It will be complicated and it will be hard over the next few years. But the only way through is to build.

This is how Joseph Lubin, Ethereum Co-Founder and ConsenSys CEO, concluded his speech this morning.

While Day 1 centered on Web3, NFTs, and brands entering the space, Day 2 is entirely about crypto.

Here's an early-bird, concise inside scoop from the trenches! 👇

My impressions so far: 

  • Some of the old guard and household names are missing (e.g. Coinbase, Kraken, Anchorage, Galaxy, etc.). Generally, not a lot of US companies have made it over the pond (except for Circle).

  • Little presence from infrastructure builders or foundations (except Cardano & Tezos) and a lot of smaller, less known companies focusing on applications.

  • Little institutional presence from big financial-services players (banks, payment providers, etc.).

Some key themes I’ve seen: 

  • “Value” & “Honesty”: Web3 will only succeed with a relentless focus on value and honest products. “We cannot tolerate flippers anymore”, says Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.

  • “Interoperability”: Making different Web3 platforms connect and talk to each other has been a theme multiple times. The metaverse is already here, we just need to connect its parts. Thereby it doesn’t matter whether we enter the Metaverse in 2D or 3D, on mobile or on desktop. What matters are the social connections that we’re building. The vision: Making digital assets not only transferable but also usable across different Web3 dApps and digital environments.

  • “We don’t need digital zebras”: PfPs (profile picture NFTs) are over, according to 0xb1, an NFT OG. The next phase will be about connecting digital and physical, about real world asset tokenization (how many times have we heard that?).

  • “Phygital” & “Empathy”: Physical and digital (assets) need to co-exists and complement each other; without storytelling or content neither of them has any value.