Crypto conference in India highlights building for next bull market

More than 500 people gathered to attend a crypto conference in the tech hub of Bengaluru, India, on Friday.

Billed as India’s premier Web3 event, Unfold 2022 saw industry leaders, budding entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and developers meet at one of the city’s exclusive hotels, the Sheraton Grand in Whitefield.

The event was primarily aimed at inspiring and encouraging crypto developers, the main focus area of ​​the conference’s hosting company CoinDCX.

It included panel discussions focused on blockchain development tools, current challenges facing Web2 developers, the future of gaming for monetization, new ways to commit to non-fungible tokens, and a hackathon.

CoinDCX CEO Sumit Gupta expressed bullishness on India’s trajectory in the industry despite a tough regulatory environment. The country’s central bank still appears hostile to the asset class, and local authorities and tax experts have recently turned up the heat on crypto exchanges.

Still, Gupta estimates that India is on track to count the largest number of Web3 developers, which could lead to a growth spurt in the industry’s startups.

“India will hopefully create more Web3 unicorns than in the last five to 10 years,” he said.

Angel investor Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase, appeared virtually to discuss how a community of individuals connected online can establish formal state using on-chain consensus. “We can start new cities, even new countries,” he said, a reference to the thesis of his recently published book “The Network State” which can be read freely online.

Other panels at the conference addressed developers looking for direction at a time when industry sentiment is low. The mostly young crowd there remained largely unaffected by the recent decline in crypto prices, and everyone seemed to agree that now is the time to build.

The networking sites were lively, with participants from all over India flying down to the southern city to follow developments in the area.

Representatives of Web3 native incubator Buidlers Tribe, one of the event organizers, were present at the event to help aspiring crypto-entrepreneurs with their ideas.

Buidler’s Tribe CEO Pareen Lathia shared that 64% of Demo Day applicants built on Polygon, 35% on Ethereum and 17% on Solana. He said the incubator is not specifically looking for ideas, but for sustained passionate ventures.

“Web3 is so dynamic that people change ideas even after Series A [fundraises]. People don’t bet on ideas, but on founders,” Lathia said, adding that the incubator program is not interested in short-term bets or cash.

In a panel on the next wave of Web3 developers, Lumos Labs founder Kaavya Prasad said that India generates over a million engineers annually, but most do not produce quality products.

“The West is ahead in terms of innovation,” she said, adding that India is only scratching the surface. “But we are not far from the West in terms of innovation in the next five years.”

Overall, the scene demonstrated immense confidence in India’s crypto startup community and a drive to keep the Web3 revolution going.

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