A complete SaaS platform bringing blockchain-based integrity to enterprise data. Powered by Moonbeam Network, scalable by design
Spicey | OIG:
Welcome back OIG family to another exciting episode in our ama series where we sit down with incredible projects and ask all the questions. Today we have the privilege of having Matjaz, the CEO of Authtrail, Authtrail is a bridge between the value of enterprise data and the power of blockchain technology. Remember to like, subscribe, and hit that bell notification icon to get all the latest updates with everything that has to do with Blockchain technology, and OIG. Okay, Matjaz. Well, welcome to our show. So we’d like to talk a little more about Authtrail. So could you give us a little more intro into what it is and summarise it a bit.
Matjaz:
So basically, Authtrail is a data integrity platform based moving on Polkadot. I’ve seen several different applications for the adoption of blockchain technology in the past, but none of them was really something that I could say, Okay, this could change the way businesses operate. So what we are building here really is to create the bridge between enterprise data and blockchain technology. And by connecting to existing legacy systems and companies, environments
Spicey | OIG:
interesting. So you mentioned you’re going to be bridging the gap between enterprise data technology as well as blockchain technology, how will you be doing that? How are you prepared to accomplish that with the team you have?
Matjaz:
So to answer your first question is how we’re doing it is basically we’re creating different connectors to the legacy systems for SAP, Oracle, office 365, and so on. So basically all the systems that are currently running enterprise environments and want to give customers the possibility to onboard or political actors systems to the blockchain. And yeah, luckily, we have a great team to help us with that. I’ll start with myself how I got into the game and what I did to really be where I am today. So I first started to basically to invest and look into crypto seven years ago and back then introduced by a neighbour of mine. And he already then mentioned Ethereum is good and great, but wait to see what Polkadot is building. And this is basically when I first started thinking a little bit out of the box, what could be the enterprise way, what could be the adoption of blockchain enterprise world, and what kind of solution or what kind of technology could be leveraged to accomplish that. And being in a data management field for the past 20 years, I’ve seen it firsthand how data has been manipulated, mishandled, corrupt, and so on. So basically, this was, for me, the no brainer, the second data and blockchain are something that goes together very well. And this is then how Authtrail basically got developed, we have to bring this story then somehow to the audience, the public. So we have a very great marketing team who’s been led by Domen. Domen has been running successful campaigns in I several larger organisations like Uber, high sands, etc, among others. So he also has a very strong business network when it comes to not just marketing but really day to day business operations. And his team is growing basically faster than any other team right now. Because we want to bring the story out to a wider audience. So his team consists of two very charming ladies who are basically creating all the content that we see today out there, from the blog post to basically everything we read about Authtrail. Then we also have Patrick and David. Patrick is responsible for the social media content for video graphics. Also, like, I mean, we did the whole ama a couple of weeks ago. So he’s responsible for this kind of stuff. And David is actually a former Olympian. He used to play ice hockey was also on the Sochi Olympics, with his living a national team. But he also tapped into crypto waters as an investor. And he’s now running our community and he’s helping Patrick together with the social media stuff.
Spicey | OIG:
Really cool. So you got people from everywhere you even got an Olympian on your team. I mean, yeah, you’re sure to be champions at some point, right? So with the name Authtrail, where did that originate from? How did it come to be called Authtrail
Matjaz:
it’s basically a combination of authentic trail, basically the additional to the ground stone that was set for off. But it was basically guaranteeing data integrity and choose to basically trace the data back to its original source. And so data integrity as a service became a core part of the whole authoring platform. However, we know, as we were building off that platform, that integrity is just a means to an end to a lot, much larger picture. I will see a lot of news coming out in the upcoming weeks on where Authtrail is basically going towards do
Spicey | OIG:
why is this necessary? What does it fulfil, you touched on data integrity. But could you go a little more in-depth on why this is so critical in blockchain technology?
