Davos 2023: Reducing The Carbon Footprint Of The Internet While Making It More Stable

The World Economic Forum held its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, last month. During this event, organizations such as the INGLOSUS Foundation, chaired by Dr. Nader Maleki — who is the CEO of Maleki Corporate Group and president of the International Bankers Forum — held gatherings nearby to bolster the annual meeting’s messaging around sustainability.

Benzinga attended Dr. Maleki’s event and interviewed 1iO CEO and founder Markus Kuhnert, as well as co-founder Frank Zachmann.

Here is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation.

BZ: Nice to meet you. Care to introduce yourselves?

Zachmann: I self-studied the Internet and worked in the data center business. After seeing all of the rising stars during the dot-com era fall with the bursting of the bubble, I founded a consultancy business through which I engaged in impact projects.

I have the strategy-building expertise and connections to make my most recent endeavor with Markus a success.

Kuhnert: I built brand management software. My first big enterprise customer was 3M Co MMM, and I also worked with the likes of Porsche Automobile Holding SE POAHY and Microsoft Corp MSFT.

The product enabled global collaboration and coordination. Eventually, we came up with the idea to use blockchain for decentralized applications like messaging, while reducing carbon footprint.

BZ: Talk about challenges as well as case studies.

Zachmann: Our starting point is a messenger application that can include any function you want in terms of exchanging information or data. We can include things like transportation and delivery services, as well as music wish lists.

For me, a special component is the support of tokens attached to that ecosystem. You end up having an efficient, secure and reliable communication or collaboration system as a start. Later, we can add more functionality.

Kuhnert: The current problem is that many businesses’ preferred solutions are not open, and we can try to be the glue in between and connect those different solutions.

Essentially, the blockchain we have is a process network, and the most basic process we have is communication between two people, but can also be communication between a person and a machine or between one machine and another.

BZ: How do you incentivize people to use this offer?

Zachmann: How many people use decentralized messaging systems? A few. To increase this amount, we’re looking to education. We can also have the usual giveaways like airdrops, and we can work with different partners in order to enable that, as well as listen to users’ feedback.

BZ: What are you most excited about going forward?

Zachmann: The Internet has some inherent mistakes. If we can correct these mistakes, we can get to a way more efficient and broader use of the Internet than we do now.

We are reaching a threshold where the next level of huge amounts of data that will be produced will, on the one side, either make the current Internet collapse or, at least, not be efficiently transported and distributed.

I’m excited about the sustainability part of our endeavor, as well as the social impact. If we can create an ecosystem that everybody can use and generates value, we may detach from the current environment and reset the whole system.

Kuhnert: I’m excited to get a prototype out of the door. We have built this with all the technological foundations underneath, and now it's about creating or defining end-user experiences and building proper user interfaces for them.

One of the big goals we have is to make this accessible for everyone, even grandmas, so to speak. The interfaces are usable so we can give them to any person, and they can start using them without training.

Photo:1iO presentation, courtesy 1iO.