Creating anti-rival tokens for collaboration and sharing in ATARCA

Creating anti-rival tokens for collaboration and sharing in ATARCA

2021-06-30

ATARCA logo

This episode focuses on the key concepts of ATARCA (Accounting Technologies for Anti-Rival Coordination and Allocation), a two-year research project that TX embarked on earlier this year. The aim of ATARCA is to investigate in its two pilot experiments how blockchain technologies can be used to create new types of businesses based on the replicable nature of digital resources. 

Head of Technology Jarno Marttila from TX and Dr. Esko Hakanen who is the Project Manager of ATARCA and a post-doctoral researcher at Aalto University talk about what the concept of anti-rival goods means, and how anti-rivalry could turn out to revolutionalize business, especially with immaterial goods such as information within the next 20-30 years. 

They also discuss the more complex question of if and how this concept can be taken even to traditional and asset-intensive sectors such as manufacturing where the new roles of collaboration, connectivity, and sustainability require added interaction and agile experimentation across companies, something which can benefit from anti-rival tokenization.

Watch the video podcast on Youtube, or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Key learnings with ATARCA

  1. Understanding Anti-Rivalry: ATARCA is delving deep into the concept of anti-rival goods, which are resources that increase in value as more people use them, contrasting with rival goods, which diminish in value as they are used. Dr. Esko Hakanen emphasizes the importance of understanding and leveraging anti-rival goods in the modern economy, especially in the context of information and knowledge, which can be shared and multiplied infinitely without losing value.
  2. Challenges in Traditional Business Models: Traditional business models, which are predominantly transaction-based, struggle to adapt to the context of anti-rival goods. The tangible, quantifiable nature of transactions in traditional models contrasts sharply with the intangible, multiplicative nature of anti-rival goods, such as reputation points in a course, highlighting the need for innovative approaches and models.
  3. Tokenization and Anti-Rivalry: The project explores the concept of tokenization, converting value into a digital representation on a blockchain, as a means to quantify and leverage anti-rival goods. Dr. Esko Hakanen and Jarno Marttila discuss the potential of tokens to represent social conventions and agreements, providing examples like Monopoly money and festival currencies, and extending it to real-world currencies representing exchange value.
  4. Potential Impact on Businesses: ATARCA aims to create scalable technological solutions and frameworks that can be applied across various contexts and use cases. Dr. Esko Hakanen sees the potential for businesses to create value “out of thin air” by leveraging anti-rival resources, allowing for unlimited growth without the constraints of finite physical resources, paving the way for more sustainable and innovative business models.
  5. Application Beyond Information: While information is a clear example of an anti-rival good, the project also explores the application of anti-rivalry to tangible goods, like a cup of coffee, by associating them with multipliable information. This approach could lead to personalized solutions in various fields, such as healthcare, and contribute to social well-being by supporting local entities and incentivizing better choices.
  6. ATARCA’s Vision for the Future: The project envisions a future where the principles of anti-rivalry are applied broadly, from business models to everyday life, leading to more equitable and sustainable practices. The project’s exploration of practical use cases, like regional currencies, and its commitment to social goals underscore its holistic approach to leveraging anti-rival goods for societal benefit.

The ATARCA project, as discussed by Dr. Esko Hakanen and Jarno Marttila in the podcast, is a visionary endeavor aiming to redefine the paradigms of value and resource utilization by leveraging the concept of anti-rival goods—resources that increase in value as more people use them. This innovative approach seeks to create sustainable and equitable economic and social systems, allowing for the realization of unlimited growth without the depletion of finite resources.

The exploration of tokenization and practical applications in societal well-being and local empowerment are pivotal aspects of the project, promising a future where anti-rival principles are integrated into daily life, fostering innovation, sustainability, and equity in various sectors of society. ATARCA is not just a theoretical exploration but a beacon for a profound and positive transformation in our world.

Transcript

Jarno Marttila  00:30

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the TX podcast. My name is Jarno Marttila and I’m your host and our guest this week is Dr. Esko Hakanen from Aalto University. Welcome Esko. It’s been a heatwave in Finland. How are you handling this?

Dr. Esko Hakanen  00:49

Hi everyone. Yeah, so, I’m quite okay. So, as you can see, so I’m inhabiting the home office and it’s starting to be okay, since we have a cooling solution here implemented, but otherwise, it would be quite interesting so to speak. So, great, but happy to be here and thanks for inviting me.

