How Blockchain is Improving Internet Connectivity and Networking for Businesses with Domas Povilauskas: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on fire the only daily show in the world interviewing the world's most successful entrepreneurs seven days a week. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down how blockchain is improving internet connectivity and networking for businesses. To drop these value bombs, I brought Domas into EO Fire Studios. Domas co-founded and successfully exited a fast growing SaaS startup. His understanding of network technologies and data streaming businesses led to the concept of Centropy. He is responsible for business development and product vision.

0:34In Friday, we'll talk about how blockchain is one of the largest shifts in the way human society operates and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sparsing today's episode goes to Domas and our sponsors. These days, your business needs total visibility from global shipments to tariff impacts to real-time cash flow. That's NetSuite by Oracle, your AI-powered business management suite trusted by over 41 ,000 businesses. Download the free ebook, Navigating Global Trade, Three Insights for Leaders at netsuite.com slash fire. Dom, welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. And we're going to dive right in today because the word blockchain is being thrown around like confetti, but most people don't understand what it is.

1:19So for once and for all, break down what the heck blockchain is all about. That's a very, very, very important question today. And I think that it's about one of the largest shifts in the way human societies operate. And I would even call it a part of evolution in general. It's such a profound and game changing technology and social phenomenon that actually it requires like multiple perspectives to look at it. And in order to fully grasp it, you know, grasp the whole essence of it and impact of what it actually is, you need to look at blockchain from multiple perspectives. Usually people look at blockchain from a purely technological perspective, trying to understand how this technology operates differently from technologies we use today.

2:13And of course, what impact it has on our daily lives. but so most of the people understand blockchain as Bitcoin and actually blockchain is an underlying technology of the Bitcoin network and it's definitely one of the best examples of how this technology works and what impact it creates to the way the society operates in a much, much broader sense. So Bitcoin is essentially the world's first decentralized digital currency operating within a totally decentralized payment network. No bank needed, no government needed for value exchange to exist and operated at a global scale. So enabling every human being easily connected to the network and being able to actually send and receive money, store value, and actually use most of the traditional financial services in a purely decentralized way.

3:20So if you think about it, it's not only an enormous shift in the way humans send and receive money, but it's also a fundamental shift in the whole economic understanding of how economies should operate, providing an alternative to central bank-controlled economy and monetary systems, especially in the times when the current system fails to deliver all promises made, you know, in the last hundred years of capitalism. So, but I still think that the most important thing Bitcoin is actually brought to the world, it brought a very concept that human society can operate in a totally different way based on a decentralized technology enabling financial system, legal system, government, health system, and internet itself, and actually be the core for the value and information exchange between the humans living in one society.

4:29Ethereum enabled like a concept of decentralized computer, which enabled like, you know, execution of commands, you know, as smart contracts, removing the need for the middleman, trusted authority, or, you know, any authority actually for the value exchange to happen, which later evolved into DeFi, you know, NFT, metaverse, you know, all these things actually, you know, is the same different manifestations actually of the same technology. So if we come back to the basics, technologically speaking, blockchain is a distributed database that is shared between the nodes of a computer network using certain consensus protocols such as proof of work or proof of stake or various other protocols to maintain a secure and decentralized record of transactions.

5:23So basically, technologically speaking, it is removing the need of any central authority to be the keeper of the source of truth. And logically speaking, blockchain is the shift from systems based on centralized control and authority to decentralized autonomous self-governed systems. so so that is very important because it is a move from a trust-based system to a trustless system which don't need any trust to exist uh in any specific entity in the system and and even more deeper i think philosophically speaking blockchain brings the next step for human evolution, growing from a closed to an open model of society, enabling, you know, further democratization, transparency, intercommunication and cooperation.

6:22So blockchain is not only a technology as the way people see it. It's much more. It's a social phenomena that's happening in today's world. And we're very, very lucky to experience that. So your understanding of network technologies and data streaming businesses is actually what led you to the concept of Centropy, which is your company that you're rocking right now. So how is Centropy specifically using the blockchain to help businesses? First of all, maybe I'll explain what is Centropy as a name. Okay, so the concept came from another scientific concept named entropy. And entropy, most people know what is entropy.

7:10So entropy is an expansion into chaos, an expansion into complexity. And syntropy is an opposite of entropy. It's a hidden order in chaos. It's symmetry. It's something that actually keeps the whole system, the whole ecosystem of the universe, of the world, to keep it balanced, organized and harmonious. So, basically, this is – so, essentially, Centropy uses blockchain technology to fundamentally change and improve the way internet works. And similarly to the impact blockchain technology is bringing to the financial world, I mentioned Bitcoin and Ethereum and DeFi and other things, Centropy is using blockchain technology to decentralize the internet connectivity system and solve the fundamental security, privacy, connectivity problems.

