Dr. Brook on the Blockchain
Whether you’re a newbie, an amateur, or a diamond handler, you’ll laugh and learn your way to great success in the latest and greatest technology of our time.
Learn the block. Invest in the block. Get financially well on the block.
Dr. Brook on the Blockchain
Ep 43: Building Blockchain Solutions for Mass Adoption with Medha Parlikar, Co-Founder of Casper Labs
Medha Parlikar is the co-founder and CTO of Casper Labs, a professional software services company focused on blockchain technology for the enterprise. She has over 30 years of tech experience and is considered to be one of the top women in blockchain.
This is Medha Parlikar's story...
I got introduced to the blockchain space in 2016, when a friend asked me to join his startup. We built the software for a new open blockchain project, but we experienced a funding crisis when the Bitcoin market crashed in 2018. A lot of the investors that are now investors in Casper Labs approached me to co-found the company in October of 2018. Casper Labs is a professional software services company focused on blockchain technology for the Enterprise and the Casper Network, which is a public protocol. We don't participate in the public network, but we maintain the network in service to the community and help enterprises, software developers, and people that want to interact with the network. We offer a consultative service to help businesses come up with a real solution that's delivering real
In this episode, you will learn the following:
1. How blockchain technology can be used by enterprises to add value to their products or services
2. The benefits of using a private blockchain over a public blockchain
3. The security benefits of using the CBC Casper protocol
Connect with Medha & Casper Labs:
Casper Labs: https://casperlabs.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mparlikar
Free Download:
The Words of Web3 - A comprehensive glossary of terms used in the space
Connect with me:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drbrooksheehan
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DrBrookSheehan
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/drbrooksheehan
Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dr-brook-on-the-blockchain/id16169
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Alright, welcome to another episode of Dr. Brooke on the Block. It's time to grab a seat, buckle up and take a ride with me through the wild, wild west of the Web Three Universe. We're going to learn all about coins and tokens, NFTs and contracts, digital real estate and the Metaverse and so much more. There's a lot to get through on the block, but I am here to pave the way and help you avoid those nasty pitfalls and rug pulls so you don't get hurt. I'm going to also introduce you to some interesting characters along the way. Are you ready? Your ride starts now.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Make sure those seat belts are fastly tightened. We do not want anybody getting hurt on today's ride. I am so excited to introduce you to my copilot today, Meta. She is the co founder and CTO of Casper Labs, which we get to hear a lot more about today. And she has more than 30 years of tech experience and is considered to be one of the top women in Blockchain. Woman who has my heart for sure. She started working with technology in the early 1980s, building computers in the basement, and then she would go on to deliver production SaaS software, so software as a service for large companies, including Adobe and other companies as well. But she put her career on hold for six years when she had children. And then she turned to martial arts as an outlet. Her goal became to become a black belt, and she achieved that goal only four years later, at the age of 41. When Meta eventually returned to work, she took the lessons she learned in martial arts with her. So in 2018, in the co founding of Casperlab, she turned her attention to Blockchain. And now this company is at the forefront of the blockchain explosion with its open source blockchain and smart contracting platform, which we'll again get to hear more about Meta. With Meta in the lead, the company is paving the way for an entire new generation for C suite to change how they do business. Welcome to the show. Matt is so happy you're here.
[Medha Parlikar]
Thank you, Dr. Brooke, for having me on. I'm really excited to be here today.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Awesome. So, first things first. I always ask my guests before beginning any sort of deep dive into what they're doing and how they're building the blockchain space. I'd love to hear the story on how you entered Blockchain technology, how you entered the Web Three World. Was that pre 2018, before CasperLabs and where we at?
[Medha Parlikar]
Yeah, it's a really cool story. Actually, it was before 2018 that I got into the Web Three World. It came out of a friendship that I had from software. It was a colleague that I worked with and when he left, we both worked at the same company. Our last employer, it was Avalara. And when he left Avalara, we had lunch and we said we should do something together on his last day at Avalara. And then on my last day at Avalara, we also had lunch and we should really do something together. And so that was in 2016, and he did start up a company. And he asked me, hey, join me. Let's do this thing with my partner. And I said, okay. You know, I joined him for a bit, and at the time, he had me doing a lot of sales and marketing and product ideation, and it really wasn't working for me. This was late 2016, actually.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Okay?
