What is Web3 Good For? - TOKEN2049 London 2022

so I've been spending some time on Twitter lately as many of you may have done and um amid all the drama I started reflecting on you know the fundamentals I figured it would be really good to ask ourselves some really fundamental basic questions about why we are doing what we are doing and so this question of what's web 3 and um is it Dad yet and um how do we know that it is useful what is it good for um restart and lingering in my head and so you know when I started thinking about this I reflected and realized that um I went through two crypto interest already and I'm still very excited about this space and this is through some stories live I lived through uh that showed me what red 3 is really good for and I think it's good to go through them um so that you can keep up your enthusiasm and um Soldier through it even though um the marketplace right now is not looking um as good as couple of months ago and so first realization that I had was from a story I lived through I had this friend uh his Venezuelan um he got stuck in the country he very quickly realized couple of years ago that this place is not good for him um and he won't be able to make it there and so he wouldn't be able to um restart a family and have successful future uh where he came from at the same time he knew that in order to escape he would need some money and he would need to get that money and sort of like cross the border uh carrying this money and that was an issue because back then the Border guards border patrols in Venezuela were corrupt and they would strip you off all the money you have and so what he really did was he sold everything he bought Bitcoin he got all of that into his wallet and then he deleted his wallet from his phone but the thing he carried over the Border where the 16 words uh the mnemonic that helped him go through it and um you know he crossed the border without that with you know they tried to search him they tried to find any valuable positions and strip it out of him however he was able to go through the border with the Bitcoin just remembered in his head and this really taught me that web 3 is really good for um not letting you down when uh big entities that you rely on every day would let you down and so this is our insurance from things going really bad Second Story I remembered was about how wet free can turn users into owners one day I woke up and I woke up with 1 600 US dollars in my in my wallet that was empty and what turned out is that I got some uni swap tokens so I was playing around with this defy web3 tool for exchanging tokens and they decided to share the ownership in this application with their users and so from a humble user I turned into co-owner and this taught me that web3 is really good about turning users into owners and how the world would look like if platforms like Airbnb and Uber would also turn their users into owners today it's possible with tokenomics and web free the third situation I remembered was um all about the surprise when I woke up I looked at my dashboard um and my firm is providing services in 150 countries uh but typically this is like mostly us and Europe but one day I woke up to a massive um uh Spike of usage in Philippines and that was super interesting because we've never done any marketing in Philippines we didn't have any partners that would be focused on Philippines but it turned out that this game actually Infinity got really really popular really fast in Philippines back then and so um it was really striking and then I called my partner um who I partnered with and whose users you know these were um and he told me that he actually was not marketing this uh to the Filipino user base and it was so striking because it really shows you how web 3 equals Global you do not even know where your service could become um really popular and it's when you launch something it's um you know Global by Design and by default and then web3 also can bind people together and I learned that when I was spending time on the chat uh in the app uh called so rare and I was helping our customer support with a surge of usage and spoke with a guy who was really frustrated about the kyc process uh that he had to go through in order to buy um a a soccer player card and I learned that he spent two days uh trying to get it and finally only succeeded using our products um which I'm going to tell you a little bit more about later on um but he was so passionate about this collectible this Lewandowski card that he wanted to buy and he didn't even know that he was using web free he was frustrated that he would need to do some kyc for him it was just a fun way to connect with something that he really believed in and connect with a story become part of the story that he thought is very relevant to him and that was really moving and so through these stories I learned that web 3 could become a better internet one where we can rely on technology when big when big institutions fail us um one where um we can start using platforms and hope that by helping these platforms uh progress uh finally in the end you could become one of the owners of that of these platforms uh one where everything is global by Design and Global by default which is very different to the internet today and then finally one where you can become part of a story and you can start uh participating uh in communities that span across the globe and cross borders however as we know web3 has ups and downs and we are currently in a very deep down um but I'm remain optimistic because uh it is all an experiment that's a point and we are going to fail um failed tokenomics are going to fail um you know mistaken business moves are going to bite back however we are in this together and we want to build uh something really new based on principles and technologies that were not available before and all of this really starts with a user's first step and so uh my company ramp is building a Global on ramping solution that really is focused on helping users who never had any touch points with web 3 to make this very first step what we are building is an SDK that everyone can copy and paste into their application to immediately start their users to start immediately let their users start buying and selling crypto right from your app so that you do not need to send them to binance or send them to coinbase or send them to FTX so that they