APAC Issue 8 2018

28 APAC / Issue 8 2018 , In fewer than eight months, Brian Xie and his team moved from the intuition that blockchain could fix problems in the digital advertising industry, to a standing- room only press conference in the grand ballroom of the Ritz Carlton, Pudong, Shanghai. The conference was timed in part to benefit from China Joy 2018, which kicked-off the following day. “China is the first stop, and a very important market,” Xie said. “We hope to bring the technology we are working on at Adrealm to other industries and markets, because the next stage of blockchain development will not be based on infrastructure solely, but on blockchain applications.” Jack Chen, VP of Product, focused on Adrealm’s proprietary IP (a consensus mechanism called “Proof of Valid Traffic”). Chen explained how it marks a massive paradigm shift in both adtech and blockchain. “When we started thinking about how blockchain could solve pain-points in the digital advertising industry, we realised that we weren’t going to be able use to good effect any of the current consensus models,” Chen said. “They cannot really be applied to one of the most data- intensive industries. And so, we Adrealm Leadership Speaks at Press Conference in Shanghai On-chainedMelody: Adrealm’s Blockchain Adtech is Music to a Disruptor’s Ears and it has Top-tier Tech-watchers Humming re-invented one of blockchain’s core elements, the consensus mechanism. We’ve turned it into something that will benefit both the ecosystem and the industry in the long run.” Carl Cai, VP of Business Development, addressed specifically how Xhance will outperform competitors. “There are a number of reasons why Xhance is the first DApp on Adrealm. One is that it provides us with a kind of hotline for feedback from businesses in the industry, from those who will be leveraging what we are building at Adrealm,” Cai said. Speakers at the two-hour event included Andy Ji, Chief Strategy Officer at Ontology, with whom Adrealm has recently signed an agreement on strategic cooperation. The press conference wrapped-up with a panel of industry worthies, among them Perry Jung from Chainers and BCI, Nan Yang from INBlockchain, Jun Yu from OK Capital, Wayne Zhu from Neo Global Capital, and Yan Gong from China Europe International Business School. The panel discussed the future of blockchain and the technology’s uphill battle to prove to the wider marketplace its value to business-users. Brendon Powell, Director of Product Engineering at Quarry, was among the 300-plus crowd that filled the ballroom to capacity. “The panel speakers had no clear consensus on the future of blockchain technology, and yet [it was] inspiring that they were united in their view that both Adrealm and Xhance [are] timeworthy, valuable projects.” If discussion both inside and outside the ballroom revolved mainly around the company’s “Business Incentive-Oriented Consensus” model, and how their DApp Xhance is a direct challenge to competitors like AppsFlyer and Kochava, many remained fixated with the video that played at the start of the press conference. Fast-paced, edgy, and set to a grungy buzzsaw guitar track that could have been lifted from a Guy Ritchie film, the short video nailed the core element of Xie’s philosophy. “Transparency fueled the American Revolution. More transparency was the result of it. Transparency was how that generation - the generation of the Enlightenment - preserved revolutionary values and promoted rationality as the antidote to superstition. Really, what is science if not ever-growing transparency into the way the world works? And what is social progress if not the distribution of that knowledge? Transparency drives creation. Tech fads wax and wane, but the smart money is on whatever fuels creation,” Xie said. “Brian wanted a bold video, and he’s got one,” said Ellis Cameron- Perry, Executive Director of Adrealm’s thinktank. “For those who’ve seen the video, there’s no need to wonder what’s on Brian’s mind -- or what motivates him, or how he intends to mobilize Adrealm’s technical and other assets.” The video begins with the Spirit of ‘76 and ends with a rift on quantum communication and references to Liu Cixin’s award- winning novel The Three-body Problem. “Being an evangelist for meta- transparency and the potential of decentralized processing is not tantamount to being anti- centralization,” Xie sad. “Our unique consensus mechanism might result in some changes being made to industry nomenclature. But our business is business, not political philosophy.” The global digital advertising industry is worth $230 billion dollars and is still growing. According to Xie, these exist chiefly because of the opacity he and Adealm are out to defeat.