The fourth Blockchain Week in Paris, held at the Carrousel du Louvre, covered web3 art, open finance, enterprise blockchain, public policy and web3 investing, among others.
In addition, other events such as a hackathon, startup competition, investor events and others were held. PBW 2023 also featured over 400 speakers from some of the biggest players in the industry including Ledger, Algorand, Reddit, Amonica Brand, and more. More than 10,000 people attended the event this year, up from the previous 3,000 attendees last year.
Let’s recap what has been discussed and the highlights of the summit.
Highlights of the March 22 Summit
On March 22, the main topic was web3. There was a web3XP event throughout the day that focused on brands and creators and how they can bring value to the metaverse and the transition from web2 to web3.
Neal Stephenson, an American author and founder of the Lamina1 metaverse project, had a panel discussion with Paris Blockchain Week President Michael Amar. Discussion centered around interoperability in metaverse games. Stephenson talked about how some game developers were irritated by the idea of interop. He noted that the idea seemed like an abomination, since all it offers is drag and drop of assets from one game to another.
Richard Muirhead, co-founder of Fabric Ventures, also spoke about inflation, the price of Bitcoin, the banking crisis, and the rise of web3. He noted that Bitcoin is the first use case for web3 and could be a haven with deflationary properties. In addition, he said that web3 is working on solving traditional financial problems. However, new use cases are emerging that represent something bigger than just software development.
During the following discussion, an investor, Marguerite de Tavernost, mentioned that the bear market is the right time to build the crypto market. Plus, she said it gives investors and innovators more time to build a reputation.
Throughout the rest of the day, panel discussions touched on the importance of decentralized networks, global crypto trends, blockchain technology use cases, and failures of USDC, FTX, Celsius, Terra, and 3AC. The panel discussed how the industry could recover from these events considering the recent bankruptcy of the US bank.
To conclude the day, Pascal Gauthier, CEO of Accounting, delivered a keynote address on Bitcoin, saying: “You can try to explain why you think you are flawed, but you should always have reasonable doubts. If you don’t believe in God, that’s okay. But you should always have a reasonable doubt because you will find out the day you die.”
Highlights of the March 23 Summit
The second day of the summit also had some important notes on the industry. Jeff Hasselman, director of Web3 at Amazon Web Services, delivered the first keynote address of the day. He spoke about the interest of entrepreneurs in the web3 ecosystem, such as Amazon. He read the bitcoin white paper in 2013 and noted that if it worked, it would redefine what the Internet entails. Hasselman also shared about AWS’s active involvement in helping web3 builders and providing infrastructure for blockchain companies and developers.
This was followed by the first panel of the day, “The Need for Performance”. Cinderella Amar, co-founder of Glass Slipper Ventures, moderated the panel. The rest of the panel included Yoann Caujolle, co-founder of Rockby, Maxime Boonen, founder of B2C2 and PV01, Tim Grant, head of Europe, Middle East and North Africa at Galaxy, and Charlie Meraud, CEO of Wootton.
The discussion turned to yield farming in crypto and its evolution over time. It also investigated its regulatory and legal aspects and its viability as a business model. Later, Chiliz founder and CEO Alexandre Dreyfus spoke about mainstream sports and the adoption of blockchain and gaming tokens. Furthermore, he added decentralized technology, making the fan experience more massive.
Tomer Weller, Vice President of the Stellar Development Foundation, spoke about smart contracts and the difficulty and complexity of their development. A discussion followed his speech on “How to do CeFi right”, which revolved around the balance and tensions between DeFi and traditional finance.
Moojan Asghari, co-founder of Thousand Faces, then moderated a panel on “The Ethics of Web3.” The discussion revolved around the role of ethics in upcoming technologies such as web3 and blockchain. The next discussion was about the impact of web3 on investors and startups. There was a discussion about the role of investors in governance and decentralized autonomous organizations.
The panel also discussed crypto tokens and the debate on whether they are securities and web3 in financial innovation. Laurenz Apiarius, the founder of Blockwall Digital, explained that some bad businessmen had taken advantage of the web3 movement. Investors should filter that out and not put their money into such entrepreneurs.
As the packed day ended, Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Circle, spoke about the future of money. He mentioned that the United States Congress needs to do his job regarding the regulation of digital assets. Furthermore, he pointed out that the current international monetary system is ineffective and outdated and needs restructuring.
Closing the busy week
The final events of the Paris Blockchain Week Summit 2023 were the 2023 Awards Closing Party at Le Trianon. The community was able to vote in seven categories for the first time at Paris Blockchain Week.
Best Impact Blockchain Project Award went to Refugees: UNHCR Ukraine, web3 Personality of the Year went to Vitalik Buterin, web3 Brand Initiative of the Year went to Sorare NBA, Enterprise Blockchain Project of the Year went to IPwe, Best web3 educational platform went to Binance Academy, best web3 content creator went to Anthony Pompliano, and people’s choice award went to the Cardano Foundation.
The summit came to a close on March 24 with a closing brunch.