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Centralized platforms to decentralized networks, Enabling equitable market access and trust

May 4, 2022

Online

MULTIMEDIA

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Centralized platforms to decentralized networks, Enabling equitable market access and trust


  • Bigtech aggregator platforms across mobility, travel, and commerce domains have dominated the 2-sided platform economy across the world in the last decade. One consequence is that people have less control over the data that companies and governments have about them. Even with the decentralization possibilities offered by web3 technologies, transaction layers continue to be platform centric. 

    But, monopolization, equity for supply partners, regulatory push back, and sovereignty have become common topics of concern. The EU is now forcing app stores and messaging platforms to be interoperable. Data protection and data portability, as well as the broader issue of giving people control over their data, have also become massive debates. Is there a way to address these problems by taking inspiration from the design of the Internet itself and the earlier attempts at building semantic web? Could interoperability and decentralization of transaction layers and data be the answer?

    Join us to hear from Dr. Pramod Varma, Chief Architect of Aadhaar and India Stack, as well as co-creator of becknprotocol.io, as he discusses how Beckn Protocol and the Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA), both open source digital public good (DPG) efforts, are being leveraged by India to move from a platform centric world to a network centric world across commerce, mobility, healthcare, skilling, and data.

  • Dr. Pramod Varma

    Dr. Pramod Varma

    CTO of EkStep Foundation

    A not-for-profit creating learner centric, open source, digital public goods under Project Sunbird (sunbird.org). These digital building blocks are used to provide learning opportunities to 200 million children in India and also in other learning, skilling, and capacity building efforts in India and other countries. In addition, he continues to be the Chief Architect of Aadhaar, India's digital identity program that has successfully covered more than 1.2 billion people in a short span of 7 years. He also helped architect various India Stack layers such as eSign, Digital Locker, and Unified Payment Interface (UPI), and Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA), all of which are now working at population scale in India. He is also the co-founder of Beckn Foundation, the genesis author and angel donor of the open source beckn protocol (becknprotocol.io) for creation of decentralized open discovery, fulfillment, and commerce networks. He is an advisor to Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), National Payment Corporation (NPCI), Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), National Health Authority (NHA), Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Turing Institute Identity Initiative in the UK, and helps with many digital public infrastructure initiatives in India and across the globe. Pramod holds a Master’s and Ph.D. degree in Computer Science along with a second Master’s in Applied Mathematics. His interests include Internet scale distributed architectures and intelligent systems. He is passionate about technology, science, society, and teaching.

RECORDING

  • Video recording : in the following link
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