Co-hosted by Polkadot and MetaEra, Polkadot Decoded Asia 2024 was successfully held offline in Singapore on September 16-17. Web3 industry experts, developers, investors, and entrepreneurs from around the globe gathered at the event for two days, with numerous insightful keynote speeches and panel discussions that were nothing short of brilliant. Together, we focused on the current state and future trends of the Polkadot ecosystem and looked forward to technological visions for the future of Web3 development. Let's review the highlights of Polkadot Decoded Asia 2024!

This article is a two-day review of the exciting content of the conference: 

Polkadot founder Gavin Wood: The Future of Individuality and Digital Governance in Web 3.0

Gavin began with the concepts of digital individuality and individuality in Web 3.0, explaining the necessity of these concepts. He pointed out that just as all sound social systems require governance structures, democratic mechanisms are indispensable governance tools in a free world. He further explained that Web 3.0 extends the norms and principles of the free world to the digital realm, and blockchain systems are the cornerstone of this digital social system. 

Chrissy Hill, COO (interim) & CLO of Parity Technologies: Balancing Act: Maintaining Decentralization and Compliance in Web 3.0

In the highly decentralized world, how can Web3 project innovation comply with environmental regulatory rules while continuing to be a pioneer in the industry? Due to the long-term concentration of technological power, Web3 innovative services and projects are expected to face development obstacles, thus seeking a balance has become a practical requirement. The mission of Web3 is to bring technological value and real benefits to billions of users. For all industry builders, it is necessary to develop more innovative and fair business models that support the digital economy, providing equal opportunities for everyone in an environment of global participation and transparent governance, to meet the growing new vision of user data rights. To this end, Chrissy Hill shared new schemes for community-driven developers to provide feedback and make decisions in her speech, bringing new inspiration to the audience. 

Kun Peng, Founder of Stanford Blockchain Accelerator SBA&BASS: Envisioning the Integration of AI and Web3

To better illustrate the world where AI and Web3 are innovatively integrated, Kun Peng approached from four dimensions: technology, politics, society, and economy, analyzing why AI currently needs the power of blockchain and cryptocurrency. In fact, we are entering a new model of digital colonialism and technological nationalism independence. Blockchain serves as the foundational technology for digital sovereignty and global collaboration, enabling the creation of transparent, verifiable, and traceable on-chain rules. The chain-based world empowered by AI can continue to enhance project development and operational performance (with faster response speeds reducing unnecessary information redundancy and external interference), giving rise to new privacy protection and digital ownership (while also achieving performance improvements from potential edge AI and aggregated GPUs). In terms of financial infrastructure, payments and incentives, digital identity rights, and privacy protection, Polkadot can provide a more robust environment for support, as it has a relatively mature underlying SDK technology, with good interoperability, scalability, and security. In her speech, Chrissy Hill shared new schemes for community-driven developers to provide feedback and make decisions, bringing new insights to the audience.

Sota Watanabe, Founder of Astar Network: Envisioning Mass Adoption for Astar: A Vision for 1 Billion Online Users

How can we unleash human technological potential through an open internet ecosystem? With a vision for an ecosystem serving 1 billion online users, Astar Network has identified the innovative direction needed in the Web3 world to simplify complexity and amplify benefits. Focusing on the convenience that developers value, Astar is firmly taking exploratory steps towards this goal. Currently, more than 80 trusted projects have been launched on Astar's DApp Staking, and in the coming months, the project will complete optimizations through technical chains such as on-chain governance, improvement of the Polkadot SDK, backup testing integration, and agile core time testing.

Tracy, Community Manager at OneBlock+: Building the Polkadot Chinese Developer Community

In order to create a world-leading Polkadot developer community and fulfill the dream of popularizing Web3, Polkadot, and Substrate technology, OneBlock+, as the first and largest blockchain developer community in China, is the only official partner of Parity in Asia, providing comprehensive support and assistance to Substrate developers. Attracting top developers to contribute to the prosperity and innovation of the Polkadot ecosystem with practical strength. Through technical courses, AMAs, online events, hackathons, and other activities hosted by OneBlock+, they have closely connected with developers from all over the world and established a good reputation as a technical community brand. So far, OneBlock+ has published more than 700+ articles on the Substrate ecosystem, including project introductions, technical interpretations, expert interviews, developer recruitment, etc., with a total network browsing data exceeding 70,000+ times; they have held more than 50+ workshops in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Shenzhen, and Chengdu, with a total participation of more than 5,000+ people; they have also successfully hosted 7 Polkadot hackathons as one of the organizers, attracting more than 300+ teams from around the world and more than 1,500+ developers to register and compete. 

