Reshaping the Auto Industry | Alex Rawitz DIMO

Tech-savvy listeners who are excited about cars, IoT, data, crypto, Web3, and software development can benefit from listening to this conversation between Alex Rawitz, Co-Founder and COO at DIMO and President of Cornell Blockchain, Leah Valente.

How does owning  more data collected by your car provide more value to you? And can you leverage this data to build a better connected car experience? Learn how an open platform can connect data producers (like cars) and consumers (applications and businesses) to unlock the next generation of mobility services.

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Lauren Weymouth: 00:06 Hi, I'm Lauren Weymouth. And I lead UBRI, Ripple's University Blockchain Research Initiative, that supports universities worldwide educating, adopting, and innovating with blockchain. This podcast, All About Blockchain, gets to the bottom of what current problems blockchain solves across so many different industries, that we believe improve our lives and we wanna share these stories with our audience to create better understanding of how this hot tech works.

Today, we're gonna talk about the automotive sector and how cars are moving beyond traditional vehicles into more mobile data centers and a blockchain startup who is helping car manufacturers develop their software. DIMO's an open source platform designed to connect drivers with their data.

Here to explain what that means is DIMO's founder and COO, Alex Rawitz. And to spice things up, we brought on a Cornell student and Blockchain Club president, Leah Valente. She's here with her fellow alum, yep. Alex also  went to Cornell at one time to ask questions about his blockchain startup.

Leah studies operations research in the College of Engineering, and has been an active member of the Cornell Blockchain Club since 2021. All right. Now, Leah, welcome to All About Blockchain.

Leah Valente: 01:09 Thank you. Super excited to be here.

Lauren Weymouth: 01:11 All right. So you just finished your exams last week. what are you doing next week?

Leah Valente: 01:14 Next week, I'm going to Berlin Blockchain Week. And then following that, I'm going to do, like technical blockchain boot camp, in a city near Berlin. So that'll be really awesome, gonna meet some of my Cornell Blockchain members out there. And then some of our other Cornell Blockchain members are going down to consensus. So we'll have, some representation the United States and down in Germany.

Lauren Weymouth: 01:38 You're into blockchain on campus. You're traveling around the world to learn more about it and to be a part of the ecosystem. You're the perfect person to get into a conversation with Alex and understand what his company's doing, and how it's using this tech. 

Leah Valente: 01:51 Super excited to talk with Alex today about DIMO, his experience at Cornell experience at startups

Alex Rawitz: 01:57 I wanna thank you both for having me on.

Leah Valente: 02:00 Awesome. So Alex, can you tell me a bit about yourself and how you got into crypto?

Alex Rawitz: 02:05 Absolutely. I was kinda always into the tech world and into the entrepreneurship world even going back to when I was in college. I spent most of my college career focused on, working on local businesses on campus, everything from the newspaper, to the yearbook, to moving companies - a whole bunch of other organizations that were really student-run businesses.

05:14 And after college, I went into the tech space. I worked at a startup accelerator. I went and worked for a company in the telcom industry. And I'd been aware of crypto actually for at least a couple of years even back in- into the college days, aware of Bitcoin, but it really wasn't until that we started to see the proliferation of new types of cryptocurrencies, in particular, smart contract platforms that I really started to pay closer attention to what was going on in the crypto space, and in about 2017 really went down the crypto rabbit hole got really excited in thinking about how crypto and IoT would play together not to mention just like generally getting red pilled for Bitcoin and a whole bunch of other, aspects of decentralization and privacy that I thought were really compelling.

... in 2018 jumped into the crypto space, uh, joined Chainalysis at a pretty early stage, spent a few years working with protocols and, um, private sector businesses just to build up crypto analytics practices. And finally in 2021 linked up with a few old friends and we co-founded DIMO.

Leah Valente: 03:31 Awesome. So kind of rewinding back to your experience at Cornell, 

Alex Rawitz: 03:35 Yeah.

Leah Valente: 03:36 Cornell has now, like, a pretty big blockchain, uh, club and, presence on campus, but we also have a pretty big entrepreneurial  presence. And we have this Cornell adjacent, not Cornell affiliated company agencies where it's basically, like, six student-run businesses yearbook included Big Red Storage,

Leah Valente: 08:43 all that stuff. And I'm seeing it all right now because everyone's moving out. 

