Yeah, hi, so I'm Allison Hughes from the Energy Research Center at UCT and I've got two colleagues here from ERC That's Tara over there and Bruno both of which are in our modeling group Just who's beeping that's you Constantine Stop So yeah for research groups within ERC, which are broadly in the area of climate change And that's largely related to climate change policy And they are by far the dominant research group in ERC, which is Kind of interesting because they draw from then the rest of the groups in ERC Which are energy poverty and development energy efficiency and ourselves which are energy modeling and planning and and I would kind of Always hope that that would be the other way around that you'd have the sort of policy top of the Of the pyramid and everything else being kind of bigger and and more broad reaching but without with ourselves It's very much the other way around and and it's largely just the way financing financing works, but yeah, so What I was briefed to do was give you an overview of consumption Which I'm going to do like a freight train because I've got a little bit too many slides. I think and Then move on to the long-term mitigation scenario process Which kind of underpins I guess the mandate to look into things like a carbon tax in South Africa Which is what what James is is going to talk about and then a little bit about the outcomes of Of the process so in the launching into the overview of consumption in South Africa As Rob has said we very energy intensive. We're very coal based which you can see the one thing I like about this slide I feel like I should stroll over there But we have right at the bottom quite a large portion that says we use a lot of biomass and and I think this kind of draws to What we don't know about consumption in South Africa one of the things we really don't know is how biomass is used in South Africa One of the things I really like is that it shows that biomass is transported by people. I don't know how many developed country Sankey diagrams would show that as a means of transport of fuel in their country so Yeah, we had we're largely coal dominant We have coal going into on the right hand you can see liquid fuels and electricity and That also distinguishes us from many other countries where we have a liquid fuels base Which is very dependent on coal and gas through coal to liquid and gas to liquid plants so About 70% of our primary energy supply coming from coal as you saw in the Sankey diagram lots of coal being exported But also lots of coal being consumed in in South Africa quite a large reliance also on oil Which is largely imported as well as a little bit of gas Which is largely imported and that biomass number is very much up for grabs. It could be half. It could be a quarter It's unlikely to be more But also when South Africa reports what is renewable in South Africa biomass is very much reported as being renewable fuel So it pushes up what we think our renewal percent renewable percentage of primary energy supply is So, you know a nice number to have in there, but probably very wrong and then in terms of consumption also largely Coal based consumption within the sectors industry being a large consumer, but also, you know here another Question mark and our energy balances. There are an awful number of question marks in South Africa's energy balances so we do some very sophisticated research and modeling based on some Based on a lot of time spent trying to really understand how is energy consumed in South Africa and These are drawn up from South Africa's energy balances, which are drawn up by the Department of Energy Which are not necessarily a good starting point for anybody wanting to research energy in South Africa Because as I was saying you get into the residential sector using a large amount of energy in the residential sector We're reporting huge amounts of coal use Which are very likely to be wrong Given that I think it's something like 1% of households actually use coal in South Africa and it's it's a thermal fuel and it's Yeah, anyway, very very badly reported but nevertheless So we've got industry using large amount of coal use and as Rob said coal used. Where's Rob gone? Yeah, being driving our energy intensity and a bunch of energy intensive industries in In South Africa and also as Rob said the power system being very Coal dominant so sort of 85% of capacity lying in coal, but when it comes to actual Gigawatt hours of production a higher a higher amount of production lying in in coal then 85% It's somewhere in the early 90s, but also we have the only nuclear plant in Africa Yeah, and a bit of pump storage and and hydro which is also an interesting so our hydro is imported electricity largely and Wonderful opportunities for reducing our emissions through imported hydro in South Africa And then in terms of liquid fuel most of it coming from crude oil Which is all imported but also a large amount of gas to liquid and and coal to liquid in In South Africa and then Rob spoke a bit about the structure of the economy But this really just drawing again to there being a number of energy intensive economic sectors in South Africa very important for export Export earnings And Then as Rob also spoke about the sort of where does Africa lie in the global picture So you mentioned something like 1.4 percent of global emissions But in terms of where we how we would compare ourselves to other developing countries. We're very energy intensive In Africa, we're kind of a dominant economy as well as very dominant in terms of energy and fuel use and I think Bruno was saying earlier We have something like 70 percent of the Electrical generating capacity in the saddock region So we're pretty high as well as a very dominant economy in the saddock region and These are kind of all underpinned why we I think as saw that we began to worry we are so energy intensive We're clearly an outlier in the region. We're not people gonna start to Look at us and go, you know, what are you doing? And I think that was very much the beginning or the motivation for the long-term mitigation scenario process So now Launching into what was the long-term it is get mitigation scenario process any of you familiar with LTMS Any of you heard of it before Okay, so that's kind of interesting because of South Africa. We think this was very important and and it's kind of like a Global, you know, we're the leaders and you know and kind of the world in sort of setting this kind of process going So it's it's very interesting that only one person in the room has ever heard of it But you know, so the main objective of long-term mitigation scenarios was to As it says rope provide robust broad supported recommendations for long-term national climate policy and then also develop some kind of platform from which South Africa could begin to a Negotiate mitigation reductions because we were expecting that someone is going to turn around and say to us you need to reduce your emissions So so we want to get a head start and and sort of preempt that know how we might be able to do it The outcome of the process that is that we have this cabinet endorsed peak plateau and decline mitigation trajectory for South Africa which Was was a remarkable achievement actually given that we are very energy intensive and that we have large industry Lobby groups in South Africa who? You know lobby for cheap fuel prices and continued use of coal in the country And then also we have a mandate to begin exploring What policies could we use to reduce emissions in South Africa? So the LTM is process it was mandated by cabinet in 2006 so as you see from the diagram we have this cabinet memo and we have the start of the process And then from then on we had the building of a scenario Scenario building team and the scenario building team are representatives from industry labor government and Civil society and others so fairly large meetings quite strong lobby groups and then we have also simultaneously this research process and It's kind of interesting because this is where energy research center splits where we have our Modellers very much involved in the research process and the climate change group very much involved in the scenario building team and the whole scenario process and from there we get a bunch of of documentation and All the documentation coming out of the process so the scenario building team Approved all the technology information that we included in the research They have proved they