DJ Hà Trang, Research Head at SubWallet: Building a Polkadot Use Case Aggregation Interface for Mass Adoption

In order to develop a unified wallet that becomes the future of chain abstraction, SubWallet is exploring technological applications and innovative paths by creating a Polkadot use case aggregation interface. SubWallet enables users to view and manage asset status on their main screen through multi-chain asset processing and collaboration, using the "all accounts management" feature to combine balances from multiple different accounts, easily achieving personal asset integration. In addition, SubWallet abstracts cross-chain benefits and exchanges, making the user interface, solver layer, swap services, and profit trading more convenient, bringing users a consistent and easily bridged wallet service. 

Aziz Zainuddin, Co-founder of StellaSwap: Defining Abstraction with Polkadot

StellaSwap is dedicated to innovating and optimizing the decentralized finance (DeFi) experience through cutting-edge enhancements. As a leading decentralized exchange (DEX) on Moonbeam, StellaSwap provides users with a one-stop DeFi portal that encompasses features like standard AMM, stable AMM, and CL V3. Aziz Zainuddin showcased the 1-Click cross-chain swap feature, leveraging Polkadot's interoperability to simplify transactions across chains. Additionally, StellaSwap optimizes trading efficiency through a hybrid AMM structure and introduces an off-chain reward mechanism, streamlining the liquidity staking process so that users can receive rewards instantly without multi-step operations. Furthermore, automated vaults and single-token ZAP features offer users a more convenient way to earn passive income, enhancing the DeFi experience.

David Wachsman, CEO of Wachsman: What Needs to Be Done Now is to Invest in Traditional Media

In today's era of information overload, social media platforms such as Twitter and Telegram have become the primary channels for people to obtain news and information. These platforms have attracted a large number of users with their immediacy and interactivity, giving people the feeling that they are in control of the news and can capture dynamics from around the world at any time and anywhere. However, this view overlooks an important fact: although social media plays a huge role in the dissemination of information, traditional media still plays an indispensable role. Social media nowadays like to say that traditional media no longer influences the world. Everyone is their own news hunter on Twitter, Telegram, and in daily conversations. But in fact, this is not the case. I believe that what we need to do now is to invest in traditional media .

Yakio Liu, the person in charge at Subscan: leveraging the Subscan open platform to explore opportunities

Subscan provides a multi-chain blockchain explorer that supports 97 networks, integrates EVM services, and aims to become a portal for the Web3 ecosystem. Through its open platform, users can easily track on-chain data with flexible APIs, customizable dashboards, cross-network identity management, and real-time notification features. In the future, Subscan will launch a self-service blockchain explorer, allowing users to quickly deploy personalized explorers and further enhance the multi-chain exploration experience. 

Charu Sethi, CMO at Unique Network: Advancing NFT Development in the Polkadot Ecosystem

She has highlighted the latest advancements in Polkadot ecosystem NFT development, demonstrating the successful application of NFT XCM between the relay chain, Asset Hub, and Unique Network. Developers can now test this feature and integrate it using the upcoming JS library. With 3.3 million NFTs and leading the industry in speed, rich features, high flexibility, and environmental friendliness, the Polkadot NFT ecosystem is poised to make Polkadot the platform of choice for NFT applications. The Polkadot NFT Collective aims to provide unified technical and business support for the ecosystem, promoting Polkadot as the preferred platform for NFT applications, with plans to showcase its value in 2024-2025.

James Pang, Professor at National University of Singapore and CognideX: Leveraging the Synergy of Blockchain and AI to Transform the Data Market

In the decentralized Web 3.0 data market, research focused on monetizing personal data and business insights is changing traditional data processing models and technological paths. To ensure the quality of personal information and data privacy protection, we need to leverage the power of AI and blockchain to achieve information monetization and automated data transaction processing. The project development and application logic powered by AIGC and protected by privacy computing frameworks explore a development path from personal data contribution rewards to use-case-centered data exploration, and then to automated processing of siloed data, completing the innovative synergy of automatic integration processing by the Gen AI Agent framework. Currently, CognideX's high-quality professional team, proprietary intellectual property protection, and world-class research and development strength will provide practical support for the application research of AI+ blockchain.