Alex Rawitz: 03:59 I'm curious, Leah,  what about your interest in, in crypto? What brought you into the, into the blockchain club, and how did you get started?

Leah Valente: 04:04 Yeah. So I actually stumbled upon blockchain at Berkeley's YouTube lecture series.And then I did some research and saw that Cornell has a class that's student led by the Cornell Blockchain Club. the club provides so many resources, did a bunch of hands-on projects. And then the following year, ran the consulting team. Now, I'm the president.

So the club has definitely, like, completely helped me learn about crypto and all I've kinda started with was, like, YouTube videos and then, it provided like a structured learning experience for me.

Alex Rawitz: 04:38 And, and what was it about some of those first videos that you saw or, like, what you were hearing about in the club that made you, like, really interested and say, "Hey, I- I'm... I wanna learn more here"?

Leah Valente: 04:47 Operations research is, like, optimization, probability, but also has, like, a lot of supply chain  aspects to it and studies to it. So I was interested kinda in the supply chain tracking part of blockchain and was able to work on a few projects, So that was kind of the initial interest I had going in.

Alex Rawitz: 05:08 Yeah. Supply  chain's been one of those use cases that,  has borne out in, in the market. I think it was really one of the first non-financial examples of like here's how blockchain could be really, really useful outside of just,, sending money, storing value, (laughs) decentralizing money. it's been one of those that, that I've seen in a few iterations and, ultimately, I think, probably needs even more just, like, we're seeing in the financial space. We're 10 years in, over 10 years in.

We're still seeing, like, legacy systems that are a long way from changing.  I think almost any one of these ways in which blockchain is gonna change, an existing industry, it's gonna take a very, very long time for it to really permeate.

Leah Valente: 05:45 Yeah. It's really interesting.I think supply chain kinda to segue into talking about DIMO and IoT.  it's cool to see with supply chain or trade finance, you could have, like, an IoT device in a shipping truck that if you're s... shipping something needs to be refrigerated, it's uploading, like, real-time data to a blockchain with different metrics, like, temperature, acceleration, et cetera.

So, super cool supply chain trade finances use cases with IoT and blockchain. So can you maybe explain DIMO, and kind of the core-

Alex Rawitz: 06:16 Yeah.

Leah Valente: 06:17 ... mission and what issue it's trying to solve?

Alex Rawitz: 06:19 Absolutely. So I, I sort of like to give little background of the industry when I explain what DIMO is. One thing that happened about five years ago something changed in the auto industry which is that every car company started to connect their cars. So you used to have cars. And they were driving around. They had no modem, no internet connection in them. And about five [00:15:00] years ago or so, they... all the automakers started to connect their cars. As part of that, they offer drivers some features. So maybe, you got a mobile app with your car. Really, the first iteration of this was you could place a phone call from your car in OnStar.  the other thing that the automakers got was they could collect data from all these vehicles.

Right away, there's an issue with that. Every automaker has their own connected car platform. So we have, dozens of [00:15:30] large automakers around the world. They're each building their own technology stack in order to, have connected car data flow through their company. users have no access to their data other than what is provided through the automaker's apps. So in a lot of ways, you actually have an industry that seems to be very similar to the crypto industry, what we think of as traditional crypto industry where you have  silos and wall gardens that are preventing transparency in data access.

We think that this hurts businesses and consumers in the industry that are just looking to have better services, and looking really to leverage connected car technology [00:16:30] to the maximum degree that you can. And so about three years ago, we started DIMO with the mission to build an open-source alternative to the big tech platforms that automakers are creating and give developers a way to access that vehicle data so that they could build a new generation of automotive and mobility applications that are built on open infrastructure.

Leah Valente: 08:03 So kind of to more concretely outline this issue-, for maybe more, like the non crypto native people. So-

Alex Rawitz: 08:10 Yeah.

Leah Valente: 08:11 ... like, I have a Toyota, and I have a Volkswagen.And I have a Toyota app, and I have a Volkswagen app. And so if someone else wanted to make, like, a game for cars or something, they-

Alex Rawitz: 08:21 Mm-hmm.

Leah Valente: 08:22 ... would have to make a separate app for Toyota and a separate app for Volkswagen, right? It's, like, siloed there.

