Medha Parlikar Co-Founder and CTO of CasperLabs: H

Hi, my name is Antito. This is CryptoKid Podcast. I'm going to be talking to you guys about blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. Welcome to CryptoKid Podcast. So today I have a special guest. She is a CTO and a Bitcoin and not Bitcoin, but blockchain enthusiasts. And she's here to give us some advice about how businesses could get involved with blockchain technology, even though it's a little bit

scary at first, but she'll go over and how to make you feel more comfortable. So why don't you give a quick introduction of yourself and how you got involved with blockchain technology. Hey there, really nice to be on this podcast. Thanks for having me. My name is Meta Parlecar and I'm the CTO and one of the co-founders of CASPRLABS. CASPRLABS is a company that built the

CASPR network. It's a public layer one blockchain protocol that supports smart contracts. And I fell into the blockchain rabbit hole, if you will. My origin story, if you will, in crypto is in 2017, a friend of mine, who knows that I know how to build and drive engineering teams needed an engineering leader or program leader for an open source blockchain project. And that really introduced me

to the technology. It was, oh my gosh, I'm going to say early 2017. And I worked on that project for about a year and about a year, a little over a year, like 14 months ago. And then that project went belly up when the 2018 bus happened during crypto winter. And that's when I was approached by the other co-founders of CASPRLABS to co-found CASPRLABS and to

build CASPRLABS. Awesome. That's amazing. So what is your role at CASPRLABS as CTO? What are they have you doing? So I'm the chief technical officer. What are the founders? So I was here from day one and I'm really the person behind the vision. I'm a member of the CASPRLABS, and I was a member of the CASPRLABS, and I was also a member of CASPRLABS, and I

was a member of CASPRLABS, and I was the chief technical officer. So I was in the CASPRLABS, and I'm really the person behind the vision. And that ever since like what happened with FTX, with Samsung, and everything else, really turn them off. But I've been trying to explain to them why is Bitcoin here to stay? And it goes way over the head. Maybe if I showed

them a professional that's found at a company, can you explain me why is Bitcoin here to stay in your perspective. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to frame it in a very different way than most people would. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is money for computers. So the current banking infrastructure and the current fiat, what we call fiat banking infrastructure, was never designed. Those rails were never designed to support

transactions and commerce at the scale that is happening today. Right. So if you think about it, if I'm trying to buy or sell goods internationally, it takes me over three weeks to get a letter of credit to do so. That doesn't work in an e-commerce world. It just doesn't work. It doesn't work. When I go to Apple or I go to Dell and I want to

buy a computer and I want to see that computer land on my doorstep in three or four days, right. Sourcing the supply to build that computer. It's coming from a different world, right. So this global, highly distributed technologically backed commerce system, you cannot use the current banking infrastructure. So coming up with a form of digital currency, right, is was inevitable in my opinion. It was only

But I would say is Bitcoin may not be the ultimate digital currency that bootstraps commerce retail commerce in the final analysis. But I do believe it'll be a non trivial participant in the global economy moving forward. You know, in the next 10 to 12 to 15 years. I think it's a very slow process. I think that it's going to take time. But I absolutely believe that

blockchain technology is here to stay. The current banking infrastructure has no options. Like there's no alternative, right. So to blockchain technology. So now when Bitcoin first came out in the blockchain, it was it's decentralized. And do you think too much decentralized is can cause chaos. And there's like no rules to be played. I think there's a place for it. Right. So I think that's what I'm

going to say. So, you know, if you're familiar with BitTorrent, BitTorrent, I'm familiar with BitTorrent. BitTorrent's been around for like 30 years. It's not going anywhere. Never. Right. Despite. I, you know, I worked at MP3.com. I was part of the digital music revolution, if you will. We foresaw the people at MP3.com. We built YouTube back in 1999. We foresaw iTunes and Shazam and all those things,

right. Digital music streaming. And while Napster was able to shut down because was centralized. BitTorrent was never shut down. It still isn't shut down. Right. So I think that there's definitely something to be said for a decentralized permissionless technology. I feel that it will be here to stay. How it evolves and the governance mechanisms by which Bitcoin continues to be relevant. Right. Because while Bitcoin may

obsolesce traditional banking infrastructures. It needs to be careful that it also doesn't become a victim of obsolesce. It's not going to be a victim of obsolescence itself because it's not able to make the necessary updates. Right. And that's really up to the Bitcoin community and their ability to ensure that the protocol does remain future proof. Right. It is able to keep up with technological change. Right.

