Aventus aims to become the go-to blockchain for businesses

Cryptocurrency

Amid all the hype about Web3, do you really know what it is?

Alan Vey, founder of Aventus, says that this third iteration of the internet will be crucial for many businesses – but understands that the starting point is to explain what is meant by Web3.

“Web1 became ‘READ’ – access to data hosted on the network. The second phase, Web2, added ‘WRITE’ – which allowed user-generated content to be shared via apps such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter,” he tells BusinessCloud.

“The third iteration, Web3, added ‘OWN’ – giving users the ability to truly own in a digital context and not just have a digital representation of physical ownership.”

Although not exclusive to them, blockchain networks are the most prominent tools for Web3 enablement. “One of their applications is empowering consumers to own digital content that defines Web3,” Vey explains.

“The distributed ledger technology, which is the core component of a blockchain, allows items living in the ledger to be truly immutable. This can solve a number of pain points.

“Everything from improving auditing capabilities for things like cargo tracking for the aviation industry to securing tickets in the events industry, blockchain is enabling organizations to become decentralized.

“While not all businesses will be suitable for a decentralized model, for those that can implement it, it will allow them to share the functionality of the business at multiple points.”

Turn

Vey, now chairman, founded Aventus in 2016 as an open-source, decentralized Ethereum-based protocol designed to alleviate fraud and purchases in the event ticketing industry, and raised more than $20 million in an initial coin offering in 2017.

“We made good moves and secured deals with LiveNation and other big players, but then the COVID hit and the live events came to a complete halt. Instead of giving up, I realized that our technology could be applied to a number of other sectors , and we branched out, he says.

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Now billed as an enterprise-grade proof-of-stake blockchain, it now operates in NFTs, loyalty, gaming and supply chain as well as ticketing.

With a parachain on Polkadot and layer 2 network on Ethereum, it claims to be able to scale to 2000+ transactions per second per parachain, processing a token transfer within 0.13 seconds at an average cost of $0.01 per transaction – 100 times the speed and at 1% of the cost of Ethereum.

AvN introduced over 30 million transactions with 2 million active wallets for business customers in the first year of operation.

“We’ve continued to grow through COVID and three crypto winters, and we doubled our 2021 revenue in 2022,” Vey says.

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NFTs

He adds: “NFTs are a very interesting space: if blockchain didn’t mean anything to the average person before, it could be argued that it was NFTs that eventually propelled the technology into the mainstream. NFTs enable brands to create value through scarcity and reward loyal customers. While the hype surrounding them has since died down, they are certainly here to stay.

“The ability to tackle fraud and ticketing is also a hugely exciting area. The ultimate goal is to create widespread adoption of blockchain technology.”

A recently announced partnership sees Beatport – a global leader in electronic music for DJs, producers and fans – join forces with Polkadot to launch a digital collectors marketplace, launched at Aventus.

Aventus has also partnered with Nexos Technologies, a digital payment and banking platform offering open banking and payment solutions, to bring blockchain-enabled solutions to the digital banking and payment sector.

Aventus currently has around 30 employees and is headquartered in the UK, but the team is fully decentralized and spread across the UK, Europe and the Middle East.

“We have focused on R&D to date and are now at a stage where we have fully built out our offering, having invested around $30 million in our product line,” says Vey.

“We are now at a stage where we want to scale our customer and partnership base to be the blockchain provider of choice for large enterprises, and are currently expanding our leadership team to achieve this goal.”

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