Blockchain World Summit With Groundbreaking Insights and Collaborations, Create the Conditions for a Decentralized Future
Under the auspices of HH Sheikh Juma Ahmed Juma Al Maktoum, the 24th World Blockchain Summit – Dubai 2023 gathered over 2,000 business titans, technological trailblazers, and big web3 investors under one roof.
The Start-up Grand Slam Pitch Competition served as the event’s kickoff and featured some of the most exciting new projects entering the market. It was evaluated by a panel made up of top international investors like Woodstock, Cipher, and Ghaf Capital Partners.
The open blockchain initiative String3 emerged as the winner of the competition.
Sandeep Nailwal, the co-founder of Polygon Labs, Dominic Williams, the founder and chief scientist of DFINITY Foundation, Sunny Lu, the co-founder and CEO of Vechain, Mohammad Alblooshi, the head of DIFC’s Innovation Hub and Fintech Hive, and Alex Ziner, global head of Ledger Enterprises were just a few of the industry pioneers on the agenda for the two-day summit.
Decrypting the regulatory landscape of virtual assets was one of the summit’s most eagerly awaited discussion topics. It was moderated by Dr. Sid Ahmed Benraouane, Dubai Government Advisor, and featured speakers Erwin Voloder, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Blockchain Association, Jason Allegrante, Chief Legal and Compliance Officer, Fireblocks, and Saqr Ereiqat, Co-Founder & Managing Director, Crypto Oasis.
The panelists talked about the long-term benefits of the new regulatory frameworks being created in Web3-specific technology centers like Dubai.
The main event of the summit was Sandeep Nailwal’s fireside chat with Kevin Soltani, CEO & Founder, of GIMA Group during which he spoke candidly about the biggest challenge for blockchain being scalability to go mainstream. However, with continued development, network effects and ZKroll-ups, a large player like Instagram can theoretically create billions of NFTs using smart contracts which opens up new horizons for blockchain adoption and a real inflection point. He went on to state, “The next frontier of DeFi will come from institutional players.”
