Kazuaki Ishiguro - Tokyo - Couger, EEA, blockchain.EXE, Token Engineering

Ahead of devcon, Kauri is interviewing local community members in Japan. We hope you readers will learn more about the local industry and blockchain activity. There will also be some gems from our interviews that hopefully give you some ideas of how to see Japan from a local perspective

What is your role?

Chief Blockchain Architect for Couger and full stack developer, including writing smart contracts. Couger is an AI focused team with some blockchain research and also focused on new research for data privacy, including secret sharing protocols. When it comes to AI data is everything. Amazon and Google will offer free services to generate and gain access to data, however [these approaches] are not privacy maintaining.

We are focused on privacy preserving technology, including Shamir secret sharing and homomorphic encryption. We are also working on federated learning with data stored on the device and a machine learning model shared to your device to enable personalized AI.

Connectome is our AI data marketplace and will allow anyone to interact with a personal assistant (AI), through your devices. These agents can have custom skins, language and other capabilities.

How is the blockchain community in Tokyo?

I am the regional head of the EEA, which is encouraging Japanese enterprises to learn about Ethereum and the entire blockchain ecosystem. We help enterprises to learn how to build an application on blockchain and how to access appropriate resources including knowledge of other blockchains like Hyperledger and Corda.

I also belong to several blockchain communities including blockchain.exe and Token Engineering Tokyo. We are looking to onboard developers and help them code smart contracts.

People will come to meet ups to understand business models enabled by blockchain, and how to build scalable blockchain applications.

What are the most exciting blockchain developments in Tokyo?

I really look up to the LayerX team and their work with zero chain. Zero knowledge proof blockchain built on substrate.

I am also very interested in Hyperledger Iroha developed by Soramitsu, which is a simple DLT. Soramitsu has also developed a client called Kagome, with C++ runtime environment for Polkadot. They are focused on cross-chain collaboration between Ethereum and Hyperledger.

There is also a large NEM community, as you can build lightweight applications, without prior software development experience.

What would you recommend in Japan

It depends on what you would like to do!

  1. Shopping, definitely Tokyo, especially in Omote-sando and the South side of Omote-sando which is more high end and has some hidden spots without signs, which is cool to see. Here you can also find antiques like tea pots. Cat street in harajuku is one of the coolest streets in Japan.

  1. Sightseeing you have to go to Kyoto.

  2. Beach resorts in Okinawa, which has some of the best water in the world including for scuba diving.

Where can people find you at Devcon?

Token Engineering - 8th October - Osaka - https://www.meetup.com/ja-JP/Token-Engineering-Tokyo/events/264947286/