EP 8: Unraveling Web3 and Blockchain Frontiers with Sandy Carter: A Journey into Decentralization and the Metaverse

Embark with us on a tech adventure that's anything but ordinary as Sandy Carter, COO of Unstoppable Domains and former VP of Amazon Web Services joins me to unravel the complex skein of Web3 and blockchain technology. Together, we peel back the layers of decentralization, discussing its power to shift control back into the hands of the digital citizenry. Sandy's riveting transition from cloud computing to the vanguard of the Web3 revolution is a story of tech evolution, as we examine the potential of blockchain to solve real-world puzzles like the labyrinth of international medical record access—a testament to the transformative nature of this emerging digital landscape.

As we navigate the crossroads of innovation, Sandy and I wander into the burgeoning territory of spatial computing and the Metaverse, where our interactions and personal brands are being reimagined. The conversation turns visionary with the prospect of Apple Vision glasses and other technologies that promise to weave a 3D internet into the fabric of our everyday lives, all while keeping a keen eye on ensuring no one is left behind in this digital metamorphosis. Diving further into the synergy of blockchain and AI, we uncover the untapped potential for heightened trust and efficiency across sectors, and Sandy provides a keen perspective on the pivotal role of ethical AI. This is a rendezvous with the future of technology where we're not just spectators – we're participants shaping the narrative.

About Sandy Carter: 

LinkedIN
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandyacarter/

Twitter / X
https://twitter.com/sandy_carter

Chapters

• 0:05 Exploring Web3 With Sandy Carter
• 9:40 Spatial Computing and the Metaverse
• 18:02 Blockchain, AI, and Ethical Use

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to Tech Travels hosted by the seasoned tech enthusiast and industry expert, steve Woodard. With over 25 years of experience and a track record of collaborating with the brightest minds in technology, steve is your seasoned guide through the ever-evolving world of innovation. Join us as we embark on an insightful journey, exploring the past, present and future of tech under Steve's expert guidance.

Speaker 2: 0:34

Welcome back, fellow travelers, to another exciting episode of Tech Travels. Today we have a truly exceptional guest joining us, sandy Carter. Sandy is the Chief Operating Officer for unstoppable domains. She's a former executive at Amazon Web Services and she has played a pivotal role in driving business innovation and transformation. As a thought leader, she's also recognized in the industry and the emerging technologies, with a special focus on AI, cloud and Web3. Beyond her corporate achievements, she's also a best-selling author. She bring her insights on books that help navigate complex intersections of technology and business. Sandy, thank you so much for coming on the show, happy for you to be here and looking forward to our discussion today.

Speaker 3: 1:16

Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2: 1:17

Absolutely so, before we jump into Web3 and the metaverse, can you tell us a little bit about your background and catch us up on where you are now in this incredible journey?

Speaker 3: 1:27

Yeah, so I actually started out. Steve wanting to be a doctor had this great professor advisor who did technology as well as medicine, and so he was advising me, and it turns out that I pass out if I smell certain chemicals in a doctor's office. So that is not a great thing for a doctor, and so he convinced me that I could use computers for good. So I did my senior thesis on doing drug testing on a computer versus on animals, which I'm still today very passionate about, and that kind of led me into tech. So I've really been in tech for ever since I graduated. I love technology.

Speaker 3: 2:10

My last big company tech role was with Amazon Web Services, a company that I really loved and learned so much from, and, as always, there, I helped create the first enterprise workload division and work on our regulated industry products and portfolio and started going doing a deep dive on blockchain at a request of some of our customers at Amazon, really fell in love with the technology itself and then did a deep dive into the metaverse and its technology and, long story short, that led me to wanting to do something in the Web3 and blockchain space. Now I had been doing AI since 2013, so I didn't want to leave that behind either, but when I heard about what Unstoppable was doing with that digital identity platform, I took the big leap leaving a company that I really did love. I really and truly loved Amazon to go into something new and exciting and to kind of really start a new revolution in the tech space.

