At the cryptocurrency conference Korea Blockchain Week 2023 (KBW), which took place over a jam-packed 48 hours in Seoul last week, crypto and blockchain were downplayed in favor of newer ideas and even newer terminology to characterize the sector.
A Comprehensive Overview of Korea Blockchain Week 2023
One may have been led to believe that the industry was no longer experiencing one of the most severe bear markets in its brief history by the crowded space and upbeat applause from the estimated 10,000 individuals who attended the numerous Web3 panels. Most people didn’t care about Bitcoin’s largely stagnant price.
There didn’t appear to be a common understanding of what Web3 actually meant. Some people at the various event booths referred to it as the “new internet,” while others saw it as an evolution of token-based protocols to NFTs that integrate with entire social cultures. Some people even proudly sported T-shirts proclaiming Web3 to “be the future.”
Each Participant Had a Unique Search
Vulture capitalists in the cryptocurrency industry looked for sparkling new products to invest their leftover funds while watching the event from the sidelines and at nearby cafés. Product creators looked for unwitting new customers, those customers looked for more expensive products, and pricing looked for a catalyst to break the current market slump.
Bear markets serve as a reality check of sorts, especially for projects without sustainable business models. Founders are inevitably struggling to raise funds as liquidity is drying up, and some projects are focusing on pitching their services to each other in a B2B-esque approach as retail demand is waning. This isn’t necessarily a net negative, though, as it strengthens the foundation for adoption and usage when market conditions recover (assuming there are genuine use cases and utility provided),
Veronica Fong, founder of crypto wallet firm SafePal
What Did KBW Speakers Talk About?
On the KBW stage, crypto celebrities projected their visions of where the industry is now and where it is headed. The most popular subjects focused on privacy, scalability via layer-2 blockchains, blockchain gaming in places like Asia, the ongoing legal issues in significant markets like the U.S., and developing user-friendly apps that the general populace both values and comprehends.
The conference’s opening address was delivered by BitMEX founder and Maelstrom Ventures owner Arthur Hayes. According to Hayes, Bitcoin and other risky assets should have been destroyed by the Federal Reserve’s most pronounced rate hike cycle in decades. It didn’t, and a new bond between the two was beginning to take shape.
Speaking online, Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin bemoaned the fact that Ethereum nodes are centralized and frequently hosted on servers like Amazon Web Services, leaving them open to attack from hackers or anti-crypto U.S. authorities. In the upcoming years, Buterin emphasized that one of the most important things Ethereum infrastructure providers and node validators—users who contributed computer power to the network—should focus on is resolving the node issue.
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