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Ep 4: What's the missing link in blockchain education?
54 Plays1 year ago
Donna Redel, Blockchain and Digital Assets Professor at Wharton, and Thibault Schrepel, Law Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, discuss the surge in student interest in Web3 technologies across the US and Europe. They explore how universities are integrating new courses into their curricula, focusing on this evolving tech landscape. The conversation also delves into the potential of education in unlocking job opportunities within the industry and aiding policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic in developing a comprehensive global regulatory framework for crypto.
Find out more in our explainers at owlexplains.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Owl Explains Hootenanny
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello and welcome to this Owl Explains Hootenanny, our podcast series where you can wise up on blockchain and web3 as we talk to the people seeking to build a better internet. Owl Explains is powered by Avalabs, a blockchain software company and participant in the avalanche ecosystem. My name is Silvia Sanchez, project manager of Owl Explains and with that I'll hand it over to today's amazing speakers.
00:00:33
Speaker
Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for listening to another podcast from Al Explains.
Meet the Experts: Donna Rodel and Tibor Chappelle
00:00:39
Speaker
I'm very happy to have here with me today Donna Rodel and Tibor Chappelle. I'm trying my best French here. My name is Olte Andoni. I'm General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer of Enclave Markets, the very first fully encrypted exchange. I would like to introduce you to our speakers, Professor Rodel. First of all, I'm honored to have an amazing woman on this podcast.
00:01:05
Speaker
She's a professor of blockchain digital assets, angel investor, and also she was the managing director of the World Economic Forum, the foremost, and was the first woman to chair a USA exchange, the commodity exchange.
00:01:22
Speaker
She's an active participant in the startup community in the United States, especially with New York Angels serving as their board members. Ms. Rodal is a very well-known professor in the digital industry and she has developed and has been teaching actually for many years now at Fordham Low School and worked on courses on blockchain digital assets, especially considering the legal and business issues in our industry and also other defined smart contracts.
00:01:51
Speaker
I also have here with me today, Professor Tibon Chappelle. He's an associate professor at the VUA, University of Amsterdam, and he is also a faculty affiliate at Stanford University.
Education Gaps in Blockchain: What's Missing?
00:02:10
Speaker
I have started following Professor Chappelle since my very, very early stages in the academic space here in the United States because I do also lecture in anti-dress law, so you who was the very first one where I was reading about especially the connection between blockchain and anti-dress.
00:02:32
Speaker
The very first book, I think, was published in September 2021. We're going to talk a little bit more at the end of this podcast. It's called Blockchain and Antitrust. I highly recommend for every one of you listeners to check that book out.
00:02:51
Speaker
So we do have a great topic, a very great topic, but also a little bit controversial. The topic is what is the missing link in blockchain education? Why do I say this is a little bit of a contradictory topic or is causing a little bit of more debate among professors and professionals, academic professionals, because
00:03:15
Speaker
You have some professors out there that think that blockchain and cryptocurrency courses are not very much needed. But at the same time, you see that a lot of universities worldwide are beginning to offer this cryptocurrency-related courses, and I think that this is a rising demand
00:03:38
Speaker
First of all, from the majority of the companies that are also I think are driving the demand for these courses. But again, what do Professor Adel and Professor Chappelle, what do you think is the missing link in the blockchain education right now? Do you think the universities
00:03:55
Speaker
are doing enough. Do you agree with these other academics who think that probably is not much needed for students to be exposed to blockchain education? So I think that this would be a great first starting question. Donna, Professor Adele, I'll start with you.
00:04:13
Speaker
So I might answer that in a contrarian way. I think that at least the universities that I teach at have been fantastic in offering students a new subject. I started teaching the first course of blockchain regulatory business issues at Fordham Law School in 2018. And now we have two courses, and there are two courses that I teach,
00:04:36
Speaker
and yet there are other professors that are also weaving it into one way or another into their curriculum.
Student Demand and Course Availability in Blockchain
00:04:43
Speaker
This year we had a debate between the professor that runs corporate law department and also is head of professor of bankruptcy and myself about crypto regulation. So I think that there's more and more availability of courses and more and more interest and knowledge of the students coming into the courses from the onset.