Speaker 2: 3:11

You know, it is truly remarkable to hear about your journey, sandy, and the way that you've transitioned from a major role at Amazon Web Services into the frontier of blockchain and metaverse is really a testament to your passion and innovation. It's often said that blockchain really acts as an entry point or a gateway for many pioneers in the Web3 space, and I find that it's the foundational technology where many really do begin their journey and kind of draw into its promise of the immutable and revolutionary ledger system. But can really, considering that Web3 is really celebrated as the next leap of the Internet and you've aptly really described your current stages as kind of the dial-up era of connectivity and I'm eager to hear your insights how do you perceive Web3 as an evolution, starting kind of starting it to reform the framework of decentralized networks and blockchain integration? Most importantly, I would love to hear your unique perspective, which would be invaluable in understanding how these advancements could potentially revolutionize the tech landscape as we know it.

Speaker 3: 4:13

Yeah, you know, if you think about the whole internet today, it's very much centralized. That's not where we started with the internet, but that's where we are today. So, for example, if you log into, let's say, google, you log in with your password and your ID. That is not actually your password and ID, because at any time someone could remove that from you and all the data that they're collecting about you is their data.

Speaker 3: 4:39

We know this because we know Metta and Google just declare that they had $100 billion of revenue from selling our data to other people. So fast forward to Web 3. And what Web 3 does is it really decentralizes that because of the blockchain, it enables really the entity of blocks to have all that information versus one centralized entity, company or country that owns that. So, for example, we saw this really clearly when Twitter rebranded to X. Someone had been using X as their digital identity. It was immediately taken because the Twitter team wanted it, and so they lost all that history, everything that they had. They lost. They were given a new digital identity, but it was not the same one, not the one that they thought that they owned. So in Web 3, that digital identity is yours. It lives on chain or on the blockchain, and so the data that's collected about you, as well as your identity, is yours, and we believe this is so important. It's like another human right is that data about you belongs to you, not to another party?

Speaker 2: 5:47

Yeah, it's incredible because it's like it's in a sense, it's like a philosophical shift, returning the rights since sovereignty back to the individual and giving them the ability to make a choice as to where they want to be able to move their data. I think you did a previous interview before and I think you had mentioned something about you had to have an operation in Brazil and it took a couple days for them to get your medical record. Can you kind of expand on that experience and what that might mean for our listeners?

Speaker 3: 6:14

Yeah, it was really crazy. So I I actually had an accident in Brazil and I broke everything on my left side. It took me four hours to get to the hospital, but when I was there, I wanted to have surgery right away so I could end the pain. Well, they told me they had to get records from two or three different hospitals and doctors that I had, and it took overnight. So I actually had my surgery delayed by almost a full day because they didn't have access to the records.

Speaker 3: 6:44

Now imagine another world where that digital identity is mine. I could pull it up. It would be protected still on chain only my private data but I could have just given it to them. In terms of my medical care, it could have been instantaneous, which I think is what we all want, but it goes beyond, just like healthcare. You know. Also, if you think about you know things like your diploma. I was reading an article from Facebook where they said 36% of people who list things on their profile like their education is actually not accurate. And so who do you trust and how do you trust them? How do you verify it? Blockchain is great for that. It has that trusted verification so that you can validate. You know what's really important to you.

Speaker 2: 7:31

That is a harrowing experience. I think it really highlights the critical issue that really many people feel today. I think the ability to have instant, secure access to the personal data, especially during emergencies, is really a game changer. Now I think the potential for really for blockchain to really say is to safeguard our digital identities and I also think to streamline that verification process is the revolutionary part about health not just healthcare but also across various sectors. But when it comes to Web 3 and the Metaverse, I'm really fascinated by the implications specifically around user identity in virtual spaces, so that, given the Metaverse really is kind of an essential collective virtual shared space, we think about the way that we establish and maintain that digital identity takes on new dimensions, new dimensions for complexity and importance and I'm wondering if you could delve deeper into how the digital identity is really managed within the Metaverse. I mean, do you envision blockchain ensuring that our digital or virtual avatars and assets are secure in truly ours?