[Medha Parlikar]
And so I said, Dude, when you have an engineering team you need me to run, call me. I'm not going to do sales and marketing. This is not my jam. And he's like, okay, no problem. And so he winds up calling me again later in mid 2017, and he's like, Meta, I have a team for you to run. I said you do. And he said, yeah. He's like, I have been retained to provide engineering services for this open blockchain project. And we need engineering leadership. We have enough engineers in the team now that I need somebody to drive this project and manage the team and make sure they deliver. And I'm like, well, that I've been doing for 25 years. I can actually do that.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
That I can do.
[Medha Parlikar]
And so that's how I got introduced to space. I brought that protocol up to their first public test net, and they experienced a funding crisis. This was when the first bus happened in 2018. So when Bitcoin, they did an ICO in 2017, and everything was going great until BTC went from 19,000 to 3000. And then during 2018, during that bear cycle, they really struggled with funding, and so the technology was good. Tesla came about in August, September of 2018. And it was around that time that a lot of the investors that are now investors in Casperl Labs, we saw the vision of that there needed to be a blockchain for enterprise. Approached me to co found Casper Labs in October of 2018. And so here we are. Wow. I love it.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
That's such a fun story. And kudos to you for you're. Like, you're not ready yet. When you're ready, come back to me. And your friend came back. He did what he said he was going to do. And here we are. Here you are. And this is really exciting. So on that note, will you share with the listeners what Casper Labs is doing in the blockchain space? Because there's so many different vertical, there's so many different things going on.
[Medha Parlikar]
Yeah, so what we're doing is pretty different compared to most of the blockchain protocols and projects you'll see out there. We are a professional software services company, and we are focused on blockchain technology for the Enterprise and the Casper Network, which is a public protocol, just like Ethereum. So if you know Ethereum, you kind of know Casper they're kind of the same in that it supports smart contracts, it's public, it's permissionless. It's also a pure proof of stake. So it is a proof of stake protocol. And CasperLabs really houses the core developers that helped bootstrap the software.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
We built the software that then the public validators run to support the network.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
We don't participate in the public network and that we don't hold a stake in the network. We don't run a note in the network. That is all the public protocol. But what we are is we're experts in the technology. We maintain the network in service to the community. We help enterprises, software developers, people that want to interact with the network. We provide a support infrastructure and service to businesses that want to use blockchain technology. We felt that structuring the project and the protocol in this manner would be what was needed in order for enterprise to really adopt technology. Because there's a lot of learning that needs to happen when you get into larger businesses. They need a number they can call. They need somebody that's going to guide them and make sure that they're implementing the technology correctly. This is how they adopt technology, in fact. And so existing protocols really aren't structured in this way to help enterprises really get going with the technology.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
My question follow up to that is, how would the enterprise so let's say we're a big corporation, 500 employees or 500 plus, and we want to utilize this blockchain technology, casper Labs, into our business model. So how is that being implemented into? Is it in their inventory tracking? Is it in their supply chain? What would that look like from an enterprise standpoint?
[Medha Parlikar]
Yeah, it depends on the vertical.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
Okay. We do have supply chain use cases, trace and track. We have done implementations for what we like to call blockchain first companies. These are companies where the blockchain is very central to their product offering. But we've also been working with enterprises where blockchain isn't central to their offering, but it's an augmentation. So they have an existing product and existing business, but they want to take on the value. They want to add more value to that product or service by adding blockchain technology. And there's some really interesting things you can do, like around brand marketing with NFPs, you'll hear a lot about that with NFPs, having a digital good, with a physical good. There's work that's being done there with deeper engagement with customers. Right. If you're doing retail and you want to kind of reach in and build a oneonone relationship with that retail customer because you're a product offering, you have a product offering, but you don't have a distribution channel that gets you directly to the customer, you're delivering your goods through a distribution channel. So you don't own the customer relationship.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right?
