BSN Spartan Global Summit
Fractal Staking was invited to the BSN Spartan Global Summit that took place on Sep 6th, 2022. To those who are not familiar with BSN, it is a cross-cloud global blockchain network built by Red Date Technology in Hong Kong.
But with so many public layer 1 blockchains that are being developed, what makes BSN a relevant platform? The answer is this — China.
Global Web 3.0 infrastructures and protocols have, so far, failed to penetrate the Chinese market. Ethereum cannot be used in China because ETH itself has been banned. And secondary trading of NFTs is also prohibited, which makes OpenSea technically illegal.
If you try searching for crypto contents on Douyin (TikTok in China) and Xiaohonghsu (the Chinese equivalent of Instagram), the search will return zero results. All because these platforms are compliant with Chinese regulations and so will take down crypto contents faster than you can upload them.
If you read the fineprint, you’ll notice that blockchains are actually not banned in China. FISCO BCOS is an open consortium blockchain backed by Tencent, Huawei, and other companies at the enterprise level.
Baidu has been promoting its XuperChain locally. Minsheng Bank and CITIC Bank have also launched a blockchain based Letter of Credit System using the architecture of Hyperledger Fabric.
Most of you might not know, but an Ethereum fork has already entered China via BSN. However, in order for Ethereum to be legal in China, a minor surgery is required.
With China’s ban on cryptocurrencies, gas fees cannot be paid in ETH. Instead, Wuhan Chain — the Chinese domestic fork of Ethereum — accepts fiat Yuan as gas fees. BSN calls this the non-crypto public blockchain, and it is positioning itself as the gatekeeper of global public blockchains that are eager to enter China.
Done successfully, BSN could be one of the most crucial pieces of blockchain architecture, connecting global blockchains to the large, domestic Chinese market.
Because of the ban of cryptocurrencies, NFTs have also been given a facelift. Better known as DDCs (Distributed Digital Certificates), they are essentially NFTs that run on permissioned networks domestically. If a business is looking to mint NFTs in China, DDC is the solution.
More interestingly, BSN is technically a DDC-NFT bridge, since it gives users the functionality of minting both DDCs domestically and NFTs internationally. This is a proposition of tremendous value to enterprises that are looking to mint the same IP as NFTs, both in the Chinese and international markets.
For the international market, BSN is offering a non-crypto public blockchain called the Spartan Network.
Several enterprises showcased their potential use cases of the Spartan Network at the summit. Prenetics, a leading genetics and diagnostic health testing company, is looking into using BSN to offer decentralized health testing to their customers.
HSBC — the largest financial institution from Hong Kong — also mentioned that they are extending their blockchain program to BSN. If DeFi is to be thought of as a C2C business model, most of the use cases presented at the summit are closer to B2C.
Coincidentally, as global enterprises venture into Web 3.0, we are seeing more companies allow the use of fiat as a form of payment for NFT purchases. This trend convergence in the B2C market might give the Spartan Network a shot in carving out a segment of the Web 3.0 space — especially in Hong Kong and China.
The C2C market would probably be a bit more difficult to penetrate, given the lack of cryptocurrencies in the Spartan Network. Though, the C2C market is probably not a high priority to the Spartan Network in the first place.
Given this backdrop, the success of BSN will indicate that the B2C market could be ready for the prime-time as more companies are forced to have a Web 3.0 strategy.
