Riding the Paradigm Shift: Transitioning Seamlessly to Web3 - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2022

hi good morning everyone um thank you for coming and spending the time with me um my name is Julian so it's my honor to be here last night spoke at token 2049 it was back in 2018 and I'm seeing a very different crowd here you know so I'm sure a lot of people here are you know maybe just trying to get into this space or trying to see what's going on here um I'm gonna talk less about the technology itself today but more talk about my personal experience for the past five years and how we see the transitioning in this space and hopefully this helps people to also find their own spot and own opportunity to get into web 3.0 okay very quick introduction for myself so I'm an engineer by training um but I started my career as a Management Consultant got into this space in 2017 so this is already my second Venture um so I love building stuff we first got into the public blockchain space because we think that's what's needed for developers you know proof of stake plus smart contract this is what makes the whole blockchain and also the new internet more interesting um we are proudly to be a company founded and also operating from Singapore um so we have most of our guys here um so we're looking at the Asian markets and trying to work with different partners um so along the way because we position ourselves as an infrastructure provider that's why we talk to a lot of d-apps a lot of in developers and also a lot of Institutions so along the way that's where we start to share more ideas on what are the things that they need to take note of in order to get it get into this space and try to avoid some common mistakes yeah so I think everyone's talking about with three and it's a very new term and everyone probably has a very different idea of what exactly that is um to me personally you know blockchain is only just part of web3 it probably works as more like the settlement layer maybe a slightly more that safeguards all the valuable assets and information on the internet um while the internet itself still generates and replicates information and does a lot of things more from an efficiency perspective perspective however blockchain itself is more similar to how the internet started many many years ago it was more trying to test out new ways for people to coordinate with each other and at a global scale that's why we're looking at web 3 more from a Creator focused user a user-led kind of a business model and in the future we're also looking at maybe data will be more PR private to yourself and this will challenge how the current web 2 companies are doing because they are benefiting mostly from the data generated by each of us yep okay so you know why we're talking about this right this is because we are really trying to help all the developers and um the web 2 companies to get into the new technology and the new business itself and we don't want them to feel the technological difficulties or challenges that's why we have identified the three challenges for them so first of all probably most of you know blockchain internet are not connected blockchain actually operates in isolated condition right that's why if you really want to understand what's going on blockchain or to interact with the blockchain you need an access point with the internet and secondly everyone knows okay so then how do I manage my private key it's just one stream of um of of codes and if if I lost it this is a big issue so these are the two points we are offering to the developers to so that you know they do not have to worry about security and also they can scale up their business on blockchain in a very cost efficient way and the large part is that you know with more d-apps coming on to blockchain we need the blockchain itself to be super super secure um so that's where we need validators we need them to process all the transactions we need them to also make sure you know things are done in a fair and decentralized way so that's another service we have been offering since 20 uh 2019 yeah so our end go here is really trying to be the Gateway for all the traditional companies to get into web3 so that you don't worry about your access point into the space you know how to manage your keys more of a uh approval based Manner and also the blockchain itself you are working on is secure yeah so you know so because we are offering all those Services that's why a lot of companies came to us um so they asked hey you know so you know we're trying to maybe pivot our existing company into blocks into web3 or I'm trying to build a new business but I don't know where to start yeah what exactly you know is are the things that I should look for and also uh for the past few months I've been talking to Claire from streets times um so we're also talking about how to nurture the ecosystem in Singapore and along the way that's how I collected some of my thoughts and I would like to share with you guys okay so very simple three points um you know if you're starting a business whether it's to transitioning your existing one or build a new new one into this space first of all start small and secondly make sure you're actually solving a problem that everybody agrees and lastly don't don't just wait you know start doing and you will learn along the way so why so let's first look at you know start small yeah um blockchain although it has been super exciting but from a technology perspective we have to acknowledge there are so many gaps especially on the tools and infrastructure perspective let's take an example just now um one of the speakers was talking about Layer Two but actually we all know that although layer 2 makes transactions cheaper and faster but there are still no good solutions to have a cheaper data storage on layer too so things still has to go back to layer one so this has a lot of implications right so can I really build something that is big enough and everything is unchanged and also we also have to acknowledge that you know smart contract itself has a lot of limitations in terms of security um so you know we need to be careful about what we're building because these are the things that are going to manage a lot of trans transactions so the best way you know to not prevent yourself of doing something meaningful is actually think very clearly let's just build a minimum variable product that actually proves the point and you can have a road map that tells people and also remind yourself what are the other components you would like to build up in the future this is also the most cost effective matter for any company wants to start yeah because very quickly you will know whether something works or something does not and this also helps you to be super focused on you know the certain things that you're trying to make Innovation about so this is also less pressure for yourself and second part you know we we were really we really believe that having a proper problem statement is really important why because sometimes you know if you really talk it out um this that things may not really make sense um so let me make an example um a lot of people are building game five and we would like to really understand okay so for gamify are you really trying to make blockchain to make the game more fun or are you using the blockchain itself to make the game more fair or is this something more about you know linking all the developers or your users so the question here is really what is the problem you're trying to solve yeah um and you know once you have identified the problem statement and we need to also talk about how is blockchain playing your role about it um blockchain is not going to be a solution for everything they are for a business or in order to solve problems there are problems that requires more efficiency sometimes it makes sense more in a centralized manner um back in 2018 we were people were talking about decentralized Uber or decentralized Airbnb but you know we haven't really seen what exactly that problem is and we haven't seen a good solution out of that yet um another example is that you know we are building we're using a multi-party computation for Key Management uh this is because we believe this makes everything more secure and we started it because we are running so many validators and we want to make sure all the validators are not done if one or two servers are done and this happens if all the private keys are stored over there so that is the problem statement that we found for our own business yeah and the last part you know we have been growing also you know we're talking to a lot of people that are trying to get into this space and a common question that we got asked is hey um actually there is a blockchain course that is offered uh by Stanford or somewhere else um should I take half a year off and just attend that one or should I start something immediately um okay my simple question answer here is that there's no textbook for this industry yeah things are moving really fast like what we understood two years ago or how we see things are totally different after two years so this is an industry that actually you learn the fastest if you build a minimum a very small product at the very beginning also talk to people that are in this space and learn from the mistakes that you have made um for the past five years like there are so many lessons we have learned you know also along the cycles of different Winters and the blue rounds there are things that we have to learn and all those things you only get get it if you're in this space yep um so this is how you know we're trying to practice the philosophies in our company uh we're building a lot of small products that we found are meaningful so for example we're building Lido on Avalanche for liquid staking and we're the first one that introduced MPC into the into the products so that it's more secure and there are also other products we're working with institutions so that we can tap into the new customer base um yeah just now we talk about winter right but honestly if you compare what was uh the the situation back in 2018 compared to now you know we're seeing so many people here you know uh institutions have Gotti uh very strong developers very mature teams have got into this space everyone is talking a much longer view building stuff so yes token price has reflected a lot of bear bearishness however if you look at the developers activities this is super bullish and we also believe that in a in a bear Market this is where companies can focus on their product and actually start to acquire their seed customers you will be surprised if you look at all the the champions in 2020 they actually all started in 2017 and 18. yeah so that's that's how things get all get started and yeah to conclude my uh uh my my sharing here Yep this is an industry that definitely going to stay um there are so many interesting people that we can help with so let's keep our long-term View stick to your vision let's make something meaningful to happen and yeah again I didn't talk about the text side uh at all but if you guys are interested to um figure out what we're doing what are the exciting things were in our head our booth is just right in the corner um behind the the stage great okay thank you so much for your time and I hope you have a great day