00:05:10
Speaker
Well, first of all, very happy to be on this podcast with you too. I will give a similar answer, I suppose. I've been also teaching blockchain related classes in law school since 2018. So personally, this has been a great
00:05:29
Speaker
experience. Now, I could give you more than one of the missing link as you call it. I think students love the subject, right? And they generally want you to pass the hype and understand what's behind the technology. What I was
00:05:47
Speaker
very surprised to realize is that they are absolutely fine with technical explanations. I'm not saying that we do the math, but to some degree, I can spend one or two classes explaining technically how it works, what's the governance, which is not something I've experienced when teaching antitrust that you mentioned in the introduction. When you start teaching about econometrics,
00:06:09
Speaker
Law students will complain and tell me, you know, I didn't go to law school to learn about econometrics, but when it comes to blockchain, somehow, they want to learn about the technical aspects. So that's the good part. Now, what I what I see being potentially a problem is that there are some law schools that are not offering anything blockchain related. I can think of several law and tech program, NLMs without any blockchain courses or even classes.
00:06:37
Speaker
I would say it's probably a problem in hiring, it's hard to find the people with the expertise. It's also, I would guess, a problem in terms of incentives, right? Which kind of incentive do you give to your professors for them to advance? But the beauty of the world in which we live is that we do have online tools and I could see no reason why we couldn't aggregate
00:06:58
Speaker
professors teaching those classes and potentially put together a common pool of resources.
Blockchain Education for Policymakers and Lawyers
00:07:05
Speaker
So long story short, if you are a student and if you are interested in a subject, my guess is that without even having to leave your continent, you could probably find good courses for you to follow, but it doesn't mean that you could do that within your university. So I guess so-so answer to your question.
00:07:27
Speaker
I think that one of the ways in which to get the courses into the law schools or other schools is students that manifest their ability to get jobs thereafter. And so we've been doing that. So we've had internships at the blockchain association. We've had students go to the top tier law firms, et cetera.
00:07:57
Speaker
Instead of telling me how well they did, which I'm very pleased to know, I always tell them write the dean and tell the dean that these new courses, the courses that focus on tech and other things really created opportunities for them. And then you see how those any resistances are kind of removed and the barriers to entry start going down. Yes, I think you are right in one of the things that you absolutely underscored is the ability to find professors
00:08:27
Speaker
they can teach the subject, especially since we know that there's so many of the lawyers in the area are really stretched for time and such a dynamic area that's constantly changing and takes so much work just to keep up with the reading, the less the ability that imparted to students.
00:08:46
Speaker
I agree with both of you, actually. I do like the fact that Professor Schurpel, you mentioned that even if the students kind of lack those technical abilities, you know, these courses are made to introduce them to the principal definitions. And I think that
00:09:06
Speaker
majority of universities are doing a great job. As an academic, I think that this is also very important. All these courses are also very important, not only to introduce our students to the blockchain industry and to better understand the technical aspect of blockchain. But I think that with these courses or via these courses, we can also do a better job to
00:09:31
Speaker
to kind of educate the policymakers. How would you recommend policymakers to get started understanding our technology? Do you think that these courses are kind of paving the path for the policymakers as well?
00:09:49
Speaker
Professor Chappelle, I'll start with you. Sure. Well, in the United States, you have actually a good example of the antitrust division, which a few years ago sent some of their employees, actually all of the employees, just willing to take classes in a technical university. I won't name names, but one of the best ones in the world to actually learn about the functioning of blockchain.
00:10:13
Speaker
And to some degree, some people, and Donna and I are part of the crowd, have spent years compiling everything, or everything at least the most that we can indeed consume, in a way that is easy to digest, which is not what I'm sure we had the same experience we had to do. When we started and invested the space, we had to find relevant sources ourselves. And often, what we could find was, in contradiction with the thing we just read a couple minutes before,
00:10:43
Speaker
But now luckily you can actually take those classes rely on the information that some professors will give you and you know an example that i give often to my students is the one of a smartphone. No one in the entire world can design a smartphone from scratch and yet as lawyers we do understand what's the implication of a smartphone and an app on privacy competition tax.
