Crypto - What Does Web3 Really Mean

foreign [Music] fantastic welcome everyone we have a very exciting panel I'm joined by a panel of all stars to talk about web3 today so we're going to cover a couple of interesting questions that you might have and we're going to not only talk about what web3 is what are the applications but we're also going to talk a bit about the impact of the current environment of web free if there is any so let me start off and a warm welcome to to my panelist um with maybe a first question on what is web 3 and what are you most excited about and maybe Basel if we can start with you sure so the way I think about web3 is the ownership and ability for individuals and institutions to monetize their digital property or their data and I think this is really important going going into the future treating data as a commodity that can be essentially used to build an economy around yeah I I would agree with that I mean ultimately fundamentally what wrap three is underpinned by is the blockchain technology that enables digital asset ownership right within that then you own a piece of your identity identity then becomes your creativity culture and you have Industries and virtual societies that build upon that now if you look up look at where the space is today we're about 80 some million wallets it's sort of compared to the internet at a time in mid 90s it's about the same number of users and now it's 5 billion right so the uh the third iteration of the internet is very powerful as you can see what happened in web 2 when um when the whole everybody can publish it really transform Industries right you know newspaper businesses that will transform itself data becomes a big thing and with web free when ownership then takes place uh you know you have a whole layer of transformation you have all the identity pieces that will come out of it that would arise from enabling the Jurassic ownership great thank you to me what that three is is access um everything with everything that weaseline Evan was saying about owning your digital identity but at the same time owning your creativity and and have have access and economics out of it which we haven't done or haven't had a chance to do in in web 2 entirely so I think at this point when you're a tutor and you can go to a Marketplace and sell your services microservices as well for a few dollars but you can make a living out of it that's what web3 can create for 1.7 billion people who currently are not able to access the entire infrastructure that we have in webto great I mean there are a lot of interesting aspects let's let's pick up on some of them so so earlier this year in Davos we had a long discussion around web 3 being the main driver to demonopolize webtoon everything that is wrong with web 2 would you agree with that I think that longer term possibly I think that's that's the intention that's the goal and that's what people kind of view view it going to become but I think that we're going to see other other companies usually venture-backed companies grow and and become you know quite dominant in the servicing space of web3 infrastructure space and I think it's just the Paradigm will shift you know the the whole point about web3 is democratizing isn't it right because what you're trying to do is that ultimately we have to understand that the the data that we create I mean you know all of you in the audience have a cell phone and you have a digital footprint you're creating data every single day right that piece of data uh is very valuable because you're spending time with It ultimately right and uh should that be uh mined incessantly to be um then centralized in uh databases that actually don't converse with one another and then ultimately when you get back is a is a piece of advertising and and sort of like you know how you're you're being shaped and and sort of like you know likes and then all these interactions that you have is the only only thing you get that's not the Commerce that we can imagine as we go forward right so the the piece about the marketizing internet in in this sense is really about how do I get my fair share of my um of my uh the data that I'm creating that are not not actually being sort of shall we say extracted by companies right because fundamentally if you sort of look at what we're ultimately trying to create here is that um uh that valuable piece of the time that we're actually putting in ought to be um uh we we ought to be able to interact in with with other human beings in a very real way and then uh when you put your creativity on even folks like teachers creators musicians you can imagine all these industries that can be that transformed as a result of that kind of ownership it's really powerful ultimately yeah and I agree with everything I think it's a I wouldn't say it's a dominance play it's more in a Natural Evolution where we are today right and and I think that's what what's going to happen going forward you're going to find use cases there are real use cases that are interesting and they're just going to slowly take over what we see today as web 2 and and have a more immersive experience and have a more immersive experience in economics and just participation okay great and then Evan maybe let me follow up on that question I mean if we if we have the vision that web3 is going to demonopolize democratize web 2. do you think from a VC point of view we're really decentralized organized or RVC is already owning every bit and piece of web3 yeah that should have been talked about hasn't it right where the VCS are way in shaping the space right it's actually super interesting so so uh any local Brands itself is obviously you know funded by different funders very enthusiastically um but our sort of premise is that we're not going to be influenced by the capital that we draw on right because ultimately that uh one very interesting piece of what we do is that