Speaker 3: 8:34

Well, I love it, you know, because originally the trend was, as you entered different Metaverse's, your avatar would change. It would look completely different, as we've really matured in the Metaverse. Now we see people want to keep their brand from Metaverse to Metaverse, so that you could recognize me, whether I was in an AXI Infinity game or a Sandbox game or an Atlantis game, that you knew who I was. Just like we know if we go to a conference, right, we change clothes, but we look the same, and so, with a digital identity, it attaches to an avatar. So as you log into a Metaverse, your avatar just comes with you, which I really love. It can also identify you like, imagine, above your head it would say you know sandyx, and that would be my identity too, which is really powerful in a lot of blockchain games where you know on the leaderboard, you don't want your crypto address, you want your name on the leaderboard if you make the leaderboard.

Speaker 3: 9:29

So I think that this is just a phenomenal. You know space to be in and I also think, steve, you know there's a lot of questions where people say you know the Metaverse is dead. Long live the Metaverse. You know, spatial computing is the Metaverse like. We're talking about spatial computing now like it's something brand new, but it's just the Metaverse. It's just another word for the Metaverse. So the, the new glasses, the Apple Vision glasses all of that is the Metaverse. And I was just at NFT Paris. I got to experience a digital fashion show and then the in real life fashion show. I do believe there's legs here.

Speaker 2: 10:05

It may not be right away, but I do believe there are legs around this whole concept yeah, it's incredible, your insights, I mean really just kind of evolving, you know, in in the nature of identity in the Metaverse. I think it's really eye-opening. The idea of really carrying a consistent avatar and digital identity across those platforms is really powerful and it adds a layer of really kind of that personal branding and recognition that really echoes that physical world interactions, kind of like being across you know kind of you know across different conferences, as you mentioned. But the concept of spatial computing, I think, adds another layer of a layer to the conversation. When we talk about spatial computing I think it's often wrapped up in a lot of technical jargon. So could you kind of unpack the term for us? How does spatial computing enhance those interactions in the Metaverse? And what about technologies like Apple Vision's Vision Pro, like where do you see them coming into play?

Speaker 3: 10:59

so spatial computing to me is, you know, making sure that you're looking at the internet, and maybe a 3d version. Typically, it doesn't always have to be, though, that you would use some sort of glasses or something to facilitate your entry into that space. I had the opportunity to try it, and it's just an incredible experience. Like it gets you closer than anything.

Speaker 2: 11:24

I haven't had it yet, but I definitely tell my on my little wishlist for Christmas to really feeling that 3d like you're there.

Speaker 3: 11:28

You're actually physically there. It's not like you're kind of a little avatar in the space. You're actually in the space.

Speaker 2: 11:34

So I think it really makes a difference using some of these spatial technologies to help drive the Metaverse forward how do we see and I'm always curious to hear this is from from entrepreneurs is how do we start to see the, the change and kind of the social interactions starting to shift into more of kind of a metaverse with Oculus or a Vision Pro? Is how do we start to envision a future where we start to shift a business model towards things like mobile tablets? Maybe not everybody can experience the metaverse through these type of simple glasses. What is an optional way that they can experience it through mobile? Or is there a shift starting to happen in this venue? We just need to see it a little bit clearly.

Speaker 3: 12:16

There's a lot of options where you don't have to have the glasses. You can actually experience the metaverse without glasses. I actually just taught a class. It was quite funny. I just taught a class in the metaverse and nobody was required any extra glasses or anything because they wanted the class to be accessible for all. That, to me, was really cool, because that means just having internet. You're lucky if you have internet access, because not everybody in the world has that. Those glasses from Apple, they're like $3,600. That's not going to be for everybody. I love these metaverses that also make it very accessible but yet still very real to people entering in the metaverse. I don't know which way it's going to go yet, steve. I don't know if the hardware prices are going to come down so that you can use it, or if the experience without glasses is going to go up, or maybe somewhere in between. I do see that that will happen over time.