People talk a lot about quantum with respect to crypto. I actually think if quantum comes out or at least of our problems is crypto. I concur completely. Now how does blockchain impact my existing data infrastructure and IT tooling? So here's the way I like to think about it is, you know, the end user doesn't know if they're using Apache web server or TCP IP or Microsoft.net

server or AW, they don't know they don't care. The same thing is going to happen with blockchain. Nobody's going to care about which blockchain they're using. All they're going to care is the value they extract from it. Right. All I'm going to care is if I'm using a zero knowledge proof to prove that I'm over the age of 21 that I don't need to show them

my home address and my date of birth and all this other information that isn't germane or relevant to whether or not I can enter a bar. Right. So I think the final analysis, nobody's really going to care about blockchain technology. People are going to get the benefits of it. And we believe it's going to be through enterprise, right. And that's where making sure that the technology

works with all the software that's ever been built comes into play. And you'll hear from a lot of blockchain projects that well, if you want to use blockchain, you got to rip everything out and start over with a whole new web three paradigm. And I don't think that's tenable. Nobody's throwing out what they built over the past 20 years to start over. Right. Things don't start

over. They incrementally improve. They add, they test, they check, right. But nobody throws out what they used before. So I think that we need to reframe how people are thinking about blockchain technology to realize that ultimately users will use it. They won't even know they're using it. That is so true. That is so true. And that's going to happen worldwide here shortly. The days are numbered.

I believe that with all my heart. Now, will my data be six months? I think the technology is there to offer data security and transparency as well. Using blockchain technology. I believe that there is some work to do to be done around computation and ZK proofs, but we're starting to see real scalable technology emerge in the space. So yeah, absolutely. There isn't a reason why you

can't have data sovereignty, you know, in a new brave, you know, web three world. For sure. It's just going to take time. It's not going to happen quickly. I think we're still going to be able to do it. We're going to go five to seven years away. But there are, there is research and development and new technologies being built to support the big idea. Okay. Okay.

Thank you for explaining that. Now I own the, I want to bow detailing business and I want to, I want to apply crypto currencies and blockchain technologies to to my business. And I'm having, I'm having a website built. So what are some use cases for my business? So I want to jump to blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. In boat detailing, huh? That's pretty cool. Well, so definitely,

you know, reputation is a big thing that lives on the blockchain. Right. So for example, you can benefit from a reputation in that. Well, is this person that I'm going to go. Do their boat. Like what is their reputation? How do they work with other vendors? Is this somebody that's trustworthy? Right. You can go and look. At their reputation of blockchain as an example. The other

thing you could look at is reputation of the people that you're going to be employing. If you're employing people to do boat detailing and they're going on these really expensive yachts, you want to know that this person is trustworthy. Have they done this before? If they worked at a car detailing place, did they work there for one year, three months, five years? How long do they

work there for it? Do they have like, approval, reputation or provable experience that you can go look at the block, at the blockchain, right? Of course, the obvious one that people would default to is crypto payments, right? That's fairly obvious. But I like to think about things that don't necessarily need, you know, that the step outside of just payment infrastructure, because everybody can think about anybody

can think about payment infrastructure, right? But I feel like there's interesting things to be do to be done around loyalty, around reputation, around incentive design around, you know, referrals, right? That you can use or rewards that you can use the blockchain for. Okay, okay. Now, now that leads me to my next question. So I was thinking about what you said about hiring like trustworthy employees. I

want to, I want my row, I want robots to actually do the detailing for me. I'm tired of looking for people, I'm tired of training. And I've been recently looking at DAOs or DOAs. So that's AI and robot technology does that's going to take away a lot of manual labor from the workforce now. And so what do you, what do you think about going to that

route? I think it's absolutely viable to, to use those, those kinds of technologies to help alleviate the lift, right? From human labor. I think they are still pretty far away from being effective enough that they can effectively eliminate human labor, right? I believe that's what I'm saying. I believe AI will support and make what we do as humans a lot more effective, a lot more efficacious,

right? So you can do more. And that's what you see with chat GPP, right? Like chat. GPP doesn't necessarily replace a human being. But like if I want to run my essay through it and see what kind of output it gives me or how it helps me be the best version of my own ideas of what it is I'm looking to do. It's very effective. And