00:11:05
Speaker
and so on and so forth. That's a great analogy. The same is true actually for blockchain, right? You do not need to be able to create your own public permissionless blockchain from scratch. What you need to be able to do is to reach the technical understanding that is necessary for you as a lawyer to ask yourself the right question and to answer those questions. So I would say start there. Maybe books published in university presses is also a good idea. And once you have this little layer of knowledge, experiments.
00:11:34
Speaker
And it's not hard. I know it sounds scary. And if you go sometimes to YouTube, they will show you the hardest way on how to do everything in a decentralized way. It's perfectly fine to start with a centralized exchange so that you can acquire your first cryptocurrency or an app on the iPhone for you to acquire the first NFT. And then maybe you move on to more decentralized solution. But it's important to do it for yourself.
Regulatory Challenges in Blockchain: A US and European Perspective
00:11:57
Speaker
It's fun. It's not that hard. It's not that technical.
00:12:02
Speaker
Yeah, taking taking slightly different angle from that, you know, you have now universities as well as businesses, seeing with how are they going to grapple with AI, and, you know, to push it away and say, you know, it's too scary, it's going to take jobs, or students might, you know,
00:12:23
Speaker
get papers from there doesn't really incorporate it because it's going to be part of life. And so incorporating whether it's AI or blockchain or digital assets into a curriculum gives students the ability to think ahead of where we're going. And we see how technology is shifting so many different kinds of things. For example, just take something that most people didn't understand. They didn't understand how easy it was to create an online run on the bank.
00:12:50
Speaker
and you saw that in Silicon Valley banks. So when there are technologies, the lawyers and the business people need to extrapolate and say, what are the additional risks that come with this? How do we do that risk management? How do we think about creating laws and other kinds of structures that cannot squish the innovation, but can put it forth in a different package that fits with society as we go forward, because now everybody's mobile,
00:13:21
Speaker
And these are technologies that enhance that and build upon it. So when both of you teach blockchain technology in this blockchain courses, I'm sure that a good angle for all the courses that you've been teaching is also to consider the legal challenges that you foresee in the blockchain space and blockchain industry.
00:13:42
Speaker
Professor Chappelle, as I mentioned, you've been a big advocate, especially when it comes to blockchain and antitrust for the regulators also, and the way how they should approach blockchain and antitrust from, and especially from a more cooperating angle. I think that you always mentioned that both blockchain and antitrust not only seek to decentralize the economic opportunities, but there are
00:14:09
Speaker
some challenges that I would like for you to touch upon a little bit for this podcast when it comes to antitrust and blockchain. And then I have another question for Professor Adel.
00:14:22
Speaker
Of course, I'm happy to do so. What I want to mention first is that as a lawyer, because I was trained in law school, my first intuition was to actually tackle problems or challenges as you call them. And that's why I've written papers first explaining how you can use blockchain to abuse dominant position, how you can use smart contract to collude within the blockchain or in the so-called real space and so on and so forth. And eventually I realized, wait a minute, I kind of think this is a good technology.
00:14:52
Speaker
I'm not saying it will necessarily produce good, but it could be used to improve the common good. So let me write a book in which I explain that the way by which we tackle all of those challenges, of course, should be done and done properly, but also in a way to, as Donna mentioned, maintain innovation and maintain the survival of the technology.
00:15:13
Speaker
Maybe technology will disappear if it's not good enough, but I don't want the law to actually decide whether or not the technologies should survive. So that being said, more than happy to answer your question, I see a couple of trends pretty much across the world, and that touches upon antitrust, but more generally speaking, the law of blockchain, whatever that means. The first is
00:15:37
Speaker
I think the concept of innovation first or pro-innovation policy is in danger. The UK just released a good white paper when it comes to AI and I am yet to see a policy guidelines coming from a government telling me, well, we won't add
00:15:57
Speaker
you know, the top priorities for us to maintain innovation in the space. And then, of course, you address the challenges. So I would say overall, the space is becoming more confrontational. And you see that governments are less and less attracted to the idea to create a good ecosystem for the blockchain and more to tackle the issues. That's one. The second one, I would say regulation is coming now at the technology itself. A good example of that is the Data Act.
