Real World Web3: Stories From Africa & Asia | Irthu Suresh, William Le, Isha Varshney,

group of panelists you know I messed up the moderator the last time because it doesn't show the names in order so I'm not going to do it this time but this one's going to be on real web three real world web three stories from Asia to Africa so round of applause for our speakers [Applause] please awesome hello hello welcome everybody um so the three of us are really excited to talk about this topic obviously we're seeing a lot of really interesting use cases and adoption for crypto and web 3 coming out of Emerging Markets but before we jump in I would love for us all to introduce ourselves um why don't we start with the uh Isa ladies first oh okay thank you um love being on panels with only man um hi I'm Isha I had ecosystem at Salo Foundation cell for those that are unfamiliar is a lir one blockchain we're currently transitioning to a too and I think the reason I've been invited to this panel is us as a blockchain we focus on Emerging Markets a lot of our presence is in Africa southeast Asia Latin America um and we have critical focus on stable coins and Retail users in these ecosystems um yeah and we'll chat more a little bit more but I'll pass it on to you nice uh I'm Ru I'm from Atlantis da and we pretty much use blockchain for a lot of climate action and uh I'm here today to speak because we did a very special pilot with Mercy cop where in rural India for almost close to 50,000 people we built a web3 uh P2P water coordination Network that kind of helped them conserve water and a bunch of other things so we built some interesting stuff in the front lines and yeah uh ready to take some of Will's spicy takes over to you hi everyone my name is Will um so the whole reason why I joined web 3 was because I was always been very interested in this intersection of really cool technology Financial inclusion and emerging markets and so um the reason why I started building this company haraca which is basically a company that provides Financial Services to businesses and entrepreneurs primarily in uh places like subsaharan Africa southeast Asia is because I think the problems that people are facing in a lot of these markets are a lot bigger there are a lot more frictions there are a lot uh uh more opportunities to have impact with this technology and so um really excited to kind of like talk with you guys a little bit more about the opportunities we're seeing in some of these spaces um but I think we're going to do something a little bit different today like I uh we wanted to mix it up a little bit make this a bit spicier a little bit more interactive so instead of us asking each other questions and just speaking on it um we wanted to kind of make some pretty bold statements uh and what I'd like to do is like make a statement and maybe take a poll of the room so like basically ask yourselves do you agree do you disagree and then um we will also respond the same way and basically have a little bit of a conversation maybe a debate we'll see about some of these topics how does that sound awesome good all right so first question and sorry the the uh the VIS the visual doesn't work right now so you're just going to have to I'll repeat it a couple times um but first question so in the next 10 years 75 % of web 3 activity will be in Africa and Asia so 75% of activity a web three activity will be in Africa and Asia in the next 10 years um raise your hand if agree raise your hand if you disagree oh interesting okay okay Isa why do you what what did you answer the way you did yeah um firstly uh the way I see it um for background I'm from emerging market so background is in Africa and Asia so super relevant to this um I think web 3's product Market fit in my mind is in geographies where you don't have already built out incumbent Financial infrastructure right and so that is essentially a lot in Emerging Markets um like yes I think the current ecosystem web3 ecosystem is very us and Europe based but we are onboarding users in these regions at astronomical rates right so for instance we have one product in the ecosystem that is Opera Mini pay and we have onboarded net new users to web 3 on this product in the last year most more than like 5 million users like netting users and I think that's just like tip of the iceberg as we kind of like as I see it grow in scale in the next 10 years I think we're going to go from like five to like 500 at least yeah that's my take I think my take is going to be more from a product Builder's point of view like how you're trying to look at these spaces and how crypto will really be useful um especially in Asia Africa and some of these continents it's predominantly got a lot of low trust societies so crypto is a great way to program values and build coordination Tech around it uh and another thing is massive amount of people are still bankless a lot of people who do not even have bank accounts and some of those people directly come onto crypto and this is not the case in most of developed Nations like almost all the infrastructur is pretty pretty good and uh the developing nations are catching up and crypto is a really powerful rail like Isha mentioned you know uh Financial rail so as a product Builder if I'm trying to build something for population scale uh I would look at Africa and Asia yeah I mean I Echo what you guys said said maybe I'll add two quick points here but like if you look at the latest chain analysis reports like I said eight or nine out of the top 10 countries per capita when it comes to crypto adoption already in Emerging Markets right so this is already happening um uh so it it's uh it's very a sign yeah exactly it's a yes the universe agrees it's happening um so in I I think there's just a lot of interesting activity that is like like when you think of about non-speculative use cases for crypto right uh like things where you are um using crypto for things besides like trying to make money like U for remittances for like inflation hedging that's all happening in places where there are frictions in the financial system there's a lot of examples