that's what we're seeing a lot of the real world application of AI is really augmentation, right? So I feel like that there could be, perhaps robots that could go on the bottom part of the boat and clean that surface, right? Using like sonar and other technologies, you can kind of integrate where you can submerge them. And then they could do that work that humans can't. So

it's a creative, right? But you wouldn't necessarily want a robot doing the really delicate parts, like cleaning the fiberglass because you don't want them to scratch. Or you wouldn't want them doing like the state rooms, for example, in a really expensive yacht. So I think that there's a right tool for the right use case, right? And so I think that there are definitely opportunities where this

could work. Yeah, for sure. I'm glad you brought up child GBT. Now there's there's going to be a lot of homework situations at universities using that it's considered cheating. And some in my landlords opinion, he's like, oh, no, that's good. So what do you think about that? It's definitely, it's definitely on the lines of cheating, right? But this is ultimately going to be the challenge that

is inevitable, right? Like back in the day, you could have cheated like before the internet. You could have cheated by asking your brother that was in college to help you with your calculus homework, as an example, right? Now is that technically cheating? Because your brother is like, yeah, I mean, that's how long back does that go? Like forever, right? Like, how many times have you heard

that, oh, yeah, the bully made the smart kid do his homework? Right? It's like so cliche even it comes in movies. So I think that that, that, you know, being allowed to, it being able to use somebody to do the work for you is not a new concept, right? The challenges scale, right? Like now it's completely accessible to everybody, right? It's not like it, not like

it didn't happen before. It absolutely did happen before. The scale is another matter now, right? Now it's easily accessible. It's very effective. It's, you know, widely, widely accessible. And I think that it's going to be a real challenge for, for people, for teachers to really going to be able to assess. I maintain that homework should not necessarily be graded, right? Like assessments will still happen in

the classroom where your test scores will be what's mattered. But probably homework won't have any weight. In your final assessment, right? Because you're not, you know, what are you going to have to do the work? Honestly, right? And, and the only way you can really measure performance that is make the test scores the only thing that matter. All right. In a control environment. Yeah. So how

do you, how do you use your team and developers to know how to implement blockchain technology? So the question you're asking me is how did we build the Casper Protocol? Or are you talking about, or how we build on the Casper Protocol? Because we do both. You can, you can explain both. Go for it. All right. Sounds good. So there are some essential components in a

blockchain, right? In, in the underlying distributed ledger technology. So you have to have a networking layer. You have to have a storage, multiple layers of stores where you store the blockchain data. And then you have to have a virtual machine that communicates that basically processes smart, if you're building a smart contract platform. So you have to have a virtual machine or like, you know, people know

the Ethereum virtual machine. Some people use a Web assembly virtual machine. So you first, you have to define like what are the components of the system, right? And then you start designing the components system by doing some business analysis requirements. Like, for example, you have to have a notion of accounts. You have to have a notion of, you know, validators or peers. You have to have

a notion of read only peers. You have to have a notion of, you know, a notion of blocks. You have to have a notion of, right? So, no, actually, you know, these are all the pieces of system. Kind of like when you build a car, right? So you're like, okay, I've got this piece. I've got this piece. I got this piece. And then you go and

you find engineers that have expertise in those areas, right? So we found engineers that had expertise and consensus and researchers that expertise and consensus that we found. We found engineers that could actually build that kind of a system with a, you know, custom virtual machine and that people that could build a server, which is the node. And then, you know, you put them together and they

each start building out their systems and then you have a core architecture that brings them all together. And then as soon as you have something that will run, you start running it right away, you start building it, you start running it, you start testing it, you start basically, you know, imagine like a little baby that eventually it's born and it starts to roll over a crawl

walk run and then, you know, grow. And so that's how software grows, right? It starts with this idea. And then you start, you know, you basically analyze what are the pieces of the software, the core idea. And then you basically start thinking, okay, I need a database, I need this, I need this, I can need all these pieces. And you just put it together and you

build a prototype. And then you go from the prototype and you add more functionality, capability, until you get to what's called a minimum viable product. So we launched the CAS for protocol in March of 2021. It took us about two and a half years to build. We started building in January of 2019, founded the company and in October of 2018, we did a fair bit of

