#58 - Can financial speculation create useful Web3 ecosystems?

12/28/22 • 26 min

In the ninth episode of our new season of Web3 Innovators, our host Conor Svensson is joined by Lex Sokolin, Chief Cryptoeconomics Officer at ConsenSys where he has built and now leads the Cryptoeconomics team.

Lex is a New York and London entrepreneur who previously held the role of CMO & Global Fintech Co-Head at ConsenSys. He also writes a Fintech newsletter, Fintech Blueprint.

Episode highlights:

How being at a Conference and seeing how many other people owned Bitcoin, inspired Lex to start
The challenges surrounding Blockchain adoption
Lex’s view on the current capital market situation and how this impacts people’s view on crypto
How speculation surrounding regulation can generate economic use cases
How Lex believes computational infrastructure will develop as we want to create digital third spaces for ourselves, away from the home and office
The pain points that people experience in crypto
Lex’s opinion on where companies should and shouldn’t be using Blockchain
How he believes Web3 technology will impact the financial landscape over the next 10 years

Key Takeaways:

It’s figuring out and taking action on how to help crypto businesses operate and how to remove barriers that prevent those businesses from having functional operations. So, it’s more about having these seamless rails in place, so that people can engage with the technology. - Lex
I think that you can draw a line and you can say, is blockchain a cost saver for your company or is it a revenue generator? - Lex
You can look at Apollo or KKR, the large private equity firms or some of the large hedge funds that are essentially price insensitive and are willing to continue investing into an ecosystem that they own because they own the underlying capital for the whole ecosystem. - Lex
I think there's some cases where they just put all of their own float on top of their own system or a system that essentially holds through equity ownership. But I think for most midsize to small, to even medium or large banks, the cost savings story is tough. - Lex
What's going to feel very natural in 10 or 15 years is that you'll have digital ownership over all your stuff. And if it's not on chain, and you don't have it in your wallet, then you will feel like it's not real. Like in the same way that I wouldn't want that paper document today, because it does me no good. - Lex

Connect with Lex on Twitter

Resources:

ConsenSys

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Lex is a New York and London entrepreneur who previously held the role of CMO & Global Fintech Co-Head at ConsenSys. He also writes a Fintech newsletter, Fintech Blueprint.

Episode highlights:

How being at a Conference and seeing how many other people owned Bitcoin, inspired Lex to start
The challenges surrounding Blockchain adoption
Lex’s view on the current capital market situation and how this impacts people’s view on crypto
How speculation surrounding regulation can generate economic use cases
How Lex believes computational infrastructure will develop as we want to create digital third spaces for ourselves, away from the home and office
The pain points that people experience in crypto
Lex’s opinion on where companies should and shouldn’t be using Blockchain
How he believes Web3 technology will impact the financial landscape over the next 10 years

Key Takeaways:

It’s figuring out and taking action on how to help crypto businesses operate and how to remove barriers that prevent those businesses from having functional operations. So, it’s more about having these seamless rails in place, so that people can engage with the technology. - Lex
I think that you can draw a line and you can say, is blockchain a cost saver for your company or is it a revenue generator? - Lex
You can look at Apollo or KKR, the large private equity firms or some of the large hedge funds that are essentially price insensitive and are willing to continue investing into an ecosystem that they own because they own the underlying capital for the whole ecosystem. - Lex
I think there's some cases where they just put all of their own float on top of their own system or a system that essentially holds through equity ownership. But I think for most midsize to small, to even medium or large banks, the cost savings story is tough. - Lex
What's going to feel very natural in 10 or 15 years is that you'll have digital ownership over all your stuff. And if it's not on chain, and you don't have it in your wallet, then you will feel like it's not real. Like in the same way that I wouldn't want that paper document today, because it does me no good. - Lex

Connect with Lex on Twitter

Resources:

ConsenSys

Previous Episode

#57 - How will tokens change your online experience?

