Binance Blockchain Week 2022: Web3, GameFi, NFTs and mass adoption of crypto

Binance Blockchain Week 2022 was held in Dubai on 28-30 March 2022. The three days of the annual conference involved the brightest and most influential minds in the blockchain ecosystem and the leading crypto industry speakers all over the world. Among hot topics discussed at the various panels, fireside chat sessions, and thoughtful keynotes were the mass adoption of crypto, Web3, NFTs, GameFi, and metaverses, as well as the future of crypto investing and fundraising.

Day 1

Day 1 of the conference gathered in the Dubai World Trade Centre started with the opening keynote of His Excellency Helal Al Marri, the Director General of Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism, and the Dubai World Trade Centre Authority (DWTCA).

The question of global blockchain adoption was a central question on the first panel by Tim Grant, Head of EMEA at Galaxy Digital Holdings, and Richard Teng, Regional Head of MENA Binance, who discussed what key industry stakeholders could do to move the sector forward.

“We should educate them to bring them ahead of the curve,” Richard Teng said.

Richard expressed the hope that regulators dedicate more resources to exploring the potential of the space, understanding on-chain surveillance, compliance monitoring, and other ways blockchain can help enforce security, more barriers to blockchain adoption can be knocked down.

Tim Grant added that beyond the use case of CBDCs, blockchain technology, as compared to cryptocurrency, is poised to disrupt more industries. With the world sitting up and taking note of the potential of crypto and blockchain, more people will likely be trained in analyzing the subtleties of the latest technologies and consensus mechanisms, optimizing tokenomics, and pushing the known boundaries of what crypto and blockchain can do now.

Further, Soo-Man Lee, Founder and Chief Producer of SM Entertainment, Asia’s leading entertainment company, in his keynote speech, presented the SM Metaverse or SMCU – a virtual world where anyone can create songs, dance routines, fan art, and more.

SMCU (SM Culture Universe), a virtual destination where fans and artists converge, will use a Play-to-Create ecosystem to encourage creativity by rewarding creators. Within the P2C ecosystem, user-created content can be converted into NFTs, allowing users to earn profits and gain recognition for their creations.

“We plan to inspire human’s instinct to create through the play-to-create model, so that anyone can make killer content and receive incentivization,” he shared his dream with viewers of Binance Blockchain Week.

In the next panel, Charles Hoskinson, CEO and Founder of IOHK, expressed the founding principles of Bitcoin and what a future powered by crypto and the blockchain would look like.

In his words, with blockchain, as the sandbox for building a decentralized ecosystem, perhaps other aspects of our lives will in time be impacted in the same way.

“I believe the future will be decentralized,” he resumed.

After, Bruce Pon, Founder of Ocean Protocol, Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, and Jagdeep Sidhu, Co-Founder & CTO of Blockchain Foundry (SYScoin), sought to answer what the journey from Web2 to Web3 does look like.

Sandeep Nailwal noted that it seemed evident that incentivization and user experience are key to the mass adoption of Web3, while Bruce Pon noted that one draw of Web3 is being able to introduce value to things that we couldn’t before.

Jagdeep Sidhu added that the industry is still working on solving issues like scalability and standardization of Web3. Regarding a time frame, he speculated that 2 to 3 years is the earliest before we see any noticeable changes.

Day 1 was closed by a keynote speech by Eowyn Chen, CEO of Trust Wallet.

The key element for Eowyn is to use the nexus of the open-source wallet as a vector to enable key improvements. Another key is to offer tools and educational resources to both users and developers.

To wrap up the day, what form Web3 will actually take is still a work in progress, and it will take an effort from across the whole ecosystem to codify this new paradigm.

Day 2

Day 2 of the conference was dedicated to a better understanding of the fast-growing worlds of GameFi, NFTs, and metaverses.

The starting panel discussed the roles of decentralized projects and centralized companies that are building the Web3 infrastructure.

Timothy Lewis, CSO of Tea, stressed the role of developers as a key element of Web3 building. And William Quigley, Co-founder, and CEO of Tether and WAX, added that indie developers, rather than centralized companies, will start to embrace and build Web3 sooner.

Three elements raised by the next panel with Denko Mancheski, CEO & Founder of Reef, dedicated to the DeFi future, were user experience, a scalable environment, and liquidity.

Discussing how projects are trying to encourage DeFi adoption, the speakers agreed that in building this new generation of products, the needs of the user come first.

In addition, the panel touched upon the issue of fragmented liquidity due to the sheer number of stablecoins in the market. The speakers expressed their hope that they will soon converge to a few key stablecoins that can power the future of DeFi.

Sebastien Borget, Co-Founder and COO of The Sandbox, then held his keynote speech presenting a prominent example of the Metaverse, The Sandbox – one of the projects that’s building that virtual space for mass users.

“The Metaverse will provide richer, more social, more immersive experiences for everyone,” he said.

Per him, the Metaverse economy could reward users for spending time on the Internet and monetizing their gaming experiences, allowing them to work and play at the same time.

How the NFT hype is evolving from being mere speculation to a more integrated business was the topic of one of the last discussions this day.

“The concept around NFTs is no longer just speculative,” claimed Joshua Ho, Co-Founder of QCP Capital.

Founder of Hypebeast, Kevin added: “We like NFTs because it’s fascinating. We want to support emerging artists.”

Also, Natasha Damodaran shared how Vogue Singapore, launched in the middle of the global pandemic, cleverly used NFTs to transcend the traditional fashion industry.

Day 3

On the last day of Binance Blockchain Week 2022, leading speakers from regulatory and blockchain industry fields shared their thoughts on trends and features of crypto investing and trading.

In the starting keynote, Magnus Grimeland, Founder and CEO of Antler, talked about how blockchain will change the future of investing. What will it take for institutional investors to move to the new financial era? The answer is exposure to knowledge and the ecosystem.

He noted that despite the progress made in the crypto investing arena, some financial institutions still find it hard to gather enough information to leap. However, with some time, this gap can be bridged.

Romit Mehta, Investor at Lightspeed India Partners, also noted: “The job of a good VC fund is to follow the opportunity.”

In Mehta’s words, failing to follow the opportunity swiftly, large companies might risk losing their first-mover advantage and the influence they have over the masses.

The next panel discussed future trends and features for retail crypto investors. The speakers agreed that we are in a unique position where users, builders, and regulators can collectively come together to decide what investing landscape we hope to see. Also, Madeh Badaoui, VP of Engineering at BitOasis, shared his principles of safe investing.

In the next keynote speech, Khalifa AlJaziri, Commercial Affairs Regulatory Sector Projects Advisor, UAE’s Ministry of Economy, underlined the importance of legislative, community, and financial support as integral in creating change on a global stage.

“Innovation in the blockchain, crypto and FinTech space is at the heart of Dubai’s digital economy,” Khalifa AlJaziri noted.

Closing the conference, Changpeng Zhao, Binance CEO, thanked all the distinguished speakers and guests that flew and tuned in to the event to make it possible.

“This event is really just about education,” he noted, stressing the importance of Dubai in the blockchain world.

In his words, the inaugural event is meant to be a destination and a celebration of our progress as a unified global community.

Blockchain Binance Week 2022 was taking place in Dubai, UAE, from 28 to 30 March 2022.