we don't think about hey we have the money in here and these are the targeted returns here's the ROI and all that stuff because you know it's still early what we're trying to do is that the money that you put into into us we in we're actually going to inject into ecosystems and the ecosystem would pay back once we're able to to um to create these uh these interesting spaces right for instance sandbox right it's ultimately about creating um uh re-interesting social interactions in spaces you're saying land you're selling your token in there what is actually actually amount to it's actually amounting to user generated content like in Roblox but in the way that you own a piece of that particular content right when you decentralized the the uh the tokens when you decentralize economies is no longer owned by sandbox or any mocha it's free owned by everyone else right and all we're doing is to facilitate the tools to build the economy up so ultimately all needs to be decentralized autonomous organization is where the governance becomes decentralized right that's the best way of actually getting the point where there is not it's not the creators that originally conceived the concept that would monopolize how the space is going to go or that particular even of that particular asset it really is the is facilitation of the of the folks and the users that are actually ultimately on it going back to the VCS part right you know fundamentally we are somewhat acting like a VC sometimes as well right because any mocha has 380 companies the way we think about uh deploying that capital is that when we deploy a capital to you what are you building fundamentally is it valuable is it going to be uh do you hold the same vision that we see in the philosophy that we see in actually giving the power to the communities you know or are you thinking about quick out a quick extraction then your pump to go token then go right so that's what we would like to see and then we want to see interoperability you know again the the whole piece of our creativity um uh that we would like to like to see if there's a space for you in there then the capital we're put into use is not going to be dictating them in a certain direction nor do we like Capital dictate Us in how we pursue our Direction so there's a difference here interesting thanks for your view but I mean we talked a lot about also the intersection between gaming and and web3 GameFly and I haven't mentioned roadblocks in sandbox as an example what gets you most excited about the opportunities in this intersection so I think personally I have two two subjects that I'm very nerdy about and passionate about one is obviously Corporate Finance I spent most of my career in in that field in private equity and moved into blockchain and crypto but I'm also a hobby gamer and I think it's it's something that's quite big in the region here particularly because we can't go outside for half the year and the intersection there is is really a really interesting use case for one adoption for the new generation people getting used to the tools understanding how to use them then understanding how to monetize their their data in a particular environment but I think it also provides an interesting um kind of example for how this could be applied to broader property whether that's digital property or even physical property that can be traded digitally and I think that's where it gets very interesting into the Future Okay interesting and I mean going more to the more traditional side of of the view of web 3 I mean looker is taking a lot of care about the counting part and making everything proper so if you look at the events that happened in the past 48 72 hours like how would you think this would affect web3 going forward and how important proof of reliability sober about events that happen past 40 72 hours obviously and but I think as an infrastructure payer and institutional infrastructure player at Luca we always been a believer in the just generally in blockchain as as an enabler of Commerce and and in that sense what we're trying to kind of always been trying to to Advocate is a a responsible growth in the industry with transparency auditability accountability and I think to the extent that there are players out there to support that and generally the industry also supports that I think it's sort of like a Reawakening and and resetting back to the principles of where we started out from which is decentralized transparent permissionless you know accessible that's those are the things that we need to focus on and and I think after this we I think the the industry is going to are stronger or we're going to be more equipped to to fight anything that's untoward and going towards the future where we can actually build access to to people across the globe and and create a a future that is that is better in equalizing for everyone and I think once we go back to that principle I think we're everyone's going to realize the the benefits of of the ecosystem yeah I mean you know it's a a totally Echo with um I was just said and and you know of great respect for the likes of Luca and other infrastructure companies let's reactivate building the space because it's really the fundamentals parts of how web3 is going to thrive um if you look at what happened in the past week it's things unfold it really goes back to the basics right if you look at sort of where when we talk about regulations where we talk about just the basics of business ethics and all that what's really happening is that there are just some basic uh layers of things that are not built yet for this fast space to grow and that layer is underpinned by infrastructure uh partially by you know working regulatory authorities that really think through how the space off the belt in the first place because um fundamentally if you don't separate client assets if you don't have risk management you leverage