Are blockchain-based identity wallets designed for engineers, not users? Kathleen Kenyon & Anil John Digital think so, and created the Digital Identity Wallet UI Design Competition. We talk with them, and with finalists Jeff Stephens of Dignari, Josh Welty of Trinsic, and Ken Ebert and Scott Harris of Indicio.

Mesur.IO founder and Chief Technology Officer Mike Prorock talks about how blockchain will become an important component of agricultural commerce, and about his recent award from the DHS Silicon Valley Innovation Program to create an open source API layer and engine that meets DHS needs for imports of food and agricultural products.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services is working with private industry to develop digital verifiable credentials, starting with the permanent resident card. The new credentials would be issued and usable on smartphones using blockchain technologies. Jared Goodwin, Chief of the Document Management Division at USCIS, reveals how they are creating capabilities that other federal agencies will be able to take advantage of.

Mavennet CEO Patrick Mandic talks about tracking oil & gas imports across the US/Canada border with blockchain technologies.

Vincent Annunziato, Director of Transformation & Innovation Division of the CBP Office of Trade, talks about shaping blockchain technologies to make imports safer and more secure. CBP's current projects include tracking steel, oil, and natural gas imports from Canada.

An interview with CTO Dmitry Barinov of SecureKey Technologies, a Toronto-based firm known for its VerifiedMe platform, on the recent DHS Silicon Valley Innovation Program award to create an "alternative identifier to the Social security number", part of an effort by DHS to reduce collection and use of social security numbers in its operations.

Melissa Oh & Anil John of the Department of Homeland Security's Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP) reveal the secret sauce of this one-of-a-kind federal innovation approach to push emerging blockchain products towards interoperability, and create solutions built-to-suit for DHS without suffering vendor lock-in. They discuss building a diverse partnership portfolio with startups run by women and other underrepresented groups, and call on other federal agencies to share their work and lessons learned in blockchain projects. Melissa Oh is Managing Director of the Silicon Valley Office of the DHS Science & Technology Directorate. Anil John is the Technical Director of the SVIP.

RevoltCypher CEO Mussie Haile shares his experiences delivering blockchain POCs for the federal government, including a Box-integrated platform for document sharing among parties in legal cases, and health record portability for the Veterans Administration.

In the wake of the Nobel Prize for Economics honoring work that revolutionized how wireless spectrum is allocated in the US, we talk with serial fintech, wireless and blockchain entrepreneur Chris Duffus about how the FCC could use blockchain for real-time radio frequency spectrum allocation mechanisms that could dramatically increase the useable wireless bandwidth for first responders, personal electronics, the military and more.

In their new book "Redefining the Future of the Economy: Governance Blocks & Economic Architecture," Co-Authors Dawn Talbot & Ralph Benko say the blockchain industry has failed to live up to its promise because it cannot reflect complex decision processes. They propose a mathematical framework for automated decision making meeting fiduciary standards. Without this approach, they warn that the US could become a second-rate technology power dominated either by coders with wild-west mentalities or by China’s investment in blockchain, which they call this generation’s sputnik moment.