approved all the scenarios that we included they approved all background data And they also approved all the documentation coming out of the research So this is very powerful. We have a bunch of strong lobby groups all agreeing to a bunch of data And these lobby groups sit on both sides. It's we want lots of renewables. It's escom saying give us loads of nuclear its Labor saying this is too much of an effect on the economy and to others Agreeing that South Africa will have a peak plateau and decline emissions trajectory Based on a bunch of analysis that has been done and from there it went on to a high-level group and then it was Cabinet approved So in terms of the research we had three Sort of broadly three Modeling processes. There's the energy model which was by far the dominant modeling process to non-energy modeling on both process emissions and then emissions from agriculture and forestry and Other sectors and then tacked on the end Which was not done terribly well was in sort of economic analysis of what came out of the energy models And this is something that we would like to try and improve upon because this is one of the main criticisms I think of our work That social effects were not taken into account enough during this process So as with any kind of modeling well with most modeling piece of works you're looking at what are we consuming now which we Had to do a lot of work to actually get to what are we consuming now? And then how might this look how might consumption look in the future? And so the first thing that was developed was a growth without constraints growth path for South Africa in emissions and growth without constraints We see quite a large growth in emissions And and a lot of that is driven by the fact that we're relying a lot of coal to liquid plants to come in We're relying coal use to continue. There's very little effort to improve any kind of energy and tends to energy efficiency in the economy and and then also Something which was kind of tricky for us was this was this view of this current development plans Which which says okay, these are the policies that South Africa currently has in place? And a lot of argument as to whether policies which we have in place should or shouldn't be included in growth without constraints And I think this is this is sort of also maybe a developing country view of of life as it is Yes, we have wonderful policies in South Africa, but not necessarily implemented And so the decision was to have a growth without constraints without current policies as if current policies aren't implemented And and I think that's largely a correct view of of how things how things happen And then what we're heading for is this required by science and so we're required by science gets us is that we're dropping emissions Slowly to what we think the IPCC is going to want from us at some time in the future And and you know as we all know I think that's kind of changing but at the at the time That was what we thought was required So so what we're trying to do is we're trying to drop this growth without constraints down to required by science or And what we're landing up with is this peak plateau and the client emissions trajectory And how we do it is we slowly add a combination of mitigation options now the model that we used as an energy Economy-wide model so it's got both supply and demand in it and and it's a it's an optimization model so you you're saying What is it going to cost me or what is it? You're developing a kind of least cost supply demand Balance for South Africa in the future So demand is a demand for end users. It's demand for heating light and cooling that sort of thing It's not a demand for final energy So you're translating a demand for heating light and cooling through a bunch of technologies into a demand for energy and then you're translating that demand for energy through Transformation processes into demand for coal and oil and gas and and other fuels and these wedges are acting at all parts of the chain So you've got wedges on the technology on the demand side You might have wedges on the behavior side, which are then affecting your your end use Consumption or your end use demands as well as on the supply side. So you might want more nuclear You might want to not have CTL plants You might want to go. What if we import hydro so a bunch of things that that we're considering One of the difficulties in South Africa is How's my time doing five minutes two minutes quick quick chop chop and is what How might development look and and I think this is It's a special challenge and then also in this kind of Development pause what government policies are driving How we'd like to see growth happening so in our economic growth where we hit a 6% growth with that's very much not a researcher perspective That's an agreed by Sonoria building team sort of political perspective almost of what the economy might look like and Then a various kind of constraints that you hit in economic growth where you go Well, we have only so many iron and steel Tons of iron and steel waiting to be mined How might that Reduce growth in iron and steel industry for instance and then also challenges related to what is the future for different? Hustle types look like because we have in different income groups hustles using energy very differently How might the energy intensity of sectors change without policy? What are opportunities for road and rail will we even invest in public transport in South Africa? So so what might we have able to do there? How will technology transfer look and things like that? And then you land up from that these bunch of different what we called wedges Which are basically giving you a cost to the economy or a savings for a bunch of different measures that we've implemented as you can see there Tons of different measures and then what we also did was some some of those measures together and the models that we That we use allow you to get a sort of combined effect of a bunch of because these policies aren't in and of themselves additive a Lot of them you need to run together to be able to see what the combined effect is and Also, if you're on the if you affect something on demand side you are also affecting on the supply side So what is the combination of demand and supply side interaction in the economy? and we see large potential savings in in industrial energy efficiency in things like changing mode of transport and and other things and let's just and Then I just added this because this is kind of curious for me as a sort of on the side So we do all this work and we start with a base year 2003 and one of the criticisms after this process was the method of determining the 2003 base year estimate should be provided It is understood that this was a projection from a 1994 data based on annual GDP growth so as scientists we sort of work from here onwards and Then someone gets hold of our work puts it back into 1990 and draws a straight line on which we are criticized For me this is an interesting kind of disconnect between the science and the policy which I which I only realized the other day And I think it's a word of caution to anyone kind of doing doing this kind of work That that we don't You know we butt up against these these criticisms of our work on stuff That actually is not based on anything that happened happened in reality But the door is open because someone put a put a line put a line on a graph. I Think I'm I think I'm done


