A panel full of professionals working at prominent tech companies discussed the current state of the blockchain space at the ongoing Paris Blockchain Week 2023 conference.
Cointelegraph Editor-in-Chief Kristina Lucrezia Cornèr moderated the panel discussion titled “State of the Chain 2023” with panelists Ryan Nitz, Head of Solutions Architecture at Coinbase; Matthew Savarese, chief strategist at Nasdaq Digital Assets; Rich Widmann, Head of Web3 Strategy at Google; Dante Disparte, Circle’s chief strategy officer and head of global policy; and Denelle Dixon, Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation.
Panelists discussed various topics and gave their views on the current state of the Web3 space, from sharing their company’s current focus to giving their predictions for how it would continue in 2023.
One of the topics explored in the discussion is the challenges that the industry faced in 2022 until today. Commenting on the issue, Disparte expressed his belief that the chain’s current state is “not strong.” Despite this, the Circle executive is hopeful that people will continue to build and develop amid these challenges, which is evident in the thousands of attendees at the PBW conference.
Live from the State of the Chain 2023 panel at @ParisBlockWeek : @RichJWidmannGlobal Director of Web3 Strategy at @googlecloudemphasizes the importance of generating value for users in the next evolution of the Internet. #PBW2023 pic.twitter.com/8x1hAgJTZG
— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) March 22, 2023
In addition, Disparte also believes that the current situation in space is a necessary phase similar to the past failures of the financial and technological industry. He explained that:
“The dot-com bubble needed to burst to hand the development of the Internet over to ordinary people, business models, and investors. The financial crisis of 2008 was needed to achieve comprehensive reforms of Wall Street, even if those reforms had failed.
The executive also reminded the audience that many things that are “taken for granted” in the space are born in response to failures in traditional financial systems.
Meanwhile, other panelists gave the audience a preview of what their firms are currently focusing on. According to Nitz, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is currently doing everything it can to help onboard Web2 companies and remove the complexity barrier. He explained that:
“We are starting to see Web2 brands evolve and start to get involved in the Web3 and crypto ecosystem. One of the challenges they face is great complexity. That is why we at Coinbase are trying to simplify this experience.”
On the other hand, Widmann noted that while there is a need to reach more users for Web3, the Google executive also noted that there is some value within the space. “Yes, we need to have a billion users. Yes, we need more people using these technologies. But before we do that, we actually have to show that there is value there,” he argued. He added:
“They’re not going to show up just because they care about Web3, they’re not going to show up just because we asked them to, we actually have to give them something to get them moving on their feet.”
Additionally, Widmann shared that Google’s current focus is thinking about how to remove the barriers to entry for new developers who may be leaving Web2 projects like Google and going to Web3 companies like Coinbase and building the next apps that will attract billions of users. users.
Related: EU MiCA crypto regulation is a ‘balancing act’: Paris Blockchain Week 2023
Contributing to the discussion, Savarese shared the NASDAQ perspective. According to Savarese, the brokerage firm believes that the institutions that participate in the Web3 ecosystem are just as important as everything else. Savarese explained:
“Where we see the opportunity is to bring in a lot of them, whether they are large pension funds, whether they are large asset managers, understanding everything from the KYC elements to how transactions are done.”
While many of the panelists focused on the present and gave their thoughts on the current state of the blockchain space, Dixon made some predictions about the future. According to the executive director of the Stellar Development Foundation, 2023 will be amazing and challenging.
“I get it. For example, we’re at this point where we have a lot of regulators looking at us and saying things, but we can convince them otherwise when we focus on what we’re really good at,” he added.
