Now is the time for Blockchain

How would you describe today’s blockchain and cryptocurrency outlook compared to 2018?

The promises and claims made in 2018 have proven to be true, but the timescales quoted then were completely wrong. Many critics who focused on crypto as a fad were also proven wrong, not because we are in a world where every application touches blockchain, but because we can see real use cases coming through as well as Bitcoin is here to stay.

I believe that when it comes to demand for tokens, trust will shift away from the communities that have been focused on the appreciation of the tokens themselves – which have been instrumental in supporting and growing today’s crypto economy – towards those who are driving the space forward: users of blockchain products. Demand for application tokens from users will be the next step on the ladder.

How soon do you see this shift starting – and how accessible are customer-centric retail products already?

There is still a lack of usable retail products on the market for customers, but there is no doubt that it is evolving. Exchange platforms are difficult to use, which a trader can easily navigate, but less so a layperson. Most retail products to date have focused on applications that allow tokens to be traded, wagered, lent, and the like. While these may be new and innovative financial products, they will ultimately become the basic infrastructure that will lay the foundation for the new digital economy. In many cases, consumer interactions involve a wallet and the requirement to exchange fiat for crypto in the first place, which is subject to regulation in a number of important jurisdictions, such as the UK and most countries in Europe. But other countries such as the United States have not yet fully committed to their regulatory framework, making the development of new applications for different products higher risk until clarity is achieved in their positions.

Large and enterprise companies with significant customer bases that have in-house development teams and the means to take advantage of blockchain technology will catalyze the network effect. In my view, we are now at the beginning of an important mainstream life cycle stage of the technology, which is where we thought we were back in 2018. There has been no shortage of problems in the meantime, such as the failure of the Terra network, Three Arrows, Celsius and most recently FTX, which has and will be a catalyst for regulators worldwide to take notice of the space and implement protection frameworks. We thought this was coming four years ago, but we’re only seeing momentum now – and it’s moving quickly as the space begins to mature.

Educating the wider community about blockchain encourages both adoption and innovation.

How did global events of the past four years, including the COVID-19 pandemic, affect the blockchain and crypto landscape? And in what ways has Coinweb continued to drive its mission toward “horizontal innovation” during this time?

At the heart of the blockchain is the concept of decentralization, therefore the practice of developers working remotely is common – therefore not much has changed throughout the pandemic. But since people confined at home usually turned to products like Netflix, Peloton and online games, the demand for crypto platforms increased in step with the global population towards digital payment systems. The inward investment drove innovation in blockchain and partially created a new bubble that began to burst along with traditional markets in January 2022.

In terms of horizontal innovation, there was a mad rush in 2018 to become the next ‘Ethereum killer’. Now the same projects are talking about the need for interoperability – building across different chains and connecting them together, not only so that liquidity locked in individual layer 1 blockchains that act as silos can flow freely, but also so that the respective communities can interact with a. another. This is what we at Coinweb predicted as the right approach in 2018, building infrastructure for technology horizontally across chains. In fact, most projects in today’s market now talk about the necessity of interoperability that is horizontal, instead of building vertically in silos.

Coinweb and its sister company, Onramp, already have seven digital asset consents and licenses, and have even launched three new core products. How will these help customers use blockchain technology?

These products are a turnkey solution to address the key pain points that prevent usable blockchain technology.

In 2018, we struggled to explain to investors how problems that had not yet arisen in blockchain could be solved in the future via our core protocol. If you wait for the problem to occur, you are too late; so we built forward and continued to build core products and usable products on top of the component working parts in modular form. In 2020, we launched two DeFi platforms using Coinweb’s protocol, which is able to broadcast transaction data to multiple underlying chains, using a stable token. These decentralized applications (dApps) have sold in excess of $200 million USD of their token and have run millions of transactions, responsible at one point for 13% of all traffic on the Bitcoin Cash network and 6% of all traffic on the Elrond network. It was proof of concept – and then the problems we predicted would happen happened. So we’re shipping a number of retail and B2B products in November 2022 that solve key problems for users, including cross-chain tokenization, customizable wallets, worldwide license coverage, multiple fiat on and off ramping gateways, cross-chain transaction routing, and an integrated marketplace that makes the entire suite able to provide real benefit to both our customers and end consumers.

On the cross-chain tokenization platform, you can design, set up and issue tokens, decide the liquidity structure to support them and choose multiple broadcast chains, with the additional option of breaking down to the layer 1 token via our trustless native bridges. Importantly, we also provide the ability to abstract the gas fees, so that users do not need to have a separate balance on the original token to pay the fees, they only need to keep a balance on the token they are trading in. You can then white label your a wallet, connects to fiat rails covered by multiple licenses, and stores tokens in it. Movements of tokens are subject to a seamless routing system that uses cross-chain Reactive Smart Contracts to monitor the underlying layer 1 chain’s KPIs, so that the end user does not experience an increase in gas fees, a slowdown of the network, or an outright outage of a blockchain – something which provides a smooth, predictable user experience. The aim is to avoid all these common problems on many of the most famous chains, such as Solana, today. Finally, you can list the token on the marketplace for public trading outside of Coinweb issued wallets.

You were recently at Token2049 London – where you launched these products – and will also be present at Digital Assets Week London, the Crypto AM Summit and Awards and the Global Blockchain Expo at Olympia London. Why are these events important?

Token2049 is one of the premier blockchain events in the world, while each of the exciting upcoming events on our roadmap also gives us the exciting opportunity to share new developments we’ve made about the technology and explain why it’s important. Educating the broader community about blockchain encourages both adoption and innovation, all things we are deeply committed to doing.

More information about Coinweb is available at coinweb.io