Alex Rawitz: 08:27 Exactly. Yeah. And it might even... You know, that's even presuming you could get access to the APIs that you would need to build apps for those platforms. So-

... another example I often give is I have a Toyota and every few months, I get an email from pro- Progressive, the insurance company, that says, "Hey, we think you're a good driver based on your driving data. Why don't you come over and switch to Progressive?"

And some people might react to that and say, "Oh, wow. They're sharing my data with another company. I don't like that., I don't love it, but I also don't hate the idea that somebody's out there gonna make me a lower offer on my car insurance, but it doesn't really help me if there's only one company that can make that, that offer. So what we believe really should be the case is that anyone, whether you have a Toyota or Volkswagen or a Tesla, whatever you have, you should be able to plug into a system and into a network where you can actually leverage your data and get a whole bunch of different quotes on car insurance.

Why have one car insurance company give you a quote when dozens out there would h... be happy to quote you based on your data? we're building the ability for developers to build an application for any car in the world, whether that's insurance or a game warranties, a way to sell your car, better way to track your family usage. there's hundreds of ways that people could leverage vehicle data in order to build a better connected car experience.

Leah Valente: 10:28 And so before we kinda get into some of those different-

Alex Rawitz: 10:32 Yeah.

Leah Valente: 10:33 ... use cases and ways to use the data, can you explain deep end decentralized physical infrastructure networks and kinda maybe in, like, the simplest terms maybe, like, three-

Alex Rawitz: 10:48 Yeah.

Leah Valente: 10:49 ... sentences super straightforward? And then kinda give some other examples of deep end projects?

Alex Rawitz: 11:01 Sure. it's interesting. This was a term that I don't even know was around a year ago. Like, it really was one that just kinda exploded onto the scene maybe about this time a year and a half ago or something like that. what we mean by deep end or at least the way I think about deep end and, and I admit, this term has come to mean a lot of things these days, like, almost anything that isn't a financial use for blockchain.

but to me, it is any network in which call them average people have the ability to connect some physical part of the world into a global system and typically, they're, connecting it to a... an open-source or, um... and/or community-owned network.

Another great example and, and probably the one that people look at as, like, really the first deep end project of its kind was helium [00:20:00] where you had regular people who, um, connected, uh, wireless infrastructure, so they could set up a wireless network, uh, and plugged it into this global open and community-governed wireless network.

What you're looking for is how easily can an average person participate. In the case of helium, the barrier to entry was a few hundred dollars to set up a node. in the case of DIMO, it can be a few hundred dollars. It could also be free depending on what kind of car you have. The other part is that, like, you're trying to build a network that is, at least, in part open source and subject to open governance. it's not just, "Hey, I'm setting this up on behalf of a big company (laughs) who's gonna run the infrastructure and take the data and build the products." But I'm contributing to a platform. there's a lot of ways that this is being applied today. Telecom is, of course, one where there's helium, and now, a whole bunch of other similar competitors to helium.

Uh, obviously, we're trying  to do that in the auto space and in the mobility space. And there's a number of companies that are trying to do this in the energy industry as well. it's now very easy for the average person to be a energy contributor whether that's, um, putting solar panels on your roof or plugging your car back into the grid if you have an electric vehicle. And so you have this opportunity for an average person to actually create and provide infrastructure that can go into a global network. I'm curious, Leah. Has deep end come u in the Cornell Blockchain Club or is it, um, something you guys are paying attention to?

Leah Valente: 12:12 No. So, like, I've heard of a couple deep end projects, like, render before at our conference we didn't have a deep end panel or anything like that. But I do think it's exciting and definitely next year.I think for our next conference, we should definitely have a deep end panel. 

Alex Rawitz: 12:28 Render is another one you brought up. It's a good example where, like, pretty much, that's just for developers. there's not gonna be immediately consumer applications built on top. I think that's an interesting dimension to look at. and then there's also,  are you connecting products that have a, like, real true physical embodiment or It's almost, like, there's a fungibility to the physicality of the device.

Like, you can have a server farm anywhere and have devices for connected to Filecoin anywhere. the fact that it's in the real world is almost an afterthought 'cause you're not interacting with the server in any physical way. A car or a cell tower or something else, like the physicality is, like at one with the product itself.