So, as it was mentioned in the previous panel, affiliate marketing is in the cornerstone of programs marketing at this, but recently this industry has experienced quite a few hardships. We all heard of the new regulations that are putting more and more constraints on the affiliate practices. And the price of acquisition, something that we'll discuss in a minute, is constantly wrong. On the other hand, we see new technology that is already implemented within the various systems, and quite a few future ones that are expected to boost affiliate marketing. So, we have with us the distinguished panel, I'll give you guys a chance to introduce yourselves, and then we'll just move on to the questions. So, Sarkina please. Hello everyone, I hope you're having a fantastic afternoon so far, or a day. I mean, this comes in one of my favorite ones, so hopefully there will be yours too. My name is Sarkina, I come from PayPage, Income Access, we're a digital marketing company that's specialized in affiliate marketing since 2002. So, hopefully you'll be able to share your feedback too. Great, so hello everyone. My name is Roma, working for Swiss Code Bank. So, Swiss Code Bank, we are the Switzerland online banking. We are specialized in multi-asset trading solutions for private investors and financial institutions. And we're going to launch pretty soon our affiliate marketing program. So, on June 1st, to boost our retail and giant acquisition. Happy to be here with you. Well, I would like to welcome everyone here. My name is Alexei and I work in TickMill. I would like to thank you all for dedicating your time and coming here instead of spending the time on Sunday beaches of Limassol. I've been dealing with partnership programs of all sorts for quite some time and hope I will be able to actually kind of share my experience with regards to the Easter side of the work that every forex broker would have to be involved in. Thank you. Hey guys, thank you for coming. I'm Sean, I'm from Tel Aviv as well. Hope you're enjoying the service. I'd like to thank everybody here. Anywhere you are on the affiliate network, my name is Tuan Picon. We're already 11 years in the industry. We have a self-accommodation system that knows how to split with an AI technology, knows how to split between all the brokers and get them the best high quality leads. Also, it's written everywhere, TPC scheme, that's our motto. That's the most important thing for affiliates. You know affiliates are asking all the time, what's the CDA, what's the CDA. Everybody needs to understand that TPC is the most important and that's our logo, TPC scheme. Thank you guys. So, we're going to start with a very basic question that might look a little funny to everyone, but it still needs to be asked. So, what is affiliate marketing today? We need like a 3D definition because there are a lot of new models coming in and I just want to hear from you what do you define as affiliate, as an affiliate and in general affiliate marketing practices. So, Tine. That's a very good question. I guess for us, a definition of affiliate could be a third party marketing partner that's referring customers to your business. Now, they could be an individual with a partner's website, it could be IDs, it could be brokers that have a network, somebody with a big social following, it could be an influencer. I mean, is anybody that's not yourself that's marketing your business to drive customers to? Yeah, completely agree with what Tine thinks on our website. We really see the affiliates as a next-tonal sales force that we remunerate upon performance. So, for Swisscote, actually, we really see the affiliates as a complementary program to our existing introducing broker networks. So, we work with a lot of IDs in Europe, in the Middle East, in Asia, and we have different commission models with those IDs. But for us, the affiliates should be CBA focused so really rewarding the affiliates based on the performance, on the client acquisition, and not necessarily on the impression or CBL, some days that we can marginally in the direct way with the external media. So, this is where we position the affiliates. Well, I basically agree with Roman and with everyone who has expressed their opinion. However, within this panel talk, I would like to say that I personally am going to refer to affiliate as their activity which brings your business regardless whether it's based on client acquisition or any other criteria. So, basically, in my opinion, as I said during today, I will basically be referring to whatever you do to maintain your business partners, to bring to generate the business partners who will be capable to bring traffic to you. Well, basically, whether you're in charge of your own, if you're in contact with the company, giving it the thing that you went to the family before, that's the way to make an expression of push and experience about the person alive in your own instances, weekends, nights, everything, because it's really important and we really want to give it the feeling of being to the family. So, because of that, we have a feeling it's going to cost over 10 years. Thank you guys. So, I want to add a very question to Alexi. It's one of the representatives here of LearnPro Garage. So, we're kind of still in the midst of the storm that is called the ESMA Regulations with Restrictions. How did ESMA Regulations, the recent one, I mean, how did they affect the marketing practices? And if you can go into detail in terms of numbers, in terms of how this affected your efforts and your partner's efforts? Well, I would say that I have an experience talking to people who work in various brokerage companies, and I can say that currently you have faced pretty much the same situation everywhere. There was a big impact once the ESMA rules were implemented, but it was kind of a funny impact where you could see there on one side there was a shift of people who were working as introducing brokers. In other words, they were immigrated for the volume generated by their clients. There was a big shift of those people to less regulated brokers just for the ease of using their trading terms and using their partnership terms. They simply wanted to apply their existing business model but to the new broker since their existing business partners, existing brokers, could not support them any longer. So, they would exchange their existing broker to another one hoping they can make as much as they were making before. On the other side, there are some people coming from, majority of them would be coming from European countries. They did not want to compromise their business activities. Therefore, they started seeking for those brokers which were capable to offer them these affiliate related terms which is like compensation based on traffic brought to this broker. That's why, as I said, the situation is a bit funny. On one side, you can see a big shift of the IBs, introducing brokers, all kinds of partners to less regulated brokers just because it's easier to work with them. On the other side, there are some people coming from very decent countries that care a lot about their reputation, about their business who do not want to jeopardize their current activities and they are looking for their good broker capable to partner up with them without breaking any local business requirements or any local laws. Can you give a specific example of the hardships that the IBs are experiencing? Give me one. All right, we have a situation. As you know, before one of the very common practices was when an IB was remunerated for certain volume traded by clients referred by these IBs. These people cannot be compensated based on this business model any longer due to the ESMR regulation. Therefore, they are forced to either change their compensation model and agree on working with a one-off payment which a lot of them don't want to do or they have to find a broker which is capable to offer them CPA, CPL or something similar which there are plenty and my colleagues here they are coming from the industry they can basically probably support me with it. So, I would say they're number-wise maybe during the first half year while ESMR was in place I would probably say that maybe 50-60% of the businesses they shifted away from the model where they were compensated for volume as their so-called IB programs and these people are seeking for different brokers. So, that's pretty much what happened. Romain, what is it done from your side with the ESMR regulation? From our side we have the ESMR program since the ESMR implementation but if we take all the acquisition channels that we work on actually we store in the ESMR region about 15% and if we talk about the revenue that we were generating before and after the ESMR implementation we store a sharp of what's present in the key markets that were in business with all of this in London. So, of course, the new regulation with those negative respondents that you must put on your website on the different trade teams the leverage now which is capped I think it's reshifting with our industry from a brokerage house perspective but also from a partnership perspective as you mentioned, I'd say it's clear that the people who used to work on a revenue sharing or volume compensation basis in the past in the ESMR region I don't see that much future for this at the moment so we must work on new formats and maybe the CPA is an alternative which might be more interesting. So, I'll take your follow-up on