Singapore, Blockchain, and Creating Next-Generation Nations
Find out how the ‘Little Red Dot’ is leading the way in blockchain innovation with Vinay Mohan, ConsenSys’ Director in the Asia-Pacific region.
As ConsenSys expands its presence in the wider Asia-Pacific region, we have keenly watched the blockchain ecosystem grow in far flung places like the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand. But of the whole region, it’s the city-state of Singapore that has assumed an emergent presence as interest and development in blockchain technology continues to grow dramatically. The “Little Red Dot” has long played an outsized role in world finance due to its historical position as a gateway for trade, but more recently it’s shown to be a unique and open meetingplace where government, finance, enterprise, and that X-factor of start-up energy converge, in turn propelling Singapore into a worldwide leadership role in blockchain via smart finance.
Still fresh from representing ConsenSys at the overwhelmingly successful Singapore FinTech Festival in November 2017, we spoke with Vinay Mohan — who leads ConsenSys’ operations in Singapore and the wider Asia-Pacific region — about what it is that makes Singapore such a remarkable hub for innovation, what that means for governments and central banks all over the world, and what’s next for ConsenSys in Asia-Pacific…
How has Singapore’s role as a hub of financial innovation facilitated the rise of blockchain?
We are seeing the emergence of a new Singapore. This is a nation built on strong fundamentals as a global financial services and technology operations centre, and views the future as one where innovation is a common denominator. Singapore is on a mission to reinvent itself as a Smart Financial Centre and this in turn has kickstarted a whole new way of thinking: take a global view, keep it open-source, and don’t be afraid to experiment.
The Singapore FinTech Festival 2017 is a good example of this new paradigm taking shape. This wildly successful event was, in fact, organized by the central bank and financial services regulator! That is quite profound, from where I see it. The energy is evident across government, finance, and tech, but particularly in the start-ups. Singapore already has a number of successful project launches and respected blockchain companies, and is going to see high-quality, explosive growth in the coming years.
What makes Singapore such a perfect environment for this sort of growth?
For over 30 years, this little nation worked hard to make a name for itself and punched well above its weight on the global stage. Singapore became a role model for corruption-free nation building, education, resource management and public infrastructure. This firm grounding in executing major capital projects, coupled with excellence in maritime trade, trade finance, and allied financial services gave Singapore an unbeatable edge: reputation.
You can conceive any blockchain ecosystem as resting on four major pillars: Government, private sector, start-ups and developer community, and academia. That’s true all over the world, in London, Dubai, Los Angeles, wherever. In the case of Singapore, what’s interesting (and of real value) is that all the four pillars are all developing at a very similar and steady pace and working hand in hand. These factors, coupled with access to new-age capital and a huge consumer market demanding diversified services makes for quite the growth environment.
How has the Singapore FinTech Festival developed?
The first edition of the festival was held in November of 2016. The organisers planned for 2,000 people to attend, and nearly 15,000 turned up. It was a runaway success. That gave Singapore the confidence to do it on a grander scale and really make an impact. This year, Singapore FinTech was exponentially larger, flashier, more successful than the last. It was a confluence of start-ups, established tech companies, banks and financial services, the academics and researchers, and the people who can bring in capital. There was a lot of business matchmaking and investment happening, and a focus on moving the needle holistically.
There were 30,000+ attendees at the event this year — which is huge, for something as specific and specialist as Financial Technology. What was clear is that although FinTech is bigger than blockchain, blockchain was the most sought after and spoken about theme at this year’s event. The response at the ConsenSys installation was overwhelming. We were completely swamped!
Project Ubin made a big splash at the festival this year. Can you explain more about it?
Project Ubin — which ConsenSys was privileged to be a part of — is a project to examine the use of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) in wholesale clearing and settlement of payments of securities. It is also the perfect example of the philosophy of innovation and ecosystem in Singapore.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) held a motivation to innovate in banking and financial services in a collaborative and open way, to create a real-time settlement solution that can be used between banks. Over the past year, leading banks, start-ups, developers, and academics have been working together in one laboratory with the MAS. An example of the collaborative perspective: Singapore’s government didn’t take sides when it came to choosing a protocol to build upon. It instead conceived a framework that would involve independent design philosophies and blueprints built on three different protocols: HyperLedger Fabric, Quorum, and R3 Corda. The ultimate choice, if any, would be based on the merit of performance of each protocol and the feedback from the ecosystem as a whole.
At the Singapore FinTech Festival this year, one of the biggest events was the release of the Project Ubin Whitepaper and the announcement that the project would entirely open-sourced, and the software code used in Phase of Ubin would be made available on GitHub for anyone in the world to access.
What’s the big picture goal for the Singaporean government in open-sourcing Project Ubin?
In the near term, this move raises Singapore’s profile as a pro-blockchain and innovative market; one that understands the decentralisation philosophy and is willing to share it freely with the rest of the world. A longer-term plan is to take all of the learnings from this project and help other countries replicate MAS’s designs (by pulling the code from the Project Ubin GithHub) and establish their own DLT networks. By building interoperable wholesale banking systems across the world, we can create a new kind of cross-border payments and settlements infrastructure. Imagine living in a world when the face of international payments, settlements, money supply and liquidity management, is decentralized with the firm support of governments.
How is ConsenSys’ presence in the Asia Pacific region developing?
ConsenSys in Asia has evolved with slow but steady investment, and organic growth. We were initially a far-flung group of 4 across South East Asia and New Zealand. I joined last year in November and set up the Singapore office. It became apparent that we needed two things quickly: one — an anchor client, preferably from within the Singapore Government; and two — a sustainable growth model with which we can engage the Singapore blockchain ecosystem as a whole.
The engagement with the MAS has been a great booster for us. Now, we’re poised to accelerate that growth by growing in headcount in Singapore. We have a presence in the Philippines, in Australia and in New Zealand. We’re looking at doubling our team across the Asia Pacific region. Events like the FinTech Festival have given us tremendous confidence and a lot of leads to act upon our 2018 strategy.
Having worked in finance and management all over the world, how do you see legacy institutions and governments responding to the disruptive impact of blockchain?
Blockchain is at the confluence of finance, economics, mathematics, computer science and the philosophy of decentralisation. It’s a very interesting combination of concepts and we see frontier markets like Singapore truly ‘getting it’. There is tremendous openness and willingness to investigating the technology. Government agencies and traditional institutions here recognised that blockchain is foundational as a paradigm and are looking to explore a wide variety of use cases. Governments are open to the idea because they’ve finally realized that this is way too big to ignore and they’ve got to do something about it. You either accept it wholeheartedly, regulate it, take advantage of it, or (in some unfortunate cases) reject it…but you have to take action.
So even many of those in positions at centralized organizations are understanding the potential of decentralization…
Blockchain is foundational. It’s not limited in itself to changing any one kind of the problem. It’s talking about a new social construct, a new economic approach. It’s completely changing the way business can be done and how governments and citizens interact. It is questioning the need for many types of central agents that have traditionally ruled the world (for far too long, some may argue!). We’re seeing a fundamental overhaul, not just in terms of technology, but in the social and economic underpinnings of modern civilization.
Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author above do not necessarily represent the views of Consensys AG. ConsenSys is a decentralized community with ConsenSys Media being a platform for members to freely express their diverse ideas and perspectives. To learn more about ConsenSys and Ethereum, please visit our website.
