Revolutionizing Real-World Assets: The Role of Ease Protocol in Blockchain Integration

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Ease of use has been blockchain’s Achilles’ heel — until now. In this episode of The Edge of Show, hosts Josh Kriger and Richard Carthon welcome Douglas Horn, Founder of Ease Protocol and CEO of GoodBlock, to unpack how Ease is transforming blockchain from a complex experiment into an enterprise-ready and government-compliant solution.

From stablecoins as the next monetary revolution to instant settlement, ERP integration, governance tools, and real-world assets, Douglas reveals how Ease is creating the infrastructure for a frictionless Web3 future.

Key Topics Covered

• Stablecoins and the Future of Money:
  Douglas explains why stablecoins are “the next evolution of money” and how instant settlement and global interoperability will redefine payments, trade, and even IMF aid distribution.
• AI vs. Crypto Adoption:
  AI exploded because of usability; crypto didn’t. Ease fixes that with user-centric design — removing private-key management through biometric authentication while maintaining security.
• Enterprise Integration:
  Ease Protocol integrates directly with Oracle, SAP, Salesforce, and QuickBooks, enabling companies to use blockchain inside familiar ERP systems without custom wallets or risky custody layers.
• Government Adoption & Compliance:
  Governments are a major untapped customer base. Ease introduces selective transparency — privacy for citizens with permissioned visibility for regulators — meeting compliance needs without sacrificing decentralization.
• Real-World Assets (RWAs):
  Ease enables land titles, property records, and public registries to be stored on-chain, unlocking foreign investment in regions like Ghana and the Bahamas by eliminating friction and fraud.
• Decentralized Governance:
  With Decide Governance Engine integration, Ease brings secure, transparent blockchain voting for governments, unions, and communities — restoring trust in democratic systems.
• The Roadmap Ahead:
  • MVP + token generation event (Ease Hub) launching soon.
  • Exponential Liquidity System for atomic swaps between assets.
  • Ease Pay and Ease ERP for merchants and corporations.
  • Global government partnerships and pilot programs within 6 months.
  • Ease Autotasks — a no-code smart-contract platform for loyalty and automation.

Episode Highlights

“Stablecoins are how things are going to be used. Nations that don’t have one will fall behind.” — Douglas Horn

“AI succeeded because it solved interface problems. Crypto never did — until now.” — Douglas Horn

“Governments are not just regulators — they’re one of blockchain’s biggest potential customers.” — Douglas Horn

“Ease Protocol is building the Venmo of crypto — fast, compliant, and intuitive.” — Josh Kriger

“We’re not building the future. We’re building tools for others to build the future with.” — Douglas Horn

People & Resources Mentioned

• Douglas Horn — Founder of Ease Protocol | CEO of GoodBlock
• Richard Carthon — Host, The Edge of Show
• Josh Kriger — Host, The Edge of Show
• Ease Protocol — https://ease.tech
• GoodBlock — https://goodblock.io
• Future of Money, Governance & Law Summit — gbaglobal.org/FOMGL

About the Guest

Douglas Horn
Founder of Ease Protocol and CEO of GoodBlock, Douglas is the original architect of the Telos Blockchain, Telos EVM, and Decide Governance Engine. A futurist and former game developer for Pokémon and Microsoft, Douglas is now focused on bridging the gap between innovation and real-world utility — bringing blockchain to enterprises, governments, and individuals through practical, compliant infrastructure.

Follow Douglas:

• Twitter → @Douglas_Horn
• LinkedIn → linkedin.com/in/douglas-horn
• Website → https://ease.tech

Transcript:

Douglas Horn: Hi, this is Douglas Horan, founder of the Ease Protocol. At Ease, we're building the tools to make blockchain adoption easy for everyone and unlocking the future where businesses and governments can trust and use Web3 technology without the friction. You're tuned in to The Edge of Show. It's making blockchain innovation a little easier for the real world. Stick around.
Josh Kriger: Hey, Web3 pioneers, get ready for today's episode where we break down why stable coins could be the next monetary revolution and what that means for global economies.
Richard Carthon: Then we're going to explore why EaseAbuse has been Crypto's Achilles heel and how Ease Protocol is finally solving it with enterprise-ready solutions.
Josh Kriger: And from ERP and government integration to real-world asset platforms, we'll uncover why Ease is the most practical blockchain you've never heard of until now.
Richard Carthon: All this and more at the edge of blockchain made easy. Cue the intro. Welcome to the Edge of Show. I'm your host, Richard Carthon, here with my co-host, Josh Krieger, and we feature a variety of top-notch guests. It's another production of the Edge of Company, a quickly-growing media ecosystem empowering the pioneers of Web3 tech and culture, and is responsible for other groundbreaking endeavors like the Outer Edge Innovation Festival in LA and Riyadh.
Josh Kriger: Today's show brought to you by Ease Protocol features Douglas Horn, who's the CEO of Goodblock and founder of Ease Protocol. He previously founded the Telus blockchain and helped develop innovations like Telus EVM, Decide Governance Engine, and cross-chain bridging technologies. He's now focused on making blockchain accessible and compliant for businesses and governments. Ease Protocol is a blockchain platform built to meet regulatory standards, enable ISO 20022 financial messaging, and make blockchain easier to adopt for real world use cases. Douglas, it's great to have you back on the show.
Douglas Horn: Hey, great to be here, guys. Thank you.
Josh Kriger: Where are you in the world today, by the way?
Douglas Horn: I am home in my home in the mountains near Seattle.
Josh Kriger: Beautiful. I'm back in the US today in Boston, had to celebrate my mom's birthday. And it's the usual, right? The real present is just me being home, hanging out, spending good quality time together. So it's been really nice and good time of year to be here in Boston. The weather's beautiful. And I think it's a really interesting time we're at actually in the industry. It's been a reflective summer, if I might say so, in terms of some of the regulatory changes are kind of settling in. And we've seen this like really interesting evolution of the conversations around stable coins and AI. And, you know, you're a futurist. I'm curious what you're seeing in terms of what's happening here in terms of stable coins and AI. in the overall blockchain evolution?
Douglas Horn: Well, there are two different technologies that are taking two very different paths, I think. It's interesting how AI has managed to capture users. Like within a year, it's something that everyone I know uses, right? And 16 years in, crypto still hasn't done that. There's a lot of friction still, which is what we're trying to address. But the AI, when I look at it, I see the possibility of what these other things could be, of the fast adoption that could occur, right? When I think about stable coins, I have long felt that they were the next evolution of money. I don't feel like I'm alone in that. I think a lot of us see that. But what that means to me is I think we're at the cusp of people completely redefining how they understand payments and settlements, even on the global macro level. How funds will be delivered, aid funds from the IMF and other things will be delivered. They're currently these funky credit things. It's just going to be stable coins. It's going to be, and settlement, the way that people buy tankers, super tankers full of oil is going to be stable coins. And so I feel like not only is there a huge consumer, merchant, and corporate opportunity, but there's actually nearly to the level of approaching economic warfare will emerge soon about stable coin dominance. I mean, we've had US dollar dominance across the world for a long time. The fact that the most powerful and used stable coins right now are denominated in the US dollars means that's likely to stick around. But there's several financial institutions just kind of scolded the UK for not having a stable coin policy. And their point was stable coins are how things are going to be used. And if you don't have one, the states, the nations that don't have them are actually going to fall behind. And I think that's true. And so to me, it's a huge, huge, just like something about to explode on the scene. That's what I think.
Josh Kriger: So China sort of started the digital sort of yen program in a fairly pioneering way. How is stablecoins similar or different in your mind in terms of just digital digitalization of currency. Do you see stable coins as more than what China did, for example, with the yen?
Douglas Horn: Oh yeah, for sure. So the biggest thing is probably the universality of these stable coins. I'm talking with countries and whatnot about potentially them using our technology for their national stable coins, with a few. And one of the things that I feel like they're all surprised about when I tell them. No, no. When the stablecoin changes hands, it has settled instantly. And there is no Forex risk because you could instantly, in the next half second, where Forex transaction is done in the middle of the day, and by the end of the day, the rates are all out of whack, and there's a problem. The instant finality of stable coins on platforms like Ease that offer that is going to completely change how we think about settlement. No more end of day or even intraday. It's just instant. That's one example of many about how this is different than anything we had before. Whereas with the Chinese Renminbi, digital Renminbi, you didn't have people in other countries who would take that. It was useful in China, but it's not like if I'm doing business in, I'll pick a fictional country like Wakanda or Liberland or something. I don't have to only use that within Wakanda. If it's an established currency, I can sell that anywhere in the world instantaneously. That's different than anything we've ever had before.