the CPA issue and Scorpina, I want to ask you CPAs have been skyrocketing over the last 10 years and more so over the last 5 years so is there an end to that? Do you see somewhere where the prices are going to stop and how do you see the differences in the future with such high prices? That's a very good question. I think the base for what you do with the CPA models or any compensation model for the first time you have to know what your lifetime values are so you have to know what margins you're prepared to work with and which partners are going to bring you the high-revenue generating customers and therefore you've got more room to give them a high CPA I think the one-size-fits-all rule doesn't work and in my experience the read does not work so you have to be very selective and yes you might be able to go high and high and high for better quality but you also have to be prepared to change the model if it's not working in your favor Sean, what do you think about the CPA prices? Is there any stop to that and end to that? I think of course not like we will say the process in economy there is demand, there is supply there is always high demand and the supply of goods is really low and so the higher the demand is and higher prices are going to be for CPA and also the savings and stuff so that's a way to pay a much more than the magazine and the supply of goods Can I have a word here? Alright, first of all just a quick definition CPA is a cost per acquisition it's how much a broker is willing to pay for Claren who decided to trade with this or that broker it's just for the people who might not know what it is Anyway, I would agree that in the recent few years the CPA, how much commission the broker would pay one of did really go far from if not mistaken they used 500-600 dollars for a client, it used to be kind of like considered to be quite high payout Now I'm seeing there are some brokers they would agree to pay 700 bucks for a client 800 dollars for a client and what I'm seeing right now some interesting things are happening first of all, a gap between payouts for clients coming from let's say not so wealthy countries such as, let's say maybe Egypt or Eastern Europe and payout to, yeah and some others, and payout for clients to come from well established countries which is let's say Australia, Singapore Germany, Italy, Norway I would say Germany, Italy, Norway I believe it correlates very much to their the drivers of the economy in Europe the gap is growing so these people who come from these countries they are being rewarded for the most and when I did my must I would say that even though currently some brokers pay 700 dollars, 800 dollars for a client like that they will be willing to pay even more and I will not be surprised that this number will double because it's a very lucrative market, I mean these countries and even though the broker will pay more they will still be profiting on the other side, what's going to happen is that these high payouts will basically cut off those brokerage companies who are not capable to pay that much therefore they will be brokers capable to offer this model and they will be brokers who are not going to play in this game at all that's my opinion so following up on what you said that I said I want to ask Sean you mentioned quite a few countries so I want to know in your point of view what are the most lucrative geographical locations in terms of ROI in affiliate marketing which countries? well it's like I'm still a young woman I know which ones and I like something different but it's seriously a negative question I think there are a lot of geos because for each brand has different publishers that brings in different ROI for each geo I have geos you know they really are making me the best ROI do you want to make me the best ROI really? from my personal experience I've been in this business for just a few years though there are the brokers and these brokers would have the core business based in just a few countries and to my surprise I experienced that sometimes the companies would be generating lots of revenues from some countries you would never expect them to for example I had cases where there were the companies getting a lot from some countries in Eastern Europe despite that you would never think of it so you may not only say there is this geo which is more lucrative or less lucrative however of course there is potential which is much higher let's say in Singapore other than Pakistan there is little to work in Germany or UK other than Bangladesh that's obvious however sometimes for a company to survive it's good enough to actually focus on a specific market where you have pretty decent setup which allows you to do the business that's number one that's from my personal experience you don't have to agree with me on the other side I would say that it's not only the geo that matters a lot it's also your ability to offer enough IT solutions to support your stuff and it is also you as a broker who is capable to motivate the stuff working for you and if your people are motivated enough and supported enough about some fancy things the basic things so if your people are supported enough and motivated enough to do the business for you almost any geo can be profitable and quite lucrative for you that's my opinion thank you so Roman I wanted to ask you following up on the issue of new models and new approaches towards affiliate marketing what do you think about free payment is it a model that you are familiar with the whole idea of affiliate marketing yeah so no it's not a model we are used to as I said today on the global scale we work with a lot of IBS so we have different models with IBS we have two major actually commission plan one is about offering rebates on spreads and this model is mostly used in Europe in the Middle East in Switzerland our market which is more market oriented so it's really specific to the Chinese markets we are pretty well established and here actually most of the IBS there are similar models there is more education to their clients and they just apply a model on top of the spread that we charge to the clients for trading on our platforms so this kind of commission scheme is completely at the opposite of the upfront payment and for the affiliate program that we can launch instant either in our philosophy from the moment to pay it from the affiliates as I said we clearly see it as an external space force that we are going to reward on a performance basis so once the client is onboarding with a deposit and with a normal price that must be executed on the platform so at the moment on our side it's not really the philosophy so we are not going to buy it Serfina what do you think as a follow-up question what do you also think about some profit and loss models some kind of rupture and loss share models that we have so just to add to a romance that I think I totally agree prepayments used to be quite common in the past with bigger affiliates who really know the traffic very well prepayments usually come with some sort of a performance criteria it's just that the notion prepayment means you are giving them the money upfront before you actually get the customers and the traffic but it really boils down to if you work it back to the same CTA values that you are comfortable to pay then you could do that profit and loss is a good one I mean in our experience a good affiliate program should always have an element of a revenue share with it and the reason I say that is because when you have a revenue share your affiliate is actually like a business partner they are not just looking for who is going to give you the highest CTA because yes, I made a knowledge reflection affiliate can be fiddled but the people who pay the highest they are always the ones who are the best so you have to be sensible about it and you have to come up with a confidence model again, a confidence model you can have a CTA element because obviously you have to come across as money and they say they can't pay and they don't understand you can see cost of money anyway so it's good to have that but the longer elements of it is what makes it a sustainable profitable model for both the program and the business all these types of new products new technologies that are now emerging so what do you guys have what kind of new product that you have that you implemented lately and you can tell us about it basically we have the AI technology and I suppose that the people out from the