BLOCKCHAIN
EXtrance: Re-defining Commercial Real Estate Investements William Lively, CEO, EXtrance


EXtrance: Re-defining Commercial Real Estate Investements
A fintech enthusiast, blockchain expert, real estate & private equity supporter and a philanthropist, William Lively dons many hats. As an investment specialist, William has developed a platform that can simplify investments thus, helping people understand the nuances of the real estate industry. He founded the EXtrance, a new blockchain-compatible platform that changes the game for real estate investors. He speaks on an array of topics in an interview. Excerpts:
Conception of EXtrance
Says William that he realized that commercial real estate investor management was a lot less attractive than it should be since it was dodged by a slew of problems faced in the industry. “There’s a need in the market for greater transparency and less risk. CRE limited partnerships serve as great investment opportunities, especially when we consider rising taxes, but these investments lack liquidity, making it a less approachable for some. On top of this, investor management is costly and time-consuming, revealing a need for a more streamlined and tech-enabled back and middle office.” The private investor ecosystem allows EXtrance users to privately solicit investments from others, thereby increasing the number of investment prospects. The full-service investor management system also allows investors to lighten their load, by outsourcing some of the day-to-day investment tasks.
EXtrance – Blockchain Integration Capabilities
In part, EXtrance utilizes blockchain technology for risk mitigation and increased security. It gives the platform’s users a high level of assurance and avoids the pitfalls of human error. Data storage and record keeping on the blockchain ensures that audit trails remain infallible and tamper-proof. Along with EXtrance’s broker-dealer status, the idea of its investor ecosystem is built on ERC-20 smart contract enforcement as it allows for large transactions to be made simply and securely, all on the EXtrance platform. “The idea is to promote a more secure and liquid secondary market” explains William.
The Landscape
Lack of transparency within the space, makes investing in limited partnerships an isolating experience, observes this technology enthusiast. “Investors typically receive quarterly statements by mail and often have very little idea as to what’s going on with their investments. EXtrance provides a channel for back-and-forth communication between investors and managing partners and allows them to track key asset performance indicators in real time. Equipped with better information, investors are empowered to make smarter decisions.”
EXtrance’s investor ecosystem is like a marketplace of users that gives limited partners access to opportunities to invest in other limited partnerships and seek liquidity by selling one’s position to another user. EXtrance puts more investment opportunities at the fingertips of limited partners on the platform.
The Blockchain Journey
“My career started at DCI Capital Advisors, which was the first US blockchain-based investment firm of its kind and at a time when blockchain was still in its infancy. There, I fell in love with the technology and discovered that it had applications going far beyond cryptocurrencies.” William was also the co-founder of SyndEX Labs, where he worked to provide large family offices with divestment services utilizing blockchain, which led to the vision for EXtrance. “At the same time, I’ve learned that organizations should be careful not to employ the technology when it doesn’t add value or make a lot of sense” he warns.
Leadership Traits
“For one thing, I know where my strengths and weaknesses lie, and I use this knowledge to fill in the gaps by building a great team made up of the right people. I tend to think in terms of the overall vision. My strength lies within the way I think outside the box to challenge the status quo and create something that improves upon current ways of doing things, which is the case with EXtrance.”
A passionate, even obsessive professional, William says that some level of failure is an inherent part of doing business over time. “I’ve learned to accept that when starting a new venture. Truthfully, the potential benefits of leading and innovating outweigh the potential pitfalls and failures associated with entrepreneurship.”
He urges startups to avoid trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, so to speak, by overusing the technology when it doesn’t make sense. “Employing blockchain technology can be expensive for a startup, so allocating funds without considering the cost-to-benefit in terms of value added could be detrimental to a young company in its earliest stages of growth.”
The Success Mantra
“I believe a huge part of finding success is finding the right people and building lasting, meaningful relationships. Effective communication is key, especially in startups. If communication between team members breaks down, then things become stagnant, and stagnation is the enemy of innovation. Openness, honesty, and transparency should always be at the forefront of team building if we want to succeed long term.”
Forging Ahead
The long-term vision for EXtrance is to be the premier investor management platform on the market. To us, this means modernizing investment to make investing in alternative assets more empowering and rewarding for everyone. Aside from commercial real estate, EXtrance has the potential to improve the way we invest in private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, and more, signs off William.


