Ganesh Swami of Covalent on the role of data infrastructure for a multichain future

Ganesh Swami is often billed as the entrepreneur building the ‘Google of blockchain’ as CEO and Co-founder of Covalent, ​​a startup solving infrastructure problems inhibiting blockchain adoption.

By focusing on delivering maximum value to users, multichain has the opportunity to create something truly extraordinary. With Covalent, Ganesh aims to index the entire universe of blockchains or multichain – and continually add new data and information, to emerge as the ‘Google of blockchain’.

In an insight-packed keynote at YourStory’s The Metaverse Summit, Ganesh helped decode the data infrastructure for a multichain future. Here are some of the key takeaways from his inspiring session.

“We are binding the centralised systems that are prevalent today, with the decentralised future,” said Ganesh.

“What we think will happen in 2025, is a very vibrant ecosystem of multiple blockchain networks. Our thesis is that there's going to be multiple competing solutions, with a spectrum of solutions available for different needs. Data that's locked on these layer one chains will all have to interact with existing systems, and Covalent is this middleware product that enables a unified API for all blockchain data,” he added.

The richest blockchain data on the internet

Ganesh also spoke about how Covalent’s solution of one unified API opened up over one billion possibilities with visibility to billions of blockchain data points.

“The Covalent API gives you a view across 35 different blockchains today, with more blockchains being added continually. That's the future we're building towards. Today, we have over 1,000 applications on all the category leaders across different use cases.” he said.

What the future holds for the data infrastructure space

While talking about what the future held for the data infrastructure in a multichain world, Ganesh zoned in on the fintech use case.

“DeFi, or decentralised finance is often heralded as fintech 2.0. If you think of fintech as banking, moving to the internet, then banking moving to crypto, or blockchain-based ledgers or settlement layers is DeFi,” he said, while explaining how it presented an incredible opportunity for growth and innovation.

Ganesh also spoke about how NFTs were seeing explosive growth beyond being just a digital platform for digital artists, with new and diverse use cases emerging for the technology.

“The same NFT technology can be used to move intellectual property rights onto the blockchain. There are so many use cases here that I don't think we've even scratched the surface,” he said.

Speaking about how stablecoins were emerging as yet another key innovation possibility and how they could be the solution to the digital currency conundrum that many countries face, he said, “If you look at simple things like COVID relief for example - the disbursement of funds in particular – for every dollar or every rupee that goes out, about 15 percent actually goes to the banking infrastructure, which is quite inefficient,”

He also added how stablecoins could seamlessly make these kinds of transfers – and ultimately everything optical, while being backed by central banks. “Stablecoin can transform all kinds of cases such as supply chain, medical records, intellectual property, music rights royalties. It's just very, very exciting.” he added.

Ganesh ended his keynote on his thoughts about the immediate future of the technology. “In the next five years, I believe there's going to be more traction, more excitement, more real use cases, more regular people using blockchain-based protocols and products,” he said.

“Blockchain has crossed over from an era of speculation to real impact,” he added.