Symposium on Blockchain and Trusted Repositories

Location: UNC Friday Center

Date: Monday, November 5, 2018

Time: 9:00 a.m – 4:00 p.m.

Sponsors: The UNC SILS Knowledge Trust, UNC Center for Media Law & Policy and The Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise.

Pay Types: Visa, Mastercard, UNC Account Transfer

Price: Regular Rate $100.00, Student Rate $50.00

>> SLIDES NOW AVAILABLE:

Dr. Gary Marchionini: Opening remarks PDF

Dr. Jean Camp’s slides: BitCoin Challenges PDF

Mark Yusko’s slides: Crypto-Capitalism November 2018 PowerPoint

Dr. David Thaw’s slides: David Thaw Blockchain 3.0 Legal Implications PDF
Talk at Seoul National University: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qE6y2A4qfk&list=PL07CpW5p2l13jWYiYPrB0JHXGuLQV0zOM

Event Overview:

Advances in the technology have revolutionized communication and commerce, which in turn have challenged our social, legal, and cultural practices and policies.

Given the deluge of ambient and invited information streams in our lives, a key challenge each of us faces daily is who and what to trust. Trust is not a technical issue, but organizations, businesses, and governments are leveraging technology to both strengthen and undermine people’s trust. This digital manipulation has generated considerable interest in the use of blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies to authenticate information sources and transactions.

The blockchain application that has garnered the most attention are the various cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, however, publishers, governments, corporations, artists, and archives are investigating blockchain technology for primacy and authenticity purposes. Potential applications range from verifying electronic medical records to insuring primacy in the exchange of public and private digital assets.

Although there is no shortage of ideas for using blockchain, these new applications raise many theoretical and practical questions. Consider this case for example: Using blockchain to maintain the provenance of digital objects. Phone cameras and other apps (e.g., notepads) immediately compute a checksum upon creation of a digital object and form a triple (checksum, timestamp, device ID) with optional personal identifier (only if creator of object wants to be identified) and this triple gets added to a blockchain.

What are the technical requirements for establishing such a practice? What kinds of infrastructure must be developed to support it as it scales? Does this strategy insure primacy for an original object? Authenticity of adversarial or alternative objects? Should the blockchain be fully distributed or maintained by trusted parties? What are the security risks? What are the legal or regulatory issues within and across national boundaries? Will this save resources for public record creators or for profit entities? Will the public trust the computed primacy or authenticity?

These questions apply to this application as well as many others that depend on blockchain. To begin to address some of these questions, the Symposium on Blockchain and Trusted Repositories at UNC-Chapel Hill will host a set of speakers and discussions from technical, financial, and legal/regulatory perspectives.

Agenda

9:00 Welcome and Introduction to the Symposium and the Knowledge Trust: Gary Marchionini, Dean of the UNC School of Information and Library Science

9:15-10:15 Keynote #1: Blockchain Technology Trends. Jean Camp, Indiana University Professor of Informatics and Director of Center for Security and Privacy in Informatics, Computing, and Engineering

10:15-11:15 Keynote #2: Blockchain Applications in Finance. Mark Yusko, Founder, CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Morgan Creek Capital Management.

11:15-12:15 Keynote #3: Blockchain Legal and Regulatory Issues. David Thaw, Assistant Professor of Law and Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, Affiliated Fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School

12:15-1:30 Lunch (provided)

1:30-2:45 Breakout Sessions (Concurrent)

Breakout 1: Trusted Repositories 101 Reagan Moore, Emeritus Professor, UNC SILS and RENCI, Founder of the Data Intensive Computing Environments
Breakout 2: Public Records 101 Cal Lee, Professor School of Information and Library Science, UNC-Chapel Hill, Fellow of the Society of American Archivists
Breakout 3: Distributed ledger technology 101. Jeff Garratt, Software Architect, IBM Blockchain Solution Assurance

2:45-3:00 Break

3:00-4:00 Panel: Trusted central parties versus trust through distributed ledgers.

Markus Most, Special Assistant, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
Gene Hoffman, Investor and Advisor – Chia Network – Mr. Hoffman is a serial entrepreneur and former NASDAQ CEO
Michael Nelson, Professor of Computer Science, Old Dominion University

Speakers and Breakout Session Leaders:

Dr. Gary Marchionini, Dean of the UNC School of Information and Library Science
Dr. Jean Camp, Indiana University Professor of Informatics and Director of Center for Security and Privacy in Informatics, Computing, and Engineering
Mr. Mark Yusko, Founder, CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Morgan Creek Capital Management.
Dr. David Thaw, Assistant Professor of Law and Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, Affiliated Fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School
Dr. Reagan Moore, Emeritus Professor, UNC SILS and RENCI, Founder of the Data Intensive Computing Environments
Dr. Cal Lee, Professor School of Information and Library Science, UNC-Chapel Hill, Fellow of the Society of American Archivists
Jeff Garratt, Software Architect, IBM Blockchain Solution Assurance
Ms. Sharmila Bhatia, Electronic Records Format Specialist, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
Mr. Gene Hoffman, Investor and Advisor, Chia Network – Mr. Hoffman is a serial entrepreneur and former NASDAQ CEO
Dr. Michael Nelson, Professor of Computer Science, Old Dominion University