Richard Carthon: Definitely. And, you know, one of the parallels that I wanted to draw around adoption, because we got on the subject of stablecoins and when I kind of want to bring it back to the conversation around adoption. So one of the reasons why stablecoins is really starting to take off is because of regulations that's happening in states. Right. So we had the Genius Act passed, the Clarity Act is trying to get passed. And because of these kind of regulations, now people are, now that things are a little bit more clear, are storming to make things happen faster. So when I think about the parallels of like crypto adoption versus AI adoption, how is it that AI adoption has just taken off so much further? So many more people in a lot of ways are utilizing AI in their daily life more so than they are using crypto. How do you make that distinction of why it took off so much faster?
Douglas Horn: So something you were saying about stable coins taking off because of the Genius Act and whatnot, I actually think it's the opposite. I think that the Genius Act and these other things are happening because it's very clear that stable coins offer a really big financial opportunity and that people within the US government's current administration are very keen to see that as a way to preserve US dollar hegemony in the global economic scene. So they push that through because, you know, much faster than almost any other kind of bill could go through, because they see the possibility, the use for them, the need. As to why people, why AI has taken off so much more quickly, it's interesting, related in an interesting way. So AI took off very quickly. because it didn't really have very many interface problems. The designers had a mindset towards solving interface problems from the beginning, which crypto never had. And they gave people real useful things that they could be doing right away. I can go find out whatever I want to find out in like a super search or even better way, or get my document that I need written, rough drafted or whatever. you know, those are really useful things. Whereas crypto didn't really give many people very many useful, actual things to do. You know, it's still, it's still primarily for, for speculation, right? And people buy it and they buy it in all kinds of ways, but they don't actually run smart contracts and very minuscule amount of people are actually doing that. So what stable coins will do and what they will change is there will now be something really useful that you can do with crypto, which is make payments that are faster, have no national boundaries in many cases, settle instantly, and are more attractive to merchants, right? Because the fee can be like you know, less than 1% as opposed to two to 3%. I mean, that's a, that's a big hit for most merchants. And, you know, it's, it's something that they are going to adopt quickly if they can get out of the credit card payment rail system, which even though we have like Stripe and all these, all these other things, they're all still really on the credit card system, meaning they're paying credit card rates and we can, we can, you know, cut those by, by 80%, maybe more. Right. That's a big, that's going to be a big change. It's going to give people something to do. It's going to, and, but of course it requires that we have the ease of use for web two type users. So they don't have to worry about their keys and losing them or being fished or, um, you know, having a difficult sign in product process every time, you know, just like make a Venmo for crypto basically, which is what we're trying to do.
Josh Kriger: totally relate to what you're saying in terms of the big UX problem that crypto has had historically. And I think it's been like over a decade of this sort of conversation around the problems with with crypto and UX. It's unfortunate. 16 years. Yeah. And meanwhile, iPhones are a work of art at this point, right? So I guess the question becomes, what specific solutions is EaseBuilding to solve this problem?
Douglas Horn: Yeah. So perfect question to answer. So the first thing we need to do is solve the end user ease of use problem because everyone's an end user, right, in the end. And so even if we were trying to just focus on corporate or government or whatever, we'd still need to solve that problem. The way we're solving that is we are eliminating the need to manage your keys without reducing security. We are, meaning that you could download your key, your seed phrase anytime you want, but we recommend you don't, but you can do it. if you're that kind of person, but most people won't need to. They'll have access to it. We don't have access to it, by the way. We meaning whoever's operating, whatever operators are operating the networks don't have it. We also meaning the people creating the technology at ease protocol, we don't have that. Even as developers, we don't have that. Nobody else has that. It's secured by a biometric passkey by the end user, which means that they just do the same action that they're used to doing in any other any other payment app where they, you know, they set up their payment, and then they, you know, use their thumbprint or finger or, you know, face or whatever they're going to do, they have their their passkey set up to allow it to verify it. And then it goes out right as opposed to things like firing up MetaMask and, you know, deciding how many, how much gas to use and making sure you're on the right nonce and the right account and the right chain and everything. People find that very frustrating and it's a stopper. I've actually done quite a bit of product testing with people trying to get them to use the various crypto wallets.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, so I can only imagine the blooper rails from going through those experiments.
