Opera and Web3 - Jorgen Arnesen

thank you morning guys my name is uh jurgen arness and i'm from opera i'm responsible for the mobile business at the opera group and also the the web 3 projects that that we have kicked off uh over the last few years so i'll give a little bit of a background of who we are uh what we're up to in in the web 3 space first of all thank you for for having the opportunity to uh to present a quick quick update on on uh on opera so for those who don't know we're we're a browser company at heart we were founded back in the 90s in oslo norway we've been doing web browsing and web development for the last 25 years actually uh all the way from the web one area uh to where we are today we were powering the first feature phones in africa for example via opera mini product to a full-fledged android products that we have in our portfolio today we have a pretty large user base 350 million users cross-platform mobile and and pc devices ranging from users in indonesia to to the us to cape town to to oslo we have a global perspective on on our business uh being a browser company we've uh always focused on on on key user user values and features that that are relevant in the browser context and we have built in and pioneered a lot of a lot of relevant features ad blocking private mob vpn built into natively into the product that are we think particularly relevant for for web3 evolution we built our first non-custodial wallet back in 2018 actually on our android products and some of our pc products we do have a an existing tech stack that we're building upon now and i'll come back to show you a bit more in detail what what we have uh what we have in the cooking for uh for web3 um on the web two sides we have also uh spun out of the browser business and developed over the last few years uh a couple of uh content aggregation products that we are also utilizing in our browser context browser portfolio using ai technology to to surface content to the user also again relevant in the in the web free space uh we have a pretty strong core business which is important for our development as uh as we are still let's say in investment mode when it comes to our web3 project versus our our core business this is important for us when we uh when we continue to innovate in terms of the organization we are approximately 750 people in opera a global company we're headquartered in oslo but have hubs development hubs in sweden two offices in sweden with 40 50 people we have an office in in two offices in poland with a couple hundred people we have a development office also in beijing in china so we are literally international plus we have of course remote colleagues from brazil to to africa to india diverse and and global organization this is just a snapshot of of the the web 2 mobile portfolio we have an opera mini client for the emerging markets low end mid to low and androids we have a android product for for mid to high end or a western market full-fledged uh product and then we have also the browser for for ios on the pc side we have our generic pc product which has been in the market for literally for decades and recently over the last few years we started to build niche browsers on top of the generic tech stack one great example is is the gx browser that we tailored particularly for the gaming community and launched this couple years ago with great success and really identifying some some core user uh user values and and and user needs among that community and some of that inspiration some of that success we are now bringing into the web3 space so you can ask yourself why why do do people why do users choose opera we're not part of a large ecosystem we don't get pre-loaded defaults on android devices and ios devices the only way that that opera can exist and have existed for the last couple decades is because we innovate it's the only way the only reason the examples you see on on the slide here of these features are actually stuff that opera pioneered and brought to the market and many of these are of course today de facto standard features that you take for granted in a chrome browser or a firefox browser i can name a few examples like the speed dials or the quick links that you that you use opera pioneer not have the browsing for example data savings in operamini et cetera et cetera et cetera so we we take that that pioneer pioneering spirit into web3 it's the only way that that that we have have a future so with that in mind we started to look at some of the key observations and trends from from our lens our point of view uh these are examples here of course non-non-conclusive but they are relevant from a browser context and how we have a role to play in in solving some of these challenges and trends that we see so we do see of course that there are some fundamental uh user experience challenges it's not often smooth to interact with with the apps it's not always easy to to to interact cross chain as an example stuff like this is is is where opera has a role to play we think perhaps that that the the web browser or the browser is perhaps more relevant in a web 3 context than in a web 2 context just because of the decentralization let's say concept yes we do have that for for some of the some of the products answer the questions excuse me the question was if we have support for unstoppable domains um so and then what we also see is that the big a big let's say barrier to to uh onboarding into web3 is also around content and how content is organized and brought to the user and from what i mentioned initially on on on the intro interslide is that we we come from uh from from a an experience in web 2 where we have brought content products to to the users and we are taking that that that knowledge that expertise around ai will bring that into a web3 uh context so like in short how we see it a little bit is that the web3 space really is lacking a a let's say web3 super app or powerapp that that addresses web3 compatibility problems smooth onboarding to through non-custodial