Rebuilding for Resilience Onchain
Principal & Global Blockchain Leader, Ernst & Young
Paul leads EY's blockchain initiatives across consulting, audit, and tax, including building the firm's first global SaaS platform, Blockchain.EY.com. EY was the first professional services firm to commit to public blockchains and Ethereum.
Under his leadership, EY launched groundbreaking solutions like the Baseline protocol (with ConsenSys and Microsoft), Nightfall (privacy technology for Ethereum), and Starlight (private business logic compiler) - all open sourced to advance public blockchain adoption.
He also serves as Chairman of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) and is a CoinDesk contributor with 73+ published articles on blockchain.
In 2023, EY Blockchain was named market leader in HFS Horizons Public Blockchain Services. Paul authored Ethereum for Business and serves on Fast Company's executive board.
Quotes
On rebuild:
I think regulators can have a really big role to play in figuring out how to create really good robust capital markets... the first thing is I think regulators should think about how do we make it really easy to raise money onchain from a global audience in a legal way for reconstruction.
On opportunity:
"Any kind of reconstruction opportunity presents an opportunity to leapfrog the rest of the world in terms of where they're going."
On streaming money and efficiency:
"Payments cost companies about $12... probably around $450 of the entire cycle of creating the purchase order, sending the message... That whole process is $450, and we can put all of it on chain."
On the Microsoft case study:
"Time required when they shifted from legacy systems to smart contracts basically went down almost to zero. It used to take about 45 days after the end of the month to produce a statement... Now basically business users can see their transaction status... within four or five minutes."
On resilience:
"Ethereum is a heavily decentralized system and it's remarkable because it has been running continuously now for over a decade without a single minute of downtime."
On building for the future:
"If you can't borrow money, if you can't raise money, if you can't get the money required to invest in something, reconstruction is much much harder. So anything governments can do to create better functioning, more efficient capital markets has a huge downstream impact on kind of growth and reconstruction."
Key Ideas
Ethereum's Resilience: 10+ years of continuous operation, zero downtime, 14+ major upgrades including proof-of-work to proof-of-stake transition
Decentralization Benefits: Operational resilience, censorship resistance, monopoly resistance, corruption resistance
Future of Money (Streaming Money):
- Payments will cost <1 penny, execute in <1 second
- Shift from monthly payments to real-time/daily streaming payments
- Immediate incentives 100-300% more effective than delayed rewards
- Example: Get paid daily for hourly work instead of bi-weekly
Enterprise Adoption:
- 54% of large corporations plan to use stablecoins within a year
- EY-SAP integration: Full automation from crypto payment to ERP system
- Cross-border payments 99% faster, 99% cheaper
- Top obstacle: ERP integration (now solved)
Business Applications:
- Total procurement cycle costs $450 (vs $12 for just payment)
- Microsoft Xbox case study: 45 days → 4-5 minutes for royalty statements, 40% cost reduction
- Supply chain tokenization can automate entire business cycles
Privacy Solutions:
- Current capability: 400M transactions/day at $0.05 with privacy
- Goal: 4-40 billion transactions/day at $0.005
- Requirements: Scalability, programmability, composability, permanence
- EY's Nightfall technology deploying on Plume and Cello networks
Recommendations for Ukraine:
- Lead by example - government should use blockchain for contracts
- Integrate into tax system to prevent hollowing out tax base
- Create robust capital markets for reconstruction funding
- Focus on making it easy to raise money onchain legally