Douglas Horn: Yeah, yeah. It's a good exercise, though, because you can see not just that there's a problem, but you can see where the sticking points are. And, you know, I used to produce and invent games for, you know, big companies like Pokemon and Microsoft and places like that. And in those processes, we always used we always use customer feedback constantly throughout the process. And it, it just applying those learnings from earlier in my career to what we're doing now, it just underscores to me that no one's ever done this with any crypto interface. I feel, you know, it's like, they're, they're terrible. And the sticking points, there's so many of them. So you can identify the sticking points in a problem or in a process, and then address them. And that's what we do. It's a very rigorous kind of boring way to do things. You figure out where the problems are, where people are getting stuck, and you fix that. And then you figure out the next place they're getting stuck, and you fix that. And it's just an approach towards design that every other industry in the world, including AI to the previous question, seems to be using very well. And we've just thrown up our hands and said, no, we don't need to do that. We're crypto. We're good.
Richard Carthon: I want to stay on that point for a moment. So, like, when we think about the challenge of the user interface and ease of use, when Web 3 started to focus on that, in a lot of ways, it was on the B2C, the end consumer type, and there wasn't as much emphasis around corporations and, like, also making it easy for them as well. I know that's a really big sticking point for ease protocol. So can you kind of speak to that a little bit more?
Douglas Horn: Yeah, sure. So, The way that corporations use computers is they use big names that we're all familiar with, like Salesforce, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP. They use these big technologies. They're generally referred to as enterprise resource planning software or enterprise resource platforms, ERP systems. these companies, every major company almost has invested tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in building out a computer system for all their necessary business processes, right? Based on these platforms, they are not going to change that. They are not going to throw that out the window to use crypto, and they're not going to use some kind of bolted on, you know, they may, in pilot programs and whatnot. But long term, they're not going to use any kind of, you know, afterthought aftermarket bolted on crypto wallets, right? Because if you think about what a company has to do, a corporation enterprise has to do, they have to not only be able to pay and receive, but then they have to track those. They have to assign signing authority to different people and be able to rescind that if those people aren't at the company anymore. There's a lot of functionality and then they have to keep that in their accounting, right? Those stable coins are pretty easy, but imagine you brought in other cryptos, which we're doing, like how do you manage the accounting of some Bitcoin on a corporate account? I mean, there are, a few that are doing it, but I think what they do is they just treat it like a traditional banking asset and use a custody service. Even MicroStrategy or Strategy uses a custody service of Coinbase, right? They're not doing anything in-house. So that is one way you can do it. The way people do it right now is they just have an outsource, an outside provider, but that is not really the way companies usually go. They usually want to, you know, bring in, as this becomes a bigger and more lucrative part of their business, they're not going to want to give up the extra percentage or two that they have when somebody else is managing their custody. They're going to want to bring it internally. Those are the exact types of tools that we are making, and we're making them to fit within the Oracle and SAP and Salesforce, QuickBooks, those ecosystems by becoming partners in their partner networks, and then having our tools, submitting our tools to them for evaluation and, and to actually sell in their sales channels, which is how enterprise businesses buy new software. What they're going to have to do is they're going to say, well, we use Oracle. So we're going to go through the Oracle partner network. We're going to, look at blockchain, stable coins, things like that, and see what's in there in the network. And if they were to do that today, there'd be nothing. But if they were to do that in a month or two, there would be ease protocol, ease ERP. And that's what's new. And if you logically understand how companies have to adopt software, which is the process I just described. You understand that this should have happened a long time ago, you know. But until it does, it's a sticking point in adoption.
Josh Kriger: Absolutely. And, you know, I think the other interesting customer segment that you're targeting is government. I was very impressed when we went over to Riyadh in terms of some of the ways that the Saudi Arabia government's looking at utilizing blockchain and big organizations like Aramco are starting to use blockchain already and telco companies. But this is not sort of a universality across the global landscape. Certainly the use cases that have come to life in the U.S. have been fairly limited so far. We covered when the California DMV put their titles on the blockchain with Avalanche, which was super cool. And that was a use case that I've been waiting for for a long time. I think that's just the tip of the iceberg. So I guess the question I have for you, Douglas, is why do you think vast majority of companies, the government is being overlooked as a true customer?