Jarno Marttila  01:11

Yeah, happy to have you finally on this  podcast and we have been working together for audience like on a project and we’ll be going a little bit in the podcast like what is it about? It’s very exciting one, but maybe first things first, like, tell us a little bit about yourself and Aalto University?

Dr. Esko Hakanen  01:32

Yeah, so I’m postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University. I’m also the project manager for our project ATARCA and in my research, I mean, especially focusing on business models in this kind of ecosystem context. So, what that means so basically, that’s simply how value is created and shared in this kind of complex, loosely coupled networks, which involve multiple firms or other stakeholders in the settings and then again, so for those who might not know about Aalto University, it’s based in Finland, followed roughly 10 years ago, through the merger of three major universities in Finland. So, we now combine science, technology, business and arts into one accomplish and that’s located in the metropolitan area of Helsinki and considering our relatively young age, Aalto is still doing quite well in different international rankings and for instance, we’re one of the most international universities in Europe and partially, to our background, we really emphasize this kind of multi-disciplinary research and this kind of approach is also seen in our current project.

Jarno Marttila  02:57

Yeah, that sounds very interesting and very timely research topics, like a constant value creation. It’s very practical, I imagine for businesses to dig deeper, and combine different sciences there.

Dr. Esko Hakanen  03:14

Yeah, definitely. So, it’s kind of easy to see that there we are facing constantly, more complex problems and so usually the kind of solutions for those problems involve where different kinds of thinking from different fields and kind of really various and broad field of expertise to solve them, probably. So, yeah.

Jarno Marttila  03:38

Indeed. So, this project that we’re working on, it’s called ATARCA, but do you want to shine some light? How did we end up here? And why is this project important?

Dr. Esko Hakanen  03:54

Sure. So, first things first. So, ATARCA, that stands for Accounting Technologies for Anti Rival Coordination and Allocation. So, that might not sound really lightning, but let’s try to kind of get the hang of it. So, basically, we’re kind of investigating this, how could we use distributed ledger technologies for supporting new types of collaborative actions and the under rivalry there is basically that these actions tried to build on the replicable nature of different bits, dot resources. So, there’s definitely some new ground there to cover. So, basically, as mentioned, this is a cross disciplinary research project. There are many different stakeholders, and especially I want to emphasize Professor Pekka Nikander’srole behind the project. So, this is basically building on the many years of his research and his team’s research around the topic and then again, personally, I’m coming here from slightly different angles. So, I have a background in, especially in studying industrial services, and the impact of these digital technologies and dissociation to the business models, especially in manufacturing industry. So, you can consider metals or mining industry or these kind of asset intensive fields and even there, we can kind of see how the role of collaboration, how the increases in connectivity of your devices and products, there are creating more new possibilities that kind of require more interaction and agile experimentation across firms. So, there’s definitely room to investigate how we can then kind of coordinate and allocate our resources more efficiently in our networks.

Jarno Marttila  06:01

No, I remember, I didn’t write the proposal last year. I remember when it was written, like it didn’t make any sense to me. It was like, very high-flying stuff.

Dr. Esko Hakanen  06:14

So, I think that’s honest way to put it. So, we have now worked in the project, roughly three months. We had the kickoff, well, two months ago, basically and I guess we kind of blew them there that we have this plan. We have great ambitions. We have kind of great possibilities and ideas here, but then, in all honesty, does anyone really understand what this means? And do we see the problem and potential solutions the same way? So, I think that’s, honestly, that’s kind of our major things to cover for the first month of the project and perhaps throughout the whole project life’s lifetime since it’s good to remember that this is part of the European Commission’s horizon 2020 funding, but we have this track for future and emerging technology. So, we’re kind of really on the exploratory ground here, and a lot of things to cover, and then try to kind of figure out what actually means in practice.

Jarno Marttila  07:20

Yeah, I guess you could say it’s the bleeding edge of science that we’re trying to bring into practice in a way in the project, then after three months, like, I’m kind of have an idea like, oh, okay, so this is what we’re creating. Yeah, three months from study.