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
So this way you can kind of reach in and develop a one to one relationship. Even with small ticket items, right. Using NFT technology. It's a very interesting way to really deepen that engagement. So these are some of the examples. We're working with fintech organizations, we're working with governments, we're working with a lot of track and trace, right, with IoT. So, yeah, there's a lot of applicability for blockchain, for the blockchain technology.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
What you're saying then is CasperLabs is pretty vast and it's offering two different enterprises. It's not just the track and trace supply chain, but it is providing them the ability to, like you said, have that one on one customer relationship through the NFCs or the digital goods and physical goods. Is there tokenomics? Is there like, tokens involved in this as well? Because a lot of the blockchains have tokenomics.
[Medha Parlikar]
I mean, casper is a public protocol. It's proof of stake. So it does have tokenomics. There is economic security in the public network. If customers are wanting specific implementations, they can choose, depending on what their needs is, they may choose to implement on the public network. If they want to, for example, transact with high value assets, we recommend the greater security of the public network versus if they need really fast throughput and privacy, we recommend a private network.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
Bigger public networks are slower, right. Because messages have to traverse. They have to go through a lot of geography or really big decentralized network. Right, right. And so if you don't need if there isn't any benefit in the data being public and you need higher throughput, we recommend a private network. And casper is very well suited for this. So the technology can be deployed in a private environment, and a lot of customers find that this is a good fit for them. More than anything, CasperLabs provides a consultative service, right, where we help them come up with a real solution that's delivering real value to the enterprise and for their customers and for their business. So that's really our focus as a company. We want to deliver value and we want to build that value into the public protocol as well.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
I love that. And that answered my follow up question was, you mentioned the public blockchain, but if you guys had the private ability as well for those enterprises who are looking for more secure protocols. So that's really awesome in terms of, oh, my goodness, I apologize. I just lost my question. I will be editing that part out. You had stated something prior to that. CasperLabs, from my understanding in blockchain and how I'm learning and developing my education around this space as well, is there's layer ones?
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
You mentioned ethereum being or casper labs being kind of like a theorem. So if you understand Ethereum, then you can kind of understand casper labs. So then in that sense, let's say again, use the analogy, I am a big enterprise and I'm coming to casperlab. I am now a layer two being built upon your guys'blockchain.
[Medha Parlikar]
It kind of is that, but not exactly. So a layer two protocol, imagine you've got the underlying blockchain here, right? Layer two basically can be another blockchain. It can be another blockchain. But what happens is that blockchain doesn't necessarily have public participants. So I could say I want to run a blockchain, and me and ten people, we're going to get together and we're going to have a very simplistic consensus protocol. It's a very simple blockchain. It doesn't have a lot of big security guarantees, but the notes do agree on a block of transactions. But then what happens is I take that block and I ship it to the Casper chain, right? This is what polygon does. As an example. I take that block and I ship a hash of that block to.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
And then now I get a guarantee and I write that guarantee back to my layer two that, hey, Casper secured this. So this allows the transaction speed on this network to be super fast. Right, but there are guarantees that you can kind of dip into from the main Castle protocol. So, yes, absolutely. Hybrid networks can function like a layer two where they have super fast transaction speeds, very low overhead consensus. But then you get Immutability guarantees by saying, okay, this block hash was actually registered on the public protocol, and we can confirm that this block hash, in fact, is the same on this. And so now you can get more security guarantees on these private networks without revealing any private information.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
And so this is something we have this Casper Trust product that we offer to enterprises that really want the guarantees of a public protocol without having the security concerns, or rather the transparency concerns.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
Sometimes private enterprises really don't want their private data on public blockchains.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right? Yeah, that's completely yeah, I could see that as a concern. So are you guys also going to be planning on working? I know you say enterprises, is that also like health and the medical field in terms of their data being out there on the blockchain?