Speaker 2: 13:15

It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. I want to see if I could ask you a little bit about unstoppable domains and really some of the partnerships that you have in this environment. I know that this is definitely an every evolving field. It seems like every day there's a new wow factor with Web 3. What are you seeing from your partnership from a partnership perspective, and what are you seeing from an adoption perspective?

Speaker 3: 13:44

Today at Unstoppable, we have four million digital identities out in the space. We are the largest digital identity platform, but our mission is to get a digital identity into the hands of every person. That's seven billion people. We still have a long way to go. This is a journey. It's a marathon. It's not a sprint.

Speaker 3: 14:05

If you think about the partnerships that we formed with Unstoppable, one of our prime goals has been to provide utility to people. What that means is to provide them value from owning that digital identity. That could be something as simple as doing messaging. We now have encrypted messaging. I can message four million digital identity holders out there. I can message any Coinbase wallet holder. I can message any Lens protocol user. I think that's a really powerful use case. I can send encrypted email, which is really important, with my domain. I can do crypto exchanges. I can use Sandyx to buy something with crypto. That was our initial use case and it's still our number one. We do 30,000 transactions a week just taking Sandyx, transitioning it into my 21 digits and numbers and letters of my crypto address and back. I think that's pretty impressive, given where the market has been lately as well. I think these partners add amazing value. Some of it is real, solid utility. Some of it is emotional connection.

Speaker 3: 15:20

We just announced at NFT Paris that we were going to be doing an extension for the Pudgy penguins. If you don't know, the Pudgy penguins are a big blue chip NFT collection. But they've really expanded. They really consider themselves a brand, a Web3 brand. They've been doing these little plushies. I have one right here. Let me bring it in. My daughter brought me this this morning. This is a Pudgyx. It has a little tag on it. You can get into their Pudgy world. What they're doing is really that whole digital experience providing real life item. That gets you into a game, a Pudgy world game. Now you have your own identity. Now I'm Sandypudgy. That real combination is pretty cool. That is providing utility, but it's also providing that emotional connection. Who doesn't want Sandypudgy? It just stands for something so cool. Both my daughters wanted it immediately by the way.

Speaker 3: 16:22

Those are the things that we're doing here at Unstoppable.

Speaker 2: 16:26

That's interesting. I love to hear the stories like that that hit a home you know close to the heart, especially with toys that might have twin three year old boys and they love their stuff, they, they, they love their stuffed animals, they. One of them has basically what we call Sammy the sloth and the other one is basically monk it's, it's great. So I totally get the attachment. I want to transition and talk a little bit around blockchain and AI. I don't think the conversation would be complete around Web three unless we talked about both. So question for you is I know that AI is really becoming increasingly intertwined in all these emerging technologies, especially with Web three in the metaverse. So how do you see AI as enhancing that user experience that drives innovation within these futuristic environments?

Speaker 3: 17:12

Oh, wow. So I love this topic. I think that we could talk about this probably forever. Blockchain and AI I think are are really meant to be right, because blockchain enhances AI. It brings to it data security, that decentralization and trust that's so important transparency. So, if you think about it, for me real world use cases will involve both blockchain and artificial intelligence. I think there's a convergence that's going to happen there. Now, why is this so important? Well, if you think about it, you know we as humans sometimes get attracted by the next little shiny object, which happens to be AI, but in reality, I think it's going to be, you know, spatial Web three that has a digital identity.

Speaker 3: 18:02

Blockchain and AI that are going to work together. So, for example, I met with one conference. I met someone in the food industry. Blockchain tracks their products journey from farm to table. There are farming, an agriculture solution, farm to table, but they use AI to analyze the data so they have a better supply chain decision. I think that's a really cool use of the two technologies together.