Dr. Esko Hakanen  07:38

Yeah. So, it’s been really kind of educating for me as well. So, I want to see where my startup, there’s any any kind of crypto specialists. So, this is really kind of unknown territory for me as well. Even though in a sense I would say, in my line of research, and especially if you consider this kind of asset heavy industries, which I have kind of mostly investigated, I still think in that context, I kind of know what others are talking in different contexts, but it’s really difficult, because you tried to somehow converge everything together in this project, and it’s just so complex problems page to address. So, yeah, I really enjoyed our collaboration so far. So, let’s keep that up.

Jarno Marttila  08:27

Yeah. It’s super interesting, interesting stuff. You mentioned, there was this concept of anti-realness. So, that’s probably something new for a lot of people that what is anti-rivalry on realness? And how does it relate to let’s say, business? Can  you shed some light in there?

Dr. Esko Hakanen  08:50

Okay, I’ll do my best. I guess and this is really kind of complex. This is easy to kind of put in place in theory, but then if you tried to kind of apply the theory in practice, it’s really fast coming much more kind of challenging to put different things into different boxes. Yeah, so basically, so in short, Anti rival resource is pretty much anything that increases in value, the more it’s being used, that’s kind of the essential nature of the kind of behind the content concept. So, when you consider businesses and especially kind of traditional approaches there, so we are mostly used to classifying resources as rival or perhaps non-rival, but in the business context, we are more or less thinking resources that will be consumed when used. So, these are the rival resources. So, if I use a piece of steel to create a roof for my house, I cannot use that same piece of steel to anything else and neither we share the same roof in our different houses. So, that’s kind of quite easy to understand that, when you apply it somewhere, it’s taken away from our use cases, or even more simple example would be a cup of coffee. So, we cannot really drink the same cup of coffee that’s kind of easy to understand. So, then, if those are rival resources, we have non-rival resources, and these are something that we consider that these can be used simultaneously. So, for instance, for an experience, many people can enjoy the same park, or beach at the same time, but still, there are some limitations. So, these are not infinite. So, not all the citizens can visit the same place at the same time with the same day. We can or other way to put it, so we all breathe the same air and oxygen in our atmosphere, but we kind of raillery consider that the limited resource that if we end up polluting that into unreadable, we don’t really have an alternative supply for that. So, we cannot multiply these types of resources in, even though they’re usually considered as kind of non-depletable, in many cases.

So, these are kind of let’s say, traditional approaches that you can see in many past economics books, and so forth and then these anti rival resources, so it’s easy to kind of think that these are the undying of rival resources. So, again, so these are in the benefit from increased number of users. So, easy examples are network phones, or the internet. So, the bigger the reach, the more value you can kind of create in that network or you can think of, let’s say, a news article, so we kind of tend to think that, that better articles and more valuable content gets more readers and then kind of its kind of a verification of the value of the article as well. So, the key element here, we don’t really consume anything once we kind of use this and the rival resources. So, it’s kind of the news article doesn’t kind of deplete by the number of readers. So, in this context, it’s all kind of, I think the best example, if you tried to kind of comprehend what one is all about, so you can go unsure about reputation. I think that’s kind of easiest way to kind of approach topic. So, if we, here, for instance, endorse each other, we’re not really taking anything away from anyone else and there are no limitations on how many people we can kind of uphold or endorse in different contexts or so. I think that’s the reputation is the easy way forward to understanding what’s an anti-rival might actually mean, but the other way to look at it would be actually to kind of, for instance, dig deeper into our project websites, ATARCA.eu. I think there are perhaps better explanations there than then I can provide here.

Jarno Marttila  13:17

Yeah, I remember reading. I think it was both costs and insurance research paper, wasn’t back best research paper where this concept was kind of being drafted and there was this matrix of what kind of rival, non-rival and anti-rival in different contexts in different examples. There was an example of a game online game, that the more you have players, playing the game, kind of consuming that resource and also sharing kind of experience them more immersive or more, the better it becomes. It’s kind of also a way to understand it nice, but I go through these comments from effects that what aren’t there?

Dr. Esko Hakanen  13:57

Yeah, so network effects is that’s really kind of the key word here as well. So, anything that kind of follows that as is most likely feeding in this context, but that’s, of course not kind of always the case and of course, if you want to complicate the situation more, you can also consider whether you can exclude the access to resources stooge for instance, the online games if there are for instance, you need to get to have this same game in order to kind of enjoy it. It’s not kind of accessible to anyone anywhere at any time.

