Blockchain Worldwide Tour: 6th stop-Consensus 2022-Investments Insights Report & Beyond
Table of Contents
I. Top 10 Investment Insights from Consensus 2022
II. Key Insights from the Foundations: Ethereum, Near, Avalanche, Cosmos, Polkadot, and Solana.
III. Top Takeaway: Metaverses & Interoperability
IV. Hidden 100xGem: WeMeta
V. Conclusion
What is the platform that will unlock the next billion users into Crypto?
“Unique thing we going to see, big media companies integrating with web3”.
-Mike Novogratz, Founder & CEO of Galaxy Digital
The sixth stop on the blockchain worldwide tour was Consensus 2022, a global blockchain footprint with unprecedented levels of energy from all angles of the crypto space. The community had bull eyes albeit we are in a bear market. In fact, this was the largest conference so far, with approximately 17,000 attendees, and it featured some of the most prominent people in the crypto space such as, Sam Bankman-Fried, Changpeng Zhao (ZC). Furthermore, it was essentially an insider’s semi-annual report on all things Blockchain IRL.
After an entire week of Austin Solana Hacker House, Dcentral 2022, and Consensus 2022 (June 4th, 2022 to June 12th, 2022), I had an electric lightbulb moment; I saw the reminiscence of dot-com’s early days, within the metaverses. The one thing that was unquestionable and caught my attention, was that all the three events are positively correlated and focus on the metaverse.
I. Top 10 Investment Insights from Consensus 2022
- Web2 giants will underpin Web3
“See this hitting the threshold of global adoption…this is an infrastructure revolution. In order to get to the next level, 1 billion users, Google will help to deploy the infrastructure with nodes. Look forward to partners with builders of web 3 to fulfill the fundamental promise of web 3, democratizing ownership”.
-Rich Widmann, Head of Strategy, Web3 @ Google.
With Google wanting to be part of web3, it is crystal clear that regardless of the market cycle’s status, Blockchain technology is here to stay and it is the future.
2. Next billion users in Crypto
According to all of the speakers and the conference panel the next 1 billion users will be unlocked by:
- UX experience
- GameFi, such as next axle infinity
- NFT’s
3. Next Axie Infinity
I personally asked Leah Callon-Butler, what will the next Axie Infinity be? She stated,
“The next Axle Infinity is Crypto Unicorns by Laguna Games”.
-Leah Callon-Butler, Director at Emfarsis
She highlighted in my burning question that this will be due to the strong community of the game. My counter argument then was, ‘what is your thoughtful feedback regarding OthersideMeta by Yuga Labs? Leah Callon expressed that she is skeptical about the community and the core values of the project. Leah Callon-Butler is an expert in Play-To-Earn, and is the Screenwriter and Narrator of the Documentary Axie Infinity Game.
However, on the other side of the coin, Ian Balina, the CEO & founder of Token Metrics, mentioned Otherside Meta by Yuga Labs during his “Position for the market shift: Metaverse” presentation at Dcentral Austin 2022.
4. New payment rails, crypto payments
“It makes no sense making payments in the old payment’s rails. We ran a Survey that 75% of PayPal merchants will enable crypto payments within the next two years”.
- Jose Fernandez da Ponte, the SVP and GM of blockchain at PayPal.
Indicating once again that Blockchain Technology is the ultimate technology for payments.
5. Venture Capital Edge
“We deploy dozens of engineers in rust base and solidity base chains”.
-Alexander Ye, Hokage at Republic Crypto
Crypto VC is adding an army of engineers to deploy to the portfolios companies in order to underpin their investments portfolios in view of the fact that blockchain technology is nascent, disruptor, and is open source, which enables accelerating innovation and facilitates a highly competitive environment.
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According to Tracy Wang, the session’s moderator and senior reporter at CoinDesk, the Venture Capitalists who are adding an army of developers are the following:
- Republic Crypto
- Polychain Capital
- Paradigm
- Jump Crypto
6. Venture Capital Investments
“I invest in the infrastructure of the metaverse. I am interested in the monetization in NFT”.
- Kyle Samani, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Multicoin Capital
Kyle expressed that one way Multicoin Capital has invested in the metaverse is through The Ball Multicoin Bitwise Metaverse Index, which focuses on four sectors: interoperability, ledgers, DeFi, and the enabling of communities. Top holdings within the index include, Ethereum, Chainlink, Solana, Filecoin, and Polygon, as well as Sandbox and Decentraland.
