a private-public partnership. they brought in some of the

biggest companies and the family offices and they brought in obviously government infrastructure in the city of munich itself. they're looking at companies that are building blockchain solutions that can genuinely affect their citizenry and citizenry globally and they are backing them with the infrastructure that the city can bring. they're backing them with funds that the public-private partnership has brought. and it's been really effective. i was in munich last month, and i got to see about five companies that are doing really meaningful stuff. they have all the pitfalls of a normal startup. when you have the support and the infrastructure from the city, you can navigate some of those pitfalls much better, right? so it's very important. we kind of get into this whole private and you don't want to get involved in government and you don't want to get involved in city and that could not be more myopic. when we can piece this together and when we think about the kind of companies that are fundamentally hl eping humanity

move forward, we can't do that just private. we'd love to -- you let us know how you would like us to be involved, and we're in. >> thank you. commissioner sullivan. >> really interesting to hear some of the environmental use cases for blockchain, and i don't feel like i am knowledgeable enough to ask any questions about that, but when i think about where government intersects with blockchain and crypto currencies, i go back to the ireland example. and the tremendous amount of energy that is going into crypto currencies especially bitcoin. is anybody talking about what government cans do about that? is there anything short of banning them that can be done by governments and whether it's probably not cities but state or national governments to reduce the amount of energy lest ireland become france or japan?

>> so we haven't actively seen and some of the numbers are crazy, right? the daily use of energy for bitcoin can power close to 4.9 million households, right? 18 house holds and then places like iceland where the government is pushing a lot of thermal energy to help mining operations there which will help use more green energy to do this. which is one part of addressing it. the other part, of course, is -- and ashley kind of eluded to that. there is a movement away from proof of work, which has been the standard consensus mechanism which is there. at at the end of the day not just from the overall energy consumption perspective, but the

future of the space and the viability of the industry will be about governance. if we can find the right governance models that meet the right balance between energy, efficiency, validity, and consensus. and that's where it needs to head. we haven't seen too many government regulations around the energy piece yet. >> thank you. >> it is hard to wrap our heads around what kind of projects could we envision? and is this energy creation and that is done in a noncentralized way. it's kind of hard to imagine enough energy creation here to be able to pull everything into a noncentralized area in san

francisco, but what are some of the -- if we wanted to do a munich style approach, what are some of the things that are more concrete that we could wrap our heads around that would serve our desire to do something good for the environment or something good along the lines of climate? or are those things that haven't been and to learn for an example and how to get involved and to do the four projects that we saw and that has little to do with energy and environment and it has more to do with let's create infrastructure and promote these companies. low-hanging fruit, though, we can look at carbon credits, right? that's low-hanging fruit. look at decentralization of peer to peer energy models and you can tie in with what tesla is doing with the solar panels and create a decentralized market or

encourage a company to come here with a decentralized market. and tie that with identity. i mean, i think if you were looking at what can the city do to begin with? and then obviously energy is one piece of it. but the most fundamental and looking at dubai. and what dubai did is basically said we'll put the drivers licenses to the blockchain. once that is done, you have mroked identity in. now -- you have locked identity in. now we can say we know who the people are and they have privacy and anonymity as much as they would need to have. now we can build around that. if you want to build carbon credits around knowing who the people are, it is much easier to do than to start with carbon credits as a platform and not have the fundamental, really low-hanging fruits in place. that would be my approach.

i think part of the problem here is you guys don't know enough about what we do and that's matched with us not understanding, in my case certainly, virtually anything about what you do. i certainly understand more now than i did before i came. for myself, i mean, one very clear option, i think, that exists which i can't figure out how it would help the city so much, but the trackability thing. if you can with confidence know that the head of romaine that you have in the refrigerator isn't going to kill you, you don't need to throw it out. and we, i mean, that's sort of

an immediate need it seems to me that if there were companies that were interested in interested in and committed to tracking the food that people eat, that would solve a problem that would take a problem that is much more fundamental here. i could be wrong, but i think it's going to be harder to get drivers licenses on blockchains in america than it would be to get the food tracked. so i mean, that's the only example i have been able to think of. i mean, i suppose somebody mentioned f.s.c. before. there is a whole lot of things we could track if people wanted

to. but i have problems trying to figure out in this civic space where we don't actually make monetary transactions all that often and blockchain and is it a communication device? >> i might recommend if we can shift over to the slide i made with key potential capabilities. do i turn this -- >> the one with the three? >> oh. so we can -- you could have a different approach to look at these and see where there's some kind of pain happening where these could solve some problems and the need for transparency or

coordination or hardware resilience of the databases or censorship and fraud resistance. and generally speaking, out in the civic and government, we see a lot of good use cases for developing countries which don't have as strong institutions and organization around them. where we can see public procurement tracking, voting, these types of use cases. for more efficient and developed countries -- >> but this actually gave me an idea. we could track what people put in their black, green, and blue bins. >> okay. >> and then we would be able to go to somebody and say, you don't get the system. and we know there are -- we know there are a lot of those people. but we could. i mean, i am not saying we should. i am not saying we should. but you could come to my house.

>> that is food for thought. director? >> thanks. i have a follow-up question. it is so funfy that commission wald was thinking about lettuce. when i was typing and when you were talking, ashley, i used lettuce as my example, too. i can understand if you have a container of lettuce -- let's say we want to track the province of organic. [please stand by]

>> you would -- you would -- you could trace it to a specific container and then know where that container has been. >> oh, right. right. >> and so with the -- with the e. coli outbreak with romaine,

so certain heads of the romaine had e. coli, you could see which containers that they were in and then see where those containers came from, and that's the source. >> and it's because -- >> and then, you throw out all the associated -- >> the packaging that's around that individual head of lettuce has an individual rfin. >> no, the large crate, the boxes. >> i'm not still distinguishing how that one -- >> yeah. generally, you wouldn't distinguish the individual head of lettuce. it's more the batch it's associated with. for a high value item, an item where the price is a lot higher, and you want to individually scan it, that makes more sense, but for cheap produce that's in batches, it would be inefficient even on a supply chain level to scan the individual heads

individually. and you do have to trust -- you're right, when the heads of lettuce get taken from the farms, they get put in this cargo, you have to trust that's done well and this original farm is organic. and you have to know when it goes from the farm to the box to get shipped out that there hasn't been any counterfeiting at that point; that those are the real lettuc that came fre t that box. you need to trust the origin point in some other way. >> so can i follow up on debbie's question because the other thing i don't understand really at all -- i don't even understand the multiexample, but i heard it, and i think i know what they're doing is how you meld the needs of

centralization, which is the regulation, whether it's initial offering or the -- what is the division of -- definition of organic and who makes the crate so it can't be compromised, how you meld that kind of system, which i'll call the sort of command and control system, with the decentralization that's the hallmark of this whole process. you can't have a million different definitions of organic on these little -- not little, i didn't mean it that way. on individual blockchains even if they have, you know, 100,000 people on each one of them. o