Jarno Marttila  14:34

That’s true. That’s true and then there’s I guess, so next question will probably be in like if I was in business videos like what’s the how do you ascertain the value of this? Then is something even murkier on the usually get value like having scarcityor something, but now, you have like kind of infinite supply, infinite amount of reputation.

Dr. Esko Hakanen  14:59

Yeah. So, that’s the tricky part. I think that’s the kind of main reason why I personally think this is a high value project. So, since we kind of identified that there are these technological possibilities that are in place, we can see some obvious use cases, how we can say benefit from, for instance, sharing our data that these are kind of our resources that are in aisle usage, but then again, it’s when you don’t you really do business in that setting. So, your kind of you are accustomed to being, let’s say, business models that are based on transactions. So, when I buy a car, I give money to the car dealer. So, that’s kind of really straightforward. So, you kind of have these exchanges, where you usually have something tangible, that’s exchanging hands and that approach doesn’t really fit here ATARCA context, so if you consider the core course, so you can’t really produce or sell many courses if you just get paid in reputation points. So, it doesn’t really make sense in our current setting. So, it might be challenging, but fits.

Jarno Marttila  16:18

It’s this old batch of let’s say, if your photograph or in the arts type of industry, I think people want to pay your exposure. Well, forget my waiting. I’ll give you a shout out on Instagram. I don’t envy anything, but I can pay my bills with that.

Dr. Esko Hakanen  16:40

Yeah, no, I think that’s a really great example of so basically, you can reach out to different designers and artists and ask them how well they made this kind of work in this situation that I give you something that is tangible, and usually kind of you would have to pay money for that and then I kind of decided, well, I can keep the piece of art, but I just give you exposure. So, it apparently, it’s tricky. So, it doesn’t really work that way.

Jarno Marttila  17:12

Yeah. Maybe that’s something we can look into deeper in some discussion that one can solve that problem also.

Dr. Esko Hakanen  17:21

That we’ll be able to run a one kind of clear use case for technologies, perhaps also, if we can kind of make this more even this kind of scenario as well.

Jarno Marttila  17:35

Indeed. We talked about a little bit about the concept and the project and also, you mentioned about the decentralized technologies, but if we go a little bit, like thinking about the, maybe the design process or the process of like, well, how do we get from the concept to the tokenized items? Like, what is kind of like, in your words like how do you say like, what is tokenization? And how it’s not the kind of related this anti rivalry?

Dr. Esko Hakanen  18:08

Yeah, again, this is, I think, challenging. Well, I would say that when I say token, it kind of different people hear different things. So, again, it’s kind of a term that has many different definitions and approaches in different contexts and while this is, again, not perhaps my expertise, but this is also something that we tried to kind of study. So, for instance, how to kind of connect the tokens into the concept of anti-realness, but from my background, I would say that the token is pretty much any physical or virtual representation of something that usually involves social conventions and that can kind of be called. I think that’s kind of, for me, let’s say more generic definition for a token and also the way I’m trying to fit this in the same business context that I kind of relate to. So, we can think examples such as, well, Monopoly money, that’s a token. That’s kind of representing something. It’s an agreement, then you can kind of think, let’s say, a festival area, where you have moods for local restaurants or something like that and sometimes, you’ll see that there’s this made-up currency there for buying the food in the area. So, I think those are examples of tokens and of course, you can also make that our current money system, so different currencies, Euro, Dollars, they’re also representing something. So, basically representing a certain amount of exchange value that you have in them. So, I think those are kind of that’s my approach to what is a token question so representing some social convention that we can then counts later on.

Jarno Marttila  20:07

Yeah, I also wrote like myself in the morning like how would I explain this if I would have to explain? So, I’m just thinking like, there’s like, I’m asking this question, but I also have to know, like, if someone asked this for me, like, what would I say? I’m running in the sense of like that, okay, so my background is I’ve got more engineering side. So, I would say tokenization is approaches for quantifying, maybe resource or asset that could be tangible or intangible in the digital representation on a blockchain. That’s very engineering problem

Dr. Esko Hakanen  20:40

That’s actually a really, really great example. So, I think that’s pretty much the same approach, I would actually like to kind of consider so of course, tokenization is then let’s try to convert that something from one context to another and then usually, that involves some kind of digital lecture solution or something like that. So, I think it’s really kind of relatable for our project. So, I totally agree. I perhaps cannot use those words, because I don’t really understand them as well as you do, but yeah, so I would say, so if we can try to kind of connect the tokens and realness so I think the kind of key question here is, so again, if that’s quantifiable, somehow, we can call the tokens. So, how we then transfer the reputation that we are, for instance, sharing, and kind of upholding or endorsing nature. So, how we then kind of count that type of sharing. So, we most likely need have some kind of quantifying system for that and basically, to measuring how much endorsements I will kind of be able for you or someone else for whatever instance that I might have.

