Philippine Blockchain Week kicks off with frontier technologies at the forefront
The Philippine Blockchain Week kicked off on Tuesday at the Marriott Grand Ballroom, Newport World Resorts in Pasay City and it did not disappoint.
📢Now Happening: Philippine Blockchain Week 2022! #PBW2022 @philblockchain | @RealCoinGeek
🚨Follow us for more updates!! pic.twitter.com/uQVCi7gV5t
— CoinGeek Philippines (@RealCoinGeek_PH) 29 November 2022
The first day of the high-level event drew hundreds of delegates, investors and enthusiasts and was opened by DITO CME Chief Operating Officer and Philippine Blockchain Week Executive Convenor Donald Lim, together with members of the newly formed Blockchain Council of the Philippines, which they stage dressed in Matrix-style clothing, giving attendees a taste of the future.
In his opening remarks, Lim briefly discussed how the first event took shape, and called on tech industry leaders to join him in realizing his vision of bringing Web2 and Web3 together and encouraging the adoption of blockchain technology—two things he claimed are key to The Philippines’ Digital Transformation.
“Our mission is what brought us together, but it’s our vision – our very simple vision – is bigger than all of us and it’s very, very simple – to position the Philippines as the blockchain capital of Asia,” Lim said. underlines that this is achievable with the country’s 110 million strong population, support from the government, builders and developers, and businesses eager to jump into the new digital age.
With the council as an advisory board to the national government, Lim said the first event will serve as a platform to educate the industry and the public on the proper use of blockchain and how the region can harness new technologies to reap the full potential of the Philippine the people and increase the economy.
Lim also opened the stage for Department of Information and Communication Technology (DICT) Secretary John Ivan Uy, who assured attendees that the government agency is doing its part to bring this vision to life before going on to list several of its projects that will serve as a building block to achieve the goal, including launching the first ever global Blockchain Summit in collaboration with the province of Bataan.
“The emerging Web 3.0 and blockchain industry will play a very critical role in terms of employment, investment, rural development and our economic progress,” Uy said while expressing enthusiasm that the Philippine Blockchain Council holds the key to the advancement of the industry and its potentials to drive digital economic growth. At the same time, DICT will continue to explore collaboration with public agencies and business to improve existing initiatives.
“Through this, we have high hopes to unlock the potential of the Filipinos, strengthen the commitments of both the public and private sectors, and match it with the right technology, policies and other enabling mechanisms to build a better digital economy than our fellow Filipinos and international investors can be trusted, he added.
Following his speech, Uy officiated the swearing-in of members of the Philippine Blockchain Council, which consists of Lim, RCBC Executive Vice President and FinTech Alliance Chairman Lito Villanueva; PruLife UK Chair and Independent Director and FinTech Alliance Trustee Ida Tiongson; Gorriceta, Africa, Cauton and Saavedra Law technology media and telecommunications group leader Mark Gorriceta; UBX Chairman Henry Aguda; Woman of Substance NFT founder Chezka Gonzales; Scarletbox.io CEO Sheree Gotuaco; and Metaverse XYZ founder Kate Hancock.
Also included in the list are Dynaquest Country Director Gail Macapagal; Tetrix CEO Emman Navalan; Impero Group Founder and CEO Emmanuel Samson; Bayanichain Chairman and CEO Paul Soliman; and Anotoys Collectiverse CEO Oscar Tan-Abing Jr.
Blockchain minus the complications
While the week-long event centered on the tech industry and emerging technologies, keynote speakers and panelists refrained from using technical jargon to better connect with attendees, especially those making inroads into the industry, and began with the core theme of the event – ​​blockchain.
nChain Commercial & Strategy Director Simit Naik gave a brief overview of what blockchain technology is and how the company leverages its use cases to run regional businesses and support government projects.
“Blockchain is more than just cryptocurrency… decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO), non-fungible token (NFT), decentralized finance (DeFi) and centralized finance (CeFi),” Naik said, adding that the distributed ledger technology is not about anonymity, eliminating third parties and avoiding regulations, which are often misunderstood by many as reasons why companies want to adopt such a nascent innovation.
Instead, blockchain offers data integrity and transparency, factors that today are difficult to ignore in the development of the technology sector.
“More importantly, blockchain is about peer-to-peer value exchange,” Simit noted, highlighting the original Bitcoin protocol discussed by Satoshi Nakamoto in his white paper published in 2008. He also pointed out that blockchain fosters public trust in new innovations When countries are transitioning to a digital economy, and with this technology, offers an additional level of resilience and security among businesses and government agencies, and with its ability to scale, can provide enhanced technological benefits and value to people.