prototyping. We actually built an entire prototype in Scala and we threw that out and then we started all over again in Rust. And we built a whole new brand, new Rust node in about a year with the existing virtual machine that we had built. So it allowed us to take everything we learned from a prototype and then build it cleanly, right in a single, in a

single language architecture. And then now that we've deployed the CAS for network, we're building solutions and applications and products on top of the technology. Some cool things like NFTs, NFT marketplaces and you know metaverses and games and all these really cool and you know kind of blockchain enabled applications that consumers can then use, right end users. Right, right. Now all that sounds really expensive when you

talk about engineering and developers. So how do you fit that in your budget? So the way it works is we rose a traditional equity round, right. So we went and we did, we raised some capital. Casper Labs is not really, it's not a token funded project, right. It's pure traditional equity. And so we budgeted, you know, this is how many engineers we needed to build out

all of these things. And then we went out and we hired those engineers. And my bias is always towards hiring the best smartest people that can get the job done. And you find that very, very important to hire really, really smart people that want to do great things and you just let them do it. Right. You just let them go, you tell them, this is what

we need to go build and they just build it, right. And you tell them, this is what it needs to do. And they figure out how the system's going to work and they go create it. And that type of relationship. I find works really, really well with engineers because engineers don't want to be told what to do. They want to be told what to create. And

so if you give them a vision and you tell them, hey, this is what we think the system needs to do. And here's why go build it. They love going and creating that, right. And then the business can go ahead and sell that technology to customers who use it, which again, make engineers really, really happy. Engineers want to see their code being used, right. And so

yeah, that's, that's the way I like to run our engineering organization. That this is the kind of the model I like to use. Amazing. And it gives you something to feel proud about. Like, yeah, I did that. I contributed, I contributed and I put a few, few, um, dance in the universe and who knows will come out in the future. Absolutely. That's right. I mean, I

feel like every single person has creativity. They want to express, right. And you want to express your creativity in your work. And so it's an incorrect notion to think that software development is software engineering can't be a creative art. It absolutely can be a creative art, right. You just need to find a company that has that way of working that allows you to have the creativity

to solve those problems and create new solutions that are exciting for you. And I believe that if you create that environment, engineers will naturally thrive, right. They will want to do more and more and grow and learn. Having a good company culture makes people want to stay and work harder if they see that they're appreciated. No, will it actually help you overcome? What are the things

that you can do to create an important business changes? You know, I think so. I think, you know, one of the core tenants that we hire for is people that are, you know, they're smart, but they're also flexible, right. They can read a room. They can understand, like, this is how this is what the situation is and how things are changing. And so a lot of

the programmers we hire, they may have a lot of strength and rust, but that doesn't mean they haven't worked in C++. That doesn't mean they haven't been able to do other things. So we, as a whole, we're going to be able to do something that we can do. We like to hire people that have a broad range of skills, right. Because we're still small company. We're

not like the engineering team is 45 people, which is fairly large for an engineering team, if you think about it in terms of the crypto space. But broadly speaking, 45 is still a pretty small number, right. And so people have to wear multiple hats. And so having that flexibility. I believe in your technical organization is really, really important because if the company has to shift direction,

we need to, we want to retain our staff and make sure that they can do more than one. So really being able to do multiple things is really, really important in a culture. Now when you're going to try to get people to listen about your company, is it hard convincing them about the opportunities that blockchain brings to their businesses? So this is where I would say

that the entire FTX and Tarar Luna thing has really hurt us. Businesses really don't trust long term. And so the blockchain right now, because they have basically combined crypto and blockchain together, right. And so the challenges we're facing, we were never really affected directly by FTX, but indirectly, we're hearing a lot of blowback, right. Because you're like, oh, your crypto project, you have a token, it's

like well, no, the token is there to secure the public network. And the security guarantees you get from public network are really, really important, right. Here's the reason why they're important. But we're swimming upstream against this anti crypto. So there's a lot of solidarity, there's a lot of solidarity, a lot of solidarity, a lot of solidarity, a lot of solidarity, a lot of solidarity. Because of

people like Sam Brank, from freed, right. They're just really wet into poison the well. For everybody that's trying to build and deliver legitimate value in the space, right. And he's really done a lot of harm. And so because they're like, oh, yeah, it's just a bunch of Ponzi schemes, or oh, yeah, just a bunch of untrustworthy people that are just going to rip off the retail

investor. And so that's a real challenge. It's a real challenge we're dealing with. And the question is, what do you think we're going to do? And I think that us being a private for-profit company that can also work with private blockchains, we can support enterprises is how we're going to help work around the narrative of cryptos a bad thing, right. I think in my opinion, I

think the FTX and the Luna is a good thing because it gives an opportunity or it gives a chance for the bad players to get out of the game and to have more, to have more, what is it. How do you say it? For regulation, to have more regulation oversee with what's going on in the crypto community before it just goes out of control. I mean,