of Technologies things like off-grid solar mobile money that are really leapfrogged in places where there's not this incumbent infrastructure and I think the same can be true for web three all right next question so I feel like one of the big themes for this conference has been stable coins like it's been like stable coin season I've been seeing like trucks with like random stable coin logos that I've never heard of before all over the place so it's clearly a very hot topic um and like we said earlier stablecoin adoption it's kind of like one of the first real use cases that we're seeing for crypto um so the question that we have for you guys and all of us is uh in 10 years uh when we think about the globe like is there going to be massive consolidation of stable coins or fragmentation of stable coins meaning is there going to be a few stable coins that went out uh uh because like the US Dollars strong and people are going to like consolidate or we're going to see more and more fragmentation local stable coins private stable coins etc etc growing so all right uh fragment consolidation raise your hand if you think there's going to be consolidation all right now raise your hand if you think there's going to be more fragmentation interesting it feels like almost an even split you want to go first I think uh again uh my experience trying to scale the services that we have built something that I'm noticing that yes definitely adoption of stable coins is going to go up but every country is going to spin up their own stable coin in some way and uh that's going to bring on its own fragment you know and yeah I'll stick to that go next sure um I think it's going to be interesting but like it feels like deep down there are strong Network effects to stable coin adoption right like you need to have like liquidity good onoff ramps like uh and so I do think that over time there's going to be a few kind of like key winners that like win out um and it does make it easier when there's kind of like one Global stable coin that serves as kind of the the the oil greas the financial system and so I hope I'm wrong to be totally honest but I don't think I am yeah I agree with you will um just like in the last year we've seen stable coin tbll increase increment like drastically and most of it is in the top two um and also in the regions that we're talking about like Africa and Asia um when you talk to somebody in Nigeria about dollars they don't know the dollar like the Fiat dollar they they say oh usdt and so that is how they kind of think about dollars in general and so to kind of go from that to like multiple I find that us adoption would be very difficult I think there will be more consolidation there will be clearly a couple of winners will it be two or five I'm unclear but I think there will be a couple of winners that'd be Fiat B stable coins that'd be like a few that are like top there and then a few maybe like interesting like yield bearing or programmatic stable coins but I think it'll just it will definitely consolidate we won't have us D us usdc A to usdc Z I think there'll be fewer cool all right um so I asked chat GPT to make some of these questions spicier and this is what they told me U next question is crypto will be a political weapon in Asia so yeah again crypto will be a political weapon in Asia raise your hand sir if you think it's yes raise your hand sir raise your hand if you think it's no wait what did you guys say I didn't I didn't see your yeah you said yes no okay wait one more let's raise our hands so ready yes raise your hand no raise your hand interesting okay okay Isa you go first this time oh my God this one's a tough one I don't think it'll be a political weapon I think like crypto what it does is it kind of helps you I mean transparency of data is a really big thing that like web crypto and web 3 in general provide and I think because of that you would be able to use that less as a weapon right like I know especially some countries in Asia politicians are able to throw out random statements and win their campaigns based on random statements which is completely unbacked by data I think crypto what it does is it kind of like backs up all political I mean backs up with a lot of data but that's my but that's my love to hear yours I mean I don't I'm still in Shades of Gray but I'll but I I I do believe that it's going to be harder because you can trace unless we're going to see like tens of tornado cash come up and like then things are going to get wild but if not I think you can trace a lot I mean like we saw the biggest Heist recently and we know where it went and so yeah I I agree that the real answer is probably more nuanced like I could be but the reason why I said no was because there's actually been examples of governments sorry uh and uh of people in Asia using crypto as a way to fight against government corruption right so the best example I can think of is like in Myanmar where a lot of the separatists and like kind of the rebels have been using crypto because like it's a way for them to like move money around and pay folks um against a very dictatorial regime right and so I do think that it creates opportunities to fight against like authoritarianism um then it is a political weapon oh yeah you're right sorry I thought I meant like I I interpreted this question as political weapon from like the top one yeah yeah yeah political about okay I changed my mind I I'm a yes then I'm a cool um all right want to do this one the next question is uh play to earn and web three jobs will become the new offshore Outsourcing industry uh in Africa and Asia so again play to earn web three jobs will become the new offshore Outsourcing industry in Africa and Asia ready raise your hand if you agree raise your hand if you disagree oh kind of a split yeah so a good example is like you know axi Infinity like the um the game where you like play you earn some like Rewards or tokens um web three jobs could also be things like data annotation or data labeling to kind of fix AI like models or train AI models yeah does that make sense yeah and so this could become a