I've got an hour or so to kill before my flight so I thought I'd take a moment to reflect on my takeaways from the Summit

Digital Home

The first thing that comes to mind is that Malta's 'Blockchain Island' forms part of a bigger picture for Malta that has designs on being the home of digital innovation. Be it closed circuit proprietary AI systems or open sourced decentralised Blockchains, Malta wants to be seen as a hotbed where digital projects can strive. At a time where many are fretting over the 'bear market' and many governments are either 'waiting or seeing' or outright hostile to cryptocurrency, the forward thing nature of the Maltese governments approach is to be applauded.

We'll have to see how this will all pan out in the long run.

Same old crypto convos

The conference was well run and came with the usual decadence you'd expect from a high crypto conference. I always find it ironic that after days of indulgence and talk of institutional investments someone pipes up and mentions 'banking the unbanked', the perennial topic that everyone agrees on yet precious little is done to progress.

The general conversations and talking points were the same as I've heard over the last few years, only being conducted by new players.

Questions around the 'appropriate use case' of blockchain. Plenty of projects 'going live imminently.' With the few projects that have gone live either pointing to multi-year roadmaps before they see real traction or having to pivot to realise the intended benefit to their communities.

Services on top of services

The key thing I will take away though is that there is a big focus on services. Not just the government as I highlighted in my previous vlog. There are now lots of projects delivering Exchanges and Wallets. I understand the motivations. Something like a Centralised Exchange platform has a business model that those outside crypto can readily understand. Also it easy to 'service' crypto users why remaining (largely) agnostic as to whether there is genuine use for cryptos or whether the activities are purely speculative. As long as there is an exchange of value and fees to charge, it is all good.

However we are well stocked for Exchanges and Wallets, the emergence of more competition in these areas begs the question, where will the users come from?

More attendees than users?

According to the organisers over 8000 people attended the Summit. Most actively looking to position themselves or develop businesses in the crypto landscape. Yet how many cryptocurrency platforms actually have over 8000 active daily users? (Buying and selling over centralised exchanges does count as platform usage!)

There is certainly a gap that needs be bridged between the enthusiasm of those eager build businesses in blockchain and actual usage of blockchain applications.

How do we move forward?

A good starting would be those in crypto 'eating their own turtle' or dog food.

A second would be to build on existing platforms before launching 'yet another' platform. In my view new platforms should be borne out of lived understanding of the pain points of existing platforms. As I've mentioned it's far easier to sell a shiny new idea on paper than navigate through the messy maze of a truly decentralised platform. Particularly if the 'cost of failure' of your new project is a bag full of cash and a lambo courtesy of a wildly over-valued ICO!

I think a combination of more people who profess an interested in 'blockchain' actually using the technology as it exists in its many forms and developers building on the learnings of existing protocols will help accelerate growth in the blockchain and bootstrap mass adoption.