And it does matter where the cell tower is placed. It does matter where the car is driving and, like, what the car is doing. Those things are, like, inherently important to the network whereas Filecoin is, like, geospatially agnostic. So I do think that. There's a way to be more deep end (laughs) than another deep end project. (laughs) But I do think that inherently deep end projects where geospace a- aspects matter are a little bit different than Filecoin all the servers could be in one place. It really wouldn't make a difference. Maybe, it impacts the way that people use the network. But It's a deep end into me in some ways and, and not so much in others.

Leah Valente: 13:36 Yeah. So, like, in helium, like, you'd have, like, the hardware, like, at my house or something.

Alex Rawitz: 13:42 Yeah.

Leah Valente: 13:43 Ah-huh. Okay. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. So switching gears a little bit-.how does, like, [00:24:30] the data collected from my car provide value to me to someone else? Who is seeing this data? 

Alex Rawitz: 13:52 We think that there's a couple of simple examples that sort of crystallize that. First off, we've built the first mobile app, um, for the DIMO network in in we call the DIMO Mobile. And anyone who connects their car to DIMO Mobile today can get some data about their car sort of, like, uh, having a Fitbit for your [00:25:00] car. You get a little bit of information.

If you've never had a connected car before or, you know, if you have, like, a five, 10-year old car that just doesn't come with an app, this is a great way to actually learn a little bit about what's going on inside your car. So from a simple just, like, better understanding this expensive asset standpoint, there's some value to the user. But the real way that we believe that this is gonna be valuable to most people is that data asset is valuable throughout the life cycle of the car.

When you wanna get insurance, we talked about the example there. You could share your data and get discounts or at least get more offers. if you need to get maintenance on your car, you could actually share your maintenance data ahead of time with a garage, so that you can get quote, "ahead of time." We're actually working with a company that today is gonna build on DIMO. And they're gonna build a AI. They've actually started prototyping it already, but an AI mechanic for your car.

So instead of having to drive down to a shop and wait for some guy to give you an assessment on what's wrong with [00:26:00] your car, you can actually just share your data with this AI agent, and it can give you a response and tell you what it thinks is wrong with your car. It can even go into the time when you're gonna, you're gonna sell your car. You have an actual transparent history of what's been going on inside your car.

And nine times out of 10, you're gonna get a much better price than you would selling your car otherwise because for the most part, the used car industry is pricing in uncertainty. There is no real corollary to this today. You have CARFAX, but they only have surface level data and, and service requests. [00:26:30] So there isn't any way for a dealer to confidently buy a car off somebody knowing, hey, this car is in really, really good shape.

we believe we can provide that databased on its usage history and the telematics history of it so from every step in the way, a user can better understand their car. They can get better quotes, better services. You can have a better experience when you go to sell your car. In our view, it becomes an essential component in just the life cycle of every single vehicle.

Leah Valente: 16:00 So you mentioned, personal benefits, like, maintenance help,, reselling my car, like, getting a better deal  but What is the data selling side of that, and who are you selling the data to?

Alex Rawitz: 16:13 when we started out with DIMO, we, we believed that companies wanted to buy big data sets about cars. And to a certain extent, that's true. We are, you know, providing,  data to a, a whole of companies. I'll tell you about those in a second.

But as we spoke with companies across the automotive industry, what became clear is that they actually are more interested in the sort of individual car use cases that I talked about than buying big, big data and aggregate. So data sharing and data sales when you show up to provide a mechanic or a used car marketplace, some of your data, you're selling them access to that data. And DIMO is facilitating that possibility. if we talked to used car marketplaces, [00:28:30] for example. And we said, "Hey, do you want data on 100,000 cars?" And they came back and said  "Yeah. That's, that's pretty interesting. we would like to have some of that."

but if you go to them and you say, "Hey, would you like to have data on this one car," they're trying to sell the car to you right now, they say "Yes, we really, really want that data 'cause it helps us make an actual pricing decision." It's not going into some model where you're trying to account for uncertainties. It's, like, you can have a certainty there that, that (laughs) car is in good shape or bad shape.

we are working with companies that wanna buy electric vehicle data where are people charging, how are batteries doing. We're working with companies that are looking to map mobility data. there's a range of applications for aggregate data. but the far more interesting and I think bigger application for data sales is typically in the one-to-one use case where you're empowering an individual to provide their data at the point of a transaction, which helps them get a better quote or, or a better service.