[Medha Parlikar]
Definitely. So we don't really say that we're only for a specific vertical or specific. What we're doing is we're developing solutions for all of these verticals.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
And our intention is through our software services model, to collaborate and work with these enterprises to figure out what are the right use cases for them. And we can turn these use cases around very rapidly, right, and get them live. Yeah. Enterprise is really looking for a team that can deliver. That's something I know how to do. I know how to make sure that software gets delivered.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Yeah, it's so great too, because they are in every single enterprise, has different needs and different wants and desires. And so it sounds like CasperLabs and what you're creating there is like a personalized turnkey solution for them, like, hey, this is what we can do for your needs, your wants, because you're not going into just one specific vertical.
[Medha Parlikar]
That's right. That's our goal.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Very awesome. I'm not going to mention the name of the company because I want to give you guys a lot of highlight here. But there are other blockchains that I'm aware of that are going into the enterprise space, and they're private, full private, not public. And they're using the proof of authority consensus model.
[Medha Parlikar]
Sure.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
What would you say that would make? Like, I know you know how Casper Labs is different than that, but can you please share with me, too, how it would be different than a proof of authority model that the other enterprise blockchains are looking to go into?
[Medha Parlikar]
Yeah. So the Casper protocol. So you have Casper Labs, a company, and you have the Casper Protocol, which is a public network. Got it. Casper protocol uses one of the best in class consensus protocols for security, and it's actually based off of CBC Casper, which came out of the Ethereum research.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
And we completed that research. So the consensus protocol is both provably live and provably safe. It's a very important distinction.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Really quick, you said CBC protocol, CBC.
[Medha Parlikar]
Casper casper, which is correct by construction. And for those of you that are familiar with the Ethereum, two auto hard fork that's coming, they're going to be implementing a flavor of Casper as well, because this is the consensus protocol that Vitalik believes is the most secure for proof of stake protocols. And we are actually the first blockchain and the first research and development team to actually complete the research and come up with a full CBC Casport implementation that is pure proof of stake. So that is definitely a feather in our cast. Yes. Security perspective. And from a research perspective, we've actually been able to innovate and implement this consensus protocol. So it's a big difference. Proof of authority is very like, I believe it's similar to delegated proof of stake, where you have a certain amount of authority that the consortium has granted you, and therefore you can participate as a participant in the consensus protocol.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
And these are what we call consortium networks.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
So basically, somebody decides that these are trusted entities that are going to participate, and you can run Casper in that way. Like, there isn't anything preventing Casper from running in that type of a consortium network. But you can also run Casper as a fully permissionless network.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
So it is possible by just through a configuration setting to make Casper fully permissionless. Now, to get some economic security, you need for those participants to actually have stake.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
So that stake has to be worth, has some economic impact.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
But there isn't anything preventing anybody from spinning up another Casper network using the open source that's fully permissionless and decentralized, because the software allows for that. What's also interesting is you can take a private Casper network and you can turn it into a consortium and you can turn it into a public network completely through an upgrade mechanism. So you don't have to blow up your entire history. You can just, through an upgrade process, just move the network from one deployment to the other, and you can take it from one and you can go back. So this is because the technology is built in a very robust way, right? It's very flexible. It's very configurable. And enterprises like this a lot. So it's not enough to just have professional services for enterprise. You need to have product that's going to meet their needs as well.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
And so that the blockchain is purpose built for enterprise use cases. And that's a really important distinction between Casper and the other blockchains that are out there.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Wow, that was a great answer. And I'm like, wow, where can I get some? Does Casper have tokens people can invest into? I know I'm not a big enterprise right now that need these kinds of services, but it's something that I want to be able to put investment dollars behind to see the future growth of that. So that's really exciting.