“We hope the metaverse runs on crypto rails and not Facebook rails . Defi rails will power those transactions in the metaverse”.
- Kyle Samani, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Multicoin Capital
After attending the different talk sessions on Venture Capital, I hypothesize that metaverse is where the network effect value accrued and it is the end game where everything will become interoperable and composable.
7. Web3 Pitch Fest at Consensus 2022
Winners announced at Consensus 2022 of the Web 3 pitch Fest powered by Extreme Tech Challenge and CoinDesk were the following:
- 1st place: GIVEPACT
- 2nd place: DEEPER NETWORKS
- 3rd place: MERKLE SCIENCE
These winners highlight that investors are seen as a niche in these sectors such as auditing and risk management for protocols, network security, (i.e. hardware VPN), and social impact via DAO.
8. Artificial Intelligence in Crypto
“Machine learning will play a pivotal role in the next wave of NFT, Defi and other crypto Asset Technologies….”
-Jesus Rodrigues, CEO at IntoTheBlock
Therefore, machine learning is now eating crypto.
9. Regulations
Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of FTX, mentioned in his session that he holds meetings in Washington every two weeks to push for crypto regulation.
10. Markets insights based on the OG’s
“The three crypto winter means opportunities, I’m contrarian thinker and believe the fundamentals are strong and is the time to double down”.
-Abby Johnson, Chairman & CEO at Fidelity Investments
“Mid-year investment outlook into the crypto space accentuated the following:
- Pain rest of the year in the markets
- Holders are underwater
- NFT will onboard more infrastructure…”
-Ryan Selkis:CEO at Messari
“The next crypto bull market is the biggest to come”.
-Michael Moro, CEO at Genesis
Overall, the next bull market will be the largest in order of magnitude based on the OG’s of the crypto space.
II. Key Investment Insights from the Foundations: Ethereum, Near, Avalanche, Cosmos, Polkadot, and Solana.
Key investments insights within the blueprint investment framework TOCNIV:
- Tokenomics
- OG developers in the Core Team
- Competitive advantage of the consensus mechanism towards scalability and main use case
- Next milestone, focusing, and execution of the roadmap
- Inner cycle of VC, developers’ community & protocol’s community
- Valuation
“The merge is like flying in a jump jet at sky 600mph, changing out the engines without noticing inside the plane. The merge more tests to come.”
-Preston Van Loon, Co-founder at Prismatic Labs
- After the merge, the monetary policy of Ethereum become deflationary, meaning that issuance is lower than the burned rate. Supply growth will be –1.4% stated Preston Van Loon, Co-founder at Prismatic Labs.
- Gas Fees are around .27 cents in Layer 2 compared to $13 dollars in Mainnet mentioned Preston Van Loon, Co-founder at Prismatic Labs.
- NFT sales were taking the maximum block spaces in Ethereum mentioned Preston Van Loon, Co-founder at Prismatic Labs. Thus, the main use case in Ethereum is NFTs.
- Preston Van Loon stated that after the merge Ethereum core team will be focusing on sharding and data availability.
“One of the use cases that had a lot of traction were incentives such as play-to-earn, Sweat,”.
-Marieke Flament, CEO at NEAR Foundation
- I asked at the Near booth, what sets apart Near scalability from other platforms? “Nightshade Sharding” stated one of the representatives at the booth.
- Defi in Near is differentiated by three order books, Tonic and Spin are live in Mainnet and Orderly in Tesnet and are the power of Near asserted Kendall Cole, Co-Founder at Proximity
- “Focusing on how to buy sports team with DAO” stated Marieke Flament, CEO at NEAR Foundation.
- After listening to all of the presentations on Near Foundation, I realized that the ecosystem is still relatively nascent, nonetheless with a lot of ongoing traction.
“Avalanche is the Internet of Finance”
-John Nahas, Vice President of Business Development at Ava Labs
- Gabriel Cardona, a Developer Evangelist at Ava Labs mentioned that Emin Gun Sirer has been a professor at Cornell University for 20 years and that people recognize him as one of the creators of the virtual currency of peer-to-peer, PoW, named Karma in 2003.
- Competitive advantage is subnets for scalability in the Avalanche Network.