Matjaz:
I think it’s for both worlds, one of the really the enterprise, I mean, the old economy to have a gateway to enter blockchain on an in a very easy way without having to have a lot of know-how we don’t have to spend an extraordinary amount of amounts of money to get the knowledge and technology to understand how they can connect their enterprise data sources to the blockchain. So this is on the enterprise world to give them a possibility to have an easy on-ramp onto blockchain. And on the other hand, for the blockchain business itself, it gives blockchain let’s say a little bit more strength a little bit more credibility in the world of the day to day operation to showcase it’s not just NFT’s and gaming and money exchange, it’s actually to bring some valuable info or to bring valuable information to the blockchain and hold it there for the day to day business operations. We have customers, who are, we are discussing with them when they’re in the initial stages, basically, who will be writing 10s of millions of transactions on a monthly basis to the blockchain. Now imagine if they would have to write 10 million transactions on Ethereum, which I don’t know what the gas prices are. But that’s an eight or nine figure million dollar amount that they would spend only for the gas fees, right? So we are in between and luckily being in Polkadot, moonbeam. This gives us a competitive advantage on spending.
Spicey | OIG:
So would it be mostly enterprises that will be utilising this technology? Or are there other clients that would be interested in using such technology?
Matjaz:
Well, it depends, what we’re building here, as well as so-called Launch app or a business accelerator on top for Authtrail. I mean, we don’t have the capacities to think in all directions or verticals, what you can imagine. And once we launched the launch hub, we’re gonna open API’s to a whole world of new developers who say, look, I could use this technology for my user-facing application or for business application for small business or whatsoever. And they will then just talk onto our API. So basically, the options are endless, what can be built on top of Authtrail At the end of the day,
Spicey | OIG:
Really cool stuff. So you mentioned launching the hub, and, you know, introduction of the API’s. So what other segments of the Authtrail ecosystem are there? And how will they work to provide a cohesive experience for clients.
Matjaz:
So one hand we have the public explorer, so the public Explorer is a way to share cluster data with external parties. I can give you an example. What I always like to explain is I mean, blockchain and supply chain management has been, let’s say, a pair in the making for the past years. I mean, everybody who says supply chain and media thinks of blockchain, I agree. But there are more and more applications for blockchain that could make sense because this supply chain idea over let’s say, of the so-called lifecycle is applicable basically, to a lot of verticals, what we are, for example, building here as well, for the healthcare system. I mean, I wish you not, but imagine you break your leg, you get your first X-ray, you get the surgery, you get the rehab, and you want to make sure, once you go through all those steps, those steps have data integrity to it, right. And so the whole lifecycle of you getting cured becomes a supply chain in a specific way. So you want to make sure once a surgeon starts operating on you that he has the right x-ray, not from your left-right leg, but on the right leg. Once the surgeon is done, and you go to rehab, you want to make sure that while they were doing your surgery that no tendons has been somehow damaged. So that the professional who then does the rehab with you knows exactly how to help you with your cure. So basically this public explored and basically gives the possibility to share the sensitive data with different parties, right. So from the healthcare provider to the, to the hospital, to the rehab, they are basically all different entities, but they want to have the possibility to access the same amount or the same data set that has the integrity to it. So this is one part would be the public extraordinary, I have to offer them the validator, which is basically our current demo. It’s an open-source manual data verification, just drop a file in and you can verify the hash, the hash gets anchored to the blockchain. And if you change something in this specific file, check it again, against the validator, you’ll see that the hash doesn’t match anymore. And this means that the document itself has been somehow manipulated in any way, as we already talked to the launch shop would be basically the big picture, or at the end, where once the platform is fully operational, you have the API’s, and after different third party developers dock onto our platform and create, I hope, amazing applications on top of it,
Spicey | OIG:
For sure! And a very good example with the healthcare application. Because that still does happen, you know, wrong. X rays are referenced wrong files or reference and to have something to validate and ensure that it’s the correct information. That’s definitely something we need right now. So on the topic of utility, can you explain the function of the auth token and anchor credits more in depth?