like crazy and there's no transparency in the process of course things would happen right but what you have to get to the point is that you know we're trying to get to the point where there's more self-governance but there is definitely going to be some dovetailing with the regular you know proven regulations as well so for instance any Brands would be with kyc right we were criticized for it but before the other other uh others other deed was actually dropped with four eight four day beyond Club that's what we did right we believe that it's a very important piece of actually understanding who your customers when the asset is valuable then it is important that we pay attention to some of these issues that is of uh tried and tested now the concept right of web3 about decentralizing is a noble one but we have to recognize how it is today right but uh what I'm sort of um uh sort of feeling right now in terms of where the market is versus where the builders are coming in there's still a lot of people and companies looking to enter the space as opposed to the Ico Boom at the time right now uh some of you may recall in the late 90s and early 2000s whatever.com is worth you know 100 million dollars right and it ended up doesn't matter where the.com is it really matters what that business underlying business is we're going through similar stages in web 3 right I truly believe that with all these entries if all the companies looking to build on a metaverse you know we'll we'll see some great creativity we'll see some there are companies that will succeed with some companies that would not succeed at the same time but what's ultimately it underpins of this industrial asset ownership we know it's real because of demographics because of what the rising generation wants in terms of spend seven to ten hours every day on the internet they want to have a piece of that they want to have the ownership right that part is clear Ambassador you're very much entrenched in your startup ecosystem particularly locally so so how would you see the impact of the events that happened on our ecosystem locally in terms of building funding and so on this really goes back to kind of why we started military metric as a regulated first crypto exchange and custodian so we wanted to build that infrastructure to enable firms to go out there and go into web3 in some shape or form however they choose ultimately I think that transparency that's provided by being supervised by an external recognized Authority is is incredibly important as it relates to mitigating the risks that we've discussed here today and I think that that needs to continue all right great and I mean if we if we look at the entire web Suite space there are obviously some very exciting use cases that could happen right let alone thinking about web 2 business model going into web three may I ask you just for one pick like what would you think is one of the most exciting use cases in web3 in the future that would drive adoption much further and maybe we start cooking with you yeah I'm pretty boring I'm CFO right so I I can't imagine anything beyond what's happening five days from now but from my perspective already seen very interesting use cases emerging in in microfinance and international payments and I think if you look around and and you see that that ethereum process about four times the Visas transaction volume and and surpass the actual transaction size as well that is incredibly empowering to see those to me is is a killer app I don't know what else you would call the killer app in such a short period of time taking over and I think traditional Finance is taking notice of that as well I think this is the the original use case if you think about it right and I think it actually is working so that to me is the is the next web3 killer app or existing color app if you like if you think about it well I I I I do think that uh you know a lot of the existing uh applications that being both today have not even uh come uh to fruition yet right so um on a gaming space for example uh you can see the sandbox uh this decentralized while being quite successful but the game economies themselves that they actually found balance uh for uh good engagement right again a community um doesn't have to be the same size as what web2 games have to be in order for it to sustain right by itself that's the beauty of web 3 because it's all about communities right and the communities don't have to be in the millions or tens of Millions for the game to sustain that's that's the great part about that right but beyond gaming you can sort of see you know applications about other verticals creative verticals that would be super interesting about uh about music for example one thing that I get very excited about is education right because uh with a tiny tap the acquisition made what we've essentially done was look at what is the what's the fundamental premise of Education industry right the uh we understand that teachers ultimately are some of the most it's actually one of the most important occupations in the world right but they're probably one of the least well paid or even shall we say fairly paid right so we've tried to do is that using their creativity on no code basis have them create these nfts which are courses then get so to be uh to call blood Publishers where these teachers are seeing their creation sold for 60 to 100 000 200 000 with a co-publisher where you can actually now reach digitally to many many different kits that you can then educate right we believe that would spark curriculum changes uh in uh in the in the in the education sector which really hasn't changed for a long time so we believe that that ownership component that creatively a component arising even from a really good teacher imagine our teachers that you have that you had and you remember a couple of them being really good to you that has made a big difference we're