BLOCKCHAIN
Effective, Affordable, and Accessible Arman Sarhaddar, CEO & Founder, Vault Security Systems AG


Vault Security Systems: Effective, Affordable, and Accessible
“Once you have a vision, build a strategy around it to execute the vision.” A serial entrepreneur across markets, Arman Sarhaddar is a dreamer by nature who believes in carefully building the strategic foundation that shapes his dreams. Born and raised in Vienna, Austria, Sarhaddar became an active investment banker in 2000. He worked for big investment firms in various markets and managed companies with up to 50 brokers in the U.S.
The Blockchain Journey
Having over 20 years of wealth management experience, Sarhaddar has always been fascinated about the distributed ledger technology which brings true authenticity, integrity, and security in to play. “At the beginning, Bitcoin was a remarkable technology, but it was not until the developments in the recent years that the true potential of distributed technologies crystalized themselves,” he notes. Moreover, all those new areas of applications reflected with his personal story. “My personal belongings were stolen from a secured area. At that moment, I knew what should be done.” With careful study and preparation, he founded Vault Security Systems. Vault provides an effective, affordable, and accessible distributed ledger or blockchain solution, helping both businesses and consumers protect their most valuable assets.
Today, there are many blockchain protocols which try to capture the supply chain market. However, having a protocol to build upon is only one side of the coin. Companies still need all kind of technology to actually make it work. That is where Vault Security Systems is truly a pioneer.
Preventing Counterfeit in Supply Chains
If a company wants to ensure that their products are, for example, climate-friendly, using blockchain is the affordable way to do so. Reducing counterfeit can also be achieved by using blockchain in combination with other technologies. With around a trillion dollar damage in counterfeit every year, this money can return to the positive side of a company’s balance sheet.
“Our business solution, ivault, is designed to prevent counterfeit in supply chains. This can be achieved for parts, as well as for products which are being sold to customers,” says Sarhaddar. They use a customized solution for businesses to benefit from the security and traceability enabled through blockchain technology and can also decide for themselves how much transparency they want to give to their customers. One of the advantages of this approach is that Vault solutions can be used to show the customers directly that their products are authentic. “Consequently, this enables completely new customer engagement models and new ways of communicating with customers.”
Apart from their business solutions, the company is also developing a mobile app. The app lets people digitize their valuables and in case they lose something, they can count on the ivault community to get their beloved item back. “Distributed ledger technology plays a role in the development of the app, although we decided to use it for the backend, so that users can rely on security and privacy, but are not actively shown all the technology,” he adds.
Tackling Challenges
Implementing distributed ledger into a corporate system can be a burden for employees. The implementation process is not so much about the technology and the advantages are dwarfed by the change in the structure of a system and with it—the workflow. “More often, the process could bring more advantages to everyone involved, if the corporate system is being enhanced with distributed ledger technology instead of replaced,” points out Sarhaddar.
Moreover, blockchain is often still regarded as a hype and many companies do not grasp yet the advantages. “In Switzerland and the European Union, we faced a challenge in explaining the differences between cryptocurrencies and distributed ledger technology. We tackled it by showing our use-cases for IoT and by implementing our solution into a product which is already on the market.” Vault’s solution can not only be completely automated, people working with the system do not even see that they are working with distributed ledger technology. And that for Sarhaddar, is a dream come true.

BLOCKCHAIN
Plazus Technologies: Blockchain in Everyday Life Galya Westler, CEO, Plazus Technologies


