YourStory launches second edition of Top 25 Web3 Innovations report

Despite a global meltdown around crypto and Web3, Indian founders and innovators have remained steadfast.

Startups are leveraging blockchain technology to solve a multitude of problems across sectors, including payments, social media, communication, credit for small businesses, gaming, governance, and certifications.

India, in fact, accounts for around 11% of the global Web3 talent, as per a NASSCOM report.

From disrupting the ride-hailing segment to solving liquidity for small and medium enterprises, and even ensuring regulatory compliance for the masses, Web3 in India has found many use cases.

Ergo, in line with our continued commitment to developing narratives around the blockchain and Web3 space, YourStory once again partnered with BuidlersTribe to identify promising and dynamic players in the Web3 sector, companies with potential to play a key role in India’s tech agenda.

Many of this year’s winners are building for multiple chains but two clear favourites emerged—Polygon (64%) and Ethereum (44%). In addition, 24% are building on Avalanche, 20% on Solana and BNB Chain each, and 8% are building on Hedera.

This is in line with the theory that the sector is moving towards a multi-chain future, showing marked progress from previous periods in Web3 innovations where many projects were restricted to single chains.

Additionally, there seems to be a growing preference for B2B2C (11) and B2B (7) business models, with only seven players identifying themselves as working on the B2C model. This is highly reflective of the fall of retail investors in the crypto market after the global crypto market lost $2 trillion in market capitalisation over the past year.

Instead, Indian Web3 startups are building platforms and infrastructures across segments to attract Web2 audiences through larger B2B partnerships and integrations with traditionally non-crypto firms.

Click here to download a copy of the report and access the full list and details of the Top 25 Web3 Innovations 2023.

Here's a quick look at the 25 winners of this year.

Alive.house

Alive.house has built an online space for the spatial web—a full-stack metaverse and Web3 solution for enterprises. It is powered by Web2 and Web3 logins, fiat on-ramp payments, NFT (Non-Fungible Token) minting and deployment, token-gated and encrypted content management, upload/storage systems, interoperable avatars, world customisation, cross-platform use cases, and more. So far, the project says it has over 10,000 users with over 100 artist partnerships.

Autify Network

Autify Network is a supply chain startup developing a trust protocol using blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) to make commerce and supply chains more transparent. It aims to offer users a tamper-proof way to determine the authenticity of physical goods using an object’s biometry. The platform is designed to be modular, versatile, and adaptable, making it accessible to even those who may not have prior experience using blockchain technology.

bitsCrunch

bitsCrunch specialises in multi-chain insights for NFTs and digital assets. Using its data, decentralised application developers, traders, and collectors can build models to estimate the base value of NFTs, produce tailored market reports and competitor analysis, account for price manipulation, protect against forgery, and better understand the latent opportunity in NFTs. The startup aims to be the standard NFT analytics engine for all globally decentralised applications.

Bowled.io

Bowled.io is a sports-based social gaming platform targeting cricket fans. It wants to build an entertaining and engaging fan experience through games, community-building and Web3 technology. The startup is building at the cross-section of gaming and Web3. On its platform, users can play games, connect, own digital collectibles, and win rewards. In January 2023, the startup onboarded cricket commentator and media personality Harsha Bhogle as an advisor and investor.

Bytekode

Bytekode is a Web3 project for converting complex on-chain actions to simple readable messages. It is built on Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, BNB Chain, Avalanche, and Fantom. The startup is building developer tools to enable a better UX for decentralised apps. Its platform and SDK convert transaction data into readable messages on over 10 blockchains. Bytekode targets B2B infrastructure players in Web3.

Copperx

Copperx is developing a blockchain payments gateway to streamline crypto payments for businesses. Businesses can integrate the gateway into their systems using just a single line of code, enabling customers to make hassle-free crypto payments without worrying about currency or conversion issues. At present, paying for services using crypto requires multiple steps, and on top of that most businesses have to build their payment systems independently.

CropBytes

CropBytes is an Ethereum-based farm-simulation game that allows players to own farms, fungible tokens of virtual food, farm animals, produce, etc., and some NFTs. The game also lets players participate in the in-game economy to earn tokens. It has created real value for gamers globally in the form of virtual currency, and believes that second-life gaming will become a source of income for millions of people on the metaverse.

Cypherock

Cypherock is building a hardware wallet without a seed phrase. It aims to empower people to be self-sovereign and have the same peace of mind and control of their crypto and personal data with their savings in bank vaults. Its hardware wallet, Cypherock X1, is designed to allow individuals to self-custody their crypto and improve crypto security by mitigating any single points of failure in private key management.

dapps.co

Dapps.co is an app store for Web3 applications aimed at making Web3 seamless for the end user, making it easy to use and discover the apps. It also empowers developers with tools for identity, interoperability, commerce and communication, keeping them open-source and programmable. Dapps.co is also interoperable, which means applications from different chains can be listed on the platform, and users can interact with different chains.

Fact Protocol

Fact Protocol is a decentralised fact-checking system that uses crowdsourcing and advanced technologies such as AI, machine learning (ML), and deep learning to give users accurate and reliable information to counteract the problem of fake news and misinformation present today. News on Fact Protocol is carried out through a two-factor process. It relies on blockchain technology to put in place its fact-checking system and verifiability layers available to users.