could buy crypto and come back to you to complete the user onboarding journey and that everything becomes a package streamlined user experience that is all within your app your website or web application and you can see how this is really neatly packaged in a way that offloads most of your kyc and AML struggles we take care of the licensing we take care of the um you know a connectivity with the banking system and we handle all of these um relationships with institutions that do not really speak web free so we not only let you get up and running in literally minutes but also buffer you from all the things that you really do not want to do as a builder in web 3. um and so you know we do that because we feel very strongly um that the mission of empowering everyone in open networks is a worthy one and going through all these stories showing you how web3 can build an Internet that is more user driven more Global that's what lets you down um is something that we feel deeply passionate about and what we really want to achieve and how we want to see this entire world evolving in the next 10 years is to see a future where everyone can exchange value as easily and efficiently as using the internet and so to put it very simply until web3 becomes one click for end user and copy and paste building block for developer and um product designer and today we are very excited to announce that we just raised a 70 million dollar round um it's 120 million in total race in last year to help Advance this Mission um this is coming from mubado and coralia capital and others we are very happy that some of our former investors including boulderton Galaxy digital um nfx seat come in first minutes also joined this round um we really think that real use cases um are going to be the next big thing in crypto and so if you're meddling with finances if you're doing funny business trying to um just you know outplay this gambling game that is crypto speculation um I think that's you're going to really have tough time in the coming years but if you are building something that can attract users and deliver real value uh like our partners such as GameStop or Exodus or Abra or Brave then um you will do well partnering with ram to make sure that your users can start using your app with no issues in a streamlined Manner and you can get up and running in just a couple of minutes we're also very happy to announce that the number of users that we have increased six-fold over the last 12 months we have a big user base that is already kyc'd they have their cards connected to our system their banks are connected to our system they are under our AML program and all of these users could start using your applications it's just one click if you integrate run platform and so you would tap into millions of users who are already web free ready understand what you're building and are ready to spend in just a click of a button um I'm also very proud to um to say that we work very closely with Regulators we are the first on-ramp that is regulated uh by Major Regulators on both sides of Atlantic where Vincent and FCA are registered and so uh we can handle these relationships so that you can focus on building so we own the unwramping The Exchange and your users can buy whatever crypto is required to use your product through our infrastructure um this grants us access to users in more than 150 countries so we understand and really know that you're building your products to make them Global and we give you this Global access also through uh payment rails um but being Global is not enough you want to be Global and at the same time be able to cater to users in all these jurisdictions in all these geographies in a way that they are used to and this is why the experience is highly customizable and at the same time we Grant access to the all these countries in a way that users are feel familiar with and are used to so we're using local payment rails so that they can pay as they want for crypto you want them to buy um at the same time we feel very passionate about scalability and how do we make sure that uh people can start using applications that are really scalable and this is why we partnered with pretty much all scalability solution providers layer to Providers Next Generation blockchain Builders um and many more so that if you are building something on a highly scalable infrastructure we can plug your users in very quickly and right now we are very happy to announce that we are launching an initiative to get licensed in even more countries and I'll unlock some of the countries that are very hard to penetrate and very hard to get access to because of regulatory requirements so this 120 million of dollars that we raised is going to be spent so that we can get even bigger coverage and make sure that your services can be used in an easy easy way easy fashion all across the globe um we are going to focus mostly on uh countries in Southeast Asia So Korea and Japan are right now um very very top top of our agenda um and also to improve the experience for users in Latin and there's a go only going to be more local payment methods plugged in so that your users who may complain that buying with visa and MasterCard is expensive sometimes slow and sometimes causes them headaches because their Banks do not want to process their transactions uh could be processed with local bank to bank payment rails that are instant much cheaper and have much higher acceptance rates we are going to continue our support for layer 2 Solutions and we are going to help everyone who's building on highly scalable infrastructure uh plug-in through ramp to their user base and uh now we are also very proud to announce that we are launching our off-ramp which is uh the best offering on the market uh it is utilizing uh instant payout ways so we're launching in the US which is our biggest market and we are going to use real-time payments so that money would show in your bank account only seconds after you clear the crypto transaction or send crypto to us and finally I'm very proud to announce we got accepted by visa and MasterCard to their new program which would allow us to push money to cards globally to every visa and MasterCard pretty much all across the globe so that our off ramping infrastructure would not rely on local connectivity with local payment Trails but would become Global from day one just like your businesses thanks [Applause]