Europe we use it for our smart trading so all the brands that we are working with we get the lead from the chart basically the lead enters and the same second based on the whole center of our business and which conversion rate the lead is immediately directed to the program and it's going to be most highly profitable so we use AI for that and yeah I'm sure it will be useful so can I have the new technologies new products that you want in that direction I think what people are going to see now is obviously most people are on their on their mobile phones so being able to do your trading very easily and seamlessly on a mobile platform is really going to be interesting and from the affiliate perspective obviously if the affiliate is going to drive traffic to your app then they will be able to track it so being able to track the in-app activity ongoing on just a model is something that's quite sold out so we talked about technology and we mentioned passwords at AI another password that we like to mention is blockchain so my question is how can blockchain if any can improve the trust between brokers and affiliates and all the agencies in the middle obviously we know that there's some sort of tension sometimes and can blockchain technology with its verification and its assurances can reach to shortfall brokers and affiliates so let's see first of all I wanted to say that the majority of the people sitting here they are much smarter than myself therefore you probably understand the word and the concept of blockchain much better than myself my opinion again and the rest of the users alright I'll try so in my opinion blockchain despite that like it's some fancy and very complex word at the current moment and maybe within the next few years would not really have much impact on the industry because it's being based on same technologies as I mean their affiliate part of the business is being based on the same technologies as we've been having for the past 3, 4, 5 years nothing changed really you need to have to be backed up the people do the work for you having all these technologies to help you somehow segment your clients kind of identify something that's good to have but it's not their driver for your business however in my humble opinion in case this blockchain and technologies based on blockchains can be profitable to somehow help your needs solve your problems do the KYC better identify the clients but they might be playing some great role sometime in the future what do you think? yeah I think the technology which can improve the shortage between partners if you do business with partners first in the first stage the second stage then I see use potential for the technological aspect of the blockchain to improve the different processes so I'm really thinking for instance about the payment part I read an article recently I told the guy who was actually saying that maybe the smart contract which is based on the network and it could be an X application of the blockchain to settle the different contracts between the counterparties and brokers for instance and to settle the maintenance of the transactions are very nice I see a strong potential from that side so really gaining of efficiency and remotely paying me on this panel another work part which is sometimes very interesting to do and which doesn't really have value and still in the payment in the payment side there is also this initiative so this network which is now adopted by more than 200 financial institutions worldwide and this also could provide additional efficiency could save money, could go quicker when it comes to manage global payments so if you have huge networks of affiliates in different continents when you have to manage different currencies again here this blockchain technology can really improve the way you process all those payments you can save your costs but it's really a technological matter I see the trust it's completely human based it's all about the relationship that you have with the partner but blockchain can be a great asset in my opinion what happens is the majority of their companies that work in this business they are being managed by some conservative people who are trying to build their business kind of like slowly but surely therefore I don't really think that these people will be rushing to start a new technology straight away they will probably take time try this product, try that product see how the competitors did it then if things went well they will apply this product it will take time so yes there is big potential in this but at the same time it will take time before these new products will be actually widely used thank you guys we have very little time but I do want to open the floor for one question only anyone going once to the city anyone thank you guys so much for this great discussion it was our pleasure thank you


Here are the seven steps I took to become a full-time professional speaker. Step one, I decided. Step two, I met with several of my mentors in the corporate space to find out their needs and to drill down on what topics and themes they valued most. Step three, I acknowledged that becoming a full-time professional keynote speaker had three primary pillars, content, delivery, and the business of speaking. Step four, I went back to all the concepts, ideas, and lessons I had learned as a basketball performance coach and organized my notes. Step five, I delivered a dozen free keynotes before I ever asked for a dime. Step six, I immediately invested in a website and a speaker reel and shifted my social media post to target my new audience. Step seven, I created a spreadsheet of everyone I knew that could potentially be an asset and I brainstormed ways I could add value to them.


Hello, and welcome back to the craft box. My name is Brenton today. We are on episode 7 the part 101 privateer playthrough thingy Last episode if you haven't checked it out already, we did the fire ship dungeon and today we are Heading into the shrimps palace basically is what I'll call it Didn't think so easy and we will see what we can do trouble we can get into here Um, we'll do that. We'll do that Okay Okay, there we go So yeah, this this dungeon isn't actually too bad Yeah, it's quite Quite easy. There's quite a few battles. So which is Slightly annoying, but oh well, he cares about me Um, yeah Sure, let us do this Da ba da ba, what are we going to do? Ba ba da ba there.  Um, sounds good. Okay There we go is half half already, which is fantastic nearly did it already. Yay Didn't even kill. Good job Didn't even destroy the box. I'm dead. Okay. Okay Um Okay, why not? More power borders.  That's good We will go for you we will go for For you and we will go for you Done There we go There we go one down That did a lot of damage and it's really good. I really like that. He's great Um, okay egg and then some damage deer repel borders. Nice.  It sounds good Oh block done lucky.  Oh, that's not good. That's the blocks Okay, um, yeah, that's not too good. Uh, Emmett probably can't hit anybody. No, he Got okay. Well, we'll just heal then. Um, it'll be fine. Bump. That was good Block done lucky mega heal. Yeah, that's good nearly full health again. Yeah Um, okay Yikes that did quite a bit actually Millie yay op one health. Okay. Um do that sure done. Why not? Yep, new you would walk. Okay Should have put you on the other that's unfortunate Please go for nope dodge. That's good. Okay. Well, we'll just put everyone. Oh, no Millie. No Millie's not gonna do it That's a shame. We'll just put everyone on him then Done Bye There we go fantastic Easy-peasy Let's use the winch Oh, hello, there's people Maybe I will you don't know that do yeah, um, okay, we will do this battle. This is a really weird one because there's only um, three of them and two companions so Yeah, it's kind of difficult can be difficult, but I have Hopes that this will go well Maybe I should have used emit, but I think we should be fine Emmett would have been quite nice, but you know, it'll be fine We will now go in for the charge You can go there done Okay, we'll just try and get some good damage on them already. Oh, okay. That was good That was actually really good. He's nearly dead. These guys don't actually have too much health, which is good. The hardest is probably Crangle he's quite difficult.  