Jarno Marttila  20:57

Yeah, and this, we’ve been workshopping on this for quite a bit and there are some frameworks and there are some tools to kind of keep the way that might need be something like this, like, appears online, main components in there, like design of the market, like where do the transaction happens, design for the mechanism design of the token itself? And it seems to be like its kind of a mix of micro economics and systems design and designing for people. It gives like this very, like, exactly shaped toolkit from outlier ventures that you can follow the December Tolkien but then there’s like this much more abstract more kind of like, my scientific way of like looking at these big pillars of RAS and then try to kind of steal knowledge from there that okay, well, beats has to be fulfilled to create a token, but it’s been a long waiting process, like a lot of effort goes into there. That’s always my observation, like my so far.

Dr. Esko Hakanen  21:55

Yeah, definitely, I would say that we have a long road ahead of us. So, basically, the more we kind of dig deeper into practically any tool that has been imprisoned in so far, we kind of start to understand that, well, it might, for instance, we have certain examples or frameworks for planning, let’s say a system for tokens, so tokenization. So, you can kind of we know how to build a blockchain for a certain use case, that’s more or less known in the kind of, let’s say, in this context, but the big problem there is that we still have most of those, the tokens that we have there, they are not really in derived. So, we have really few examples of that kind of use cases. So, let’s say, to put it in two simplified terms, we’re seeing, let’s say, really complicated platforms, but they’re still more or less the digital platforms that we are used to have, and that are kind of building on different transactions and exchanges between the participants, even though they are perhaps more analyzed or governed, decentralized or something like that, but still, this is really, let’s see where we end up in two years, but right now, it kind of feeling that once before we understand there are two more steps to be taken and so forth. So, let’s see how it goes.

Jarno Marttila  24:27

Yeah, there’s quite a bit of road to be made, but it’s getting there. Like, every week, its exciting things happening.

Dr. Esko Hakanen  24:35

Yeah, so definitely this is, but most likely the most, the coolest and most inspiring research project I’ve been involved in because well, we’re kind of in this unknown territory and let’s say anything that we kind of come up with seems to be new and pretty remarkable as well as when we kind of consider the potential that can be derived there.

Jarno Marttila  25:01

For sure. So, if you think about the kind of mind, what kind of new baseness good way kind of form from this class, what could be the end results of this project like afterwards that how could improve might benefit businesses? Do you have some ideas about that?

Dr. Esko Hakanen  25:23

I think we have some ideas, but I would say that at this stage, the ideas that we’re gonna have, most likely we’re kind of see, kind of evaluate them after a couple of years, and then kind of culture, how could we have been so wrong, but in any case, so I think there are kind of many applications that will, in a short time, start to look quite obvious and then also kind of alarming that we didn’t understand them earlier, and so forth. So, it’s kind of easy in this case to have good hindsight, but I would say, at least two different approaches are there to when you’re considering this, as let’s say, a business case, or what can we do well. So, of course, we are dealing with technology and trying to develop new forms of accounting, your actions, and different collaborative actions. So, hopefully, we can kind of create this technological toolkit or frameworks that then can be applied in various contexts and use cases and of course, if we are able to create value with tool, same tools in one context, most likely, they will generate value in other contexts as well. So, that’s, of course, quite natural, let’s say business case to have this scalable solution from a technological perspective and then I think this neuro from my background as well, so the second kind of big upside I can see here is that that we’re kind of built to favor this kind of infinite economic growth. So, we want to continuously expand the number of resources we’re producing and that also means that we’re utilizing resources, in growing amounts, and so forth and we’re kind of trying to achieve this and of course, this is impossible in what we are already seeing that it’s not possible, and we have finite resources here on Earth. So, we cannot really have this approach in our context. So, then, basically, how I see this, and what’s kind of great upside here from a business perspective is that if we can have these anti rival resources there, and these are the kind of foundation for your business models or your whole economic system even and then of course, there are no limitations on your growth. So, you’re not anymore kind of counting what resources do you have and what kind of you produce all of those raw material, for instance. Well, you can just start to multiply and use these in different contexts, as long as you wish. So, I think that’s kind of once we are seeing the concepts and these ideas, let’s say in 20, 30 years’ time, I mean, this is going to be the kind of the thing that we’re going to be most excited about. So, we kind of we’re able to devise a way to create value out of thin air, so to speak.