In the eighth episode of our new season of Web3 Innovators, our host Conor Svensson is joined by Weiwu Zhang, Founder and CTO of Smart Token Labs.

Weiwu has over 9 years of experience in blockchain technology, alt currency design and trading algorithms. He has served as a blockchain architect for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, held the R3 global architect office, and also architected 3 altcoins and 7 ICO projects.

Smart Token Labs is creating a new standard for a tokenized future, building composable smart token bridges from tomorrow to today.

Connect with Weiwu on Twitter

Episode highlights:

How Weiwu bought his first Bitcoin in 2010, which sparked his interest in blockchain
Where his inspiration and focus came from, which led to him founding his own company
The struggles he faced starting Smart Token Labs at a time when the community viewed tokens differently
The broad change of perception and understanding of tokens sparked by NFTs
Issues they face with wider adoption of the technology
How technology capabilities will increase as people demand more functions from tokens
Weiwu’s belief that tokens will create a less frictional market
What Soulbound tokens are and what they may mean for the future
What Weiwu believes mainstream adoption of tokens will look like in 10 years time

Key Takeaways:

Instead of trying to focus on how to make the blockchain programmable, I try to understand what blockchain means to the industry. - Weiwu
People started to see tokens differently because NFTs demonstrated that tokens can be different things. Ever since, it became very easy for us to explain the idea behind Smart Token Labs, how smart tokens can reduce market friction and allow integrated applications like Web3 without synchronised points. - Weiwu
Businesses need to see that with wider access to the market, they're able to sell more goods and services. So they should be more incentivised to use tokens. - Weiwu
We will see a lot of token use cases. We will see all of the smart devices have a token interface.That includes cars, smart luggage or smart meeting rooms. We will see individuals start issuing their time as tokens so that if you want to book a meeting room your app can solve this automatically by the token from the market. - Weiwu
Previously Chrome and Firefox struggled with the idea of whether or not they should be Web3 browsers and connect to the blockchain. The reason they struggled is they didn't see how connecting blockchain would change the web experience. But that wi

Next Episode

#59 - Do we need quantum resistance in Web3?

In the last episode of our new season of Web3 Innovators, our host Conor Svensson is joined by Marcos Allende López, CTO at LACChain and Specialist in Blockchain, Digital Assets, Quantum Technologies, and SSI at Inter-American Development Bank

Episode highlights:

How Marcos started to learn more about blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies after applying for his current position at Inter-American Development Bank
How quantum technologies and blockchain are linked by cryptography
The work that Marcos is doing on blockchain and how this is developing
How Marcos believes we need better assurance frameworks in addition to the regulatory policies
The biggest challenges Marcos sees with quantum and blockchain technology both in the immediate and future
How Marcos believes we should be focusing on quantum resistance now so we have solutions in place should quantum computers be ready before the blockchain networks are ready for them
How they created one of the first orchestration vehicles for blockchain
The advice Marcos would give to anyone hesitant to use blockchain

Key Takeaways:

Quantum computing and quantum cryptography which are being actively developed are essential for the blockchain Web3 and all the assets that are now being created and generated in blockchain networks. So the quantum and blockchain worlds are actually very connected and it is very important to start having a conversation around what might happen in the next few years around this. - Marcos
My work has been focused on building and maintaining something that is between the enterprise and the crypto blockchain worlds, which is a permission public blockchain. So basically we created this infrastructure that is intended for Latin America and the Caribbean but available globally, with suitable features for public and public sectors. - Marcos
We need to start having the conversation about quantum computers hacking blockchain now because the solution might not be that easy. Replacing or adapting the cryptography of current blockchain networks is not going to be an easy problem to solve because blockchains are so inherent to the type of cryptographic algorithms that they're using. - Marcos
It is important to start developing great interfaces. I think it is time to understand that not every organisation needs to run a blockchain node and run their blockchain, their smart contracts and their APIs, and do their integrations. We know how difficult it becomes because some organisations don't have the expertise or don't need to run their own notes and smart contracts and be responsible and a