[Medha Parlikar]
Definitely is. There is a token that's available. It's CSPR. Depending on your jurisdiction, you may or may not be able to have access to it. We're not available in all jurisdictions yet. But the Casper Association is the custodian of CSPR in that it is a not for profit, Swiss based association of the validators that run the public network. Okay. Now, I myself, I work for Labs. I work for the company that builds the technology. So I'm very technology focused.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right. No, I can hear that. And I love it. It's an area that I don't have a great deal of understanding. I understand some tech stuff. I've developed an app in my past life. I feel like, well, I really did. Well, I didn't personally develop it, I got it developed. But I think it's so cool, though, to actually see you as a woman so passionate about this space and just the amount of joy and everything when you're talking about it. What emits from being your faith is just so exciting. And I know women in tech is also a really small demographic in terms of the greater tech space. Right. There's a lot more men in the space. And that, I feel like, is also the same with web three. There's a lot of women who aren't really coming into this even from an investment point of view, because they don't understand a lot of why this technology is so amazing. So with that being said, is there anything specific you would say to maybe ladies who do have tech backgrounds but maybe not looking into blockchain and are doing more traditional web stuff like web one, web two? And also, what would you say to someone like me who may not have the big tech background, but is really passionate about educating and bringing people like you to the forefront so people can learn more about all of this.
[Medha Parlikar]
Gosh, yeah. So that was a lot with women in technology. I think we need to just get out of our own way, I think, definitely. And find our own power. I get asked this a lot, and I would say that I was able to participate in creating Casper and co founding Casper ads because I found my own power, and I found it pretty late in life, and so it took me time to get here. I think there's a lot of women out there that are way further ahead down the road than I am.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Do you feel like you found your power through the black belt, the martial arts that you were doing or what?
[Medha Parlikar]
Definitely played definitely played a role. No question about it. Definitely played a a role, big role in me finding my own power. But I also had to go through some failure I definitely had to go through some failure to really kind of have the epiphany that I had a lot more sovereignty and a lot more authority than I allowed myself to have. And it was through that failure that I really sat back. That time between 2016 and 2017 is when I kind of sat back and I really kind of analyzed, how did I get here? There wasn't any reason for me to have left the last company that I left, when I left and the way I left it. And it really came down to the fact that I could have done a lot more if I just believed in myself. I should have waited for anybody to give me permission to believe in myself. I needed to believe in myself. And I find that a lot of women do that. We're afraid of failure. We're very risk averse. And I think Web Three, there are tremendous opportunities to connect if you have a great idea to connect with developers and to get grants from all these projects like Casper that are looking for people to build.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right?
[Medha Parlikar]
And I think women, we bring a lot of wonderful nurturing energy into anything that we cultivate. And I think we have three could use a little nurturing, to be honest, a little bit of grounding. I think it would be really great for us if we had more female energy in here, kind of like nurture ecosystems, bring them along, bring people together, help the folks involved in Web Three to kind of see the bigger picture and take a step back sometimes. I think it would be really great for us. But yeah, definitely. From an entrepreneurship perspective, you can get connected with developers like yourself. I'm sure you got connected with developers. It helps you go and get funding from one of these wonderful projects. And yeah, I think there's great opportunity, like, unprecedented, actually, you're what? Unprecedented opportunity, because it's really unique, because before you had to talk to a VC, a venture capitalist. Good luck getting a meeting, right? Yeah.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
It's very cool on how people are getting creative projects funded through the use of NFTs and blockchain technology. Like, hey, I'm an indie film producer or filmmaker, and I want to get this film out. Like purchase these NFTs. It's going to go to this product. I mean, it's very cool to see the creativity that's happening. And you mentioned something, so I love it, the word nurturing. And I do believe that this space does need a lot more nurturing because it really, truly is. Despite the fact that we've come maybe a decade through now, we're still in the Wild West. Like, still things are happening. You'll wake up the next morning and some other protocol has collapsed, and people have lost hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in these things. And so we definitely are in a period where there's a lot falling by the wayside. But the beautiful thing in all of that is.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Like.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
The rebirth. Like the things that are standing and the things that are still here and companies like CasperLabs that are building and really looking to create a greater future for humanity and not just saying.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Hey.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
We want to throw up this shabby little hut and come in here and dump your millions and we'll be on our way. One of the things I wanted to kind of take away from what you said about the women in tech and just going through the whole evolution of you realizing that you didn't need permission and you didn't need somebody to come and tell you that it was okay. That's always what I share, too, is the idea or the notion to just take one step. You may not have any answer whatsoever, but I had an idea in my head, and I'm like, this needs to be an app. And I literally got onto social media and said, does anybody know any app developers? That one inquiry, that one question opened up the door to being able to find a development company to bring in the product to full life and all of it. And it's been such an amazing learning experience. No longer do anything with that project, but it's something that just takes the one step forward.