Bernie Mattoff pulled it off in a very regulated environment, right. So it's not like it doesn't happen even in a regular environment. It does, right. The difficulty is is that industry is just painting a broad brush, right. So we will need to remind them that, hey, you know, in 2008, AIG collapsed, right. Bernie Mattoff pulled off his scam. And so it's not like it doesn't happen

in traditional finance. It does, right. So they just, people tend to have amnesia, right. Like they don't think further back than six months. And I feel like, you know, the whole FTX, I think, I think, I think it's going to be a good thing to do. So I think the next thing is still fresh and top of mind of people's and people's heads. And there's a

narrative. Like as it is, I feel like they're trying to push, push, you know, public blockchain down. And this just kind of adds fuel to the fire. But I feel like sensible regulation will help the adoption of the technology. So I am, I'm very much open to it in favor of it. Yeah, we need to hold people accountable for their wrong dealings. Yeah, definitely. We're really

focused on bringing enterprises, you know, all on, right. We want to help them build really cool applications that they can give consumers the benefit of blockchain technology, right. So we want to work with companies that support businesses and support consumers and help them expose their consumer base to the benefits of blockchain technology through new features and new value offerings. Right. So that's it. We're fully focused

on. Of course, the public protocol. All is also front of mind. And we're working really hard on Casper 2.0. We're looking to ship Casper 1.5 really shortly. And 2.0 is slated for 2023. I'm really excited about will be upgrading our consensus protocol. And we're going to be one of the few very few blockchain projects that will be, you know, upgrading their consensus protocol very shortly after

launch. So I'm really excited about 2.0. Now can you share exact date when it drops or not yet. I can't share an exact date. Like we're talking Q3. But these things are hard. You know, blockchains are really hard to build. And there's a lot of value locked in blockchain, right. So we have a responsibility to every single token holder and every single app developer. And every

single project that's built on Casper to make sure that whatever code we release, whatever code that we propose to the community is rock solid, right. So we will make sure that the community understands everything that we're proposing to be built. As well as they understand that. How thoroughly everything is tested. So we don't take it very lightly. We don't take it lightly. We're very diligent in

our qualification process to make sure that the code is ready for prime time. All right, all right. Now I know, is there anything you feel like we didn't go over that you want to cover. No, I mean, it's your podcast. I'm just here to support you. I really appreciate you. And how can people get a hold of you? On Casper Labs.io, you can also follow me

on Twitter. I'm at M Parlecar for Meta Parlecar. And you can also find me a LinkedIn. So we're on Telegram. We have a discord. If you go to the website, you can find all our social channels. And I'm always available to answer questions. So don't hesitate to reach out. Amazing. And I'll put all those links in the description. And yeah, I really appreciate you taking the

time. I know you're a busy woman. And dealing with blockchain technology and engineers. And it's an honor to have you on the show. And I really wish you the best with your endeavors. And maybe we, I would like to catch up it later on in the future. Maybe get some tea or drink. If we ever crash into each other and the event cryptocurrency event. So that'll

be amazing. That sounds great. I would look forward to that. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on. Take care and have a good night or day. Whatever you're at. I'm in Puerto Rico. So good night for me. Cheers. Good night. Good night. Did you know that podcasts are a great way to grow your personal and business brand voice? Here's a street crit. We all want to

feel connected to brands we buy from. What a better way to humanize a brand than through sharing your story on a podcast. Kidcaster is a part of the world. The podcast booking agency that specializes in developing real human connection through podcast appearances. If you are an expert in your field, have a unique story to share or an interesting point of view is time to explore the

world of podcasting with kitcaster. You can expect a completely customized service. From our staff of communication experts. Kidcaster is your secret weapon and podcasting for business. Your audience is waiting to hear from you. Go to kitcaster.com slash crypto kid to apply your special offer for friends of this podcast. The link will also be in the description. Down below. And happy podcasting.