- Good morning.
I'm Kathleen Mitford, CVP of Azure Marketing,
and today I'm excited to be with Donovan Brown,
Partner Program Manager Azure Open Source Incubations
to discuss the open source future with Web3.
Donovan, we just saw an amazing event on open source.
I understand open source and Web3 separately,
but how are they interconnected?
- That is a great question, Kathleen.
Web3 is a revolution that can leverage open source
to accelerate innovation.
Web3 applications can help address security concerns
and centralization of Web2 applications.
Web3 is decentralized, as it is built on a blockchain,
which is a distributed ledger technology
that enables the creation of secure and transparent ways
to transfer and store digital assets.
Some blockchains support smart contracts,
which are self-executing contracts
with the terms of the agreement written in the code
upon which we can create decentralized applications,
or DAPs, that can automate processes
and reduce the need for intermediaries.
Closely related to Web3 are NFTs, or non-fungible tokens,
DFI, or Decentralized Finance,
and CBDCs central bank digital currencies,
as they can all leverage
the underlying blockchain technology that Web3 is built on.
- This future web is very fascinating.
We just saw this amazing end-to-end intelligent app demo
showing the present view of app development
on Azure using Web2.
Will any of these DevOps best practices
be used when building Web3 apps
and what Microsoft technologies
can developers take advantage of?
- The DevOps best practices that we just saw
are almost more important in the Web3 world
than they are in the Web2 world.
In the future, many organizations may build solutions
with a combination of Web2 and Web3, so as a developer,
everything that you just saw you can leverage,
in addition to everything else Microsoft offers
to support the Web3 developer.
If you are a developer and you choose to use Web3,
Microsoft is the best place to do it.
Here are some examples of why.
Azure Static Web apps are purposely built for hosting
a SPA or single page application,
which is the front-end of a DAP,
interacting with a blockchain through a JavaScript library.
Azure container instances are a fantastic way
to host a short lib development blockchain.
Azure Pipelines and GitHub actions allow developers
to deploy their solutions to test environments
before migrating to main net using DevOps best practices.
With Visual Studio Code, you can continue to use the editor
you are already using for your SPA
for your Solidity development.
The marketplace has many extensions
to aid in your Web3 development.
When you add GitHub Copilot,
writing your DAPs become even easier
with suggestions from Copilot.
If you use GitHub Code Spaces, this is an incredible way
to spin up Web3 development environments
with all your tools and frameworks already ready to go.
And then there's GitHub,
home to a hundred million developers
shaping the future of software in the open,
many of which are Web3 projects.
While we have our own first party capabilities today
to support Web3, we are leaning in with our partners,
ISVs and Web3 natives as well.
It is imperative that we meet our developers
and customers where they are,
and our rich partner ecosystem supports this.
- Donovan, you're a developer who has worked in Web3
for some time now.
How optimistic are you about developing Web3 solutions
with Microsoft Tools?
- I am very optimistic because Microsoft has always been
a company started by developers for developers,
and the tools that we create can be used for any type
of development including Web3.
For example, across GitHub and Visual Studio,
I've seen great work in the community to address pain points
in the experience of the Web3 developer.
For example, there have been incredible extensions
contributed by the community
to make tools more easily integrated
into GitHub, Code Spaces, and VS code
to ease the Web3 developer onboarding experience.
I think the Web3 developer experience
is going to continue to get better.
If you're interested in building these types of extensions,
please reach out to us.
Another reason that I'm excited of the future
for Web3 development is because a lot of our customers
are building innovative new blockchain solutions
for enterprise applications.
We are seeing strong levels of activity
and interest in capital markets,
where permissioned blockchain technology, like CCF,
is being used for improving operations,
such as trading, settling, custody,
and creating that single source of truth
across multiple entities.
CCF or Confidential Consortium Framework,
is an open source enterprise grade blockchain platform
developed by Microsoft that enables the creation
of private permission blockchains.
So if you are looking to integrate Web3
into your next project,
Microsoft has all the tools you need.
Kathleen, you're close to many of our customers.
What trends are you seeing in the industry?
How have customers started to integrate Web3 solutions
into their businesses and what benefits are they realizing?
- Great question, Donovan.
I'm seeing more and more customers
starting to adopt Web3 solutions
across a variety of different industries.
In financial services, or example,
banks and exchanges wanna modernize their trading platforms
and create trading solutions
that allow for real-time settlement.
By using distributed ledger technology,
they're able to eliminate a large number
of separate processes often required
to trade financial assets across organizational boundaries.
This enables financial institutions to reduce friction
and minimize both cost and risk.
For retailers and shipping companies.
they're always trying to improve the tracing of key assets
from ingredients and raw materials
to containers and packaged goods.
Blockchain technology is being used to develop
new supply chain solutions that create the ability
to work with shared data across organizations.
I've seen national grocery chains leverage Web3
to trace the original source of food contamination events
for items like fresh greens, coffee, seafood,
and meat in seconds rather than days.
This mitigates supply chain disruptions
that previously would've been much more consequential
to their business.
And then all sorts of companies are exploring NFTs,
not just as art, but for uses in ticketing,
managing customer loyalty programs and more.
You may have seen a top coffee brand now uses NFTs
to architect experiences
in its widely loved loyalty program.
Personally, I'm interested in central bank
digital currencies and how central banks across the world
are starting to study and pilot new ways to manage
their own currencies to improve cross-border payments,
prevent fraud, and increase financial inclusion
with broader access to financial services.
One example is how one country's digital currency
has enabled mobile transactions without internet access
and can be used in a digital wallet
without having a traditional bank account,
increasing the inclusivity of financial services.
- These use cases sound incredibly impactful,
but accelerating the creation of these is key.
- You're absolutely right,
and that's where I believe our partnership with OpenAI
and the excitement around innovations,
like ChatGBT and DollE2 come into play
in how we can apply AI to drive developer adoption in Web3.
Historically, developers and enterprises
have found it challenging to onboard to Web3,
so it's not surprising that devs want better tools
so they can more easily build apps
and ease the on-ramp from Web2 to Web3.
Donovan, what does the future of Web3 with AI look like?
- Moving to Web3 as a developer can be difficult,
due to all the frameworks and tools needed
to develop in the environment.
Depending on the chain that you select,
you might have to learn a new language, like Solidity.
The syntax is the same, but the concepts are not.
The design and architecture of adapt
requires an understanding of SPAs, which many of us have,
but smart contracts are new.
Smart contracts can only use data that's on the blockchain
and requires Oracles to interact with the real world,
and we can't forget about security.
In a world where your every mistake
lives forever on the blockchain, man,
you put all that together and the learning curve
can be steep.
However, with the power of AI, you can ask ChatGPT
to create a hello world sample in any language
and copy and paste the code to get started.
Then you can go modify the code and have GitHub Copilot
help you make the changes using all the best practices,
and I can do all of this inside of a GitHub Code Space,
configured with all my favorite tools and frameworks
and my Visual Studio code extensions
automatically installed.
Then I can use Azure DevOps or GitHub actions
to deploy my application into Azure.
- Donovan, I love the excitement
and this conversation has been fascinating
and I've really learned a lot.
AI is top of mind for both customers
looking to improve efficiency and reduce cost,
and for developers to do their job faster and better.
I am really excited to continue seeing
what solutions our customers build on Azure using Web3.
- Thank you so much for having me, Kathleen.
- Thank you for being here, Donovan.