Agenda:

• Report work

Attending: Eve, Thomas, Kathleen, JohnW, Matisse, Marco, Susan, Adrian, Jeff

Discussion of Jeff's critique/comments:

• Is the challenge with the phrase "blockchain technology" that it is being taken to apply only to the specific encryption technique? It appears so. We discussed how there are two uses of the phrase "blockchain", where a preponderance of the world uses "blockchain" to mean the entirety of the set of technologies; Jeff is using it to mean just some subset involving encryption. Matisse's professor taught her that "In traditional finance, the bank sends an encrypted transaction between clear people, while in Bitcoin, the bank sends a clear transaction between encrypted people." We edited our Blockchain technology section slightly to make clear that we mean "the whole, not the part".
• Does the ethical diamond use case get in our way because the diamond miners have challenges that other use cases wouldn't, such as high-value pharmaceuticals or luxury goods? See this story on blockchain and human rights. Susan will reach out to Everledger to ask a few questions about the workers involved in the diamond case and Eve will reach out to Vchain to ask them to fill out a questionnaire regarding their border control (not "human empowerment") use case.
• What impact is there on OPAL/Enigma in thinking about where data is stored: central servers vs. distributed servers vs. clients? Enigma is on distributed servers; all the nodes act as a data server; the data is encrypted into shares. OPAL simply means moving the queries to the data. You can accept (consent to) algorithms running over your data.
• We're all in agreement that the key problems of identity, such as verification/proofing, credential linking, etc., are not solved by blockchain itself.

AIs:

• Susan above
• Eve above
• Eve to send out PPT
• Jeff to comment on the doc from his "new eyes" perspective