Douglas Horn: Wow, that's a great question. So I think even though the reality is, that government is actually one of the world's two or three biggest industries, you know, maybe after agriculture and things like that. We don't really think of it as an industry, right? Even though it produces massive amounts of revenue, it, you know, spends massive amounts of money. Generally we think government is government, not, not industry. So I think it gets overlooked for that point. But I think it also just gets overlooked because another thing curious to our crypto industry is that we've always had a rough relationship with governments. Bitcoin was invented because governments had completely messed up their economics. On the other hand, you've also got governments that have policies that probably didn't make a lot of sense. that were very anti-crypto. So because of this, the crypto industry and governments tend to be in completely different corners, even though governments would likely be some of the biggest potential customers for blockchain-based systems. And in the end, we talk about crypto, we talk about all these things, but the blockchain-based systems, stablecoin payments being one of them, those are what's really going to have to come in and revolutionize things. The promise of crypto or blockchain is at least partially that it gives more efficient ways to do certain things, like record those licenses. Those things need better ways to be recorded. Governments are far behind and not very unified in their approaches. And so there's an opportunity for blockchain to solve this. But to do that, we have to engage governments as if they ar customer. Right? And that just hasn't happened yet
Richard Carthon: The emphasis around, like, government and putting a lot of these things in place is an important aspect of this is being compliant. Make sure that your infrastructure that you're putting is safe, secure, and compliant with whatever the regulations are around it. And I know that EASE focuses a lot around this specific thing. One of the challenges that potential competitors has is not putting much emphasis around, from the beginning, the compliance around making sure that everything is good. So how is EASE focusing on that component as you also approach governments?
Douglas Horn: Right. So compliance is something that changes depending on what jurisdiction you're operating in, right? And what we try to do, generally, what we try to do on the technical side first is be compliant with non-governmental, industry-wide security standards, like NIST, like SOAP 2, Level 2, things like that. That is something that we take very seriously and being very compliant with those. Governments have a very small number of things that they need from crypto to be able to use them harmoniously, but they haven't been addressed. or at least not more than half measures. They need to be able with the proper legal authority in their nation or state or whatever, just like they want to be able to look at bank accounts and things like that. Governments are not going to be satisfied or accepting of crypto until they can do the same thing with crypto accounts. Now, the reality is almost every crypto is on a public block explorer, which means that with the right tools, they can do that within the account already. One of the problems there actually for consumers is you still don't want all your competitors and everybody to be able to see how you're spending all your money. That has to be solved. We address that with our privacy protection measures, which are privacy against other users, but still maintain the ability for governments with the right authority to be able to to look at those addresses or accounts, as opposed to what would happen if you use ZK proofs or something like that on every transaction, and then no one would be able to look at them. It's a totally valid way to go for some things, but I think if you want to make sure that governments are going to be accepting and especially willing and excited to use your technology, then you have to address that. You have to not use something like that. You have to use something that's more of a gated, filtered form of privacy protection. Governments need to be able to bypass that privacy with a proper authority. That's one thing. The other thing is that when suspicious activity is found or suspected or whatever, a government is going to want to do what they can do with banks, which is just issue an order you know, that may come with, should come with court approval, but whatever, by whatever process governments, here's what they want to do. I'm not saying this is the best thing that could possibly happen, but this is what governments need to have happen. If they're going to, if they're going to accept, uh, fully crypto and blockchain, they need to be able to go in. And in the same way, if somebody is accused of something, um, they need to be able to, seize an account, right? And you can actually almost all major stable stable coins have this at least partial seizing, right? So what we see now is, and by the way, I'm well aware that this is a very sort of touchy subject for a lot of people in crypto, because one of the reasons we got into this was, you know, so governments couldn't seize your, your accounts. And I'll say that what we're doing doesn't change, you know, what what Bitcoin and all those others can do, you can still have that security. Now, I think it's notable that the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is made up entirely of funds that were already seized by the governments, and they weren't seized by breaking the Bitcoin protocol. They were seized by breaking the owner. And so I actually think that providing this thing that the government can always take if they want to by breaking you, is preferable. Of course, more preferable, the more protections people have in their own government. But I think this is long-term a way towards that. Because as people get more financial power, they will demand more responsive governments. But if governments don't have the ability to go in and get rid of and say, we're taking over this account, like they do with Circle and Tether and whatnot to at least freeze accounts. They're not going to engage. So we have built a process that allows that to happen. Now, it doesn't have to be enacted on any blockchain. It's optional when you set up the blockchain. The way we envision it is a government, say Wakanda comes in and has their own stable coin. and has their own national blockchain system where they record things like vibranium ownership and rhinoceros pet licenses and land titles. They have that. For them to use it, they're going to demand that, first, that they're running the service in their own country, that their servers are run by probably their treasury department or similar, or by contractors directly contracted to their treasury department or similar. And so there's all these rules of jurisdiction for those types of things, they will turn on the feature. And when they decide that they need to, you know, freeze an account, and then eventually, you know, run it through a trial and eventually do something with those, with those with that account, which includes possibly returning it to its original owner, if they were never, you know, there was never any rationale or reason to seize them. until they have that, they're not going to be able to, you know, they're not, they're just not going to accept that system. It'll just be a no, right? Yeah, I do some pilots, but it'll never, they'll never go, okay, yeah, this is a system where we're actually going to use for our digital money.
