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Consensus2023 Consensus Conference: Summary of Six Highlights and Trends

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As one of the important weathervanes of the encryption market, what are the wonderful views and collisions in this Consensus conference?

Original title: "Six key words summarize the highlights and trends of Consensus 2023"

Original source: Nancy, PANews

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From April 26th to 28th, the annual encryption event Consensus (Consensus Conference) was held in Austin, Texas, USA. The Consensus Consensus Conference, which started in 2015, is held by the blockchain media Coindesk, attracting industry leaders, developers, KOLs, government officials, artists, etc. to participate every year.

However, due to factors such as the deteriorating regulatory environment in the United States, the downturn in the overall encryption market, and the debt turmoil of the sponsor's parent company DCG, this year's Consensus Consensus Conference was a little deserted compared to previous years. For example, the number of participants in Consensus in 2023 will be about 12,000, a decrease of about 8,000 from 20,000 in 2022; the number of sponsors will be 231, a decrease of about 30 from last year, of which the number of head sponsors has decreased significantly, while the number of exchanges has decreased Most obviously, only Huobi, OKX, and BitMart, etc. last year included Binance.US, Bitget, and Bybit.

However, the Consensus Conference still attracted Yuga Labs CEO Daniel Alegre, Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu, former US CFTC chairman Chris Giancarlo, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, a16z partner Sriram Krishnan, Google News vice president Richard Gingras Near Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin and other 150 guests participated in the conference. The topics of the speeches covered Web3, security compliance, DAO, DeFi, CeFi, NFT, encryption art and metaverse, etc.

As one of the important weathervanes of the encryption market, what are the wonderful views and collisions in this Consensus conference? What trends are worth paying attention to?

Regulation:There is an urgent need for regulatory clarity

"Crypto Dad" , Chris Giancarlo, former chairman of the CFTC in the United States, seems to have criticized the current suppression of the cryptocurrency industry by U.S. regulators. He said that from the successful case of CFTC’s approval of Bitcoin futures contracts in 2017 (during Giancarlo’s tenure), regulators can successfully participate. encrypted currency. At the same time, regarding CBDC, Giancarlo believes that those who publicly oppose central bank digital currency (CBDC) are basically wasting their time, and that a government-backed digital dollar is largely inevitable and will definitely exist with private stablecoins. Giancarlo also called on the United States to discuss and experiment with how to create a CBDC, rather than lose the dominance of competing national digital currencies. Because whether or not the US deploys a digital dollar, a CBDC will come. “Choosing between stablecoins and CBDCs is wrong, the real choice is between financial freedom and financial control.”

Coinbase is defending itself against the U.S. SEC's claim that much of its business is illegal and trying to convince a court that "Wall Street regulators lack the authority to oversee the cryptocurrency market." “Coinbase is the same company that the SEC allowed to go public two years ago, with no securities listed then and now, we don’t like bringing lawsuits against the SEC, but we will vigorously defend ourselves. Will continue to ask Congress to legislate, requiring the SEC Make the rules.” If the SEC brought a lawsuit against Coinbase, it would threaten the unregulated business model of crypto exchanges that was responsible for their early profitability and rapid growth. If Coinbase loses the case, the company could be forced to register some of its business with regulators or stop offering trading services for many crypto tokens, which regulators say are securities and should be subject to investor protection rules.

Regulatory clarity is urgently needed to help the next generation of Web3 consumers onboard, according to Kate Brady, head of next-generation DTC connectivity and innovation at PepsiCo. Reddit, Starbucks, Nike, Adidas, Pepsi, and hundreds of brands have developed Web3 and NFT ecosystems over the past year as a way to deepen their relationships with audiences and customers. However, with the massive law enforcement activities of the U.S. regulators, the status quo of regulatory ambiguity has always been "Our biggest challenge yet" , to launch the Web3 strategy, "We had to build our own structure to comply with current regulations, which unfortunately are either very limited or based on written securities laws from the 1940s that are very limited or outdated. Before we can figure out most of them Before content, there was still a limit to what we could do.”

Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein, a digital asset management company, pointed out that Grayscale expects to know by the end of the third quarter whether to allow its $2.7 billion Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) to be converted into an exchange-traded fund. It is reported that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rejected the asset management company's request to convert the Bitcoin trust GBTC into a Bitcoin ETF last year. Grayscale sued the SEC for this decision. ruling.

Web3 is not only a technology, but also conforms to the values of the new generation

"Web3 isn't dead, but it needs to be reinvented for mass adoption." Marc Mathieu, head of Web3 at US software giant Salesforce, said Web3 could make a comeback if its builders focus on creating a community around decentralization and other values that are important to young people who will eventually to have these experiences.