wallets and a rich content experience this is basically what we want to build and we started to build around these these pillars back in q3 q2q3 last year this is just a snapshot of of the products we have now live on on on mac windows and android i'll come back to show a little bit more how it looks like but in essence what we are trying to to do here is basically to build a uh the best non-custodial web 3 super app that addresses some core user values and bring substance to to the market the use of values that we focus on when we develop our products is around accessibility we know that that users because of our global footprint the users in indonesia needs to to have a great experience just like a user in in the us on on on a different set of devices we have that global perspective from an accessibility point of view we also have a large existing user base on web web 2 today 350 million users that we of course are very keen and motivated to upgrade into a web free context ease of use is absolutely fundamental we need to make sure that it is as smooth and easy as possible for for users to to interact and this is why as i mentioned we need to have web3 compatibility across across our products on the transparency side also also key we think we we do plan to open source our wallet we will keep the wallet non-custodial and on the privacy and security side we also have an active roadmap on on uh important aspects that we will bring this is a snapshot on how actually the the the products look today you can check it out on on opera.com the web3 section there but basically we announced publicly in january uh our beta web3 browsers we have it available on android and pc versions today ios is coming now during march these these products are are built on on on three main components web3 compatible browser we know it's not easy to to to build build good browsers this is what we've been doing for for the last couple of decades this is this is absolutely central to to the onboarding then we have the non-custodial wallet that is natively built in uh into the products and this content engine which we have coined around a a let's say product name called crypto corner and here we will bring in services from from partners in in the market uh we do have an active pipeline uh on uh in the road map now we have a multi-chain strategy uh we are integrating with solana polygon is coming out i think actually today in our beta beta products we are porting bitcoin over from from some of our android products into this new web3 dedicated product products we have [Music] in march i hope we will announce a layer 2 solution which of course addressing fundamental problems on on gas fees we are integrating with with cello et cetera et cetera so basically we we see it as absolute necessity for us to to have this multi-chain uh multi-chain strategy in place so probably by q2 uh next quarter we will have a a i would say a good enough coverage when it comes to to relevant chains again going back to the to the user values i discussed earlier again just showing a quick snapshot on on the on the user experience in case you haven't tested our product yourself yet but super easy on boarding for uh to activate your wallet non-crossover wallet and we give you a nice nice ui you nice interface to to to check your your balance as an example we integrate with coin market cap to fetch data to display that in to the user in a in a nice way we've integrated with one inch swap swaps partner built into the product now is live again drawing a bit from our experience on on on the content side we see also from our experience the wallet the web3 applications in the market today are not necessarily the best at surfacing information and bringing information to the user in an intuitive way we've built our own push notification system for example that we will plug in so that when there are for example uh material market movements we bring that to the user uh in an intuitive way so more of that will will come we think it's important for engagement in important for for information uh to the user we are going to to to integrate with the with wallet connect of course as an important breach into into the into the let's say mass volume of of the app and i wanted to mention this also because it's a little bit not necessarily on the side but it it reflects our emerging market uh business as well we have a large user base in in in africa as an example more than 100 million users uh opera users connect to to our products in africa on a monthly basis in africa it is difficult to download applications because of the constraints on the on the devices so we use the existing uh install browser base the opera browser base to surface web web websites and content to the user we have done this for many many years we do it with partners we do it with our own services last year we launched a couple of football assets uh under the name of apex football and in a couple of months we got 10 million users just from promoting that through our own inventory and now soon we will launch our own opera crypto.com domain we haven't announced the official name yet that's why it's in in brackets but uh this is also part of our mission to bring content bring information about web3 and crypto to to the masses and to the user and lastly i wanted to uh to to end on on this note we are also having a privacy and security uh front and center in in our world map but i don't want to go into too much detail here but i have some examples on stuff that we already have in our products and and stuff that we will bring into our products as well we do see and acknowledge that that privacy security is is not only a problem but an imp very important part of of webtree's ability to to really get mass adoption so with that guys i want to wrap up i said thank you any questions yes webassembly uh actually not sure i understand the question i'm uh forgive me i'm not the developer [Music] okay i think we have to take it offline sorry about that okay thanks a lot guys and up next we