Josh Kriger: For sure. And I think another interesting side of this, which is becoming increasingly common is, is the real world asset component of blockchain, right? There's not a better use case for real world assets and actually within government and the government started to take note of this in terms of using real world assets to increase transparency, reduce fraud, improve efficiency for public services. Did a little research in preparation for today and learned that the city of South Burlington, Vermont, collaborated on a project to test real world assets being transferred on the blockchain and found that it saved money and it saved time. So, you know, I think as you're talking about all these different utilization points for EASE protocol. I know you're also thinking about EASE as the ultimate real world asset platform. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you have in mind there and how it might be applicable to government enterprises that we've talked about so far in the show?
Douglas Horn: Yeah. So I think that when I see certainly land title RWA platforms right now, I always think of them and I say, well, that would be great if the governments weren't going to do the exact same thing within a decade. And that once they have done it, then any of the other real world asset platforms become fairly redundant. If the national government has a land title system that it's in use and you can do buys and sells and fractionalization of property and all the cool stuff on that platform. Why would you use, you know, why would you add a separate, you know, layer of complexity? Now, maybe there's a reason, but I think that mostly all the things that we think we want to do with DeFi, be able to, you know, do fractionalization and sales and lending and staking of your land and things like that. All of those are things that could be done, you know, very efficiently on a platform like Ease. And so whether or not actually they're directly integrating with the government already, but especially when, you know, when Liberland comes on and has all their, all their land titles on chain, right, then, you know, that's going to be where people are going to want to transact because for one thing, If you transact on anything else, then you have to do a separate step and record it on the national system, right? Another huge efficiency, like think about if you're fortunate enough to be a homeowner and you have bought a house, you probably got in the US, you probably got something called title insurance, which is basically a insurance policy that somebody comes along in the future and says, that's not your land, that's mine. that will pay paid out in that case. And every, you know, US home sale, for example, you know, which is certainly like a multi trillion dollar market. Every, every home sale, you know, comes requires this and you pay money for And they just, and what the title companies do is they just have these, you know, big lists of where they've scraped all the databases so that they can, and basically where, when you're selling a house, you're asked to provide all the substantiation, right? Even though they're getting paid to have that, you actually, it's incumbent on you as the home seller to provide most of that. At any rate, they'll go through all that and say, yep, we feel safe for doing this and thanks for our half a percent of the cost of your house. The land title system is really just insurance against really messed up record keeping. I'll use an example of the Bahamas where there just is no centralized database. One of the challenges there is anytime you want to buy a piece of property, you have to hire a lawyer, do all this looking into everything, and people come out of the woodwork and say it's theirs and whatnot. And perhaps it is, perhaps it was. Like the claims of ownership are very unclear. And what that means as an impact is that people just won't invest in those areas, right? In Ghana, where we've been doing a regenerative farming project for a while, there's a problem that without being on the national register that can be checked, you know, from anywhere in the world, investors just won't invest, right? Because they can't say, because I come to you and I say, hey, I want you to invest in my farm. And they go, oh, that sounds great. We'd love to. How do we know it's yours? And like, well, trust me, bro, you know, or fly to Accra, the capital of Ghana, and go into and do a bunch of research and, you know, it's like, they're like, no, we're really looking for something that we could like push a button on a computer and then move on with our lives. And, and it's like, oh, that doesn't exist yet. So similar. So then what happens is investment, international investment doesn't happen in places like Ghana and Bahamas, right? Or at a much, much, much reduced pace, because There's just so much friction, right? So one of the advantages is actually the ability to eliminate that friction and then unlock the economic growth in things like property in these countries, which people should want.
None: 100%.
Richard Carthon: And I think that's a really good example. The way that property is even done here in the States, or even just having to go through databases to find everything is pretty old in a lot of ways that blockchain can solve. But then you have like that next component of Where else can this go? Where else can we bring this outside of these other use cases, outside of real estate, from potential medical to go to potential voting systems? There's so much that can be brought into this umbrella. And I know that Ease is focused on a lot of these different use cases.