[Medha Parlikar]
That's right. That's exactly right. Journey begins with a single step.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
You just need to take that first step and don't be afraid. And if you feel like even that first step that you initially want to take is too big, take a smaller step. Take a smaller step.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
Do what you're comfortable with, but do take a step. Because if you don't, then by definition, you've failed.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
You can't succeed. You have no chance of succeeding if you don't take a step.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right?
[Medha Parlikar]
Right. You literally have nothing to lose. Exactly.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
And if you don't take that step forward, it's almost like you're taking a step backwards by not taking any action because technology is moving at the speed of light. It is moving so quickly. It's faster than we've seen in years prior. That by you not even moving forward. Specific to blockchain and web three now is by not having any understanding or not choosing to just turn a blind eye to it, you are literally setting yourself light years behind the entire future of where we're headed.
[Medha Parlikar]
Yes, that's right.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
I would love to hear about what you're most excited about when it comes to the future of this space and then all of the tech advances that you've witnessed in your prior life to where you are now and where you see us going.
[Medha Parlikar]
I'm really excited about what I'm hearing from enterprises. I'm hearing from a lot of enterprises that they're looking at. They're very seriously looking at blockchain technology. A lot of them are actually inquiring about how to integrate with the public protocol, which I find super cool, really exciting. I was bracing for, okay, they're going to want public blockchains, and a lot of them want private blockchain. A lot of them want private blockchains. But there's a good portion there like, no, we want to integrate with the public protocol. Like, our use case involves working with the public protocol. And here's all the reasons why we want to work with public protocol. I feel that really incredible. Really incredible, because I feel that in doing that, you actually are opening up the data, whatever it is you're putting on the public protocol to the entire ecosystem right. To the entire community.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
And that's wonderful. Instead of creating these closed systems, to have open systems with much more transparency is wonderful. I think it's fantastic. And we feel that the path to public infrastructure, public blockchain infrastructure, will go through a hybrid route.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
So you've seen a lot of adoption of hyperledger, but now we have a hyperledger Casper bridge. So a lot of these private networks are wanting to actually bridge these tokenized assets over to Casper. That's really cool.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right?
[Medha Parlikar]
Yeah. And so now you can start building stable coins.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
These are massive banking institutions that have hundreds of millions of dollars on their balance sheet that are being tracked in these private instances that now they're going to bridge over to Casper.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
And creating stable coins that will be highly regulated, highly compliant, asset backed. That's how you build trust for consumers.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
Like, you take the institutions that have already established some trust with us that are regulated, and you give them these tools so that they can unlock new value opportunities and new value creation and new products and new services for consumers so that everybody benefits.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right?
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
And I think that's what I'm super excited about is seeing this transformation happen in the enterprise. And I'm really keen on seeing, like, the value transfer that's going to happen for consumers.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
I love that. And I have some friends in my world who are so, like, anti. Big corporation. They're like, it's almost like the ugly, behemoth monster. Right? And when you said a lot of them, the thing that you're excited about is a lot of them want to show like, hey, this is our public. It's not giving every piece of data, but it's like being more transparent with the consumers, being more transparent with the general public. And that's a beautiful thing because it's creating an ecosystem where everybody is kind of working together instead of people having these negative connotations on what it means to a big corporation versus us, so to speak.