But while a handful of companies have opened their doors to blockchain, mass adoption has yet to hit its stride.
For Avarta.io co-founder and Head of Partnerships Singapore The Sandbox Belinda Lim, the mass adoption of blockchain technology can be triggered by the success of the use cases, which is now seen in the popularity of NFTs, virtual currencies and the rise of DeFi and GameFi, among others, while emphasizing the importance of newer infrastructures.
Citing a message from her colleague, Women in Blockchain Philippines founder Gail Macapagal said the Philippines needs a nation-wide strategy for the mass adoption of blockchain technology.
“Not even a holistic approach will be enough, there must be a national strategy to be built on a whole-of-nation platform, and the digital natives will have to play a very important role in the development of that strategy,” Macapagal said.
Lim and Macapagal spoke on a panel consisting of nChain project manager Gareth Roberts and Community Alliance Network co-founder Eunielle Yi.
Going deeper into the rabbit hole
An all-female panel consisting of Macapagal, Hancock, Gonzales, Hype Collective co-founder Tara Kwon and 5ire co-founder Vilma Mattila kicked off the metaverse discussion with moderator actress and Miss World Philippines 2019 Michelle Dee.
According to a 2022 poll, women represent only 26.7% of tech jobs globally, with the vast majority not holding high-level positions, such as CEOs and CTOs. The Women of Substance panel emphasized this during their stay at the Philippine Blockchain Week, encouraging girls of all ages to be fearless and enter the space, with Macapagal and Hancock stressing that the industry needs more than just a tech geek , but someone who can make a positive change, and the metaverse is exactly the arena where they can exercise their abilities.
“Metaverse is an expression of the reality we live in right now; it’s not like just a virtual world where all the tech-savvy stuff. Even if you’re not very tech savvy, it doesn’t have to be. Your world is bigger than now, which means that of course it’s not just for women, but for everyone, we can have a limitless experience. Just imagine what you can do and it can be your metaverse,” Kwon said.
Mattila was quick to add that the metaverse is there to enhance the current room and environment, stressing that the room provides an opportunity for everyone to become who they want to be.
As for NFTs, Macapagal highlighted that these are more than just digital collectibles, but can also be used to advocate for social inclusion and provide opportunities for the disadvantaged, much like what her team is doing on the “NFTs for a Cause” project , where drawings of 34 underprivileged children in the province of Cebu are minted as NFTs and sold to fund their education and improve their lives at a shelter.
From virtual and augmented realities, the Philippine Blockchain Week also touched on the topic of DeFi and how it differs from centralized finance, with TRON founder Justin Sun and 1inch co-founder Sergej Kunz taking center stage and moderator Forkast News Chief Correspondent Joel Flynn firing up the discussion by ask the panelists how the exchanges, or the industry in general, can rebuild public confidence after the FTX implosion.
Joining via Zoom, Sun said the flaw with FTX was that it was built on a centralized exchange where data is not transparent and provides a poor user experience compared to decentralized ones. Kunz agreed, adding that providing a first-class user experience is also a priority for the DeFi industry, explaining that a seamless financial service is a big deal for customers today.
From the complex world of DeFi, one of the biggest esports teams in Southeast Asia, Blacklist International, joined MetaSavages CEO Todor Minev on stage to talk about the state of the online gaming industry in the Philippines and how eSports is shaping the sector.
The team, led by Kristoffer Ed Ricaplaza, said that creating gaming content on social media using the latest technology, which includes playing Play-to-Earn (P2E) games, brought unity to the community.
An earlier panel consisting of Tier One Entertainment CEO Tryke Gutierrez and President of Blockchain at Gala Games Jason Brink also weighed heavily into the gaming industry, emphasizing the need to break down the wall that divides the community.
“Web2 games are obviously a thing. Web3 gaming is obviously a thing, but what we really need to do is we need to get to the point where it’s just gaming and it shouldn’t be a division; it should just be gaming,” Brink said of his take on the rise of Web3 gaming seemingly devouring the legacy of Web2.
Meanwhile, Gutierrez asked Web2 developers and players to never look at Web3 games as a threat to the industry, but instead on what drives the motivation behind this development aside from monetization.
Watch: nChain Executive Chairman Stefan Matthews on CoinGeek Backstage
width=”562″ height=”315″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen=”allowfullscreen”>
New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeks Bitcoin for beginners section, the ultimate resource guide for learning more about Bitcoin – as originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto – and blockchain.