Douglas Horn: One of the things I built was the Decide Governance Engine and Decide Voter app. And we're actually integrating that into Ease protocol. Because when I originally built them, I made them open source. So we are able to bring that in. The voting and governance platforms of many, many places in the world are really messed up, right? The last technological disruption of things like voting was the invention of paper. Right? So once we had paper, you know, ever since we've had paper, it's basically the process has been unchanged. You somehow let people make a mark on a piece of paper. Then you want to collect all those pieces of paper. Don't lose any. Don't add. Don't provide an opportunity for any new ones to be added in. Right? And then you count them. And then if there's a problem and people don't believe it, then you count them again. Like that is the technology of voting. when it comes down to it, in almost any, you know, in the US and any place in the world, right? Practically. So, if we can make that a blockchain-based trusted system that's very easy to do, where there's no chance that your vote is not counted, in fact, you know your vote is counted, right? Where you can vote very easily without having to go somewhere or potentially be be intimidated by, you know, the other party or the government itself or whatever, depending on where you are, you know, but just do it on the convenience of your phone, that's great, right? If you can, instead of having multiple days, weeks, or sometimes even months before you know the final outcome of an election, if you can know that in two minutes, right, that would also be great. All of these things will help restore faith in government. The things I just mentioned are all strong reasons why people are suspicious of voting. And I think we can solve that. I set out to solve that with decide governance engine. And I'm really glad that we're going to be incorporating that as a post MVP feature of the system. So I think there's a huge opportunity there. And I think every government needs to adopt this. And also the governance is different than just voting, right? There's committee management. There's all kinds of things that we build into that, that I think small towns or medium-sized towns or smart cities or whatever, bottom up, will want to adopt because it also lowers their costs and improves their service. So I think that's another thing that we'll see. after stable, after people, it'll actually be empowered by people getting used to using stable coins, being more comfortable with it. And then of course, by Ease protocol, including in the Ease easy for everyone super app, the voting features that any organization can adopt for themselves, whether it's a union or a company or a county or whatever, that's how that adoption is likely to happen as a second wave after stable coins.
Richard Carthon: Yeah, I think it has to all be layered in and I think it's all about, you know, a first injection point on meeting people where they are and where they feel like they can start to adopt the technology. So, you know, we covered a lot today, a lot of different ways that EASE is tackling a lot of these challenges that are currently happening. But as you look at the next six to 12 months, you know, what's on the roadmap? What are things that people are looking forward to? If someone's listening to this, you're like, yo, this sounds awesome, options we want to go build on here. Do you have grants? Like, tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, absolutely.
Douglas Horn: So over the next month or two, we're going to see the release of the MVP that people can actually start using. We're also during that timeframe, there's going to, and tied to it, there's going to be a token launch, token generation event for the EASE Hub system, because that token actually plays a core function of providing liquidity through our revolutionary exponential liquidity system that allows things like swaps to be atomic swaps we built in to a transfer. So if I want to pay in USDC, but you want to receive USDT, I don't have to do a separate transaction for that to happen. So because we need that for those features, we're going to have to have a token generation event for the hub chain, EaseHub. And that's something to see. I think we'll bring a lot of people in because there will be staking rewards and there's augmented staking rewards early on. I think we'll see a lot of people from the crypto world come in for those reasons. And I think we'll see a lot of people from elsewhere come in because as we bring out merchant tools for merchants to be able to not only use ease pay as a way to bypass the credit card rails and save money, But also we're gonna give them tools in the easy for everyone super app to be like a small point of sale system for themselves. Meaning that businesses can basically kind of set up a storefront on ease protocol. That's very easy for everyone to use, it's message based and we think that's gonna bring a lot of adoption. I happen to believe that especially in the world and In the US, but especially in the broader world, there's a massive amount of micro entrepreneurs who are one-person operations. They're your side hustle, right? And a lot of people have one, two, three, or four of those. And you need to sort of like create those as a business unto itself. And giving people a bunch of tools on ease super app means that, you know, they have those things so they can, they can improve their business. They can, you know, instantly notarize something, right? It's not a big deal. It's not cutting edge, but no one's really made it easy for people to do it before. Um, you can, you can get a micro loan to go out and do something, right? You can, you can find your customers, you can do payments and revenue splitting and all these kinds of things. You can do a no-code smart contract-based system for loyalty points for your customers, right? That's part of our Autotasks no-code smart contract platform that's going to be coming out in about four months. And so these tools are going to really bring a lot of adoption to the Ease protocol platform. Then I think within six months, big things that we're doing with major countries and major financial institutions already. And I think within six months, you'll see the first of those projects actually coming out as pilots in those areas. A year from now, we will have multiple releases of Ease Send and Ease ERP, Ease GDP, much usage of exponential liquidity as a staking system, And I think it'll become apparent that, you know, this is a technology that's actually making revenue, that's actually people are using, are liking, are having fun with, are engaged about in the same way that people are engaged about, you know, Venmo or something, right? And it just becomes part of their life. As that happens, I think it'll be really clear that we're, you know, on a rocket ship path to success. That's where I think ease is going to be.