- “ with subnets, developers can build custom dapps to specific chains that fit their needs, scalability is infinity and creates the best experience for the dapps” stated John Nahas, Vice President of Business Development at Ava Labs.
- The increase in monthly transactions in Avalanche has been due to the birth of native DeFi in the second half of 2021 and the game, Crabara in the beginning of 2022 mentioned Lydia Chiu, VP of Business Development at Ava Labs.
- Our success has been to the many institution partnerships expressed Lydia Chiu, VP of Business Development at Ava Labs.
- In the Avalanche Network, the main use case is Defi and they are still building the primitives that are critical to the ecosystem and more subnets.
- Lydia Chiu, VP of Business Development at Ava Labs, mentions that subnets increase the value of Avalanche coin (Avax) by:
- Need 2,000 Avalanche Coin (AVAX)to be validator and validators of the subnets are validators of the primary network.
- Gas fees are paid in Avax.
“Is not a multichain world, multichain world is a pessimist view on many chains exiting right now. The future is Interchain, expecting configuration with blockchains… No silo blockchains”
-Billy Rennekamp, Cosmos Hub Lead Interchain Foundation at Cosmos Network.
- Jodie Gunzberg, the moderator, asked: How do Cosmos incorporate scalability?” Billy Rennekamp, replied:
- Key feature, PoS is more easily to scale;
- Each Dapps has its own blockchain, you are not sharing block space, so you have a ton of leverage there;
- Tendermint for vertical scalability;
- In terms of limited TPS, the horizontal scalability approach, best known as sharding.
- He also expressed that the main advantage of Cosmos Network is integrating Inter Blockchain Communication (IBC) which you do not need the Cosmos coin (Atom) or to be part of the Cosmos Hub.
- Cosmos SDK is the world’s most used framework for building Blockchains expressed Gregory Landua, CEO at Regen Network Development.
- “We are focusing on Cosmos Hub” stated by Billy Rennekamp, Cosmos Hub Lead Interchain Foundation at Cosmos Network.
- The most anticipated feature is the Interchain Security (share security), which enables new blockchain launched with the security of Cosmos Hub validator set affirmed Billy Rennekamp.
- Billy Rennekamp mentioned that Cosmos is working to bring native integration with new clients like substrate, solidity, & IBFT (Celo).
“Substrate standalone chains with around 25+”.
-Derek Yoo, Founder at Moonbeam Network
- “Asynchronous Backing, we predict at least 100k tx/s system-wide” presented Derek Yoo, Founder at Moonbeam Network.
- The limitation in Polkadot is the auction process. However, the upcoming milestone, Parathreads: pay as you go parachains (by EOY), will unlock the grow the ecosystem on Moonbeam Network because you do not have to go through the process of auction acknowledged Derek Yoo, Founder at Moonbeam Network.
- Derek Yoo, Founder at Moonbeam Network stated “We are not that noisy as other ecosystems but there are a lot of things happening behind the scenes”.
Keynote: Solana was not present at Consensus 2022; however, Solana built and launched the Austin Hacker House that same week. I was able to attend the first 2 days on June 4th & 5th prior to Consensus 2022.
- What is your thoughtful feedback about Anatoly Yakovenko compared to Vitalik Buterin? I asked Jarry Xiou, Engineer at Solana Labs.“Anatoly is very practical and Vitalik Buterin is theoretical”, he states.
- I then asked Jarry Xiou, Engineer at Solana Labs: What is your sentiment regarding Solana’s recent outage? “They are focusing on that and will try to get it fixed in the next few months” he replied.
- The main use case and what Solana mostly was focusing on during the Hacker House was NFTs. They even hosted a session titled, “Why open-source development is a winning strategy for Solana NFTs”.
- Solana Ventures was giving advice and looking forward to finding potential investments at the Solana Austin Hacker House.
- Mentors and the community of developers were vibrant.
Trends of the smart contract platforms at Consensus 2022
- Adopting play-to-earn
- Focusing on NFT, DeFi & regenerative economics.
- Brave Browser is in partnership with most of the smart contract platforms.
In Summary
The burning question of all times
How can you scale with more block space in a coherent way to achieve higher TPS & fastest finality?
- For building in advantage for dapps the best alternatives are Solana and Near as they have higher TPS and the fastest finality. Followed by Avalanche.