Leah Valente: 17:49 Mm-hmm. So, like, aggregated data on, like, all different types of cars, different brands, different models is, like, kinda less in demand, and more it's a, like, a specific car that's trying to be sold 'cause, obviously, like, if I'm buying a car, I wanna know, uh, mileage all the data on the car that I'm buying.

Alex Rawitz: 18:08 Yeah, or for example, in the insurance use case that we've talked about a few times, e... you know, insurance companies, sure, they wanna understand. You know, they need to always be improving their models for how they're underwriting risk.All of that is to improve the models, as opposed to, "Hey, here's my data. I'm a potential customer. Can you give me a quote? And what will that quote be based on my data?"

And I actually think that, that's been the missing piece of the,, own your own data narrative, When we talk about how Web 2 has abused people's data ownership, it's not because, You've missed your mailbox money, and Facebook or Google are, like, doing crazy things with your aggregate data. They are, but they're serving ads to you. And what they're monetizing is the fact that they know who you are as an individual, not that you're some, like, faceless, name in the model. (laughs)

and that, I think, is where [00:31:00] there's a real ability for Web 3 to shift power back into consumers' hands. It's about not getting you a check because you're in this big aggregate data set, but, like, you as you go and interact with hundreds of digital products every single day practically, you can actually license your data to those products as... at will. You can also choose not to and hopefully still get value (laughs) from the product. but you can choose to share that data and, and have a better experience.

Leah Valente: 19:21 So for the more, like, individualized data sharing, is there any privacy concerns and how does, DIMO, combat those?

Alex Rawitz: 19:29 Yeah. Lots of people have privacy concerns. And that's why we say, "I'm, I'm glad you're thinking about those things." You should, uh, probably not feel so comfortable that car makers (laughs) are  not really obeying those." About two weeks ago, GM was sued for selling user data to, um, insurance companies without users being aware of that.

within DIMO you can choose not to share your data. It's all user opt-in. Like, that's the way we think the world should work, is that you have to opt in to share your data by default rather than, like, your data is already out there. And now, you have to try and come fight for it. look, I think for the real privacy focused people, the best answer is always gonna be don't share anything. Like, lock down all your data as much as you can. In that case, go get yourself a 10-year-old car without an internet connection. And, like, drive that around. But also, you know, you're not gonna have the benefits of having a connected car.

And that's fine. For a lot of people, that might be great.  for most people, we think that they're, they're gonna be better served by a system that is open source and transparent,in a connectivity platform that is user governed.

So rather than having to trust Toyota, it's, it's the age-old crypto store rather than having to trust the big entities that they're doing right by your data. You should be able to verify that. that's where, you know, we've been building DIMO to be open source and open govern from the start.

Leah Valente: 20:41 And then on the topic of data collection, so you install, like, a hardware device, right? Can you talk a little bit more about that and, maybe some of the challenges that come with creating hardware?

Alex Rawitz: 20:43 It actually depends a little bit on what kind of car you have, so a bunch of modern cars. Like, if you have a Tesla, you can download DIMO and get connected within, a few minutes without needing any hardware. Tesla is doing something really, really cool where they're actually letting the data bypass their own servers. And they're allowing the data to go directly from car to application.

unsurprisingly, they've been actually, like, way out in front of other car makers and thinking about an open ecosystem. And they're the first ones with like, a free and open developer platform.and what has happened is there's now six, seven, eight applications that are building on Tesla APIs which is awesome.

And what that does it actually makes the car more interesting and better because now as a Tesla driver, you can use the Tesla app, and you can also use a whole bunch of other applications [00:35:00] that have been built, uh, built for Teslas. we think that, that's kinda the model that the industry is gonna go towards. the only reason that you need the hardware is if your car doesn't come with a internet modem or isn't connectable.

We have two hardware manufacturers that are a part of the DIMO ecosystem now. And we're gonna have a few more by the end of the year. And hardware is always hard. people are always antsy in our community for new hardware or updates on the existing Hardware. We were able to sell out. And now, we're gonna sell more.

There's lead times. You need to produce it. You need to quality check it., it just adds a whole dimension of complexity to the product experience most people with IoT devices have had that experience of, like, fumbling with the Bluetooth trying to get it connected. And that's, unfortunately, sometimes part of the DIMO onboarding experience. hardware is really really tough. And, luckily, we've been able to partner with some great teams that have helped us to produce some really great products so far.