trying to enable and Inspire those teachers to put some time in the creation of their own to then own their creativity own a piece of it and perhaps earn a an income that is more fair in our opinion hopefully this one works there we go so so I think from my point of view I I agree with with both of both of my amazing panelists here my view I'm going to put this much further into the future which might sound a bit fantasy or science fiction but I think the the ideal goal here at least what I'm excited about is if one day every individual every company can essentially either voluntarily or or passively earn income on the data they generate just by doing whatever it is that they do and I think that's a very powerful thing in sort of generating wealth for the Global Citizens and I think that's a really interesting goal to strive for and this is one of the reasons that got me passionate about blockchain in the first place that's great and I think already in this space we're seeing already the first real life use cases with the mercedes-bench launching a blockchain based data Marketplace exactly to untap this potential of data that is not used yet because it cannot be monetized and also to tear down the walls of data monopolization that we have today so final question for you guys so if we meet next year on the same stage same panel what's your prediction looking back in hindsight then a year from now what were the events that happened what would have changed how would the industry have have grown further even if we maybe start with you um hello or there we go some Mike's pop mic problems today huh but anyway um I think um the industry is going through ups and downs and by the way we have a look at the macro right the macros that we had really about 14 years of easy money right so there's a lot of capital being chased on uh on um shall we say projects that might not be well scrutinized right so that's that's what happens and this happens in the in the in the non-crypto world happens in the crypto world as well and uh things go work through itself but what remains again I'm very bullish on the sector because ultimately I'm looking at who's entering right with this traditional uh industry folks like you know myself you know some summer panelists some of you around here that are kind of like wow this is really the future and we sort of um uh see that and more and more building infrastructure applications Etc it's very exciting some things will remain some things won't right but what I would expect to see a year from now is that you see a couple people more camera applications along different verticals it could be education right it could be from any mocha Brands it might not be right it could be from the music industry it might be from from gaming industry a couple more of these like maybe Triple A titles that you you and I talked about uh back in the lounge um and uh and uh the infrastructure side you'll see I don't want to name names through a couple of very interesting companies including Luca that would uh look to enable the space and they'll grow right overall so I believe that you might have fewer fragmentation you may have some that are emerging as winners but the space itself I believe will still be made of smaller companies because of a decentral like decentralized nature of it but the um the premise and the ingredients for Success will come become a lot more clearer 12 months from now than the murky the murkiness we might be experiencing today great interesting King all right yeah it works now does work okay good so um just just going back again going back to the basics so what I what I see here is that there there's incredible amount of talent and let's not forget about that that that came over to experiment with crypto like Innovation is still there as you said VCS are still there there's money coming in but there's also crowdsourcing the the whole aspect of Open Source creates ideas and ideas come from everywhere in the world you don't need to be concentrated in the developed World it can be anywhere and there's a lot of young talent that came to the market and I think the next year is going to be a bad building there's going to be building interesting use cases like gaming and marketplaces things that we haven't really even thought about and that's and in a more transparent way I do think that the industry grew up over you know the the past few months just by adopting more uh race mature standards and and disclosures and I think everyone's going to understand that we have to build with proper disclosures and innovate the right way and mature way and I do think that's happening and next year I I do expect a lot of those projects that are in the works right now there's many many many of them they're going to come to fruition we're going to see interesting things and and things that Evan was talking about that helps generally the ecosystem to evolve and and helps people to take advantage of it great basil um so Abu Dhabi crypto 2023 what what will we see looking back well I think for 2023 what I really hope to see is some very strong onshore regulation and support from the central bank to enable firms like ours to interact with the traditional Financial Services System but also with non-financial corporates I think it's very important that that sort of the large corporates that provide many of the services that we know today play a role in the adoption of web 3 especially in the UAE great I think that's a fantastic Outlook where there is a use case in data whether it's education whether it's more regulation or proper regulation and I think most importantly king of what you mentioned in infrastructure that would allow us to avoid the mistakes maybe that happened over the over the past week or I would have exposed over the past week having said that I would thank the audience so much for for joining us today and thank you to the panelists [Applause]