[Medha Parlikar]
Yeah, definitely. So, look, I believe the Internet I was there for the Internet revolution, right? I was there for the entire.com revolution. I saw what happened. I was there during the cypherpunk subculture around the Internet and how it was going to be anarchist. It was going to turn everything upside down, and it didn't. Right. You still have centralized authorities. You still need to place your trust in somebody. Right? So the average consumer is going to place they're not going to place their trust in a smart contract that isn't backed by somebody they trust, right? And as much as we like to say that that's the way it's going to go, I do not believe it's going to manifest that way.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
I believe that the organizations that are prevalent in society today will continue to exist. I do not believe that blockchain by any means is going to upend them and somehow, one fine day, they're going to disappear.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
With the Internet, we saw the Internet basically transform retail. We saw the Internet really transform content delivery. So newspapers are no longer a thing. Kodak pictures, the way we thought, are no longer a thing.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right?
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Yes.
[Medha Parlikar]
Blockbuster is no longer a thing.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
These businesses were effectively upended by the technology. But what has emerged, right? So you have other large central players emerging. You have Netflix that has emerged. You have Disney that adapted, right? You have hulu that emerged. You have YouTube that emerged. You have medium that emerged.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Spotify, like streaming music. There's no longer you don't go buy CDs anymore.
[Medha Parlikar]
Exactly 100%, right? I was at Mp3.com. We saw this transformation. We saw it as inevitable. We saw it happening. All of this. We predicted that it was going to happen. But the really important thing is we decentralized content creation. So if you think about what happened to content creation because of the Internet, we actually decentralized it. We created this entire new concept of the creator economy, right? But even in that creative economy, you still have central players. You still have Netflix, you still have YouTube, you still have Medium, you still have TikTok, you still have Instagram, you still have these content creator companies that are still central authorities that people trust, that people go to, that people use as a means, as a platform to get their voice out there.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right?
[Medha Parlikar]
And I think that's going to happen even in the Web Three world. I think that's going to happen in the decentralized economy. I think we'll see new businesses emerge that are blockchaincentric like we are building for Medicas, which has revolutionized how you sell whiskey. Caps created a brand new economy, right. But it uses NFTs to track rare whiskey casks and they built a special marketplace where you can bid, buy and sell like a cask of McCallum.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
As it's aging, you can buy this whiskey cask for like, $5,000 and you can keep it for 20 years. And in 20 years, you could sell it for like a million bucks. Right. It's a great investment.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right?
[Medha Parlikar]
Right. And it needs special custody. It's a custodial service.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
So it's custody at the distillery, but it's tracked with NFT and it's packed on Casper.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
So these are some new technologies and new blockchain first companies that will emerge out of this decentralized web. But I think they'll still be companies. I don't think that that's going to go away. And we are there to serve them, right? We are there to serve those companies with features on the protocol that allow them to service their customers, upgrade their code, provide great customer service right. And view future proof.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Right.
[Medha Parlikar]
That's what Casper does.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
I love it. That is so exciting. I'm excited to see what happens with all of that and how it unfolds as we keep moving through this space day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year. So that's really cool. Anything you want to add before we pull the ride into the station?
[Medha Parlikar]
Oh, yeah. Well, if you ever want to connect with me, folks, you can find me on Twitter, you can find me on Telegram, you can find me out there on the web. So we're always happy to connect with folks that want to learn more. You can find us at CasperLabs. IO and you can find us on social media as well. So I try to make myself very available for the community. Always happy to connect with folks and talk about the technology and the space and what we're doing. Awesome.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Yes. And I will make sure all of those links are in the show notes and the YouTube description for those of you who are watching the interview versus listening to it on the podcast platform. So with that Medha, thank you so much for being here. This has been such a great conversation. I really enjoyed it. I personally have learned a lot as well, and I just appreciate your time. So thank you for that. And for those of you who are on this ride, make sure to exit to your right and we will see you on the next one.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
You made it. Congratulations. That wasn't so bad, was it? I hope you laughed and learned a little bit more about this Web Three Universe, and how simple and fun it can really be. Would you be so kind as to leave us a review and share it with your friends and family? It would mean so much to get this out to more people as we embark on the greatest transfer of wealth that has ever happened in human history. Can't wait to see you on the next one.
[Dr. Brook Sheehan]
Bye, you.