Speaker 3: 18:29

I also attended this the session with 100 healthcare startups in New York City, and one of them was using an AI chatbot to assist with patients, but blockchain was securing that sensitive medical data. So together they were empowering this. Medical solutions, securing data sharing with advanced analytics, and I could go on and on with these type of solutions. I'll give you another one that we've been thinking a lot about at unstoppable, which is you know, 49% of the world's population will experience an election this year, and the number one thing people are worried about is I see my candidate, but is that really my candidate Like? Is that his video? Is that his picture? Is that his tweet? And so now, using blockchain, you can actually provide that verification. Consider a green check besides something that you see in the news or a picture on Twitter or a video, you can actually verify that with blockchain, and for me, that's such a powerful use case that could really be a game changer, especially this year, when we have so much of the world's population going through elections and trust is so important right now.

Speaker 2: 19:42

Right, that's exactly true. It's incredible you mentioned that, because it almost kind of took the next topic off my mind, which is, you know, leveraging AI, because now we're in a world where AI is generating all this content and we don't know if, in fact, if it's a real person, or if it's the person who actually connected with the content. How do we have a way to solidify trust? That was my big question.

Speaker 3: 20:05

Yeah, and I do think that blockchain plays a role in there. Like, let's imagine you know the Pope's picture I don't know if you saw it or one of the 4 million people who retweeted it the Pope was in a puffer jacket. It was a Balmond puffer jacket, so it was like a branded puffer jacket. The Pope was in that jacket and people were going, oh look, the Pope's so cool, he's in a puffer. And then it later came out that that actually wasn't a real picture. That was an AI-generated picture.

Speaker 3: 20:31

So, imagine if the world changed to wear anything that was verified, not AI-generated, had a green checkmark by it. You can do that today. We actually have filed for a patent in that space where you can actually put that trust verification, so you could actually verify with Sandypudgy or Sandyx. You could validate that. Hey, this is really a picture of me, or this is really my video, or this is really my quote. It was funny because the opposite happened to me.

Speaker 3: 21:02

I had been at an event in LA around blockchain and AI, and it was a red carpet event, so I brought out my nice gown. It was freezing cold Like I thought LA was supposed to be warm, so cold, so I really did put on a puffer jacket. Somebody really did take a picture of me and posted it, so once the Pope's picture, though, was viewed as fake. When I posted my picture, people said oh, your picture is fake too. So now you really have a massive trust issue, because what's true is questioned and what's not true is questioned. So how do you validate it? I really think that blockchain is the main way that we can validate all of that content, if we could do it in a scalable fashion.

Speaker 2: 21:53

And this involves basically kind of having the content for a person who's generating content or the person having their way for them to digitally sign with some sort of cryptographic key, the ability to verify yes, this person did sign this, they did post it, we can validate it using the blockchain with their public key and they did sign it, so something like that.

Speaker 3: 22:15

Right, Absolutely, that's absolutely right. Yep, you got it.

Speaker 2: 22:21

And, of course, I can't let the question go about around AI as, in your opinion, really kind of getting into this. What role does kind of ethical AI play in the development of future blockchain technologies and how? Organizations what would be your message to organizations ensuring responsible and transparent use of these technologies? What's your message to them?

Speaker 3: 22:41

Yeah, I feel really passionate about this In fact, so passionate, steve. I did like three or four speeches on it and I got named one of the top 10 responsible AI leaders for 2023. This is something that's really close to my heart, for sure. So I think that every company has a responsibility to ensure that the data that they're using is the right data, that it's diverse data, that it really represents what's going on and, if it doesn't, that they need to tell people about it. That means governance, that means training employees, that means making sure that you've got everything lined up to do this in the appropriate way.