- Smart contract platforms that fully accrued value to the native coin are Ethereum Solana, Near, and Avalanche. Nonetheless, platforms like Cosmos and Polkadot do not necessarily increase the value of the native coin. This is due to the fact that Cosmos does not need the native cryptocurrency of Cosmos (ATOM) or need to be part of the Cosmos Hub in order to be part of the IBC. Likewise, Polkadot substrate-based chains can exist as solo-chains, meaning that you need the native cryptocurrency of Polkadot (DOT) because they are independent chains.
- There is more likely to have greater return potential with Solana, Near, and Avalanche compared to Ethereum due to the market capitalization of Ethereum and the aforementioned. For instance, Ethereum is trading at roughly 11x the Market Cap of Solana based on the Messari screener below. In terms of relative valuation analysis, Market Cap is important because it gives investors an idea of how large a project can reasonably grow by comparing it to the peer group.
4. Finally, the smart contract platform that has more probability to outperform in alpha compared to the peer group is Solana due to the high inflation rates of Near and Avalanche and the aforementioned.
“Near and Avalanche are two tokens that have scheduled higher inflation over the back half of the year compared to the first… Without additional buyer inflows, token emissions will continue to take their toll on prices.”
-Messari Research Report: Understanding Market Caps and Flows, Jun 12, 2022
III. Top Takeaway: Metaverses & Interoperability
Who is building the Tank Car from the Standard Oil Company in the metaverse?
-Wiston Rodson, CEO at WeMeta
Winston Robson’s statement above, made me realize that the builders of the tank cars, as well as everything being developed in the metaverse, are the builders from the web3. For instance, DeFi rails will power the transactions in the metaverse. Thus, top key takeaway is that the end game of crypto is the metaverse; where DeFi, NFT, social tokens, and everything build-in web3, are more likely to be interoperable and unfold compounding network effects value.
The above panel was an eye-opening session regarding the future of blockchain technology and the infancy of the metaverse. The panelist represented platforms that play a key role in the stack of the metaverses and are paving the way for the open metaverse with a non-silos environment.
WeMeta: atomic data layer of the metaverse. The first search engine analytics on the metaverse for builders & investors. Enables to profoundly understanding of the metaverses with game analytics and economics analytics.
Axelar: enables users and developers to interact with any asset or dapp from any chain securely.
Improbable: pioneers new ways to connect, play, create and build value across interconnected virtual worlds.
Adrewseeen Horritz: one of the top VCs in blockchain technology funding the metaverse.
On the other side of the coin, during my Blockchain Worldwide Tour 2022, I’m looking forward to finding the ultimate platform that developers can plug into and build their open dapps by interacting seamlessly with any asset or dapps from any chain securely. So far, Axelar is a promising platform that will enable the aforementioned like LayerZero.
IV. Hidden 100xGem
Do you want to feel like you are like investing in Bitcoin in 2008?
“WeMeta is a critical part of the Metaverse development stack”
The underlying question: where do you invest, build, and release events in the metaverse?
Blueprint framework to invest in blockchain technology
I. The Investment Thesis is centered around investing in projects that are going to become the entire infrastructure of the internet/web3.
WeMeta:
- atomic data layer for the network of builders, investors, and brands of the metaverse.
- for builders/developers: is Google Analytics, to profoundly understand the real state in the metaverse.
- for investors, partners & brands: is Zillow (It’s the best tool for integrations & to manage your NFT land portfolio) as well as google analytics of the metaverse.
II. Fundamental factors: TOCNIV
Tokenomics
WeMeta fundraised via private equity nonetheless, WeMeta, envision to have a loyalty utility token.
OG Developer within the Core Team with a driven mission
- I asked Winston Robson, CEO at WeMeta, what is your mission and outbound goal with WeMeta? He stated, “Since a kid I have wanted to build Mars due to the caveats of overpopulation and other environmental issues”.
- Wiston Robson, the CEO at WeMeta, is a developer that came to light after shining at ETHGlobal’s Web3Weekend in May 2021 as one of the finalists with the WeMeta project.
- Previously he was a Lead Data Science Instructor and data scientist for several companies, including, Coding Dojo and BlazingSQL. Before his career in data science, he worked with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Drysdale Properties as a Referral Agent. Thus, his unique background is the perfect match for his current position and vision at WeMeta.