Josh Kriger: Well, it's quite a journey that you guys are on. And it's really nice to have such a clear, specific roadmap as an answer to that question. We ask that question a lot, right? We've had over 400, maybe 450 shows. And you don't always get that level of specificity when you ask about the roadmap. And that's a problem with our industry, but it certainly sort of alludes to sort of the gravitas of what you're building and why we're so excited to have you as a partner, Douglas.
Douglas Horn: I'm excited to have you guys. You know, you, you, it's always fun because you, I, you guys know a little bit more about what we're doing than we can publicly talk about. So it's like, you know, and you know, can't wait to tell people about it. Yeah. It's been, it's been great. I'm really excited about your Washington DC event. and our ability to be sponsors there. And I think that's something I didn't include in my roadmap, which maybe I should have, which is inroads with the U.S. government as well through outreach like that and some other things that we're doing.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, I think, you know, the benefits of that event are quite obvious. The opportunity to sort of engage directly with not only lawmakers, policymakers in the US, but globally who will be at the event. So my sort of closing question to you though, is actually you have this unique platform. We're honored to give it to you. What do you hope will be the greatest takeaways from your panel and the event for policymakers globally?
Douglas Horn: I would call success. reaching one or two policymakers of note and really getting them to understand my vision of where stable coins are going and what the possibilities are and what the need for treating this like it's almost a tool of economic warfare or self-defense and not just a cool way for people to pay for stuff. I think if people can understand my vision, if I can share that with policymakers, and they can understand what I see as the possibility, what I see as the risks, and the opportunities, then I will be very happy. Now, it would be great to do that for 100 people, but, you know, one or two of the right people could be just as, could be incredibly valuable as well. And of course, everything is the start of a conversation, right? I'm not looking to change the world at one event. It's a great stop on the train ride, which requires many stations.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's a journey, but that's why Richard and I are so excited about the event, the Future of Money Summit with folks like yourselves and Animoca Brands. Constellation Networks, all real like forward thinkers around sort of how the government can engage with this technology to make the world better, which is why I got into the space personally. And we're also going to have some fun. There's going to be this gala at St. Gregory's Hotel the night before, and we're going to play a game called Cryptopoly. So as a game maker, I'm sure you'll enjoy that as well. We're doing that with EasyBot, which is a really cool company as well that you'll learn more about. Great to have you back on the show. Really excited to know what the fall and beyond is going to bring for Ease Protocol.
Douglas Horn: Yeah. I'm excited to be at the event and actually have Ease Protocol as an app that people can download. In fact, we might even find ways to give people some tokens or some NFTs or some prizes just for creating an account, which takes less than a minute, right? And just show the ease of use. So I'm really hopeful that there will be opportunities to do that as part of the conference. And that I do see as a really big opportunity for us to grow and change minds.
Josh Kriger: Absolutely. Where can folks go to learn more about Ease protocol and start to unpack the potential?
Douglas Horn: Yeah. Ease.tech, E-A-S-E dot T-E-C-H. Ease.tech is a great website to go to. It seems like every couple of days we add more content, we're getting documentation, all kinds of things there. Ease.tech is a great place to go. On Twitter, And telegram we are at ease protocol all one word And so it's really easy to follow us there And get the the latest or discuss with other people who are excited about it. What you know, what's going on? Um And you can follow me personally at douglas underscore horn. No e at the end. Uh You do so, um, and you can follow me personally at douglas underscore horn And, um, I, I talk about things a little outside, purely the company part and more of the long-term vision and the ease protocol at ease protocol, uh, platforms are a great way to play, to see what's going on. Officially our official releases things, people who write about us. Um, so those are great places to follow up. And I'm excited to, I always love talking to people about these things. It's a, it's a big time. And I think that. The important thing is that we all come to this together and understand and build this future together. I don't think I'm building the future. I think I'm just building tools for other people to build the future with.
Josh Kriger: Well, sounds good. Thanks again for joining us today, Douglas.
Douglas Horn: Thank you so much. It's great. I can't wait for the event and can't wait for this video to come out. It's looking great. You guys always do such a great job.
Josh Kriger: Thanks, my friend.
Douglas Horn: Thank you.

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