00:16:23
Speaker
Currently being discussed in the EU that tells you article 30 that every smart contract has to have a kill switch function which is again a way of regulating the actual technology as opposed to regulating use cases and users which is something I will prefer and third and final
00:16:41
Speaker
I think an issue we're gonna see emerging real soon is the one of the complexity of the legal rules that are coming from all over the world, right? Not a single day without a new regulation being announced or at least addressed in the media. And at some point, I wouldn't be surprised if those rules and standards will start creating some sort of
00:17:03
Speaker
conflicting dynamics and or to contradict what the others are saying, which will be extremely complicated to navigate. So those are the three legal challenges that I see emerging. Thank you, Professor Chappelle. And Professor Odell, here in the United States, we have been facing many legal challenges, especially from a regulatory perspective when it comes to crypto industry and
00:17:31
Speaker
blockchain industry, which I always like to sort of divide the two, because I feel like we we tend to commingle all the time, blockchain and crypto. What are some of the main legal challenges you foresee, especially for the rest of 2023? And I probably shouldn't be applicable only to 2023. But what are some main challenges, legal challenges that you foresee for our industry?
00:18:01
Speaker
Well, I mean, I'm going to be preaching to the choir here. I mean, for all of the times that I've started a semester, it starts with the same refrain, that we don't have a comprehensive regulatory framework in the United States for digital assets. And that we talk about the bills that might arrive, et cetera. And in the end of the day, what we spend most of the time talking about is one regulation by enforcement.
00:18:28
Speaker
why regulation and by enforcement isn't necessarily helpful, and increasingly some of the very hostile type of attitudes that Chair Gensler has taken, and many of them being unreasonable from many perspectives and points of view. So I think that
00:18:48
Speaker
This theme is continuing. I do think that in just as there have been more students that have graduated learning more about blockchain and digital assets, the people on Capitol Hill and in the agencies have learned more over the last, you know, I'll say five years, but it's been obviously longer than that. And it is clear that they come to approaching legislation with a more sense, not all of them, but many of them with a more sensible attitude and one that's based on knowledge.
00:19:18
Speaker
and not fear or some kind of rumor about what is going on in the whole digital asset space. So I think that's a long answer, but I'm doubtful that in this year, which has seen Congress be very inactive in being able to pass even a debt ceiling bill that we will get, though there are some very good senators and representatives
00:19:43
Speaker
that are pushing for some overall comprehensive regulation. I'm not sure that we're going to see what the industry was hoping for in terms of an overriding set of rules and regulations that they have input into and was well organized and well thought out.
00:20:04
Speaker
Professor Chappelle, do you see the same from European regulators? And I'm glad that you mentioned Article 30 from the Data Act because to me it shows that not only are industries maturing, but at the same time we have better, especially regulators have a better understanding. But even going back to Article 30, you remember that there were like so many other sort of feedback from companies that they were expecting for Data Act to be amended in order to apply to permission smart contract based
00:20:34
Speaker
systems owned and operated by an enterprise. I think this was sort of the main complaint at the time. But are you seeing sort of the same approach from the European regulators there? Or do you think with Micah or Mika now in place, we are already walking on a more established path, especially in Europe?
00:20:58
Speaker
A regulatory path, I meant, yes. Yeah, to some degree. So, you know, what I've seen, and the transformation is quite interesting to me, is that when this book came out about the Brussels effect by Annie Bradford, this was something which was quite shameful to most of the members of the parliament in Europe, right? So they were not proud of the fact to regulate first,
00:21:24
Speaker
I'm sorry to say while the united states will innovate and europe would regulate i mean it's a bit too simplistic but this was pretty much the idea what i've seen in recent months is that now they actually put videos of themselves members of the parliament when they pass your regulation including me can you know to some degree the data act the act gmail to see everything is an act now.
00:21:47
Speaker
And they actually say, well, we are the Brussels effect and we do it first because we know that we're going to force companies and ecosystem to comply with our rules. And it's extremely hard to design a business model that is compliant for Europe and different ones for the United States. So, you know.
00:22:04
Speaker
All in all, it is actually a way of regulating the entire world. So this is a desire and this is something that they do on purpose. Not all of them, of course, but for that reason, I'm afraid that we have a different dynamics in Europe where, you know, being first is actually what we want to achieve as opposed sometimes to the quality of what we do in terms of regulation.