Denny, Co-founder of ltering Tech: Transitioning from App Chains to New Architectures with Modular DApps

The concept of modular development is crucial for the construction of DApp applications. It requires examining the actual impact of modularization on protocol value capture, understanding its basic features that support custom characteristics, and exploring new paths for differentiated use cases and business model development. To achieve the transition from app chains to new architectures, it is necessary to build simple and user-friendly projects with modular thinking. From the perspective of economic feasibility and sustainability, a broader and more enduring direction for modular exploration should be explored to ultimately achieve construction requirements that are stable, low-cost, and well-equipped. At present, ltering Tech has gradually found a development model that is decentralized, highly secure, and adaptable, and continues to work towards the goal of performance optimization.

James Bayly, COO of SubQuery Network: SubQuery: Decentralized and Multi-Chain Data Access

In the Polkadot ecosystem, how can we build smarter DApps? SubQuery Network is leading the way in decentralized and multi-chain data access, providing a unified data infrastructure network that includes block explorers, dApps, mobile apps, and analytics. By further reducing development costs through centralized options, SubQuery allows for the construction of faster, better, and more intuitive applications, published to the Web3 market. To achieve the technical goals without compromise, SubQuery has built "unstoppable" applications that ensure rapid response and selection of DApps, following an integration approach designed for consumers rather than developers, building a new era of technology where multi-chain and AI coexist and thrive .

Monica Hong, Event Director at MetaEra: MetaEra Supports the Polkadot Ecosystem

MetaEra, as a leading brand and growth expert in the Web3 industry, provides Web3 companies with creative technical and creative solutions. By offering a full range of technical resources and business advantages, it leads each project ecosystem to provide customized management growth services. So far, MetaEra's business includes media strategy and communication, content creation, KOL marketing, social media and community growth, online and offline events (including AMA, etc.), research reports and market analysis, public affairs, etc. Over the past four years, MetaEra's global footprint has covered more than ten countries, more than 30,000 offline participants, and more than 500,000 online participants. "We use the language of Web3 to tell your story to the world," Monica summarized. 

Web3 Foundation's Seraya Takahashi: The W3F Grant Program Will Greatly Promote the Development of the Web3 Ecosystem

Seraya Takahashi shared updates on the W3F Grant Program, the ecosystem fund, and the free ecosystem funding initiative. She emphasized that the W3F Grant Program is a funding program for high-quality projects in the Web3 ecosystem, aimed at promoting the development of the Web3 ecosystem. The W3F Grant Program offers milestone-based open-source grant agreements for fundraising and provides three tiers of grants based on the scale of the project. In addition, the W3F Grant Program also provides joint marketing and connects projects with financing channels.

Max Rebol, CEO of Harbour Industrial Capital, and Mario Altenburger, CFO: Raising a $100 Million Polkadot Ecosystem Fund

When we need to focus on ecosystem construction, a significant question arises: why is there a need to establish a new, large-scale Polkadot fund organization? This stems from the fact that many traditional venture capital firms still tend to overlook innovative projects based on Polkadot development. To raise $100 million in funds, Harbour Industrial Capital leverages a variety of different funding sources to accomplish this formidable fundraising task, including partners, strategic investors, other venture capital firms, exchanges, and family offices. After meticulous planning and research by the team, they have developed an ecosystem exploration plan based on the main fund and ETN, achieving the goal of fund management with both security and liquidity.

Luca von Wyttenbach, Co-founder of Polimec: Redefining Fundraising in the Web3 Era

As we transition from the Web2 to the Web3 era, how can we redefine the concept of fundraising? In the current landscape where the total amount of funds raised is on the rise, investment volumes are increasing, and chain-based products are becoming more frequent, DeFi protocols in the Web3 era are entering a new phase of deployment, and user transaction registration volumes are also seeing a significant increase. The future-oriented approach of Polimec is bound to explore new dimensions in capital management and technological optimization, stepping up to a higher level of fundraising models. 

Brendan Playford, Co-founder of Masa: Building the Next Billion-Dollar AI Ecosystem with Polkadot and Bittensor

Bittensor is leveraging the Substrate technology framework to catalyze the creation of a billion-dollar decentralized AI ecosystem, an innovation ecosystem known as DeAI, which is composed of computing hardware, data networks, and technical models. This is facilitated through subnetwork incentives, Bittensor API, and Subtensor blockchain architecture project incentive mechanisms. Currently, more than 100+ developers are using Masa to build AI applications, fully experiencing the efficient response workflow of validator-protected data networks to complete AI collaborative processing. They are moving towards the goal of using data to develop and build projects all over the world. Developers are invited to join the ranks to build agents, fine-tune, and collaborate on models, experiencing Masa's advanced technological concepts in data extraction, preprocessing, and other aspects. 

