Blockchain-In-Use Conference 2022

The in-person conference took place at Factory Berlin on September 15, 2022, and set out to explore compelling use cases around the latest blockchain applications within several industries. In this article we look back at some conference highlights.

THE BERLIN BLOCKCHAIN COMMUNITY

Over the last few years, blockchain has diversified into a wide range of use cases and application fields, such as FinTech, Digital Arts, Digital Health, or Supply Chains. There are more than 130 players in Berlin when it comes to blockchain and Web 3.0 and the industry is actively growing. Positioning the city as an important center for financial innovations and the development of NFT, Crypto, or DeFi, Berlin is providing strong access to a variety of networks such as VR, AI, and IoT to enrich the community and connect these clusters benefiting from each other. Introducing BerChain as an additional association to connect and create a decentralized future blockchain ecosystem in Berlin, the importance of these partnership networks was particularly pointed out in the opening speech of State Secretary Michael Biel, Berlin Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises:

“We are currently counting over 180* blockchain players, over 110 start-ups, but of course also established companies, accelerators, innovation sellers, research institutions, and investors. In 2020, Berlin's blockchain companies achieved a turnover of just under 450 million Euros, which means that Berlin has one of the most active and strongest Blockchain ecosystems worldwide. I am particularly pleased that the Blockchain technologies, a cross-sectional technology, is giving rise to companies and applications in very different areas - from the creative industries, AI, energy to identity management, and legal tech to name just a few. Our goal is to ensure that Berlin continues to develop positively as Blockchain top location in the future. Berlin should remain the blockchain capital in Germany and win the competition of the other European cities. For this to succeed, we must firstly work on the part of the senate, to ensure that the political conditions in Berlin are right. Secondly, we keep hearing voices from the blockchain scene and association saying that the state of Berlin itself should promote and support applications for blockchain technology in the public sector. This would be an important signal to help the technology achieve a sustainable breakthrough in Berlin.”

DECENTRALIZED FINANCE AND BANKING – A RISING INDUSTRY?

With the significance of the industry for Berlin's economy, the Blockchain-In-Use Conference 2022 started an expert-level event full of innovation and opinion leaders. Let's dive into some of the highlights starting with a panel about the financial and banking sector.

While great improvements in various industries have taken place, the financial services and banking industry has remained almost unchanged within the last decade, explained Co-founder and CTO of UNSTOPPABLE FINANCE, Peter Grosskopf in his speech. By the invention of the Bitcoin protocol, Blockchain showed us that decentralized digital currencies, so called cryptocurrencies, can be used as a valuable form of payment, but the rising prices created a huge trading industry likewise. Crypto was not invented to be traded as a speculative asset but was meant to enable transactions and build applications. We are now experience a second wave showing us what financial services can be provided based on blockchain technology. With DeFi (Decentralized Finance) an important approach of accessibility in financial services is built via smart contracts. Its benefits are the high interoperability with other public API (mechanisms to enable two software components to communicate with each other using a set of definitions and protocols), which helps to create a value chain of smart contracts and new standards shaping a transparent, (almost) manipulation free financial infrastructure on a global scale. The opportunities of delivering financial services with DeFi can be used as the replacement of almost any financial services, from marketplace to landing protocols, currencies which are already to be observed. According to Grosskopf, access will be provided by opening a non-custodial wallet being easily created on your own, e.g. with ULTIMATE, an application to educate, navigate, and give access to DeFi for the mass.

Watch also:

Blockchain-In-Use Conference 2022: Finance Track - Use Case by Unstoppable Finance

Blockchain-In-Use Conference 2022: Finance Track - Use Case by The Standard.io

Blockchain-In-Use Conference 2022: Finance Track -Panel Discussion

CREATIVE INDUSTRIES AND SUSTAINABILITY

“Berlin is one of the most creative European cities we know. The people here are shaping a new future in such as the music, fashion or gaming industry in important ways.”, says Daud Zulfacar, founder of License.rocks. Whilst the metaverse and crypto currencies will have a huge influence on the gaming industry, Lily Feyerabend, founder of the NFTBerlin 2022, showed how Blockchain and NFTs can be innovated in a sustainable manner. An important step to a more sustainable usage of cryptocurrencies, NFT´s, and other decentralized applications was set: With the “Merge” of Ethereum from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS), which took place during the Berlin Blockchain Week, Ethereum was able to reduce its costs of energy by more than 90 percent. This reduces the carbon footprint drastically and benefits other Blockchain technologies and their acceptance in general.

