A look at the key highlights from Paris Blockchain Week 2023

PBW was also graced by some of the most prominent and influential personalities from the digital asset industry, including Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), Ethereum co-founder, Joseph Lupin, NASDAQ Head of Digital Assets, Ira Auerbach, and many others. As such, every day of Paris Blockchain Week was filled with exciting events and updates. Here’s a quick recap of the key events and highlights from this year’s edition of Paris Blockchain Week.

Events before the summit

Paris Blockchain Week began with a hackathon that ran between March 17 and 19. Participants were given topics from industry leaders and asked to develop solutions that would solve real-world challenges. The winning teams would take home €4,500.

This year the challenges for the hackathon were set by Solana, Gridex and XRPL. The first challenge (set by Gridex) was to “build a dApp that uses Gridex’s order books to bring as many Web3 users as possible.” This was won by a team known as Etherla Wave – Grindex Project.

The second challenge (set by Solana) was to “scale a consumer DApp to bring crypto to the next 1 million on-chain users.” This challenge was won by a team called Pay Consent. Finally, the third challenge was to “use XRPL technology to bring decentralized solutions to real-world problems.” And this challenge was won by Thomas Hussenet and Maxime Dienger from XRPL Solvency.

On the fourth day of PBW, 3 events took place: the talent fair, the start-up competition and the investor day. The talent fair saw several of the biggest firms looking for potential recruits among some of the brightest students and young professionals in the sector.

The start-up competition aimed to find and finance 3 promising web3 projects. There were hundreds of projects that signed up for the competition. Each of them had to present their idea and convince more than 200 VCs, DAOs and accelerator programs to support their projects.

Only 3 winners would be selected and they would receive $10B of VC AUM and $2M in prizes, grants, funding and credits. The investor day followed a similar theme. It allowed aspiring start-ups and projects looking for funding to network with prominent VCs in the web3 space.

On March 21, PBW hosted the Web3XP conference. As the name suggests, Web3XP covered the latest developments in the Web3 space. The unique event brought together several prominent figures from the digital industry to discuss the major Web3 projects and major brand use cases. The event had 4 main themes, Brands and Web3 Economy, Marketing in Web3, Web3 Art and Market and Investment in Web3: Culture and Entertainment.

Eric Hazan, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, delivered a keynote speech on value creation in the metaverse. Some of the other interesting keynotes were from Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, who talked about the blockchain boom, while another panel discussed Web3 and brands’ success stories. Alice Liu, head of research at CoinMarketCap, spoke about the frontier of the crypto market, and there was also a panel discussion on “What will it take to restart NFTs?”

Renowned author Neal Stephenson shared his thoughts on various topics, including metaverse issues and Web3 concepts. He believes that many of today’s challenges within the space are derived from people who are eager to finance far too quickly. He went on to say that people often forget a very crucial part, which is to build a stable economy first.

The 5th day of the event concluded with a VIP dinner which was reportedly attended by the who’s who of the digital asset space.

Summit Day 1:

The main highlight of the first day was a speech by the co-founder of Nine Blocks Capital Management, Henri Arslanian, who talked about Bitcoin, NFTs and CBDCs. He highlighted negative events in 2022, and emphasized points about regulations and transparency. Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin also spoke about Web3 space diversity and the importance of decentralized networks in traditional finance.

Another panel discussion covered the EU regulation of cryptoassets to be implemented by 2024. Experts talked about the implication and impact on the existing system. Some of the topics covered included KYC challenges, metaverse regulations, governance models and so on.

Another big talking point was the recent banking crisis in the US. To this, popular bitcoin advocate Tim Draper sang a poem about Bitcoin and how it can outperform other traditional assets amid the banking fiasco.

Stablecoin issuer Tethers CTO Paolo Ardoino also explained the USDC saga, saying that Bitcoin is the ultimate way to secure your wealth. When asked about his opinions on the USDC de-peg, he shared that stablecoin issuers should always keep their reserves protected.

Another panel talked at length about FTX, Luna, Celsius and 3AC collapses. As the keynote speaker at the event, Koenraad De Jonghe, Head of Business Development at Bitget, gave a quick speech on social trading and its impact on the crypto industry.

Pascal Gauthier, CEO and chairman of hardware wallet provider Ledger, shared his opinion on major bank collapses. He stated that when events like FTX and bank collapse happen, people rush to crypto and Ledger. He defined the recent events as a crash course for Bitcoin and its importance for the future. He further criticized that the banks are there to protect people and even if they fail, people should be compensated but recent events showed the opposite.

Summit day-2

The second day of the PBW Summit focused on the adoption and importance of decentralized culture. Highlights of the day included panel discussions on topics such as the Web3 ethos, the evolution of crypto payments, and consumer protection against crypto fraud.

The head of Web3 at Amazon Web Services, Jeff Hasselman, gave the first keynote and shared his impression of the Bitcoin White Paper in 2013. He shared that at the time, he used to believe that Bitcoin would redefine the Internet if it worked, and he has actively taken step in the Web2 space by supporting blockchain developers and companies.

Another topic of discussion was crypto yield farming, with panelists including Cinderella Amar, co-founder of Glass Slipper Ventures, Maxime Boonen, founder of B2C2 and PV01, Tim Grant and many others. There were also keynotes on blockchain integration, gaming tokens, CBDCs, blockchain’s real-world impact, and building tools.

Vice President of the Stellar Development Foundation, Tomer Weller, talked about the complexity of smart contracts. “Smart contracts are not simple and are only as smart as the coders who build them, and we need to hold them to a higher standard,” Weller said.

There was also discussion of the meltdown of prominent crypto exchanges in 2022 that put the entire industry under regulatory scrutiny. Panelists from BitGo, Woorton, Shift Markets, Messari, Finoa and GBBC Digital Finance spoke in detail about how to do CeFi right, citing recent chaotic events in the industry. There was also a fireside chat about developing a silicon valley for web3, and attendees also enjoyed a workshop on the Hedera Hashgraph.

Day two of the summit ended with an awards evening. Some of the winners include Vitalik Buterin (Web3 Personality of the Year), Binance Academy (Best Education Platform of the Year), NBA/Sorare (Best Web3 Brand Initiative of the Year) and Cardano Foundation (People’s Choice). . The last day of the summit ended with an after party.

Conclusion

Most in the cryptoverse are calling Paris Blockchain Week 2023 a huge success. The event went off without a hitch despite all the anti-Macron and pension reform riots in other parts of the city. As such, the organizers are already gearing up for the next edition of PBW. “Above all, return next year – stronger, bigger and better. This is just a goodbye,” read the closing tweet from Paris Blockchain Week.