John Linden, CEO of Mythical Games: Mythical - The Future of Gaming

Web3 and classic IPs will lead the next evolution of the gaming industry. Linden emphasized two trends that have already transformed the gaming industry: the "free-to-play" model and the rise of "user-generated content," which have led to a surge in the number of global gamers and introduced new stakeholders in content creation. In the future, the gaming industry will undergo three major transformations: tradable assets and ownership, cloud gaming and distribution, and the enhancement of social interaction. He also stressed that the integration of Web3 will continue to change the gaming ecosystem through player ownership, market-driven economies, and decentralized cloud gaming, while classic IPs will drive the large-scale application of this technology. 

Alberto Viera, Head of Developer Relations at Moonbeam: Game Management

How can blockchain technology transform traditional game architecture and redefine the relationship between players and games? With blockchain, players can truly own in-game items, and NFTs and cross-chain technology bring new possibilities to gaming. However, most NFTs are still limited to individual games, and cross-chain functionality is not fully realized. In addition, Web3 gaming introduces community participation and governance tokens, where players are not just participants but also part of the game ecosystem. Moonbeam promotes the adoption of these innovative models by game studios by providing technical support, enhancing player control and engagement. 

Tyrone Pan, Developer Relations at Bifrost: Reshaping Cultural DNA? Expanding Polkadot with Bifrost Infrastructure

The concept of Restaking is not new and has been applied in Polkadot. By sharing inherent security across different parachains, staking of DOT and parachain tokens is not only used to ensure block security but also enhances overall shared security. However, re-staking also brings some challenges, especially the concentration issue of LSTs in the Ethereum ecosystem and the lack of cross-chain abstraction support. In response, Bifrost has proposed a solution to ensure that LSTs maintain their native staking attributes and achieve cross-chain abstraction, making them more suitable for Polkadot's Restaking mechanism. This combines parachains and relay chains to form a unified consensus security .

Nino Kutnjak, Chief Product Officer at Apillon: Embedded Wallets in the Polkadot Ecosystem

The development of wallets is still facing practical challenges such as high technical barriers, lack of security for private keys, and negative user experiences. In response, Apillon has created an open-source wallet project exploration with an embedded wallet SDK. By creating a standalone wallet service, it enhances user-friendliness and secure access settings, allowing flexible scheduling of wallet transactions across different devices and applications. Once the wallet is connected and authenticated by the user, it can generate new EVM accounts through SDK requests, generate new private keys through smart contracts, and store them encrypted, completing key operations within DApps. In the future, Apillon will continue to optimize wallet features, allowing more users to unlock the innovative experience of Web3 wallets.

Tony from CESS Network: CESS and DePIN: A Path of Collaborative Development

With the rapid growth of data storage demands driven by AI, machine learning, and the Internet of Things, data security issues have become increasingly prominent. CESS enhances data security, improves storage space utilization, and accelerates data retrieval through decentralized storage solutions, offering robust data privacy protection. CESS AI-LINK supports decentralized AI model training and ensures privacy and security through smart contracts. Its highly customizable architecture is widely applied in Web3 gaming, AIGC innovation, and decentralized data markets, promoting the innovative development of data security and privacy protection.

Catherine Bischoff, CEO of Sovereign Nature Initiative: Diversity in the Crypto Industry: Dolphins, Whales, and Other Companions Have Entered the Crypto World

The Sovereign Nature Initiative is dedicated to funding global biodiversity conservation and restoration projects by connecting digital products with real species. For instance, the 400 virtual avatars in the Wildsama game correspond to 400 real lions, while DOTphin is a dynamic avatar that evolves with user participation in the ecosystem, combining gamified experiences with real ecological impacts. Furthermore, by embedding over 120,000 NFTs into the Web3 platform with Bioacoustics data, Sovereign Nature Initiative has raised $380,000 through ecologically supported digital products and distributed over 1 million items globally. 

Tin Chung, Software Engineer at R0GUE IO: Seamless Blockchain Development Experience with Polkadot SDK and Pop CLI

Despite Polkadot's technical advantages such as shared security, high throughput, and interoperability, the fragmentation of user experience has limited its growth. How does the tool Pop CLI simplify the development process and elevate the developer experience to a new level? With Pop CLI, developers can more easily engage in smart contract and Parachain development, and access all runtime features. At the same time, Pop Network provides a wealth of templates that support EVM compatibility, asset and contract Parachain development, making the deployment of smart contracts and feature integration more convenient .