8:16But most importantly, the internet monopolization and control problems. So before we get down into the businesses, I would like to kind of like give you some more context of what Syntropy is and what is Syntropy's final mission. So the final mission is to be able to provide a decentralized internet access to everyone. And instead of getting internet from your telecom provider, people and companies will be able to connect to the decentralized connectivity system, the internet itself, without the need for intermediaries guaranteeing secure, private, reliable and transparent experience. So, again, similarly to what Bitcoin and Ethereum is doing to the financial system, Syntropy is doing a similar thing to the Internet connectivity itself.

9:15And, yeah, so basically, and this is the core technological concept and specifically solving internet monopolization and technological problems. And then helping, you know, right now we have a product that is currently helping businesses to overcome these problems very easily. A lot of people right now, Dom, they love the internet. They're on the internet all day, seven days a week, 24 hours a day sometimes. But there are flaws. There are definitely flaws within the internet. So from your viewpoint, what is wrong with the internet? Yeah, so let me give you some context. And it's not a secret that current internet, you know, has many fundamental technology and governance flaws, which makes the internet a very monopolistic and controlled network, as well as having, you know, fundamental security, privacy, reliability problems that are impossible to fix without a fundamental upgrade to the current design.

10:23So the original idea of the Internet was actually to make it a decentralized network, yeah, for seamless exchange of information between the computers connected to a joint global network. But at the time, it was impossible to imagine how unimaginably big and important the Internet will become in the future. And, you know, the like the use cases and impact this will have on human life was just impossible to grasp. So the initial design of the Internet didn't foresee and address all the problems we have today. And funny thing is that although the initial design of connectivity almost didn't change at all.

11:17The protocols that internet started with are still running to this day. And, for example, one of the core protocols underlying the global routing system called BGP, Border Gateway Protocol, introduced in 1994, is still used today. And the whole public Internet is still running on it. So that is one of the key problems. And in general, this stagnation and lack of innovation, which later caused all the problems that the Internet experience today, is actually mostly caused by two key reasons. And I already mentioned this briefly, but the first reason is severe monopolization of the Internet market.

12:01And the second is technological limitations that existed before the blockchain technology came to life. So, first of all, again, similarly to the financial system, the whole internet industry is probably the most monopolized industry in the world. From the very beginning, telecoms monopolized the infrastructure and keep the internet industry tightly controlled. So instead of being a decentralized network, it grew apart to become a very centralized network, which enabled telecoms to establish certain business models around these technological inefficiencies, keeping the margins high while maintaining the status quo, leaving no motivation for innovation and change in general.

12:48So monopolization is the key problem for severe stagnation of innovation that's happening in this industry. And currently there are like huge changes coming actually with the 5G technology and various like peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connectivity implementations. So what is very exciting that in three to five years, most of the phones and computers will actually use electronic SIM cards and connect to very dense, widely distributed peer-to-peer 5G radio networks, basically provided by a mesh of various providers and maybe people themselves hosting this connectivity. So, that actually – so, basically, movement from the cables to radio, actually, and this will happen at a certain point in 10 years.

13:48All connectivity will probably – most of the connectivity will be radio-based. This will actually, you know, give a chance to actually decentralize the infrastructure again. It's kind of like, you know, right now what's happening in the infrastructure space, most of the 5G infrastructure is actually built by different providers and by the companies investing in the infrastructure itself, not the telecoms. Telecoms leasing the infrastructure from the infrastructure providers. So these changes are very important, actually. And looking forward, this actually is a chance to decentralize the infrastructure again.

14:34But the technology itself remains outdated. So what actually we're trying to do with Syntropy, and we're trying to provide this fundamental upgrade to the current public internet connectivity using blockchain technology. And this actually, we call it an upgrade because it runs on top of the current connectivity system, not removing, not changing, not requiring to change anything. This is what people sometimes carry because they think that to change insurance, you need to rebuild it, you need to create something new. No, we're not requiring to change anything. simply providing an additional open connectivity layer and addressing the four fundamental problems.

15:28So, and these are a little technical, but I'll mention this, you asked about the problems. So, the first, actually, the first problem is that the current internet is, the current connectivity system of internet doesn't deal with security. So basically, everywhere you go on internet, you have to rely on, you know, your service provider, you rely on, you know, content providers, you rely on, you know, applications you're using. Basically, your security is always, you know, always, always, always, you know, exposed to various attacks, various things that, you know, that various effects can happen on your data and your privacy.