Matjaz:
Yeah, the anchor credits are basically used to, as the name already suggests, is to anchor the data to the blockchain. So this means that once a customer-defined specific set of data that he wants to anchor to the blockchain, those tokens are going to be used to basically verify the hash and then anchor the data to the blockchain. However, what we’ve decided is to go a little bit, let’s say a two-way approach when it comes to the token. So one is going to be purely towards the crypto community. So it’s going to be offered token, whereas the end customers are never exactly going to get in touch with the token itself. Guys, we’ve seen from the past that customers, as soon as you enter the customer environment, start talking about blockchain crypto whatsoever, an immediate red flag comes up. So we want to keep that still as transparent as possible, but also showcase look, we are doing crypto the backend, however, it is used for the utility and getting data to the blockchain, whereas the customers will have credits. So like a normal subscription base pay as you grow model, they will have credits and those credits will then be used for the anchoring onto the blockchain. So this means if a customer says look, I want to have a minimum level of integrity, he will have to anchor his data once per day, so once every 24 hours, but this will actually then consist of a whole 24 hour data set, right. So if they will not have a very granular search possibility into the data set. If they want to have a more granular approach, they would say, Look, I need four to eight anchors per day. So every six hours, every two hours every three hours whatsoever. And this means they will use more and more credits for that at the backend, the mechanism will then trigger those buying operations on the market and therefore driving up the let’s say, the supply for last token, which will then get used for anchoring and then split the 50% are going to be born at 5% gonna be locked away 25% Go into the pressure.
Spicey | OIG:
So essentially, they are linked, the anchor credits and the auth token. It’s just different end-users, right? Yes, yes. Interesting. Okay. Let’s so let’s talk about the development. I mean, you mentioned you guys have been in development since I believe 2018. Yeah, What things have you achieved since then? And what are you most proud of?
Matjaz:
Well, it’s definitely that we’ve come to a point where Authtrail beginning to get traction in the real world, but also in the wet free environment. As mentioned, I mean, back in 2018, it was just a pure data integrity service. But now the idea is growing this so-called digital product, passport, circular economy, the circular are the sort of digital product password that I mentioned is really the password that can be given to any specific data set. So as mentioned before with a healthcare record could be the whole case that for example, insurance claims could be one DPP supply chain, financial transactions. So basically, every data set that is somehow valuable to customers can get a so-called data, digital product passport, and this can then be tracked on the blockchain. So this is what we’re now building towards to is really, mainly this DPP, together with a circular economy. And we’re doing it with great customers so far. I mean, we have already five customers who are working closely with us, co-developing the code showcasing us better trends are going and how we could improve our product to really be in, in time with new development in the market. But also think that we are also driving now with this narrative that we’re building here with the connecting enterprise to blockchain showcasing customers that there is a future in blockchain, that more and more customers trust into blockchain. And they can see that they can build business cases on top of it.
Spicey | OIG:
I mean, the number one thing you mentioned too, is trusting the blockchain like there’s still an underlying fear of blockchain technology just because it’s so very young. But having Authtraill build the foundation to validate data by utilising blockchain technology for enterprises really make opens the doors and opens the floodgates to a lot of new businesses to roll in. So definitely something we need, right? Great. So the next segment we’re going to go into is our Twitter questions.
Community Twitter Questions
Spicey | OIG: So our first question comes from @Bd_Boss2, who asks, security is the weakness of any project anytime hackers can attack and create huge losses for users and owners? So what steps did your project take to prevent this kind of attack? And how do you control risk?
Matjaz:
When we started building Authtrail, this was definitely one of the major aspects of how to build the platform in a way that you don’t compromise the company’s data. And given the fact that we are in Europe with the GDPR requirements is very strict on how you handle data, how you move the data. We don’t move or we don’t touch any data, per se. So we only deal with the data, hashes and the anchors, and not the actual data. Meaning that the data itself remains at its native location. So customers can have the data either in the cloud and on-premise or whatsoever. So Authtrail never stores any data on private servers whatsoever. So which means there’s no GDPR risk, or that any data breaches could suffer from compromise, right? Even if the hacker should get into office databases, they would only see the hashes and those hashes mean nothing to them without the customer data that the customer controls.
Spicey | OIG:
So another level of security is simply because you’re not coming into contact with the data directly.
Matjaz:
it’s all done on-prem on this on the customer side, we only received the hashes and those ashes and monitor.
Spicey | OIG:
Amazing answer. So our next question comes from @CryptoGeeek_, who asks, Why did Authtrail decide to build on moonbeam? What competitive advantages does building on Moonbeam give to Authtrail? Platform and its users? What other networks Does the team consider before choosing Moonbeam? And will you integrate into more networks in the future?