Nicolas Hussein, Developer Relations Engineer at PaperMoon: Establishing a Polkadot Developer Documentation Hub

Nicolas proposed the establishment of a Polkadot Developer Documentation Hub to address the current challenges faced by developers. These challenges include fragmented information sources, outdated documentation, and a lack of guidance on best practices, all of which increase the time required to get started and the difficulty of development. By centralizing all the resources needed by developers onto a single platform, the hub will offer technical guides, best practices, and opportunities for community contributions. The goal of the documentation center is to facilitate more efficient work within the Polkadot ecosystem by keeping the content up-to-date and supporting contributions from multiple parties, thereby promoting the growth of the ecosystem. In the future, feedback will be collected from the community both actively and passively to continuously improve the documentation.

Yuzhu, Business Development for Acala in the Asia-Pacific region: Acala 2.0 — Building the Web3 Financial Liquidity Layer

Acala, as a modular and hybrid chain, provides a seamless 1-Click experience for cross-chain interactions, allowing users to conduct cross-chain transactions without native tokens. The unified account system enables users to manage interactions across multiple chains with a single account, reducing the complexity of multi-chain operations. Acala has also expanded the LSTFi ecosystem by introducing Solana's jitoSol staking and offering a variety of decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, such as leveraged trading and lending platforms. Acala's JAM system aims to create a trustless, multi-core computing liquidity network, further promoting innovation in decentralization and liquidity. 

Yongfeng Li, CEO of OpenSquare: Methods for Secondary Financing in the Polkadot Ecosystem

Yongfeng Li pointed out that there are current issues in governance such as excessive influence by whales, irrational voting, and low-cost voting. To address these issues, he proposed the introduction of secondary financing into the Polkadot Treasury as a supplement to OpenGov. Funds are allocated through community donations, with voting weight based on the square root of donations, reducing the influence of whales and encouraging more people to participate. To deal with Sybil attacks and incentive issues, he proposed a voting weight system based on on-chain activity and Web2 accounts, and introduced a reward mechanism to encourage small donations. Future plans include collecting feedback, setting up a reward treasury, and promoting the construction of cooperative platforms.

Michael Bennallack, Co-founder of Mandala: Connecting Governments, Enterprises, and Retail to Onboard the Next 100 Million Users

The core concept of Mandala is to seamlessly connect governments, businesses with the public and retail applications through blockchain, especially to promote mass adoption in emerging markets like Indonesia. The Indonesian market has tremendous potential, with a technologically skilled population that trusts cryptocurrency. Leveraging the team's experience, Mandala has successfully acquired a Polkadot parachain and developed a digital identity solution, IDCHAIN, in collaboration with the government, which is expected to support more than 10 million new wallets. Mandala has also partnered with banks, hospitals, and gold companies, planning to onboard a large number of users and data onto the chain, while also establishing a blockchain center in Bali to support development.

Ghan Vashishtha, Co-founder and CTO of Zeeve: Transforming Parachain Launches with Perfuse

Ghan Vashishtha shared insights on how Perfuse can simplify the process of launching and managing parachains. Despite the complexity of node configuration and ongoing management for parachains, Perfuse makes the entire process easy with one-click templates, monitoring tools, and an intuitive user interface. Web3 developers and enterprises can quickly deploy parachains with Perfuse, going from testnet to mainnet in just a few clicks. Additionally, Perfuse offers 24/7 monitoring, security audits, and backups to ensure the security and scalability of parachains. 

Luna Hao, Business Director at Jinse Finance: Connecting Communities and Markets through OpenGov

Luna Hao has proposed a vision of connecting communities and markets through OpenGov, emphasizing the role of media in the Web3 era, akin to an octopus reaching multiple fields and promoting global cooperation. She believes that the next phase of Web3 will rely on collaboration among all parties to foster the integration and development of a broader global community and market.

Thank you to all the guests who shared insightful perspectives and industry foresight at Polkadot Decoded Asia 2024. It is also a pleasure to have partners who focus on Web3 join us in Singapore for an unforgettable two-day industry event. The new surprises belonging to the Polkadot ecosystem and the development of the Web3 industry never cease, and the new directions driven by technological innovation still require continuous breakthroughs and exploration by every tech enthusiast. We look forward to seeing you next year!