3 QUESTIONS TO JELLE POL, COFOUNDER AND BUSINESS LEAD OF DUSK
They are our clients, our friends, good contacts or just people we met in the crypto-community. They have new vision, they are running great projects, they are developing new services or they just want to share their story. Havas Blockchain is interviewing key people of the blockchain ecosystem.
Let’s meet today with Jelle Pol, CoFounder & Business lead of Dusk:
(1) First of all, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and about Dusk?
By nature, I have always been a creative, but from a career perspective, I have spent most of my time on the business side on technology. After acquiring a degree from Erasmus University I started my career at the aPaaS platform Mendix, which was recently acquired by Siemens. Most of my consequent years were spent at Shell, the global energy company. At Shell, I founded what would later become the global Shell blockchain team, and ran the first three blockchain projects. During this time Shell joined the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance and made its first equity investments into blockchain companies. After a few years in the innovation space, I spent just under a year on renewable energies, most notably off-shore wind farms. However, I found myself permanently bit by the blockchain bug and despite my love for new energies decided to leave Shell to pursue an entrepreneurial career in the space. After founding and leading a boutique consultancy and investment firm I found myself increasingly motivated to enter the arena and fight for the forces of good in the space, an example which is privacy. Queue Dusk.
We conceived the Dusk Network to solve blockchain’s unanswered challenges: scalability, privacy, and compliance. At the basis is our own consensus algorithm that is the first privacy-proof of stake implementation. Because we wanted to go beyond payments, we have had to further the field of zero-knowledge cryptography significantly, and we are releasing a virtual machine that offers zero-knowledge smart contracts. The combination of privacy and programmable smart contracts allow for the unique combination of privacy and regulatory approval, without storing (and therefore without revealing) any sensitive data.
(2) Can you tell us more about the impact of blockchain technology on The financial services industry?
Much of the initial impact made by blockchain is in cross-border payments, through implementations such as Bitcoin. The ability to settle near real-time cross-system is a leap beyond anything currently offered in that regard. Similarly, the low barrier of entry has de-facto banked large populations that previously did not have access to this type of infrastructure. Since Bitcoin, we have seen a few interesting things in smart contracting and governance. Blockchain has a lot of potentials to disintermediate unnecessary complex processes. Dusk is purpose-built for more mature sectors such as the financial industry. Requirements vary from settlement finality to privacy in some places, and transparency in others. Tokenization of assets can also lead to higher liquidity because assets become easier to transfer, this could mean that blockchain becomes an effective alternative or hedge to the increasingly slow IPO process for example.
By introducing modern securitization we want to make issuing, accessing and trading securities available to everyone through our programmable Security Token Standard (XSC). These programmable sets of rules enable organizations increase access to capital and liquidity, whilst making great headway on automation and cost-cutting through decentralization... Paraphrasing our cryptographer Luke Pearson: “The referees can be taken away — but the rules are still in place.”
(3) How do you see the evolution of the blockchain market in the coming years?
Privacy will become an increasingly accepted feature. Many projects in the space are moving towards enhanced privacy in some form or another, and when used correctly it will be embraced as the force of good that it can be. The securities sector will see some further decline in hype until the first propositions start to really deliver, and the protocol wars are not over yet. We are continuously improving on the infrastructure that will make the technology viable for the mainstream, and whilst pick-and-shovel type companies are arguably
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Jelle Pol:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jellepol/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DeVermetele
Dusk — Technology for Securities
Dusk Network is the first privacy-oriented blockchain protocol that includes Smart Contracts. DUSK is fully decentralized and anyone can use DUSK to create their own dApps.
Website https://dusk.network/
Twitter https://twitter.com/DuskFoundation
Telegram Announcement channel https://t.me/DuskAnnouncements