00:22:28
Speaker
Well, being first is always great, but something that I hope to see, especially among and between our regulators, is to see a lot of more global cooperation. You said that perfectly. Being first is sort of the principle for European regulators, but at the same time, I think that
00:22:49
Speaker
We just cannot fully adopt those, especially regulatory principles here in the United States as they are already. So I think that hopefully this is more of a cooperation sort of mission between European regulators and United States regulators. So going back, it's not only in Europe and we've seen the benefits of regulation in, let's say, Japan.
00:23:18
Speaker
I mean, they had their early disasters, but then they made a comprehensive way of approaching exchanges. And from my understanding, the customers of FTX Japan have already begun to be able to withdraw their assets because those assets came under the Japanese regulatory regime and were, quote, protected in ways that, you know, they were, you know, not in other countries from the alleged problems that happened.
00:23:48
Speaker
No, I love seeing everything that's happening in Japan. Yes, go ahead, Professor. Just to make it clear, you know, I'm a professor of law and I don't want to give the impression that I'm anti-regulation by default. And in fact, I've written a paper with Vitalik Buterin precisely on the fact that you may be a crypto anarchist all you want. Code is law. Maybe, maybe not. I would say this is the case.
00:24:10
Speaker
But code is insufficient. That is reality. Blockchain does not exist in a vacuum. You may decentralize your ecosystem. All you want, you will still, end of the day, need to access digital infrastructures that are being governed by centralized players. And those players, because of that, may abuse their power against your blockchain project. So you do need good laws, good regulations. And I just wanted to make that very clear, because I think we actually shared that in common with Dona.
00:24:38
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I shared that with you as well. So we do not mean for this industry to be unregulated. And I think that this is the biggest sort of difficulty or obstacle that we've been facing because majority still sort of defined this industry as not only being unregulated, but being that wild west that we keep always referring to our industry as such.
Resources for Aspiring Blockchain Students
00:25:03
Speaker
Going back to the education, because I would love for the students who are listening to this podcast, do you have any advice for them? How can they be a little bit more involved in the blockchain industry if they would like to learn and especially what are some readings that you'd recommend or maybe some podcasts for them to watch in order to start learning about blockchain industry? Who should go first?
00:25:32
Speaker
Professor Dow, go first. Well, I think one of the things that they should do, you know, I know a couple of our friends are updating their books, but I do think they should start following some people on Twitter and they should look at some of the, like Lex underscore Dow, places in which there are lawyers that aggregate and congregate and discuss these issues. But Twitter is a really good place to do it.
00:26:01
Speaker
There's lots of very good, you know, they have to follow what the cases are, the high profile cases in the United States and other places. If you are interested, of course, in going further than just a, you know, kind of a superficial, superficial understanding.
00:26:20
Speaker
looking at what's going on in the EU and start to look at other countries is very helpful in order to be able to understand the contrast and the different ways that regulators and industry are defining assets and trying to create regulation. So there's just, as we all know, so much reading that happens all the time. I do think that certain people, like my course, the students are supposed to read Coindesk
00:26:48
Speaker
because it gives you a very good overview of what's happening. They read Matt Levine, who has a fantastic column on Bloomberg. And if they can, you know, the defiant, which usually they can get free, and they still be able to look at the block as well. That's just a kind of mortgage board of things. Super helpful. Thanks so much, Professor Adel. Professor Sherpell, any advice for students?
00:27:15
Speaker
So I would say it depends on which resources you have access to. If you are a law student in the United States, you will get access to at least one of those MLX or Law360. And there it's very easy for you to set up an alarm with some keywords.
00:27:33
Speaker
If you do set up an alarm on the court decisions, because this is most of what we have so far with the key words, blockchain or cryptocurrencies, well, you get quite a few cases, but no more than one a day. I mean, that's already plenty enough, but you won't be overwhelmed that you could just screen with or not. It's in the field of law that interests you.
00:27:52
Speaker
So that would be one way if you have access to those. If you don't, I'm actually, and here I'm going to be shameless and make some self advertisement, but trying my best to make a lot of resources open source. I do have a list on the network law review in which I have put together the books and articles that I think should be read if you want to invest the space from a legal perspective.