Fantazy

Fantazy is a virtual sports fantasy gaming app built on Web3 that allows users to create teams around real-life sport matches to compete with other players and win rewards in cryptocurrencies. The platform does not have its own token to power user participation and relies on existing crypto tokens. Fantazy targets fantasy sports players who hold crypto. Its smart contracts power user participation, analysis of leaderboards based on real matches, distribution of user rewards, and its own commission.

FanTiger

FanTiger is a music NFT marketplace that helps independent artists build fan communities. It helps fans have a greater role by buying music NFTs that give them access to exclusive communities, get special privileges, and earn royalties. These privileges include early access to exclusive behind-the-scenes content, meet-and-greet opportunities, access to unreleased music, backstage access to concerts and more. As for artists, it helps them directly engage and build loyalty among fans.

Glip

Glip is a leading mobile gaming video recorder and Web3 wallet with eight million downloads across 100+ countries. It offers a creator economy tool suite for gamers to publish and monetise on existing social media and content platforms. On the business side, Glip provides user acquisition and playtesting to Web3 games through quests on the Glip app. Users globally get instant payouts after winning rewards in quests.

Huddle01

Huddle01 is a decentralised video conferencing platform that enables synchronous and asynchronous communication for wallets, dapps, DAOs, communities, and users for free. It also gives users access to secure, real-time communication through a toolkit for communication powered by blockchain technology, data, and information with a video conferencing dapp, infrastructure (SDKs), and dRTC protocol.

IndiGG

Indigg, a part of Kratos Studios, is building a Web3 gaming DAO (decentralised autonomous organisation) to onboard over 500 million Indian gamers onto the Web3 gaming ecosystem and enable earnings for its members. It partners with gaming studios and developers globally, increasing their probability of success by creating relevant micro-communities. The startup has over 15,000 unique earners in its community and has generated over $125,000 in revenue.

Intract

Intract is a permissionless growth protocol for Web3 networks, which offers solutions for Web3 community building and data-backed marketing campaigns. The platform allows users to run all growth campaigns, including giveaways, collaborations, influencers, airdrops, and crypto-native ads on a single dashboard. Additionally, it provides users with tools to optimise their return on investment, making it a valuable resource for any Web3 project looking to grow.

Komet

Komet is an NFT aggregator where traders can find, collect, and trade NFTs across marketplaces. It aggregates the accessibility and ownership of brands across categories, enabling collectors to make quick, efficient, and data-driven decisions in a single click. It has launched over 15 NFT collections on Polygon and Ethereum and created a strong community base of over 11,000 users across the US, Africa, Australia, and SEA, which is steadily growing.

Lighthouse

Lighthouse allows users to store files in a decentralised manner, where customers pay only once and store files forever. The startup facilitates permanent storage of files on Filecoin to store, request, and transfer data. Protocol Labs has built the complementary networks. Lighthouse offers everything on a single platform—encryption, access control, and the ability to serve files directly from its base storage protocol.

Lumos Labs

Lumos Labs is an innovation management firm that strives to drive Web3 innovations in India. It aims to solve issues of scattered opportunities, chaotic and unsynchronised platforms, and a shortage of Web3 developers and bring a purpose-driven metaverse to the Web3 sector. The end goal is to help Web3 developers, users, enthusiasts, and explorers find relevant opportunities, information, and knowledge.

LYNC

Lync is developing infrastructure to empower game developers to launch their games on the blockchain with ease and allows them to dedicate all their attention to creating immersive experiences. The company aims to eliminate friction in Web3 game development, facilitating the launch of more Web3 games while ensuring seamless in-game asset management for players. It has more than 200 games on its waitlist, while 10 subscribers have access to its private SDKs.

Obvious (Crypto Payments App)

Obvious is a self-custody wallet, which brings together assets across EVM (ethereum virtual machine) chains and powers users’ cross-chain transactions by giving them safe, fast, and affordable bridging and swapping routes within the app. Unlike other EVM-only wallets, Obvious’ Android and iOS apps show users’ balances across EVM and non-EVM chains such as Solana and Cosmos.

Phyllo

Phyllo is a data gateway to access creator data from hundreds of source platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Substack, Discord, Twitch, OpenSea, and Shopify. The startup builds the underlying infrastructure that connects to every creator platform and maintains a live data feed to the systems used by these platforms to manage the creator’s data. It provides a normalised data set so businesses can use creator data impactfully.

Polkassembly

Polkassembly is the primary governance forum for substrate chains, where blockchains can use the forum for discussions, polls, and on-chain governance proposals. The open-source platform helps users to discover and participate in substrate-based chain governance. They can also browse proposals made on-chain, discuss with the community, and vote directly from the website using a browser extension.

Polytrade Finance

Polytrade Finance is a Web3 project seeking to bring trade finance on-chain. With this, it wants to bring sustainable, real-world asset yields to decentralised finance and open up liquidity for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The startup is looking to address the problem of sustainable high yields in the decentralised finance segment and has identified on-chain trade finance as a possible solution.

ZKX

ZKX uses Zero Knowledge (ZK) to build an accessible, user-friendly Layer-3 ecosystem on top of Ethereum. It is developing this tech on StarkWare, a platform that uses its native technology to allow decentralised apps to scale. All transactions on StarkNet fall back onto Ethereum and are designed to offer the scalability of centralised exchange while delivering the security of a decentralised exchange.

(Featured image by: Chetan Singh)