- It’s a native gamer.
- The WeMeta team is composed of: Ali Vira, a co-founder and COO at WeMeta, who spent four years at Microsoft as Senior Product Manager. As well as the other co-founder and CTO, Nick Brons, who was a software engineer in the past for games companies such as Sun Machine Games & A Thinking Ape.
- The core team of WeMeta is technical in all arrays of a start-up in blockchain technology and metaverse.
Competitive Advantage
- The competitive advantage of WeMeta is that it pioneers the first search engine analytics of the metaverse and more likely to be the standard data layer of the metaverse.
- One of its key magic features:
- WeMeta Builder Tag-the 1st plug & play solution for metaverse scene analytics, which was included in the build scene, collected data such as foot traffic and player activity before, during, and after the event based on the Executive Summary of the MetaFest 2022 (NYE2022) in Decentraland by WeMeta.
- WeMeta bootstrap Ethereum, Graph, Open Sea API.
Next milestones within one year and execution of the roadmap
- The next milestone is Game Analytics Engine, under development and expected to release 4th Quarter 2022
- Execution of the roadmap have a great track record.
Inner circle of venture capital & community
- WeMeta is funded by DCG, who established Consensus 2022 and it is one of the top venture capitals in crypto.
- The VC’s funded WeMeta
- The cohesive community of WeMeta
WeMeta value from the perspective of the search analytic engine for the metaverse
“Metaverse Standards Forum, which aims to drive open interoperability, could make it easier for developers to build across platforms” stated TechCrunch.
It is crystal clear, the value that will be generated in the metaverses after the news release of the Metaverse Standard Forum. Probably nothing!
With all probability 100x compounding alpha is within the metaverse, especially in NFT land. You can capitalize on this investment opportunity in Sandbox & Decentraland. You can also leverage WeMeta’s search engine analytics tools to understand the intrinsic value of the NFT lands between metaverses in order to build, invest, and release events.
Overall, from an investment perspective, WeMeta is the Bloomberg for NFT Land in the metaverse.
Recall, that in the crypto world, the more you know, the richer you can get.
Conclusion
5 Key Takeaways at Consensus 2022
- The end game is the metaverse, it is where network effect value accrued from DeFi, NFT, & potentially all been building in web3 and will be the leading social platform in the future.
- The leading smart contract platform towards scalability with greater return potential accrued to their native coin are Ethereum, Solana, Near, and Avalanche. In the long term, perhaps Cosmos and Polkadot.
- The next bull market will be the largest by order of magnitude due to the fact that primitives and building blocks of crypto space are relatively more mature to build superior UX and innovative dapps, which will enable mainstream adoption.
- The platform that will unlock the next billion users could be in the ultimate UX, GameFi, or NFTs.
- The next 100x compounding alpha is within the metaverse. Perhaps NFT land in the metaverse like Sandbox or Decentraland.
Final thought
While I don’t have a crystal ball, after feeling the unparallel vibrant community first-hand and the focus of Consensus 2022 week, I believe that there is a high probability that the next big thing built in this bear market & will be the macro trend that inspires people to join crypto space is the metaverse. Thus, more likely that the next sci-fi moment, when you think everything is possible will be in the next bull market in the metaverse. Consequently, and then suddenly will be the next biggest economy in the world.
Secret Unfair Advantage
It’s highly recommended to leverage the Data Analytic platform. Indeed, it will put you in the front font of the lightning speed of the crypto space. For instance, such as Token Metrics, Messari, TheTIE Development Team, and for the NFT land in the metaverse such as WeMeta.
There are unlimited upsides and limited downsides in this bear market. It is eye-opening in the metaverse. WAGMI!
Special thanks to CoinDesk and the Digital Currency Group team for pushing this industry forward and hosting the most complete blockchain conference in history.
I hope to see you next year.
“Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”
-Warren Buffett
May the force be with you’ll!
P.S. I’m currently conducting a Blockchain Worldwide Tour, titled 100x & beyond. It is worth noting, that I’m a global digital citizen and I’m a Blockchain Maximalist. My investment philosophy is focused on value investing.
Disclaimer: This is not constitutional investment advice. The investment opinions and the latest insights expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investing, or other advice. Investing in crypto assets comes with a risk of financial loss.