16:11And, yeah, all these things right now are not included in the Internet design. So that's why the attack surface is huge. And basically you hear about data leaks, security problems happening almost like every few days with, you know, this costing billions and billions of dollars for the companies and also huge privacy problems for individuals. So there's no security involved. We are, Sintrape is bringing an additional default security layer to the connectivity system using blockchain technology. So this is a fundamental upgrade which actually provides a decentralized data encryption service that actually is able to embed the security into the routing system instead of always relying on a third-party security.

17:09Don, I'm going to stop you right now. Keep your finger on that pulse. Don't you go anywhere because Fire Nation, we're going to talk about what Don was just mentioning. We're going to talk about the impact this is going to be having on you and your future when we get back from thanking our sponsors. I think we can all agree that it's an interesting time for business. Tariff and trade policies are shifting, which affects supply chains, cashflow, and more. And if your business can't adapt in real time, that's a big concern. You need total visibility from global shipments to tariff impacts to real-time cashflow.

17:42And for that, there's NetSuite by Oracle, your AI-powered business management suite trusted by over 41 ,000 businesses. NetSuite is a number one cloud ERP bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one suite, giving you one source of truth and the visibility and control to make quick decisions with real-time forecasting, you're peering into the future, allowing you to know what's stuck, what is costing you, and how to pivot fast. And with AI tools, you can automate everyday tasks, allowing your teams to stay strategic. If our business needed this type of software, I'd use NetSuite in a heartbeat.

18:13It's one system, full control, tame the chaos with NetSuite. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, download the free ebook, Navigating Global Trade, Three Insights for Leaders at netsuite.com slash fire. That's netsuite.com slash fire. All right, Dom, we're back and go on to that next point. And then we're going to really hit on the impact this is all gonna have on us as a culture. Right now, people get internet from the telecom providers. And basically, we don't have any guarantee of secure, private, transparent and reliable internet experience. And we still pay a lot of money. So the final vision of Centropy Project is actually to enable a consumer to connect a decentralized internet network that is not provided by any single provider.

19:10But it's a joint decentralized network that you are able to connect and pay actually very little. Or we're hoping and we're working towards that to enabling a free internet one day, which basically every person can just connect and have secure, reliable and transparent, fair internet experience. So that is, you know, actually, you know, fighting the monopolization that exists in the market today and also solving these fundamental problems from from a technological sense I was mentioning, you know, using blockchain technology, again, similarly to what's happening in the financial system with Bitcoin and Ethereum.

19:59So, yeah, so the impact is definitely, definitely very important for every human life. Yeah, because Internet, especially with metaverse and other things, becomes an inseparable part of our being. and it just can't be provided and controlled and basically not being secure to a point where you as a human being have a right to have a really transparent and fair internet access. I mean, Fire Nation, it is crazy what the future holds with the impact of the metaverse. I mean, there's just so much ahead strap on those seatbelts. And Dom, let's really end with a bang, brother. What is the one message you really want to make sure our listeners walk away with from our entire conversation here today?

20:59We used to say, free the internet, free the internet, basically bring back the control of the internet back into the hands of community, into the hands of people. uh that's that's i think uh why every person should care about uh this project and uh since we're um making it more and more open for people to participate and and and trying to decentralize it even further uh creating working on a DAO model decentralized autonomous organization model so we can invite people to join it and to actually work on on this mission all together where can fire nation find out more about centropy where can they go to find out more about you to connect with you any call to action you have for us let's break it down you can definitely join our telegram channel uh and you can find telegram medium uh twitter accounts on our website www.centropynet.com so i i suggest to visit the website and you have I have all the links to all the major social news, social media channels so we can where all of our community members cooperate and basically discuss entropy every day.

22:21Fire Nation, powerful stuff because you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with DP and JLD today, so keep up the heat. Head over to eofire.com. Just type Dom, D-O-M, in the search bar. His show notes page will pop up with everything that we've been talking about here today. Best show notes in the biz. Dom, thank you, brother, for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Dom.

22:58And Fire Nation, if you've ever thought about creating a podcast of your own, the podcast journal is for you. It is gorgeous. It is full leather. and it will guide you step-by-step in both the creation and the launch of your podcast in 50 days. That's five zero. Visit thepodcastjournal.com and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. These days, your business needs total visibility from global shipments to tariff impacts to real-time cashflow. That's NetSuite by Oracle, your AI-powered business management suite trusted by over 41 ,000 businesses. Download the free ebook, Navigating Global Trade, three insights for leaders at netsuite.com slash fire.