Yeah did a lot. Okay um, yikes We will go on you you can go on him and um Not gonna super because I know we can do a lot of damage If it didn't it's cool That's good Because I know we can save it on the crab crangle who Need probably a lot of damage done. Millie. Yay. Thank goodness Um, we'll do you and we'll do you done Block done lucky ready spell. There we go nearly half health, which is good Okay, we're nearly half health, which is not good. We are under half health, which is not good. Um Go Millie go that was intense dodging Yay Millie yay Um, we're gonna heal ourselves because that is probably a good idea. I don't particularly want to die um, yeah heal There we go Yay one down only one more to go And here we go Bye That did a lot. Good job. Good job Millie Yay perfect No, yeah, we have to crush people crush the lever with the thing Yay, okay, let us hit on over and we know that there is going to be a Fight because we can already see them Okay, actually Um health health health health. Thank you um See i'm just going to skip this battle because it is pretty much the same as the one we did just before Okay, I am back just finished off that battle. We're just going to get some health. Yes, very nice And we're going to head on in here now finally Locate the master Okay, then if you say so Bump bump bump Minions silence. Well, I will be back once I've finished this battle because again, it's kind of just the same as before Okay, just finished off that and now we are defeating the master Just same old team I suppose he's hiding behind those big crystals. We'll have to break our way through. Okay, we get it So basically we all just have to the goal of this is to defeat the masters so Basically we need to bust our way through here.  I suppose Um, yeah, sounds like a good plan. I think Wow, you have a long range. Don't you you sure do Oh, hello All right, so I am nearly dead already. Yeah. Hey Um Yeah, you had fiction you would have Luckily I can get out of here now That was really good There we go one down already, which is fantastic. Millie is OP um I'm going to do that. We'll um speed through into here Yeah, basically Is what we're going to do the whole plan just to kind of get through here Really spell.  That's good Why would you go that? Oh, you can go through there. That's cool. Stop blocking Millie do something Millie is so OP OP Millie. Okay, um We are going to Go like that. We're gonna go up Around there like that. We're going to super hit you And we're gonna super hit you and we're gonna go down and hopefully he's dead There we go, that was pretty good.  Um, okay He's that was actually really easy It's quite easy if you have the right stuff This is not not okay. Come on. Let's go tell mordecai the plot's being broken Well, let's head back to mordecai then. Um, what level are we? Are we still seven? I think we are Yeah, we're seven Um, I don't actually know when we get exp. I think it's when we talk to And then at the end Jack, I think it is at the end. Um, how much do we get? 750 How much do we need actually when we use the life fountain? Probably a good idea We need 750 will get us over the mark That would be good Okay Don't get a level you don't get a level You don't get a level and you do get a level Wow highest level companion. Thank you Bonnie Ann. Um, who's better? Well, you're better than him. So we'll put you there donation off the better than the others But I kind of like the others so we'll leave it like that. Um We got a practice point still don't know what I'm going to put these into. Um Yeah, I'm just going to save them up for now I'm going to grab this chest And we will head on in here privateers office and see do we get anything? I'm not sure so we're just going to check um Yeah, we do we get tough which is great 10 health fantastic Um, and we're going to head back to traders cave, which is not there. I'll be back in just a bit Here we go Oh Let us start many Okay, this is probably Me in um, this is probably the easiest of them all because you don't have to run around everywhere. So Good So much dialogue just shush, please Please shush. Um, yeah, there's this is the easiest of them all by far in my opinion. So Yeah, 97 not too much. Um Don't but um, but um, just do that. We're not sure we're done Fantastic Bum Okay. Yeah, slow down boy. These guys actually go quite Great happy for a lot of the time. So yeah Bum, bum, bum, bum. We'll go for you. We will Go for you. We will go for you. We will go for Scatterblast done fantastic Here we go. That could know if you did, which is good Good good There we go one done Three to go Okay Hello, okay, and Millie. Hello Go for you. We'll go for you. You can do him and him We'll see how that looks There we go. That was actually really good. That did a lot of damage. I'm surprised. There we go. Fantastic. Um, hopefully This should be dead now. Yep There we go. Fantastic What I really hate about this is we can't move while he's talking which is really annoying Thank you. You can get pulled.  I think we just go straight up. Do we Yeah, we do Here we go Captain wouldn't skull island anymore, but that's good to know Bonnie Okay, okay Yeah, I'll be back once I've gotten some meat. Okay.  Well, let's do this then Uh, we got melee first time as well this battle. That's cool. Uh, let us do These guys are annoying. They're so far away. The battle water is so big for this one. I really hate it Um, we'll do that. Um, fantastic. We'll see what we can do That was good. Nearly half half already Whoo, okay And what are we doing here? Milly, what are you gonna do? Okay These guys walk so slow as well. Like it's really annoying Really really annoying Well one down. Good job Milly Um, we'll just leave Milly over there for a bit. I suppose We will do This one Do you and you can super hit you and you can get a blast both of them and we'll leave Milly over there with that one Okay, that was actually really good. That was really really good Okay, fantastic There we go. That was easy peasy.  Yeah There we go. Fantastic. That is that and done I should probably go adjust. That's a good idea Bump bump bump bump bump The jobs have done. They lost that crystal There that's done. Let's get all this stuff back to the lizards. Well, okay Um, yeah That was actually really easy. This is a really really easy place. I think we're like Pretty much finished now. There's just the dungeon which we'll do next episode um because It takes a while I really wish that there was more to do in this place because it's such like a big area But there's like a really nothing to do in here except this quest. It's kind of upsetting Yeah Oh, there we go. That is that done. Um, we will level up companions Go go can't be leveled up, which is fine and you can though fantastic You can even be leveled up to level seven. Whoa, look at that. So can you? Whoa, whoa, whoa Whoa, whoa Look at that. Fantastic. Okay um Well, then next episode we will be Doing The dungeon over here Um, so anyway, thank you for tuning in to leave a like and subscribe and if you subscribe Press the little bell so you know exactly when I post another video and remember craft outside the box


Yes, that's can I put it in my pocket? Okay. It's time to start session of block sehpatsu. We have three talks. First talk is a new algorithm for unbalance between the program by Yvitch Nikolik and Yusasaki. Talk is given by Yvitch. Thank you. Okay, so first let's try to understand the meaning of this unbalance. Excuse me. Meeting the middle attack with a simple example. Imagine you were lucky enough or smart enough and managed to invert the compression function of SHA-256. Say in 2 to the 64 you can find pre-image for the compression function. And now you want to convert this pseudo pre-image attack into a pre-image attack for the hash function. So how you do it? Well, of course, use the well-known meeting the middle attack. So, basically, you're using two compression function calls. This is your IV. This is the target hash that you want to find pre-image for. So first you create a set of 2 to the 96 pre-images using the pseudo pre-image attack. You store this set in the hash table. And then from the IV you shoot with 2 to the 160 images for the first compression function because the middle space is only 256 bits wide. You can hope to find, on average, one collision. Okay, so this is a typical meeting the middle attack. So why is it unbalanced? Because as you have seen, the cost of this function, it's 2 to the 64 whereas the cost of this function is only one. So that's why we call it unbalanced meeting the middle problem. Okay, that's the only thing. So this function costs more