Key takeaways from launch of YourStory's The Metaverse Summit and Blockchain Economy franchise
Here are the highlights and key insights from the launch of YourStory's The Metaverse Summit and the upcoming set of initiatives to foster an enabling environment for innovators, developers and entrepreneurs in Web 3.0
YourStory on Saturday officially launched The Metaverse Summit -- a flagship platform for bringing the global blockchain and Web 3.0 ecosystem together to BUIDL a decentralised future powered by Web 3.0 and accelerate innovation in the building blocks of the Metaverse.
"There are so many amazing, young builders in India excited about the opportunities this new Web 3.0 world brings for all. With The Metaverse Summit, The Decrypting Story and other initiatives in YourStory's Blockchain Economy franchise, we are showcasing, encouraging and celebrating all their voices as we build towards a decentralised future," said Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO, YourStory.
YourStory's Shradha Sharma launched The Metaverse Summit as part of YourStory's brand new Blockchain Economy franchise, which includes a series of key initiatives to foster an enabling environment for innovators, developers, entrepreneurs, and technologists building the decentralised networks that will power the next era of the digital economy.
Here are the key highlights from the day:
Polygon: a playground for all Metaverse-building activities
At a fireside chat at YourStory’s launch of The Metaverse Summit, Sandeep Nailwal, Co-founder and Chief Operations Officer, Polygon explained how his Web 3.0 startup’s network is becoming the playground for all Metaverse-building activities and why blockchain technology can power innovation in this space.
In fact, Polygon has emerged as the go-to protocol and framework for building and connecting Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks.
Its growing suite of products and scaling solutions have seen widespread adoption with over 3000 applications hosted, more than 1 billion total transactions processed, over 100 million unique user addresses, and $5 billion+ in assets secured.
Despite the industry-leading traction, Sandeep said, “We still feel we are early in terms of how the blockchain industry is evolving. A lot of it is media hype. We are not there yet. But we’ve always been clear that we’re going to focus on adoption and empowering developers to build real-world apps on Polygon.”
Blockchain, crypto, NFTs and DAOs to build shared worlds
Earlier this year, Facebook’s rebranding to Meta and its shift in focus towards becoming a Metaverse company renewed interest in the concept.
At YourStory’s launch event for The Metaverse Summit, a panel of experts in the Web 3.0 and blockchain space came together to discuss the key building blocks that go into building such a Metaverse.
Ganesh Swami, CEO, Covalent; Kaavya Prasad, Co-Founder & COO, Lumos Labs; Illia Polosukhin, Co-Founder, NEAR Protocol and Ashish Anand, CEO & Co-Founder, Bru Finance featured on the panel, and revealed insights into the future of shared, online worlds.
“Metaverse equals opportunity. And there's been some variant of the 2D and 3D online virtual space for decades. So it doesn't matter where in the world you are, you're not constrained by geography. This is why it’s exciting for seven billion people to work together and build a better future,” said Ganesh Swami, CEO, Covalent, whose startup provides a unified API (Application Programming Interface) that brings visibility to billions of blockchain data points.
Making the Metaverse as mainstream as the Internet
"Our objective is that India succeeds in building fantastic products on the metaverse. We want to make it as mainstream as the internet. Startups need to build products on it and that is how the metaverse will grow in India, said Neeraj Khandelwal, Co-founder and CTO, CoinDCX, at The Metaverse Summit launch event.
With metaverse starting to pick up momentum now, the industry has head room to scale and grow for the next 20 to 30 years, according to him.
CoinDCX became the first crypto startup to enter the unicorn club with a $90 million funding led by B Capital.
Neeraj also launched YourStory’s The Decrypting Story - a digital multimedia property for featuring the best blockchain startups, innovative solutions and BUIDLers in the space. The platform will also feature detailed insights, analyses and resources on India’s developing blockchain and crypto ecosystem.
India has huge potential to become a global crypto hub
India has tremendous potential in becoming a global crypto hub, but India needs to develop a clear playbook for setting up and operating businesses with crypto, given the prevailing uncertainty in operating crypto projects in the country, said crypto startups and investors at the launch event of YourStory's The Metaverse Summit, India's first Web 3.0 conference.
During a panel discussion on “India’s crypto story: the way forward,” Raghu Mohan, Co-founder and CEO, Buidlers Tribe and Lumos Labs, spoke to crypto startup ecosystem stakeholders such as Aniket Jindal, Co-founder, Biconomy; Pranav Sharma, Founding Partners, Woodstock Fund; Tarusha Mittal, Co-founder and CEO, Unifarm; and Minal Thukral, Executive VP - Growth and Strategy, CoinDCX, to deep-dive into what it'll take to make India a global crypto hub and build a decentralised future powered by Web 3.0.
“Web 3.0 is inevitable. What’s more important for India to shine is to capture the associated industries or economy as a whole. Another important question is whether we can create jobs on a massive scale? Thus, it is all about creating enabling frameworks so that India captures enormous value,” says Woodstock Fund's Pranav Sharma.
Scalable blockchains for powering Web 3.0 innovation
As blockchain technology sees increased adoption and applications across segments, the need for cross-blockchain bridging infrastructure has only accelerated.
At YourStory’s launch of The Metaverse Summit - India’s first Web 3.0 conference - Ramani Ramachandran, CEO of blockchain startup Router Protocol, highlighted the need for scalable infrastructure layers for the next wave of Web 3.0 innovations.
“In the traditional world, you have Visa and Mastercard doing thousands of transactions per second,” he said, explaining that in Web 3.0, speed and scalability of blockchains is not always high.
“So, Layer 2 protocols and rollups are adding a layer of scalability on underlying blockchains. What these try to do is minimise the amount of transactions performed on the core layer of one chain by taking a bunch of the transactions off it and performing them on a layer 2 chain,” he said.
If you'd like to register for one or more of the other key initiatives under YourStory’s new Blockchain Economy franchise, visit the website or use this form.
Edited by Tenzin Pema and Rishabh Mansur