00:28:20
Speaker
I would say you could also do some or follow some good newsletters. If you do follow the Network Law Review, every month I put together the best articles in my view, of course, on the subject of blockchain and AI, about 10.
00:28:37
Speaker
press or academic articles that I put together. But there are other newsletters that I think are fantastic. Decrypt I think is a good website. There is one that I like very much is the TLDR newsletter. They will send you a short email every day and here again aggregate a few links from all over the press.
00:28:59
Speaker
So I would say start there and don't be afraid. There are lots of things that you could find open access and you don't necessarily have to pay to get access to what is necessary for you to get started. I want to just add two points to that, if I can. One, law students' eyes get very tired, but maybe they can listen to things when they're at the gym. There are tons of podcasts, like a podcast we're doing now, but there are tons of podcasts with really fantastic people.
00:29:28
Speaker
that are available and you know maybe in your show notes also you can put some but obviously unchained, encrypted economy, law laws, I think it's called code of law and a bunch of other ones of course the banquist ones and you know lots of different special ones along the way but I think those are really helpful because you can listen to them and fantastic lawyers are on there and have been able to
00:29:58
Speaker
do that. So I would say podcasts as well. The other thing I would also caution people is to like in any, these are not law review articles. And so often you just need to understand who your source is and understand whether or not they're really, you know, potable then and what kind of point of view they come out from in order to be able to judge whether or not in fact, what they're saying is based on, you know, um,
00:30:27
Speaker
type a little bit or is grounded in
Final Advice and Conclusion
00:30:31
Speaker
reality. So I do think that's very important.
00:30:35
Speaker
Yes, go ahead. Yeah, I'll be very brief, but since, you know, get me started on podcasts and then I go crazy. And I very much agree with the idea that you need to be aware of what are the stakes in the game when people talk to you. The podcast that I like very much is the one of A16Z. Now, they do have 20 billion USD being invested out there. So of course, they have an interest in, you know, pushing the narrative. I think it's a great podcast.
00:31:00
Speaker
But that's good to be aware of what's there for them. Another one though that I will recommend is Acquired. It's a podcast not just about blockchain. What they do is a very long episode of three to five hours. So if you travel a lot, that's the one for you. And they will go through the history of a company or a project and read all the books ever published on the subject and summarize, condense all that in those three to five hours.
00:31:29
Speaker
they've done episodes about ethereum bitcoin and a few others and that's an absolutely fantastic resource for you to get started absolutely and thank you so much something that i would like to add this are all amazing suggestion is uh is our owl podcast we created this whole campaign just with the intention to to sort of break that uh gap when it comes to to uh the understanding and to
00:31:58
Speaker
better navigate the world of web3. We have created the Tree of Wisdom that I would highly recommend for all the listeners to go and check it out. Our Tree of Wisdom includes five principles. The first one and the main one is to understand the technology and of course be aware
00:32:18
Speaker
of misconceptions and we talk about classifying tokens sensibly, which is a main principle or one of the main principles for the whole industry. And of course, the last one is think global.
00:32:31
Speaker
I think these are all very, very important principles. I highly recommend the newsletter that Professor Sherpell mentioned, all the sources that Professor Adele mentioned. There is so much out there, especially for the students listening to this podcast. You just need to have the passion and you just need to have the desire to learn more about the benefits of this technology.
00:32:56
Speaker
and of course always being open-minded and trying to differentiate between blockchain and crypto. I think it's also important to check all these new courses that universities are offering right now, which I think is a great opportunity, especially for low students and also other colleges as well.
00:33:19
Speaker
Professor Rodel, Professor Sherpell, this has been a real pleasure to have you on this podcast. I hope we're going to have more podcasts like this, but I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge and also everything advice related for our students. I hope to see you in another podcast. Thank you so much to our listeners for listening to this podcast.
00:33:46
Speaker
We hope you enjoyed our Hootenanny. Thank you for listening. For more Hootful and hype-free resources, visit www.owlexplanes.com. There, you will find articles, quizzes, practical explainers, suggested reading materials, and lots more. Also, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to continue wising up on Blockchain and Web3. That's all for now on Owl Explains. Until next time!