In addition to the sustainable opportunities within the creative industry, Philipp Lanik, Managing Director of Pink Frog Games, kept his focus on about the future of Blockchain and Gaming Industry. With one of the highest revenues in our economy and a current market value of 6.2 billion USD, the gaming industry is continuously rising in numbers each year showing its huge potential. By creating new social experiences for next generations and making crypto currencies and digital ownership easily accessible, it is leading us into an economically strong future for vast growth and dominating market shares. Lanik also showed the ambivalence of the current development. Since the gaming industry is already a huge valued market, until blockchain is not easily integrated into the gaming industry, especially with mobile access, it will remain with unused capacities.

THE FUTURE OF INTEROPERABILITY

With the existence of countless blockchains nowadays, the ability to communicate with other blockchains is still a niche field. Therefore, we must take an extra look to the future of their interoperability. In an engaging discussion, Leo Hilse, STYLE PROTOCOL, Zoe Meckbach, council member at PHALA NETWORK and POLKADOT ambassador as well as Bruce Pon, founder of the OCEAN PROTOCOL, discussed the actual needs in an interesting panel.

The application of different blockchains still remains complicated and transferring assets in between chains or, considered financially, in between wallets is still not always easily accessible. Therefore, it is necessary to expand the interoperability in future. To achieve this, connecting different applications could be a helpful source to the end consumer.

“For the end user, interoperability is very important, so the user experience is something that we need to work on to make it seamless and smooth”, said Zoe Meckbach. Breaking it down further, she mentioned that it is not relevant for the end user how blockchains work interoperable, but for sure it is of importance that it works. “For example, in the DeFi space, we cannot offer this service right now, but I wouldn't say that the end user does not care about it. Therefore, it is very important that we are actually focusing on this:”

With the example of Polkadot, one of today´s leading open-source-blockchain project, the importance of scaling and upgrading transactions in between different networks becomes apparent. Nevertheless, it is not clear yet when these symbioses will be relevant or applicable in the future,. It is still highly desirable to have as many different networks for different use cases and infrastructures, but also to take advantage of different ecosystems to upgrade and connect the blockchain universe.

Watch also:

Blockchain-In-Use Conference 2022: Interoperability Track - Use Case by Philabs

Blockchain-In-Use Conference 2022: Interoperability Track - Use Case by FileChain

Blockchain-In-Use Conference 2022: Interoperability Track – Panel Discussion

With lots of exciting presentations and panel discussions the Blockchain in Use Conference 2022 was a great opportunity to connect experts and thoughts of the industry – showing its great potential and leading to new approaches. You can watch the full collection of all talks and panels here on YouTube.

SOURCES

Berchain e.V.: https://berchain.com/

Senate for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises: https://www.berlin.de/sen/wirtschaft/en/

THE BERLIN BLOCKCHAIN COMMUNITY

*Official numbers: https://www.finanzen.net/nachricht/devisen/krypto-in-berlin-ueber-180-blockchain-unternehmen-berlin-wird-zum-krypto-hotspot-11579515

DECENTRALIZED FINANCE AND BANKING – A RISING INDUSTRY?

Unstoppable Finance: https://ultimate.money/

CREATIVE INDUSTRIES AND SUSTAINABILITY

ETHEREUM MERGE:

https://www.btc-echo.de/news/ethereum-merge-abgeschlossen-proof-of-stake-150703/

Altcoins: So viel Strom verbrauchen diese 6 Kryptowährungen (btc-echo.de)

Ethereum 2.0: Merge ist abgeschlossen (btc-echo.de)