HORIZON STATE

HORIZON STATE INTERVIEW

Interviewed by: Stefan Sathianathen Website: www.horizonstate.com

Jamie Skella

Horizon State Co-founder “This is set to be a global gamechanger and will soon be adopted by political parties, multinational enterprises, global NGOs and communities in developing countries.

“Horizon’s secure digital ballot box represents a cost-effective and smart solution to the problems inherent in today’s voting procedures.

Horizon State is the future of voting and collaborative decision making. Horizon State has built a token-based blockchain voting and decision-making platform that delivers unprecedented trust through the integrity and post-unforgeable attributes of blockchain technology. Horizon State delivers a secure digital ballot box that cannot be hacked, wherein results can never be altered, and voter identities are protected.

How does Horizon State improve voting over traditional paper methods?

Jamie Skella (JS): Horizon State betters traditional methods in many ways, but I like to break these down into three key categories: cost, efficiency, and security. So far as cost and efficiency is concerned, our platform enables 10x improvements across the board. Using Australia’s marriage equality vote as an example, we’d have shaved months off of the time it took to orchestrate, and reduced the expense from $120 million to about $2 million. Then there’s the immeasurable improvement of security: the record of the result applied to blockchain technology is perfectly secure; it’s tamper proof. This is a stark contrast to the reality of the marriage equality postal vote, where votes ended up in the wrong hands, and hundreds were even left out in the rain.

Other than cost-cutting, why would a company or government use Horizon State?

JS: It’s important to call out that it’s not just governments who can benefit from this technology, but enterprise and NGOs as well. Cost

Horizon State appears to be establishing a very “

Horizon State has partnered with SAP Next-Gen high bar in terms of the steps that can be taken to address this opportunity.

Horizon State looks to be a key part of our “

Blockchain technology is revolutionizing the collective future. to present a token-based blockchain voting and decision-making platform that delivers unprecedented trust. global political landscape.

cutting and efficiency gains aside, it’s the security of the vote that is most compelling - having an unhackable, accountable, and transparent system is a tremendously good way to install additional confidences and trust with any kind of constituency.

Why do you think blockchain technology should be used for solving problems?

JS: Blockchain isn’t a great fit for every problem, but surprisingly to some, it does in fact present many use cases which could shift society in profound ways. Be it peer-to-peer energy trading instead of your national energy provider, truly decentralised and crowd sourced file storage instead of using Dropbox, or Spotify without Spotify where you have direct financial relationships with the artists you listen to.

What’s your opinion on the Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency Bubble?

JS: From the perspective of investing speculatively in new financial assets such as Bitcoin, many idle observers are calling this a bubble. I wouldn’t necessarily disagree, but I also hesitate to call it a bubble. As the saying goes: “money is the bubble that never pops”. If societies reach consensus on what holds value, for any reason, it does. If enough people believe something can be used as a medium for exchange, it’s hard to change that belief. Gold has few applications, yet we still value it highly. Fiat currencies are no longer backed by gold, yet the value remains. In-game items are digital, but often priced highly, especially when scarce. From the perspective of speculative investments in blockchain startups and utility tokens, I think it’s clearer that we are in a bubble. Many of these startups are currently far overvalued, and corrections will have to happen. Like all startups, in the vicinity of 90% of these blockchain ones will fail, but like the dot-com bubble, we’ll see some incredibly important businesses rise from the cumulative ashes of their former peers. The question is: have you invested in the Pets. com of blockchain, or the Google of blockchain? It’s important to remember that after the dot-com pop, we still saw some of the most important innovations and businesses the world has ever seen arise from it.

What is an interesting project that you like, other than Horizon State?

JS: I’ll have to give a shout-out to fellow Australian startup, Power Ledger. The team over in Perth had a tremendously successful token sale, and have a real world use case that I think is a very important one: the democratisation and decentralisation of energy trade. I very much look forward to a future where I can sell excess power from my solar tiles and battery pack, helping create a more sustainable future for our planet.