Plazus Technologies: Blockchain in Everyday Life
Oftentimes leaders do not recognize the power in them until they pursue it persistently. From a shy dancer first on stage to a bold TED speaker later in life, Galya Westler discovered the potential in her with relentless perseverance despite the odds she faced.
Originally graduating as a Software Engineer, Galya quickly climbed the corporate ladder but soon realized that she wanted the independence and freedom to develop her own company as an entrepreneur. She decided to quit the corporate world and devote her entire focus to cutting-edge technology projects. “I took what I learned from my corporate experience; onboarded clients and identified projects that were not only interesting to me but where I felt that I could really make a difference in this world,” says Galya. “Slowly, I built my team and took on projects, initially, in mobile app development, DIY B2B tools, and more recently, in Blockchain enterprise solutions.”
Today, being the CEO of Plazus Technologies and GO Health Technologies Inc., Galya’s success factor lies in stepping outside of her comfort zone, facing issues head-on, and using any and all challenges and as learning tools to build on her expertise and knowledge.
The Need of the Hour
“Providing high-end technology solutions is about combining the best possible team with complementary skill sets,” points out Galya. Having been a technical leader for many years, she believes it is extremely hard to find the right talent with the required skill set and experience to solve the complex enterprise challenges involved with business logic, in payments, supply chain, HR, and compliance. There is a need for highly skilled developers with enterprise-grade solutions experience, first-hand Blockchain development, and experienced in SSI solutions developers to solve many of the challenges using identity on Blockchain.
This is where Plazus Technologies takes a unique approach to these highly complex concepts, turning them into clean and easy-to-use solutions, providing leading tools to increase security and streamline processes utilizing Blockchain and AI technologies focused on health and privacy, cross border payments, compliance, fraud detection, and HR processes.
Transforming Lives
A Blockchain enthusiast, Galya, has over the years been observing, researching, and learning the Blockchain market from multiple perspectives to reveal its benefits in everyday life. “Every day is a success, because we get to work in an area that we feel passionate about and positively impact people’s lives by developing software that protects their rights and helps enterprises with their business.”
2020 has been a year where more enterprises than ever are implementing Blockchain solutions for their businesses to improve transparency, efficiency, and to streamline their operations, from supply chain and compliance to fake news and identities during election times. Usage of identity on Blockchain also benefits in health data protection using Self Sovereign Identity (SSI).
“Meanwhile, some of the challenges we face are the lack of knowledge decision makers have on the benefits of Blockchain and the knowledge they could gain if they ran a POC or an MVP in their organization. To address these issues, we work with enterprises to carry out Gap Analysis workshops with them and discover the inefficiencies in their business flow, security gaps, and clients’ and users’ data protection issues. We then generate ways for them to automate and streamline their business and services to positively affect their bottom line. We take them from concept to MVP in just a few months of development,” notes Galya.
User Identity Protection
One of the biggest issues today is the lack of authenticity when it comes to user identity, which requires manual verification thus collecting sensitive data. Doing so, opens corporations up to liability in the mishandling of people’s digital assets (identity, data, money,) which ends up costing them time and money when disputes occur.
Abiding by their philosophy to give users the ability to own and control data and holding companies and authorities accountable for handling people’s digital assets, Plazus Technologies focuses on SSI and other Blockchain-based solutions for enterprises. Self-sovereign digital identity is an identity that’s created and managed by the user. It has all of the credentials a user needs to interact in the digital and physical world, without relying on a centralized organization or authority.
Project GO and REACH org in Collaboration with the Canadian Government
With great passion, creativity, and agility, Galya always has a unique perspective to offer. When the COVID-19 pandemic started, the team participated in one of the biggest global hackathons and came up with the idea of building an app. The app verifies and holds a person’s anonymous data on self-testing (applied to COVID-19 tests, HIV self-tests) and stores and encrypts the results on their device acting like a “private health wallet”. The users then decide if they want to push the data, anonymously yet verified, to an authorized party to: either pass a border (prove they are not sick,) or see a care professional, or participate in a study.
“We called it ‘Project GO’ to get the economy going by identifying who is sick and who is not yet keeping privacy of the users to avoid discrimination when one gets his/her health status, they should decide if/when they want to share it,” says Galya. GO collaborates with REACH organization for connecting HIV undiagnosed to care in an anonymous manner and as a way to stop the spread of HIV in Canada.
According to Patrick Boscher, VP Strategy, Plazus Technologies, “With Project GO, our approach has been to understand and use the legal framework to identify best-in-class solutions and related technologies, in particular for three major areas: GDPR, cross-border and cross-jurisdiction solutions, and increased fraudulent activities on fake identities. Moreover, “we’ve gained a lot of knowledge from talking to so many professionals around the globe during these hackathons. It’s been an intense period. Frequent iterations and focus made us able to process huge amounts of feedback into something meaningful. Also it was interesting to see how different teams tackle similar problems but from different angles,” notes Anton Bludov, UI UX specialist, Plazus Technologies.
Connection with WHO
Having partnered with many big players, Galya considers it a grand moment when Plazus Technologies connected with WHO. The organization wanted to update their guidelines on post market surveillance for medical devices (eg., Covid-19 test efficacy) to protect people’s data using Blockchain and SSI.
“Even though it is cumbersome to collaborate with WHO directly given their complex structure; their guidance to world leaders, enterprises and corporations to consider using Blockchain to connect patients (for example) with health manufactures, pharmaceuticals, and governments automatically and safely using a SSI is huge progress,” explains Galya. “I just hope that the momentum grows and companies, not just in health but other industries, will start building POCs to include this exciting new technology.”
The Shared Trust Ecosystem
With Galya’s upcoming keynote on the topic “Believing that Blockchain is for all,” Galya thinks, today, the users ought to educate themselves on how their data is being used and manipulated by central parties. “As corporates and governments, it will be up to us to develop systems that are based on integrity and trust using Blockchain technology, not just for the economic benefit of it but for the social benefit.”
The future of Blockchain, therefore, will see a greater awakening to create a shared trust ecosystem that will benefit everyone. “There’s a long way to go, but it is up to us to set the standard and demand data transparency in what central bodies do and take back what is rightfully ours—our digital assets,” she concludes.