Leah Valente: 22:33 Mm-hmm. So once I get, like, my hardware device I install in my car, what kind of data is being collected? Like, if you could just list off a few examples.

Alex Rawitz: 22:42 Yeah. we start with kinda, like, what's the simplest things that m- most automotive companies are hungry for data. And when you start with what is their, like, hierarchy of needs, [00:36:30] they start with a few things.

So one is always gonna be they want to be able to verify the VIN, uh, the vehicle identification number of any car. That's really important when you're trying to understand exactly what car it is.they're also gonna wanna know location basically, like, where it was, where did it drive. I mean that's just kinda, like, almost no automotive app works without those two data points. (laughs) So you need to get those things.

probably then also in that category, I would say trifecta, there's the odometer as well because so much [00:37:00] is dependent in the auto industry and, like, what is the mileage on your car? beyond that, it's gonna vary a lot by the type of application and the type of car. pretty much all cars have standard error codes, diagnostic trouble codes, is what they're called. You can scan for those, using the device. If you're talking about an internal combustion engine and ICE vehicle, you're gonna be looking at things, like, engine speed and intake pressure, oil life a whole bunch of other metrics tire [00:37:30] pressure.

there's, like, about two dozen or so that we're collecting right now. And the CAN bus itself, the kinda the computer network in the cars is extremely data rich and communicates hundreds, if not thousands, of data points. On electric vehicles, you're gonna look at state of charge whether the car is charging on and off and a whole bunch of other metrics around the battery health of the car.

you can start with a lot of those. Over time, you're gonna wanna get more and more granular and more and, you know, deeper and deeper into certain data points.just getting an industry that has been very starved of data, some data points is typically enough to, uh, get the ball rolling with developers. over time, we'll see, I think, the integration of much, much, much more interesting applications. But  just a handful of data points is typically something that the average company in the auto industry comes in and says, "Wow. Like, it'd be awesome if I could get my hands on that."

Leah Valente: 24:34 Mm-hmm. And on the, on [00:38:30] the topic of developer, so what's the general process for someone who wants to develop an app on the DIMO network?

Alex Rawitz: 24:41 Yeah. Today, um, mostly, they're reaching out to us, and they're saying, "Hey, we love what you're doing, and, you know, we have an idea to build this app," we're actually getting ready to launch in the next month or so. We're probably gonna be beta testing it internally this week our developer console.

So a developer would be able to just, create their own, uh, account  in our developer console which would be awesome.. You need to create a software license for yourself. It's, you know, just a simple way of kinda registering who you are in order to use the APIs. and from there, it's just a matter of starting to build. We have API documentation. We released our first, uh, SDK a couple weeks ago. So the, the only other thing developers need is a handful of connected cars to test with, and then they can start building. And in fact, we're working with probably about a dozen teams right now that are gonna be building on DIMO very soon.

Leah Valente: 25:28 And can you share some of those different apps? Like, what I think of is, like, a, a game kinda, like, a Pokemon Go where you're, like, going to different checkpoints, like, that kinda thing. can you explain or give some other examples of other apps that would be useful for car owners?

Alex Rawitz: 25:46 We are still waiting on the team that wants to, like, really make the Pokemon Go style game for cars. I think that's an awesome [00:40:00] idea., I think just, like, the idea in general of any kinda, like, quest or, or, or geospatial experience that you can have like that. I've always thrown out the idea if somebody should build visit all 50 state capitals or, like, visit all the national parks. You could build all kinds of little quests like that.

I'm sure other people can make more interesting ideas. I think that AI agents for cars is a great one that we've been talking about. Actually did our own prototyping] for several years ago. I love the idea that you can ask an AI agent not just like, "What should I do? Like, does my car need an oil change?"  today an AI agent would have to look at just, like, what are the service manuals out there. What do they say? but in the future, it could actually leverage your real car data and make smarter recommendations. You can give the AI agent the context it needs basically.

I wanna see us, like, support some insurance use cases since that's already a proven industry. Incredibly, I think  roadside assistance is, is something that has not really seen a lot of integration with real-time data. And I'd love to see us support that. if we wanna look a little bit further into the future, one of the original sort of projects envisioned for DIMO and one of the reasons the project got started was how do you automate a parking garage?

