Orbs’ Activity in the US Market

Interview with Gili Ovadia, Head of Global Business Development

Last week, Gili Ovadia (aka @gogogili) came to visit Orbs HQ in Tel Aviv and we thought it would be a good chance for you to get to know more of what he’s been working on. Gili is regularly based in Silicon Valley, at the Orbs US office, and there’s no one better to know the ins and outs of the American blockchain market; From blockchain adoption to popular use-cases, here is what he had to say:

What is the current state of enterprise adoption of blockchain-based solutions?

The majority of the adoption we are currently seeing within the enterprise realm is mostly private solutions, mostly focusing on collaboration among multiple parties with conflicting interests. We are starting to feel positive momentum towards public solutions for the last 6-10 months but these attempts are still in their early days, enterprises starting to understand the value of permissionless networks and the guarantees they are providing. Some of the most famous private use cases consortiums turn out to be limited with the impact they had on the participating enterprises, in other words, they haven't  been able to increase revenues or lower costs

Can you describe Orbs USA’s main activities?

We have multiple goals, while the main one is the increased usage of our network, with a focus on enterprise applications, so a big chunk of our days is meetings with enterprise decision-makers, going to conferences, and ongoing development of different use cases.

Another target is to strengthen the Orbs PoS Universe, by working with the different stakeholders in the ecosystem such as validators and guardians.

The third objective is with the crypto community, exposing Orbs projects to developers and professional communities mostly in Silicon Valley but not only.

Lastly, we are focusing on getting high quality and updated business intelligence from the front.

What are some of the use-cases you are working on?

We have a vast range of use cases we are working on from provenance to document and photos notarization all the way to traceability and government-related use cases.

With some of these, we already progressing and have a solid idea of how the use case will look, what the governance will be like and what type of data will be shared with whom, with others applications we are still experimenting, testing the water and trying to gauge the value of each use case by sharing it with different stakeholders and getting feedback from them.

What are the main challenges with advocating blockchain-based solutions to enterprises?

Most of the enterprises are still in very early stages of understanding the technology and its potential, so there is a lot of market education that needs to be done, misconceptions that needed to be refuted and use cases that need to be proven.

Some of the early adopters of the technology are scared of low ROI and are not sure if and how they want to move toward. Some of the enterprises are mainly there to learn and educate themselves and still don't have the people, expertise and the budget to get seriously involved and engaged with the technology.

Moreover, Enterprises are reluctant or highly concerned about holding or using tokens for a variety of reasons, volatility, transaction fees, regulatory uncertainty.

There's a misconception about privacy and  enterprises are concerned from exposing their application and business data publically

Another point is the fear of relying on permissionless validators the notion that random validators with access to their core data freak enterprises out.

How do you gauge the overall sentiment of the industry based on the conferences you are attending?

We feel like the sentiment is getting more and more positive and serious as time passes, the use cases are getting more and more solid, the technology is getting more mature and scalable, the UI is getting better, corporates allocate budgets and resources to seriously engage with the technology. We are seeing more commitment especially in the supply chain use cases where big enterprises are talking to us for real PoCs and pilots.

What are your expectations for 2020?

The way the blockchain industry has been evolving, you can truly expect the unexpected. I think we’ll keep on seeing adoption and willingness to try experiment technology although there is still some solid doubts whether these experiments will mature into significant products that will deliver real value.

Geography-wise we believe that given the huge progress coming from China, South Korea, and Japan we will see some counter-response from the US from regulation to investment all the way the funded R&D that will boost the market and will generate interest and attention.

···

Gili is the former Consul, Head of the Israeli Economic and Trade Mission to the West Coast, developing the business relationships between US and Israeli companies. He also served as the assistant to the Director of Foreign Trade and in the North America desk and served as an advisor to the Israeli Defense Minister.