major source of income and jobs for people uh uh in Emerging Markets sure I can go first so I actually did a lot of projects on this we did several Pilots one with Mercy core actually um around like uh data annotation and data labeling and I think there's a lot of really interesting H things happening like number one I obviously AI is booming I believe that within our lifetime data is going to become the world's most valuable commodity but to make that like like just like oil to make it valuable you have to refine it you have to annotate it you have to label it um and so that requires actually human inter intervention to train or to like manipulate and a lot of that will happen in Emerging Markets there's also interesting things happening with data annotation too where you want people from a diverse background to train the data because otherwise you're going to have biases and so it does make sense for folks to have a lot of these opportunities and I think web three and crypto is going to make the borders a lot like uh uh less right it's going to make it a lot easier to kind of like create these jobs reward people kind of like move things across borders and so I see it being an inevitability yeah I agree with that um we're already seeing this like I mentioned we have this application that is very popular in Africa and we kind of like tried multiple things with this application we tried like save and yield um but what was most exciting to them was like either play to earn or anything gaming and play to earn is actually like opening up access to a lot of like job opportunities clearly but it is also like like it's like will mentioned like data is going to be king and so Plato earn is really way great way to kind of like clean out data yeah I think I could go a speak a lot about this because one of the first products that we built was uh dap called impact minor it's got gamified climate bounties pretty much they just TKS and we literally use these web3 gamified rails to help villagers come together you know they were picking up different tasks based on their skills and they were getting paid in crypto and uh I think this is going to go a lot more especially in India if you see uh lot of lot of young Talent today work for a lot of international companies and most of it is like web3 jobs um for example super team earn they probably like generated more than 2 to 3 million as a community in terms of outsourced job that they've got for web 3 so yeah that's the future seeing big activity in Nigeria India the leading the way cool maybe one more question all right ready so um last question stable coins will replace mobile money for everyday transactions in Emerging Markets so uh again stable coins will replace mobile money for everyday transactions raise your hand if yes raise your hand if no oh interesting so there is kind of an even split but we all said no yeah what did you say Kate why did you say yes yeah what did you say yes because I think that stable coins will become the like world currency and I think that people traveling and people in different countries will adopt to one currency eventually and it will become the dayto currency that every uses is the spicy question for you which is the currency TD so I said no but I said no for kind of a cheaty reason like basically I think that there's going to be a convergence and we're not going to see that much of a difference between stable coins and mobile money right like for example I think what mobile money has is like this massive infrastructure a lot of agent networks Etc um and right now a lot of most people in Emerging Markets they're using mobile money as an on andof ramp to stable coins right and so I I think that line is going to get blurrier and blurrier and we're not going to see the separation so I don't think stable coins are going to replace mobile money so much as kind of like merge with it if that makes sense see I have a completely different take this is why we're talking I think when we think about stable coins essentially like what Kate said in my mind it's like okay one currency and I don't think that's going to happen I think how you have Capital controls and Fiat um a lot of Emerging Markets are going to put Capital controls even on stable coins and it's easy easy to track it's easy to govern there's literally smart contracts that you can put in place for Capital controls on stable coins and I think a lot of Emerging Market countries I know this is already in the regulatory landscape of a bunch of like em countries in Africa specifically they're thinking through how do they kind of conserve their local currency how do they conserve Fiat because a lot of like um I don't know money market and like how the economy work is based on like Fiat control right and so if stable coins take over then they won't be able to control how their economies function um that's at least my take yeah I think for me it's just the sheer number of mobile money that's going to pour into the market that's going to like prevent this whole thing happening and also maybe an introduction of cbdc I'm not uh sure about that but uh I do see like mobile money like it's just going to be unstoppable but Enterprise deals definitely not going to look at mobile money I mean that's really interesting what do you think about Central Bank digital currencies are like are they going to replace stable coins if I have to stick with my thesis earlier I would say it would but you guys had some strong arguments so okay well cool um thank you for listening to us ramble about stable coins and emerging markets and all this stuff hopefully you uh got some good insights maybe you agreed with us maybe you disagreed with us but that's okay um we'll be around after do you guys want to say any last words oh um thank you for being here it was really interesting to see some of your spicy takes uh I appreciate it U yeah thank you for having us yeah uh just quick word there's definitely lot of real world use cases in crypto outside trading and you guys should keep a good track of it and there's some phenomenal work happening in this space thank you [Applause]