Like, imagine you're trying to drop your self-driving car off in a parking garage. Well, just try to imagine the challenges there. You have 30 different automakers that are each running their own self-driving technology. They've built their own parts. They have their own components. You have a parking garage that, um, probably is owned... You know, there's thousands of parking garages around the country. Are they all gonna have the same technology in them? Highly unlikely.

So how can you create an application where you can have garage and car coordination that works really seamlessly that any car, any garage could plug into? So I think, like, you can start with just the car experience itself but you can also think about how does the car interact with the real world, in other ways and start to imagine, like, what DIMO might support in the future. we've only really just launched the platform. So we haven't spent a ton of time.  but we plan to, you know, socialize more in, in developer circles in the Web 3 space and in the Web 2 space. We'll probably be sponsoring hackathons. We'll be doing anything we can in order to, like, make sure that we can get, developers aware of, like, the capabilities what you can do with DIMO.

Leah Valente: 28:03 Will DIMO do hackathons with university developers?, is that, like, in the road map?

Alex Rawitz: 28:06 We definitely want to.. I think that by middle of the summer, we'll be in a place where we can, like, really hand out the developer docs and the developer console as well, and basically just allow people to get started. So we would love to be sponsoring those sorts of events for universities, for, crypto events and, and [00:43:00] otherwise. Yeah.

Leah Valente: 28:26 So that kinda ties into my next question which is, like, I guess what, what are you most excited about  in your road map? Is it this kind of new developer platform you guys are launching?, is there anything else?

Alex Rawitz: 28:37 Definitely, the developer platform. And that's where I spend a lot of my time building, you know, and working with external teams helping them to build on DIMO. also I think that there's a ton of really exciting upgrades coming to the DIMO mobile app. And we're working on some sort of extensions of the mobile app onto web apps and other experiences that I think are gonna help people understand the transferability of this data and how, um, having your vehicle data in your pocket, like, isn't just about seeing the data or, like, making a little bit of money on it. But it's about opening up a world of applications that are really useful to you.

Leah Valente: 29:10 Mm-hmm. We'll definitely have to have a Cornell Blockchain Ripple DIMO hackathon on campus. You'll have to come back and visit.

Alex Rawitz: 29:17 Yeah. Absolutely. 

Lauren Weymouth: 29:18 Does your student Blockchain Club encompass different departments, or are you strictly within the engineering school, or do you also have business school members?

Leah Valente: 29:27 Yeah. So one thing that I love about the Cornell Blockchain Club is that we have such a range of majors in colleges. we have lots of people that study computer science, operations research in the College of Engineering. We have people in our Industrial [00:46:30] and Labor Relations College that are really interested in crypto law. we have statistics majors, arts and science majors, people who are into biology that are interested in DeSci. Like, we have such a big range, and that's kinda what I love most about the club.

also, we have a bunch of different,sub-teams. So we have an accelerator team that runs a six-week incubation program for startups that apply to the Cornell Blockchain accelerator., and that's run every semester. And they get mentorship help  talks and support through the program. And then we also run our classes.. I was explaining how I got into blockchain, is I took the Cornell Blockchain student-led student talk class. and that's run every single semester. And it's two credits. All club members teach and TA it in which is pretty cool. It's the only class on campus where it's all student taught.

and then other students from all different colleges can be [00:47:30] in the class and get credit for being in the internal blockchain class. So that's another big initiative we run. And then we have a governance team. So we have Arbitrum and Optimism delegation. And then lastly, we have a consulting team. So that consulting team works with, like, various projects. Like, recently, we worked with AthenaDAO which is a DeSci company.

I ran the project with The Aura Blockchain Consortium on supply chain tracking. That team [00:48:00] does various things.we definitely have a very big range of sub-teams and majors and students in the club.

Lauren Weymouth: 31:06 That's awesome. And since taking on leadership in January what are some things that you've done  this semester?

Leah Valente: 31:11 So I would say the biggest thing I've done was run the Cornell Blockchain conference. 

There was so many moving parts. I learned so much, collecting sponsorship money, looking for speakers and categorizing speakers and keynote speakers,

Lauren Weymouth: 31:28 That sounds amazing. what were the stats of your conference? Like, how many people attended? How many speakers or industry participants did you have?

