During the month of September and early October 2023, I will be traveling to a few conferences, and doing a few speaking engagements. As a part of the travel, I wanted to provide a few thoughts on what I have seen, people and projects I have met and the changes and trends emerging in the last year or so in the industry.
Even just a year ago, zero knowledge proof was barely a topic of conversation. Now, almost everyone had some level of understanding of what MPC was.
My first week of events was in South Korea, my birthplace, and I spent the week going to multiple side events, did a quick speaking engagement (thank you H.E.R. DAO for the opportunity) and met with a variety of builders, projects and community builders.
I also got a chance to meet with two of our Korean Ambassadors, which was an amazing opportunity. We teamed up for three days going around different side events promoting building for privacy using Partisia Blockchain.
My first thought was with the amount of missing L1 blockchains in the industry that was present. It clearly still is a bear market and as a result, L1’s were visibility absent. One person I spoke with, when I mentioned I was from an L1, said “oh no, not another L1!” And I think that reaction makes sense. As mentioned on our interoperability article, L1s are all playing a zero sum game. Everyone is in competition with each other and the industry is trying to mature into more of an interoperable environment. To me it was a good sign not only for the blockchain industry but also for Partisia Blockchain, as people were beginning to understand the importance of interoperability in any industry.
My second thought was the amount of zero knowledge events that were out there. One out of every two to three events was either focused on ZK or had zero knowledge as a topic. Even just a year ago, zero knowledge proof was barely a topic of conversation. Now, almost everyone had some level of understanding of what MPC was. This was an amazing shift in the industry and I will keep you all updated to see if this trend continues.
Just on a side note, even the ZKP experts were conceding that ZKP has limitations in scaling and long computation times. My thought is that as the industry continues to mature, many people will begin to turn to MPC as a potential solution unless ZKP scaling issues can be resolved.
Overall, I met up with quite a number of potential leads and partnership opportunities. Quite a lot of leads to follow up, interesting use cases to delve deeper into and more opportunities to come from what I thought was a very successful event. A lot of the builders were focused on DID/SSI solutions, as well as gaming and ZKP technology.
More to come next week on our presence in Token 2049 where we will have a booth and a speaking engagement at the R3al World @ Token2049: Interoperability, Web3’s Disruption Point conference. If you are in the area, come say hello!
Website • Twitter • Discord • Telegram • LinkedIn • Facebook • Instagram • GitLab • Medium • YouTube
During the course of July, students, young professionals, academics, and industry leaders came together from across the globe for the SDG Summer School. This Summer School is organized by the University of Geneva and hosted in the SDG Innovation Lab, close to the United Nations as well as on different campuses around the world in parallel. Partisia Blockchain had the privilege of attending and actively participating in the program.
Groups of students were formed, assigned a coach and began to develop an idea into a project. The projects were all aimed at solving pressing problems and contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). After three weeks the groups pitched their projects to a jury consisting of decision makers from major institutions such as the University of Geneva, the Global Fund and the Olympic Committee.
I had the opportunity of representing Partisia Blockchain and coaching a group of students in creating an innovative solution to women’s health:
“Her Menstrual Trials” is an application using MPC and Blockchain to track women’s health trends and the effects of medications without revealing anyone’s personal health data. The blockchain would provide crypto-incentives to the participants and help store and track the data collected, while MPC would keep the data private, while allowing for real-time, continuous data collection from the participants.
Furthermore, Partisia Blockchain had the pleasure of sponsoring a student from Copenhagen to come to Geneva and participate in the Summer School.
The SDG Summer School is an impactful event empowering young minds to find solutions to the most pressing problems around the world. Partisia Blockchain is proud to support such an initiative and help to contribute to a brighter future for all.
Website • Twitter • Discord • Telegram • LinkedIn • Facebook • Instagram • GitLab • Medium • YouTube