BLOCKCHAIN
Revolutionizing Blockchain Technologies for a New Global Ecosystem Diego Gutierrez Zaldivar, CEO & RSK Labs


RSK Labs: Revolutionizing Blockchain Technologies for a New Global Ecosystem
RSK Labs develops the blockchain technologies needed for a new global financial ecosystem. The organization has developed RSK Smart Contract Network, RSK Infrastructure Framework (RIF) and Taringa!’s platforms. The RSK Network is one of the more secure smart contract platforms in the world, designed to leverage Bitcoin’s unparalleled power. RSK Infrastructure Framework (RIF) is a suite of open and decentralized infrastructure protocols that enable faster, easier and scalable development of distributed applications (dApps) within a unified environment. Taringa! is Latin America’s largest Spanish speaking social network with 30 million users and 1,000 active online communities. Excerpts from an interview with Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar, CEO & Co-founder of RSK Labs:
Idea Behind Founding of RSK Labs
RSK Lab platforms help people to create digital identities, build reputations, establish and enforce agreements, including engaging in commercial transactions without intermediaries. “Now everyone has the chance to participate in a new economy for our new Internet age. That’s why we call it the Internet of Value. RSK Lab’s mission is to build a blockchain-based financial ecosystem that can serve any human being regardless of their economic situation and has the potential of empowering billions currently excluded from our society” observed Diego.
RSK Ecosystem Fund and RSK Innovation Studio
RSK, the first smart contract platform secured by the Bitcoin network, is transforming the way businesses are conceived, designed, and built. Its complementary platform, RSK Infrastructure Framework Open Standard (RIF OS), takes these technologies to scale, simplifying the use of decentralized infrastructure for any traditional or Blockchain developer, organization, or innovator. The RSK Innovation Studio is focused on balancing innovation with usability. Created as a joint venture between Monday Capital and RSK, it acts as a skunkworks at the intersection of scaling businesses and developing tools for the Bitcoin ecosystem.
RSK Blockchain Sets the Bar High
Since its inception, RSK Blockchain was designed as a second layer to Bitcoin and over the years, it garnered the support from more than 50% of the Bitcoin miners. This has turned it into the most secure Smart Contracts Blockchain, noted Diego. The RSK Infrastructure suite of protocols (RIF) offers all the P2P protocols (Payments, Data Storage, Identity, Secure Communications and Gateways) needed to create scalable and user-friendly financial solutions. All these services are integrated around a sharing economy engine, RIF Marketplace, to create a truly decentralized service economy.
Challenges Galore
The three main challenges for blockchain technologies to reach mass adoption are: Scalability, Interoperability and Usability, added Diego.
Scalability: The Blockchain industry is aware of the existence of a trade-off between security / decentralization, functionality and scalability. Though bitcoin rules the market, it sacrifices transaction and functionality to maximize security.
Interoperability: Another key element is to create good interoperability between crypto economies, like the RSK bridges, Bitcoin and Ethereum are doing. This enables interaction between protocols and assets on the three networks, creating a more anti-fragile ecosystem.
Usability: On the usability front, the industry is witnessing some standardization (i.e. wallet connect) and naming services (i.e. RIF Identity) in the way users are interacting with decentralized apps from their wallets. These provide a seamless experience like that of Fintech mobile solutions and security levels.
Most Memorable Moment
“I certainly have fond memories of the moment when we presented the RSK Mainnet to the world at Consensus 2018 and also the first time somebody used the RSK Network to buy something in a slum in Buenos Aires or to send money back to their families from Buenos Aires to Caracas. We build technology to improve people’s life so every time we witness a new meaningful use case of our technology that leaves a memorable trail in us.”
Blockchain to the Rescue
Noting that the organization’s role, in this crisis, is to provide technologies to amplify initiatives emerging from the current chaos, Diego noted, “We are using RSK blockchain and RSK Infrastructure Framework (RIF) technologies to amplify the positive effects of self-organized initiatives that are emerging from the current chaos. Our tech can enable self-coordination among decentralized groups and protect privacy.”
Future of Bitcoin
Bitcoin could reach a tipping point for mass adoption and the foundations for the financial system of the future in next ten years, predicted Diego. These trends will open new markets to citizens, but perhaps most importantly, usher in a new, decentralized, peer-to-peer economy. “I envision within a decade to have an economy built from the ground up that can stand apart from government-driven fiscal policy – a true peer-to-peer system, driven by the people – and based on Bitcoin as the foundational layer, the store of value layer, on which the rest of the crypto economies will build upon.”