than this function. Everything else is pretty much the standard. Now, Diffie and Helma introduced the meeting the middle problem some 40 years ago and they called it meeting the middle. They introduced the problem for finding the keys of double desks. So they called it meeting the middle because they are indeed the two encryptions with two independent keys for meeting in the middle. However, today when we talk about meeting the middle, we have in mind some more general meaning. For example, the latest attack on AES that they made to yourself joke, meeting the middle attacks, have nothing to do with meeting in the middle of the cipher. It's not that you have, I don't know, 8 round AES and then after four rounds these two encryptions are meeting. No. There you have an offline phase where you create some pre-computation table and then in the online phase you shoot into this table. Okay, so it's not meeting in the middle. So basically today when we say, when we talk about meeting the middle, what we mean is nothing more than a collision surge between two functions. Okay, whenever you hear the word meet in the middle, forget about meeting in the middle of the cryptographic primitive, but think about collision surge between two functions and that's how we're going to regard this problem here in this talk and that's how you should see the problem always. So we are trying to find a collision between two functions f and g. So we're trying to find two values x and y such that f of x equals g of y. That's all. Now we can differentiate several types of collisions between f and g. The most common types when f and g have a range larger than domain, that's the first type and the second time when the range is not larger than domain and in this talk I'm going to focus on the second case and further we can simplify it even further and then we can assume that we are dealing only with n-bit functions f and g and we are trying to find a collision between these two functions but we are looking for unbalanced collisions. So we introduce this value of r, so we assume that one of the functions, let's say g, is r times more expensive than f. So in the previous example of shot 2, g was 2 to the 64 times more expensive than f. Okay, so r equals to 64 divided by 1 equals to the 64. Okay, so now let's take a look at the state of the art, what are the best known algorithms that solve the unbalanced collision search problem? Well, when r equals 1, actually this is the balanced collisions, of course we use the Floyd cycle finding algorithm and we can find collision between two functions in time 2 to the n divided by 2 and this algorithm doesn't require any memory. When r equals 1, as we saw in the case of shot 2, we use the myth in the middle, so basically we store square root of m divided by r images of g, we store in a hash table and then we produce around square root of r times n images of f to shoot in the hash table and because the myth in the middle space is n, when you multiply the sizes of these two sets you're going to get n so on average you can assume you got one collision. So you can see why we disbalance here the number of calls and number of calls because g costs r times more, so even though we produce this many images of g because it costs r, so the total time complexity for producing the first set is square root of r n same as in the second case. So this myth in the middle requires time of square root of r n and memory square root of n divided by r. In general case, I'm quite sure that all of you know that the myth in the middle follows the famous trade of time times memory equals n but keep in mind the time cannot be less than square root of r and you can easily show this. So let's try to remember the minimal optimal time is square root of r times n. Okay so we have this excuse me nice algorithm that can solve that has been used for many many years. Why do we have to come up with a new algorithm? It works perfectly fine. Well it's a bit strange. So in the case when so here on this chart I have the dependency how much memory do you need depending on the ratio of the cost of the two functions if you want to find the collision in optimal time. So this is a log of r this is log of m so when log of r equals zero in other words when r equals one in other words the balance case so when the two functions are balanced we don't need any memory to find the collision. And now look at this we increase r slightly a little bit we increase and then the required amount of memory jumps to square root of n. So even though we increase slightly the memory jump to square root of n and as you can see it's kind of counterintuitive the larger the ratio between the two functions the less memory we need. So imagine one of the functions is four times more expensive only four times more expensive then in order to produce the collisions in optimal time we need square root of n memory. Okay so because of this kind of discrepancy we are trying to find we are trying to come up with a new algorithm. Okay so let's take a look at the new algorithm. So the new algorithm combines two ideas the first is unbalanced interleaving or unbalanced selection function and the second one is one or should vener parallel collision search. So let's first take a look at the first idea. So as I mentioned before in the balance case how we find collisions between two balances of course we use the Floyd cycle finding algorithm in other words we define a new function h of x with depending on some selection function that's either 0 or 1 so h of x either equals f of x or g of x depending on this function that outputs 0 and 1 with equal probability of one half. Okay and then we run we run Floyd for this function h of x we find a collision and after a final collision we check if it's a collision between ff or fg or gf or gg so in half of the cases is the good collision that we are looking for. So if it's a bad collision we have to repeat the search on average we have to repeat the search only twice. So put this into perspective this is your function f this is the row this is the cycle finding algorithm so as you can see in below it's either g or f randomly and then once we find a collision which is here let's say so it between g and g so this is not good obviously we have to repeat again and after repeat we found a collision between f and g good we can use this as a collision. So this is the balance case now unbalance interleaving happens exactly everything is the same just the selection function output 0 r times small then it outputs 1 meaning this function h of x equals f of x r times small often and now when you produce a collision for h of x it's a collision between f and f with much higher probability if you want to be a collision between the probability it's collision between f and g it's only one divided by ha and that's why you have to repeat the search r times okay so again we put this into perspective you can see now excuse me you have much more invocation of function f than g so we run Floyd cycle finding algorithm we find a collision but of course it's between f and f we run again it's again f and f and after repeating this around r times we're going to find a collision between f and g okay so we have this unbalanced collision why don't we use this as a as a new algorithm for for the search of unbalanced collisions but the reason is so you can see the complexity of this algorithm is one cycle finding cost square root of n and we have to repeat this r times so the complexity is r times square root of n but optimal time complexity was square root of rm so we kind of add factor of square root of r to the time complex so this is not optimal we need some more advanced ideas and the second idea and this is the more advanced idea is instead of finding collisions with the Floyd cycle finding algorithm we're going to use van Orsch of Wiener algorithm to find a collision so this is very famous in very frequently used algorithm whenever you want to find multiple collisions if you're looking for a single you always run Floyd if you want multiply you always switch to van Orsch Wiener parallel collision search or as I like to call it multiple collision search so however unlike Floyd algorithm this algorithm requires memory so let's take a look how it works it works in two phases in the first phase you build a hash table so basically you start with two to the m random points and you iteratively so assume we are trying to find a collision for some function f so