At the same time, he also said that the decentralization of the Internet serves the people... This is one of the key elements to restart Web3. It will come back because fundamentally, it is not only a technology, but also in line with the values of a new generation.

Real Assets RWA

Jonathan Steinberg, CEO of WisdomTree, an asset management company, believes that if the blockchain enables investors to buy treasury bonds with additional functions, it will have huge appeal to mainstream users. For holders of real asset RWA, this type of illiquid asset has a huge advantage, "We think that with tokenization and blockchain finance, you can add functionality... When you combine tokenized, physically backed gold with peer-to-peer transactions and payments, gold becomes money, just like digital It's the same as it was a hundred years ago."

“Just as big corporations were initially uneasy about cloud computing, it is now the norm for prudent agencies like the CIA. Tokenization represents the next chapter for cryptocurrencies, where real assets will eventually be held privately. Tokenization on the chain, then the permissioned chain, and finally the public chain.” Carlos Domingo, CEO of Securitize, a digital asset securities market, pointed out.

Morgan Krupetsky, director of institutional business development at Avalanche Labs, said that the concept of tokenization is not new, but it has had new developments in the past. “Since the idea first appeared on the market in 2017, great strides have been made, and institutions and investors have become comfortable with the technology. Not only that, but rising interest rates have increased the potential for this technology to be ready for the mainstream. A sense of urgency, as rising interest rates compress token prices and create demand for new things on-chain. “We are at the stage where users just need to say yes to tokenization” .

NFT and Metaverse

Erick Calderon, co-founder of Art Blocks, said that NFT royalties are a value-added addition to the basic premise of being able to prove ownership of digital assets, and are valuable to creators and the wider NFT ecosystem, including collectors and investors By. This concept is attractive to creators, who don't have to constantly publish work to make a living, but are able to think more deeply about their artwork and create artwork that can create better and more valuable, And continue to participate in the NFT community. Leaving aside royalties, NFT is fundamentally more artist-friendly than many things in the traditional art world are done in secret. "As for NFT buyers who want to avoid royalties cutting into profits, Calderon believes that if royalties are only seen as a transfer tax, then they may miss the opportunity.

“Games and the metaverse lack regulatory clarity. In my opinion, many regulators think they don’t need systemic regulation, so they don’t pay much attention to it. Regulation pays more attention to cryptocurrencies and assets, but games are obviously a form of entertainment. , it’s still a cultural form. Just like you wouldn’t regulate the art industry, so I think that’s intentional, they haven’t specifically looked at regulation in the NFT and gaming space because they don’t think it’s necessary.” Said Yat Siu, co-founder of Animoca Brands.

Stablecoins

Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, a US dollar stablecoin issuer, said that USDC has emerged from the US banking crisis in March and has become stronger and safer. “We have successfully weathered this crisis and have actually upgraded the market infrastructure behind USDC, making it by far the strongest and most secure digital dollar on the web today.” However, Allaire also said, USDC still needs to become more secure, but this can only be achieved through legislation at the federal level.

During the Consensus Consensus Conference, Circle announced the launch of a developer-provided cross-chain transfer protocol (CCTP) based on Ethereum and Avalanche, which will support the flow of USDC on cooperative chains, providing interoperability, security, and liquidity and simplified user experience.

DeFi and CeFi

Sidney Powell, CEO of the institutional lending agreement Maple Finance, said that the core difference between CeFi and DeFi is "self-custody". When users use centralized exchanges, they deposit assets into their wallets, but behind them are controlled by an opaque entity, such as BlockFi and Celsius Network. This is not the case with DeFi, because the way funds are stored and transferred is more transparent, you can see the flow of funds at any time, and it is always controlled using Solidity and smart contracts. He also added that this does not mean that the DeFi ecosystem will be adopted on a large scale soon, because in the short term, CeFi may still be the main way for traditional financial customers and traditional users to adopt digital assets.

Salman Banaei, head of policy at Uniswap Labs, believes that the current regulatory environment in the financial market can be well integrated with the CeFi model. “CeFi has an advantage in the sense that their business model has a clear controller, which makes it easier for CeFi to adapt to securities, commodities or banking laws. DeFi has a disadvantage in this regard because it relies on an open source Agreement, from a regulatory point of view, this agreement reduces its degree of control. But over time, this situation will change, and DeFi will eventually become the main infrastructure of the financial system in the future, but the role of CeFi is not There will be huge changes. He believes that in the future, DeFi will become the pillar of the new economy, and CeFi will continue to play a transitional role in this richer DeFi environment.