Speaker 3: 23:20

It was really fascinating to me because you know, and well, let me just take women's health. There are some great AI health tools out there. In fact, one has a 77% likelihood of predicting liver disease using just a blood test. That's so cool, right? What we didn't know is it missed liver disease and 44% of the female patients because they didn't have enough data on female patients. They had female patients, who have different markers than men, and so missing 44% for women is unacceptable, and so, how you know, maybe we should have labeled it. Hey, this was this. Ai model was trained with 90% male data, so that you know the risk of using or leveraging it.

Speaker 3: 24:10

I was just reading a story about COVID and they were using some AI testers and they found that oxygen level in people varies by the color of your skin, so they weren't detecting certain trends for African-American patients. These type of things need to be noted. You really need to do a good job of identifying that data, and it's not just healthcare, it's all kind of data. I was working with one group and they had this data. They ran it through an AI. They was like I got to present this to the board and I kept saying where did the data come from? Is the data right? And that was the first question the board asked them. They couldn't validate it and it really ruined their entire thesis because the data was wrong. So I think this is super, super important.

Speaker 2: 24:58

That's incredible and I know you mentioned you're very passionate about it. I know you're also very passionate about this. Another thing women of Web 3, tell me about it. How have you been doing with it? You'd launch this on International Women's Day. Tell me how it's going.

Speaker 3: 25:11

Yeah, we launched it. This will now be our third year for International Women's the group and it's called Unstoppable Women of Web3. And we added AI because people were like Web3 or blockchain and AI is so hot. This group is really important to me because it provides education for women. In fact, on International Women's Day, we're gonna be selling a t-shirt and the proceeds from that t-shirt a portion of them I think it's $10 a shirt will go to additional training around the metaverse and around Web3.

Speaker 3: 25:47

The second thing I'm very passionate about is showcasing women. I really love the quote. If you can see it, you can be it. So we've been highlighting amazing women. Now We've done it for three different times the most inspirational women of Web3 and the most inspirational girls of Web3. So you can see all these amazing leaders. And then the last thing that we've been doing is really looking at how you get groups together so they form support networks or tribes. So we've also been focused on that and we're real excited this March 8th, international Women's Day, will be able to do another Twitter space around some cool topics as well, as we'll be able to hopefully raise some funds to get some more education out there as well.

Speaker 2: 26:35

Education and training and upscaling is essential. I definitely am plus one on the idea of creating a very unique space where people can come learn, collaborate. I know you mentioned kind of this tribal knowledge. It's exciting to see what's on your horizon for the next three years in this space. It's growing so fast. I mean, every day there seems to be a wow factor. What are you seeing from a three year trajectory, as we kind of round out our segment? What's your predictions for the future?

Speaker 3: 27:01

Let's see. So predictions for the future I think that we're gonna see more discussion about this convergence. I was just at a conference where tokenization was so hot Tokenizing real world assets and then using those real world assets with AI. I think that's gonna be a hot one. Tokenization, I also think figuring out trust, and trust is a lot of things. It's not just what we talked about here Regaining trust, building trust, proving trust in assets. I think that's gonna become a really important one. And then I think, like I said, the convergence is gonna be hot. I think all of these technologies are gonna be converging.

Speaker 3: 27:43

I wrote a couple articles on it. I'm starting to see more now come out about this convergence, which I think will be interesting, and the other one I'll surprise you with this one space. I think we're gonna start hearing more about space startups and what's going on. When I was at AWS, I started the Space Accelerator. I thought it was so cool. At one of the conferences, I was in a round table about tokenizing space debris and even tokenizing satellites so that smaller countries could get access to some of that data. I think we're gonna start seeing some of the fruition of the output of some of those space startups as well.

Speaker 2: 28:22

That's incredible. I will look forward to having you on. I would love to hear you talk more about this tokenization and space again on our future programs. Sandy, thank you so very much for coming on the show today and sharing your incredibly insightful, inspiring conversation on tech travels. Your wealth of knowledge and your experience as truly enriched our understanding of Web3 and the Metaverse. I wanna thank you so much for this opportunity.

Speaker 3: 28:44

Thank you, Steve. I'll talk to you soon. Lea ك어요ناcionalcom.