Leah Valente: 31:35 Yeah. So we had 800 attendees which was the highest number in all of our Cornell Blockchain conference history. This was the fourth Cornell Blockchain conference.  we also had the largest number of media partners that we've ever had and also the largest number of student clubs in attendance. So it was an awesome year, super successful year. we had around 15 panels, eight keynote speakers and, some side events that were planned. So it was a great time. everyone will have to come down for the next one.

Lauren Weymouth: 32:08 How involved does Cornell administration or faculty get involved in your conference?

Leah Valente: 32:12 Admin on the Cornell Tech side is definitely very supportive.

Alex Rawitz: 32:16 I find that fascinating.  it's great to see that at an administrative level, at least being very supportive, and that the blockchain club has grown into such a force of its own to throw an 800-person event is, is pretty awesome.

Leah Valente: 32:28 And Cornell. has, like, a rich history of, like, distributed system research, I think, since, like, the early 2000s. Avalanche came out of Cornell, the Tezos founder, flashbots, I think, from Cornell Tech. So there's just, like, a lot of just either alumni working in the space or, like, research that was done here that kind of stemmed into, projects which is pretty cool.

Lauren Weymouth: 32:49 Do you think you'll look to work in blockchain or crypto space when you graduate?

Leah Valente: 32:53 Yeah. I think so. I need to figure out what I wanna do. So like, last summer, I was lucky enough to be at Fidelity on the digital assets team when they were filing the Bitcoin ETF. So that was a really cool experience.

but then, that's pretty separate from, like, supply chain trade finance and everything. I'm still kinda figuring out where I'd wanna go or what I'd wanna work on. But definitely wanna work in crypto or blockchain after I graduate.

Alex Rawitz: 32:16 What sorts of projects are you seeing your peers  get excited about or going to work on, whether that's as part of, you know, consulting things through the blockchain club or looking at professionally, are there any categories or even specific projects that you're seeing [00:53:00] are really exciting?

Leah Valente: 33:32 Yeah. So kind of on the topic of, like, big range of majors  we have people that are interested in, like, doing crypto law. And DeSci is kinda an exciting topic now, within our club.

lots of people are interested in doing biz dev we have some more technical people that are interested in MEV, EVM. 

Alex Rawitz: 33:50 Sounds great.

Lauren Weymouth: 33:51 Alex, is there anything else you wanted to share about DIMO 

Alex Rawitz: 33:54 One thing I always like to share is that, despite sounding quite complicated and really big picture, we're trying to change the underlying infrastructure of the auto industry and reshape how it all works. It's actually really easy to get started with DIMO You can download the DIMO mobile app. Whether you need hardware or don't, you can actually check all of that out at drivedimo.com. it's pretty simple and something that we feel like most people can get started with, whether they're crypto experts or not. so I always like to tell people to go start there and, see where the DIMO rabbit hole takes you.

Lauren Weymouth: 34:26 That's great. Well, Alex, we thank you for sharing all about DIMO and for engaging with this technology, leveraging the benefits of blockchain and data storage, and safe sharing for consumer benefits. I don't think I ever realized how much usable information my car has. I definitely don't think about that when I'm driving around, and how now by adding an open source network to access this information really contributes not just to the industry and the ecosystem. I mean I love the quest idea, but also that it gives me power, that I can geek out with this data in a whole new way that will benefit me as the car driver.

Alex Rawitz: 34:59 That makes me really excited. And I think that's ultimately what we want people to experience, is how can you do everything, you know, geek out on the data? And I think from there, you know, as we often talk about in the crypto industry, you start with what is exciting and just interesting and what is... you know, piques people's curiosity. And from there, um, we'll figure out how to ,really, really build the most powerful and unique, uh, experiences.

Lauren Weymouth: 35:23 Awesome. And, Leah, thank you so much for participating in this episode of All About Blockchain, and for asking the right questions to help us better understand connecting cars to their drivers in a deeper way. We really appreciate that you've taken on a leadership role on campus at Cornell to help further this tech. And We look forward to hearing updates on how this use case positively expands the automotive industry.

Leah Valente: 35:43 Thank you for having me.

Lauren Weymouth: 35:44 Hey, listeners, thank you for your ears and for the helpful feedback to my UBRI at ripple.com email. If you have any questions about this episode or ideas for future episodes, please reach out. Until next time.