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We love frank, punchy answers from our interviewees, and that’s exactly what we got from Sebastian Küpers, Chief Transformation Officer at Plan.Net Group. “What are the biggest misconceptions people have about blockchain?” we asked. His reply: “That it’s all about monkey pictures and crypto speculation.”
Well, hopefully you won’t be thinking that after reading the rest of this interview! One repeating theme is that if we’re going to entrust decisions to AI agents – and we’ve written two stories about that already today, so it’s in the air – then we do need to actually trust them. And that’s one potential role for blockchain.
“With service-as-a-software taking over, the entire service industry will be part of the evolving agentic economy,” Sebastian told us. “For AI agents to deliver these services effectively, a trust layer will be essential. All of this will be enabled by blockchain, creating a whole new economy.”
Before reading the rest of Sebastian’s answers – and we firmly recommend that you do – a word on his role. As Chief Transformation Officer, he’s responsible for digital transformation projects such as the introduction of AI, spatial computing, blockchain and data-driven marketing for the Plan.Net Group and for its clients.
He’s also Managing Director of Plan.Net Studios, a creative unit that develops spatial experiences for its clients. So it’s safe to say that he’s at the sharp edge of technology and business. As you will rapidly discover…
I was fascinated, but it also completely puzzled me, as you have to learn so many new things, understand the terminology and figure out how it all works. It’s a world of its own that’s not easy to grasp at first.
Two parties agree to do a transaction, and many so-called validators observe that these two parties have agreed, and they validate that this transaction is written down in a ledger that can’t be changed. You would have to compromise a majority of those validators to write anything else. This is called decentralization, and it creates security because everything that is written into a blockchain has been validated by many.
I believe that AI agents will be the breakthrough app that blockchain has been waiting for. And while they will also use blockchain as financial infrastructure, it’s also important to verify outputs of agents, for example, to hold them accountable and to verify their identity and track who created them on the blockchain.
By creating a base-layer infrastructure that is trustless and permissionless by design. Software across all sectors will become increasingly autonomous and will require a trust layer – something blockchain can provide. Whether in healthcare, the supply chain or public services.
That it’s all about monkey pictures and crypto speculation. That dominates the perception so much that people don’t see all the other applications of this technology.
Solving the blockchain trilemma – finding the right balance between decentralization, security and scale – is still work in progress. The tendency to sacrifice decentralization for scalability undermines the whole point of blockchain technology. But there’s still a long way to go. Nobody has solved it yet, and I think that very few are on the right track to do so – like for example Cardano, although many don’t have it on the radar for being the closest to solving the trilemma.
You need to be very aware of how decentralized a blockchain really is, to which extent it complies with regulations and how much energy it consumes.
The biggest advantage is the immutability guaranteed by a decentralized network of validators. That is the key benefit. It comes at a cost. But there are interesting use cases where it makes a lot of sense to pay the cost for extra security.
People need to understand how transparent blockchains are and how privacy preserving techniques, such as zero-knowledge proofs, can be applied to get a better risk assessment depending on their use cases.
That’s the key. We are heading towards a future where billions of AI agents and basically every software will have autonomous capabilities. This requires a trust layer and that’s going to be blockchain.
Probably IOHK for building Cardano and having the patience and rigour to get things right, rather than just being fast.
