Shaul Kfir, Co-Founder and Chief Architect of Digital Asset, sits down to discuss Daml, our open-source technology platform, and smart contract language, and Canton, our privacy-enabled blockchain. Canton combines Internet-like horizontal scalability with sub-transaction privacy—a unique combination in the blockchain space.

Learn more about Digital Asset: www.digitalasset.com
Follow Digital Asset to stay connected: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digitalassetcom + https://twitter.com/digitalassetcom
Follow Shaul for more insights: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaulk/ + https://twitter.com/ShaulKfir

I'm 1 of the co-founders and the chief architect at Digital Asset.

We are the company behind DEMO, which is a smart contract framework and programming language that companies use to build multi-party applications across industries between multiple companies.

So companies will come together to agree on some business rules

on how they work together, then they will encode that in a type of program called the smart contract, and that defines how those companies across an industry can collaborate.

Smart contracts are the core technology behind blockchains or the way that programmers and companies interact with blockchains.

The main roadblock to adoption thus far has been the maturity of the technology.

There was no public blockchain that enabled you to have all 3 of an easy-to-use smart contract language, privacy, and control over the scalability of your application.

So easy to use is important because we need to be able to train our workforce to build our business processes in a smart contract language in a way that isn't prone to errors and cyber attacks.

We can't have all of our data public for everyone to read.

And scalability, as a business, I want to know that if my user base increases, if the use of my service increases, that I can control and add more resources without slowing down my services that I give to my customers.

DigitalAsset addresses these shortcomings through DEMO and Kanton, which are unique technology among smart contract languages and blockchains.

DEMO is a smart contract language that in addition to the rules of the market and the definition of what data we're coordinating and what workflows we're coordinating also clearly specifies who is allowed to see which piece of data or who is allowed to see each step in a workflow.

Kanton is a network that knows how to distribute those data and workflow across the different participants of the market based on what we encoded in the DEML smart contract language without disclosing data to any other party, maintaining synchronization across all the different parties.

Digital Assets Vision is a global economic network where businesses can seamlessly interact.

For such a global economic network, we need everyone first of all to be synchronized, but we need every application operator to have control over their own application, over the privacy, over the scale of that application.

Digital assets tools allow you to join that global economic network by having granular control over your application, over its scale, over its privacy, or who can see what data and who can do what within that application, while deploying that application onto this global economic network and interacting with other applications that other service providers put in that global economic network.

We've increasingly seen customers at the beginning deploy their own services but as more and more customers come together we're seeing this cross-industry collaboration and innovation where people are coming up with new ideas on how to do more exciting things with blockchains.

The idea that at some point, any technologist, any developer can come and add to those services and increasingly we're going to have a flywheel of value on the global economic network.

Demo is an open source technology and if you want to learn more, you can find us at digitalasset.com.


Speaker 0: I'm Shoaib Khafeer. I'm 1 of the co-founders and the chief architect at Digital Asset. Digital Asset is a software company. We are the company behind DEMO, which is a smart contract framework and programming language that companies use to build multi-party applications across industries between multiple companies. So companies will come together to agree on some business rules

Speaker 1: on how they work together, then they will encode that in a type of program called the smart contract, and that defines how those companies across an industry can collaborate. Smart contracts are the core technology behind blockchains or the way that programmers and companies interact with blockchains. The main roadblock to adoption thus far has been the maturity of the technology. There was no public blockchain that enabled you to have all 3 of an easy-to-use smart contract language, privacy, and control over the scalability of your application. So easy to use is important because we need to be able to train our workforce to build our business processes in a smart contract language in a way that isn't prone to errors and cyber attacks.

Privacy is critical to businesses. We can't have all of our data public for everyone to read. And scalability, as a business, I want to know that if my user base increases, if the use of my service increases, that I can control and add more resources without slowing down my services that I give to my customers. DigitalAsset addresses these shortcomings through DEMO and Kanton, which are unique technology among smart contract languages and blockchains. DEMO is a smart contract language that in addition to the rules of the market and the definition of what data we're coordinating and what workflows we're coordinating also clearly specifies who is allowed to see which piece of data or who is allowed to see each step in a workflow.

Kanton is a network that knows how to distribute those data and workflow across the different participants of the market based on what we encoded in the DEML smart contract language without disclosing data to any other party, maintaining synchronization across all the different parties. Digital Assets Vision is a global economic network where businesses can seamlessly interact. For such a global economic network, we need everyone first of all to be synchronized, but we need every application operator to have control over their own application, over the privacy, over the scale of that application. Digital assets tools allow you to join that global economic network by having granular control over your application, over its scale, over its privacy, or who can see what data and who can do what within that application, while deploying that application onto this global economic network and interacting with other applications that other service providers put in that global economic network. We've increasingly seen customers at the beginning deploy their own services but as more and more customers come together we're seeing this cross-industry collaboration and innovation where people are coming up with new ideas on how to do more exciting things with blockchains.

The idea that at some point, any technologist, any developer can come and add to those services and increasingly we're going to have a flywheel of value on the global economic network. I find that very compelling. Demo is an open source technology and if you want to learn more, you can find us at digitalasset.com.

See all Digital Asset transcripts on Youtube

Digital Asset Co-Founder Shaul Kfir discusses the Daml smart contract language