Jarno Marttila  28:39

Yeah, that’s a very interesting kind of discussion, on wonder, when I think about, like, decentralized ledger technology is that they I guess thing can affect businesses in quite a few different ways. Like they can say, create totally new business models, or they can pick up great money for existing businesses by just changing out their let’s say, technology, like architecture or infrastructure is working, but yeah, that’s very interesting. When we talk about like, the resources that it’s actually holding on to my final question, what do you think that there’s this anti rivalry for all resources? I mean, you mentioned in information already, so for sure, it must work for information, but who worked for something else too?

Dr. Esko Hakanen  29:34

Yeah, so definitely for something else. Yes. So, if your kind of, let’s say they easily answered your question that is applied to all resources. That’s no. So, of course, it’s kind of easy way out is to say that we only have certain types of resources can be multiplied, for instance, but they’re kind of when you consider other types of things so they’re not really kind of limitations how many phones you can have? Or how many computers you can connect to the internet? So, of course, these are different, but I think kind of the most interesting and perhaps more most important question here is that how it could be applied into this, let’s say, a cup of coffee or something that’s really clearly not easy to multiply. So, we cannot really drink the same cup of coffee, but can we do something else that kind of somehow connects these elements to those physical resources as well? So, I think that’s also kind of, well, again, kind of partially due to my backgrounds, the angle, it’s really kind of enticing for me in the project.

Jarno Marttila  30:45

Yeah, that’s interesting. Like, it’s good to have anti rival tokens associated with rival products, and there be some dimensions in that product that we have anti rival properties.

Dr. Esko Hakanen  30:57

Yeah. So, I think that’s definitely the question that I tried to kind of understand with the help of this project, and hopefully, a lot of future collaboration or work as well, but basically, so if we, again, try to consider a cup of coffee, so let’s say you can, for instance, consider what kind of beans you are using, or how they have been roasted, or brewed and basically what kind of water was used and if you use those kinds of bits of, say, multipliable information, you can kind of, for instance, measure what we drink and how much we enjoy it and can we then connect these elements to the cup of coffee, and somehow then start to utilize this information in practically endless use cases. So, can we then, for instance, create a system where we can know what’s the perfect cup of coffee for me, so how to produce that and of course, that’s something that can pretty much be changed, well, throughout the time. So, let’s say, in ideal example, here, there will be something that there’s AI, who knows what type of coffee I would want right now, even though I cannot really ask for that. So, let’s learn, if you kind of tried to consider that type of use case, it’s starting to be really far from the original a cup of coffee, and it’s not. There are no limitations anymore, how you can then utilize this kind of knowledge there. So, it’s something like that might be in place.

Jarno Marttila  32:37

Yeah, I could probably do some kind of decentralized reputation and recommendation systems on the basis of that, for example.

Dr. Esko Hakanen  32:46

Yeah, for instance, and then, of course, a cup of coffee is perhaps too trivial, but if you for instance, consider personalized healthcare solution so there are a lot of thoughts, when let’s say that we are going to have in the future some kind of gene sequencing tools, and we’re going to analyze your body and then we can tailor the medication and treatment for your work your individual needs. So, you don’t have these kinds of commonalities or averages anymore, but this is just the perfect solution for me and of course, if that’s a tailor made solution, then the key question starts with that is this actually creating value for me so you as subjective end customer kind of value, this type of treatment that I’m having, because that’s, of course, something that we cannot really measure using the same let’s say, factual measurements. So, then that again, perhaps creates a link so we can start to consider what’s the best use case or line of treatment for certain scenarios and try to kind of, again, combine my individual experiences to everyone else’s and all the kinds of vast amount of data that we have and then somehow kind of build something much more comprehensive out of those individual data points. So, all that kinds of solutions seem really interesting to me and me especially kind of linked in this let’s say tangible resources to anti rival thing.