you start with two to the m random points and you iteratively evaluate the function f on those points you build for each of the points you build a chain that's sorry build a chain of length two to the n minus m divided by two and then you store in a hash table only the n only the ending and the beginning points of each chain okay so we create the hash table and then when we are trying to find a collision we take a random value and start evaluating again building this iterative chain and every time we extend by one value we check if that the newly constructed value coincides with one of the stored points of the chains so if it does coincide obviously it collided this chain somewhere with this chain and because this value we also have in the table we can backtrack and find where collision occurred and that's we can find the collision for for f so as you can see during the construction of the table it has two to the n points each the length of each chain was two to the n minus m divided by two if you multiply this thing you can see that when we were constructing the table we pass this many values and if the length of this chain and because in total they are two to the n values if the length of this chain is two to the n divided by how many points here we get if the length of the chain is this much then on average we're going to find a one collision so the algorithm works nicely so the total time complexity to build the hash table and define collision so to build the hash table is to the n plus m divided by two and requires to the memory and to find s collision is s time we have to find a collision search algorithm for one we pay to the n minus m divided by two and now we can present our new algorithm for unbalanced collision search excuse me or unbalanced meet in the middle so we define the function h is unbalanced interleaving between f and g and this sigma outputs r times more zero than one so basically h of x equals f of x r times more frequently than g of x and then for this function h of x we construct hash table according to the one or should winner algorithm with this many entries this much memory and then we find a collision for h of x if it's collision for f and g excellent if it's not we have to repeat the collision search algorithm so basically because h of x equals f of x r times more often we have to find on average our collisions in order to to find the in order to solve the unbalanced collision search problem so again to put this into perspective this is the the hash table so again as you can see there are many more evaluations of f than g now the whole trick why this thing works see here even though i have many more f's than g but keep in mind the cost of g is r times more than the cost of f f so basically how much i paid here i paid the same time complexity for f and for g that's the whole trick why the whole kind of algorithm works because of the construction of the hash table and then of course i build a i find a collision i check no it's a collision between f and f i find another collision no between f and f and after repeating these times i'm going to get a collision between f and g and solve the unbalanced collision search problem so the total memory complexity to the m this much we pay for the construction of the table this much to find our collisions when this number is large in this number in other words when m does not exceed r then we end up with a very nice trade off that says t square m equals r square m okay so in order to solve the unbalanced collision search problem you can use this algorithm which follows this trade off curve it's a bit familiar so this algorithm in comparison to the standard meeting the middle algorithm has a better time for certain values f m better memory for certain values of m and what's most important or one of the most important things is the unbalanced collision search but one of the functions is r times more expensive than the other function can be solved in the optimal time t equals square root of r m with not more than our memory okay so this is the Floyd for the balance case this is the old meet in the middle the standard meet in the middle and this is our new algorithm mirror when we are trying to find the optimal uh when we are trying to find the collision in optimal time okay so now actually the amount of memory is not two to the n divided by two around when the the ratio of cost is close to one but actually the smaller the ratio the less memory we need so obviously here from zero to one third our new algorithm outperforms the standard meeting the middle algorithm in terms in terms of memory however you should you should also know that sometimes some of the problems the ratio are of the cost of the two functions depends on the on the memory so you cannot just simply use the the trade off that I presented so you you have to come up with a new trade off and also the new algorithm will not work if one of the functions is given as sets okay because in order to work we have to evaluate both f and g on certain random points and because we need to evaluate on on random points we cannot use our algorithm in a known plain text attack it's always chosen plain text also in some papers I've seen some of the people say we actually do not care about memory complex we're just interested in time complexity that's the case keep in mind both the standard and the new algorithm they achieve the minimal time complexity it cannot go any lower so if you don't care about the memory you can just ignore the new algorithm if you do care you should probably take a look but keep in mind the algorithms that that that use infeasible amount of memory they are completely entirely useless in practice so you should you should care about memory so the new algorithm may replace the standard depending on the ratio are as we saw from the from the chart and in our paper we have certain number of applications to collect you can take a look there we of course didn't go through all the papers that use standard meeting the middle algorithm and try to replace with our because it's kind of trivial to do so what's more interesting actually certain balance collision search problems can be reduced on balance and then solve using our algorithm for example when you're trying to find collisions between two functions but for one of the functions you have to pay data complexity so each evaluation of the function means one one one query to the cypher so if you want to remove reduce the number of queries you won't kind of to switch to the unbalanced case and then you can use our algorithm or if one of the functions has a reduced domain size again this is reducible to unbalanced collision such and to conclude you'd consider a new algorithm whenever you're dealing with unbalanced meeting the middle problems the rule of the time is the ratio of cost of the two functions less than totally undivided by three then probably you should use our algorithm than the standard meeting the middle algorithm in some of the open problems you can try to find more tricky cases use cases of the new algorithm and maybe try a new algorithm for the case for the known plaintext case so basically when one of the functions is giving us a set it will be really nice and that's all thank you any question and comment small comment about the case in which the function g is a function not a permutation not uniquely invertible if you are trying to build the three backwards actually it has only a linear number of possible values so if I go back for t steps the expected size of the number of predecessors which are t away from the final point is only order t because even if I try to go back and I got some of them two or three possible values some of them might not have any predecessors therefore some branches die out and this is a well-known combinatorial property that actually the number of predecessors if you go a very long way backwards is very limited yes so you might want to use it in your attack even when you have a set okay comment on the question I have one question yes in your algorithm you consider two functions f and g about the more function three and the function for the problem but three is terrible actually we cannot do anything for three four we can do something you know because four is kind of two plus two three is one of the most interesting problems I think we have and everybody in computer science has but no I don't even know for case for probably something can be done I cannot say it right now