Matjaz:
So originally, the idea was off, it was built on Ethereum. And back in 2018. This was still feasible. I mean, the gas prices were kind of low. But I mean, it was the Go to Network when it came to enterprise data. The example like to say I mean, when I talk to the enterprise customer and say to them, Look, do you really want to move or the other way around? I mean, when a customer says why are going to move I said look, imagine there’s an airdrop coming on socket crypto kitties on Ethereum, which is clogging the network, are really willing to wait two days for a business-critical trajectory to transaction to go through or pay an X amount of fees or would rather be on a secure, highly governed highly secure network that is meant for enterprise business like Polkadot and have the safe, let’s say the peace of mind to understand that your data is stored in a secure way. So basically, when we started migrating our code from Ethereum to moonbeam. I mean the transition was seamless. I can just because one I want a half hours to migrate the old code to test it then we were up and running on Polkadot basically. And I mean we could have chosen Kusama as well but then again, enterprise mission-critical data, we cannot afford to have some outages to have some very fluctuating gas prices whatsoever. We need to stay with a highly governed highly secured network to process company data
Spicey | OIG:
It’s really great to see a company valuing, security, as well as transparency with all of what you’ve said. So it’s good to see that you understand what enterprises need as well. Like you said you could have easily gone on to Kusama, but because you value the enterprise aspect, you’ve gone to Polkadot, and that’s gonna benefit you in the long run.
Matjaz:
I mean, I want to emphasise here as well. I mean, we are starting on moonbeam and Polkadot I mean, we want to stay still somewhat blockchain agnostic. If there are companies who have different needs or approaches or have some more partnerships whatsoever. I want to go on to Solana, avalanche, Ethereum etc, we are open to connecting different bunches in the backend as well, but given the fact that we started here, and they’ve seen this migration was to Moonbeam, at the moment for us, this is the most secure network there is We’re staying on Moonbeam.
Spicey | OIG:
You can argue with that. So question number three from Twitter comes from @QuNguyn61793298 who asks, I’ve seen almost no information about Authtrails IDO Could you tell us more about this? Where will it take place? And how can we participate as well as requirements and benefits?
Matjaz:
It’s one of my personal agenda, something that’s on my personal agenda, I want this project to be one of the more reputable projects as well. So that’s why we are aiming towards tier-one exchanges. Where do we want to launch our token, I have the IDO. So we are currently in different conversations with those tier-one exchanges. I can’t give you right now, unfortunately, any details because it’s all under NDA. But we’re aiming to have the launch by end of q2 latest beginning of q3. This is going to be the TGE event and also then our IEO. However, what we have right now, running and the announcement should be out in a couple of hours in the community only invitation round, which gives early supporters of our telegram and Twitter the possibility to get an early investment opportunity before we go live.
Spicey | OIG:
Awesome. And you mentioned that sometime in q2, where would the community find out? Where would they see this information first?
Matjaz:
Definitely all social media channels, so Twitter and telegram. This is where we are most active. But as mentioned before, I mean, we have their great marketing team, we’ve actually partnered with the market across one of the leading PR agency marketing agency in the crypto environment, and they will be helping us a lot. So look out for announcements on various different channels websites, in the upcoming weeks,
Spicey | OIG:
And for all our viewers all the links will be in the description. So you can definitely check them out. Whenever you get the chance that ends up our Twitter question segment. Let’s just wrap up the AMA with a little bit more about your roadmap, what’s coming up? What should we be aware of? We talked about the idea of what else is coming up?
Matjaz:
So definitely, as we’ve already mentioned, the community round is what’s running currently. But the biggest thing that we think we’re I think it’s gonna be launching in upcoming weeks is really this launch up to business accelerator to get this ecosystem growing to bring younger partners, younger developers into our ecosystems. So it’s basically like a grant programme that we are going to be running funding different projects on top of Authtrail. Because as mentioned, I mean, we don’t have the manpower to go to all the verticals. We are not specialised in all the verticals. However, we are giving the tools and knowledge on blockchain integrations and they’re going to help the other partners to then basically onboard onto the web three environment.
Spicey | OIG:
Well, Matjaz was amazing talking to you today about Authtrail, you’ve done a superb job highlighting the importance of data integrity and security across a multitude of industries, as well as real-world applications that can be implemented today. We can’t wait to see what more Authtrail has in store for the future.
Matjaz:
Thanks for hosting me was a pleasure being here.
Authtrail:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/authtrail
Telegram: https://t.me/Authtrail
Website: https://authtrail.com/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/authtrail/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/authtrail
Github: https://github.com/AuthTrail