Jarno Marttila  34:19

That is interesting field. So, this project has website, right, so if someone wants to go and find out more, where do you think they find out more?

Dr. Esko Hakanen  34:33

Yeah, so that is  ATARCA.eu, that takes us to our program our project. Homepage is there are not too much content yet. So, if you want to kind of quickly check what’s going on, I think now’s the time. Hopefully we’re going to expand this page is quite drastically and draw the project.

Jarno Marttila  34:58

Yeah, I guess you can also go Google Scholar try to find beckoning content or Esko Hakanen. I think there’s probably going to be one of the latest research papers or actually about this concept and probably in a project.

Dr. Esko Hakanen  35:14

Basically, that’s of course, is you got so you can see, see all the resources from other we have there in the project, using our websites and then of course, scholar is a really good way to find papers. Well from us, researchers, and also, I think, kind of, since we are having many interesting partners here, so we of course, have you so Streamr, TX, then we have Demos from Finland. So, basically, they are trying to help us to increase our, let’s say, social impact here in the process, or really helping us to communicate our results and kind of solutions that we find and then of course, we have great partners from Spain as well. So, we haveNovact and Qbitfrom Spain and Barcelona area, especially and we’re then trying to with this group of collaborators, we’re trying to find a small, really practical use case before the solution. So, we have been really on, let’s say, on the abstract and let’s say the business perspective here, that it’s good to remember that one of the primary use cases in our project is actually trying to kind of increase social wellbeing here in let’s say, in different contexts that might have need for let’s say, social well-being and attempts on that. So, that’s, again, another field to discuss. So, how we then connect this undesirable linking to let’s say, improving people’s lives in your everyday context, so can we, for instance, support local dealers, or local shops, and perhaps incentivize people to select better options in grocery stores, for instance, if you’re considering environmental aspects, or whatever metrics that you want to basically all that kind of things. We’re trying to also reach the social goals here as well in the project.

Jarno Marttila  37:32

Yeah, and there’s gonna be a couple of pilots if I’m not mistaken. So, we’ll try and face whatever we come up with, like in practice, see how it works.

Dr. Esko Hakanen  37:44

Yeah, so that’s also great thing about the kind of foundation that we have from Pekka Nikander’s work here. So, basically, we have, for instance, in the Barcelona area. So basically we have this kind of basically regional currency. So, basically, this kind of, again, a tokens that are meant for supporting this area of consumers and then how we then connect these, let’s say, past experiences and use cases into this new type of anti-rival linking and perhaps different kinds of tokens, which might not even yet exist, not really sure, that’s more of your field, but still, I think there are kind of many balls in the air and, for instance, the different use cases that that we are kind of planning to have or pilots. There’s still some leeway there to decide on what’s actually the best solution and the best way to demonstrate our practical benefits there in this approach.

Jarno Marttila  39:05

Yeah, that is very interesting. Well, maybe the most interesting part of the approach is at the end of the process, we get to build this on basis of concepts and ideas and your science and test it out, get some feedback from there. It’s a two-year project. So, I guess what we’ll see in about two years what’s the outcome? But thank you so much for coming. It’s very, very, very interesting. I think we will probably do another one bit later. Nothing could be further with the project when have more experiences on it.

Dr. Esko Hakanen  39:40

Surely, yeah. So, thanks again for having me and really great to be here. It’s been a real pleasure to work with you guys and learn new stuff. This is really educating experience for me as well and we have many interesting people in the project. So, let’s try to find different angles here as well and it’s going to be a really interesting set of discussions hopefully.

Jarno Marttila  40:06

Yeah, I’m learning a lot.

Dr. Esko Hakanen  40:08

Yeah, I think that’s called as the PRN in our project and in our community.

Jarno Marttila  40:17

Right. So, this has been the TX podcast. Thank you, Esko. Thanks for listening.

40:26

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ATARCA has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Any dissemination of results here presented reflects only the consortium view.

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2021-02-18
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TX joins European consortium to solve market failure of artificially scarce digital goods

A €2.75m EU grant has been awarded to the ATARCA project aiming to create a new economic system in which digital goods are traded with mediums of sharing.

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