Future Blockchain Summit and Fintech Surge brought together industry pioneers from around the world to discuss the latest advancements in web3, crypto, banking and decentralised finance.

On the second day of the summit, the Future Blockchain Stage hosted a series of insightful sessions focused on the theme of “DeFi Evolution, Innovations & mass adoption.”

During the opening keynote, Brian Rose, Founder & Host, London Real, United Kingdom, spoke about ‘Mindsets to Thrive in the Highly Competitive Blockchain Market’, highlighting the importance of ownership, discipline and leadership in personal and professional growth.

Extreme ownership

“I love this concept of ‘extreme ownership’ – it means that everything in the world is your fault. Which means everything in the world is under your control, and that, in turn means, that you can take ownership and fix it. If you own a problem, then you own the solution,” said Rose.

Meanwhile industry leaders Mandy Naidoo, Chief Compliance Officer, Yellow Card, South Africa; John Le Blanc, Chief Legal Officer, Figment Inc, US; and Mickey Graham, Co-Founder & General Partner, Metalayer Ventures/ Former Head of Growth, Chainlink Labs, US, joined a panel focused on‘Cross-Industry DeFi Applications & Innovations: Utilising AI to Expand the Scope’. Cross-chain transactions now make up 20% of all DeFi activity, highlighting the critical role of interoperability. The panelists discussed real-world applications like decentralised insurance, tokenised real estate, and blockchain-based voting systems, illustrating the innovative use cases driving the evolution of blockchain technology.

Naidu commented: “If we are actually looking to bring and leverage blockchain across Africa and the world, we need to step away from our PR thinking and look at how we are actually going to use AI and blockchain to solve real world problems. Across Africa, peer to peer transactions have increased dramatically – the question is how do we identify them? If people are sitting in less technologically advanced areas, how do we assist them and aid payments. What we are looking at across the industry is an innovative way to step away from the old-world banking and way of thinking, to develop real-world real-time solutions.”

Spotlight on digital banking and finance

Day two of Fintech Surge’s agenda at the Future of Money stage (Hall 10) focused on digital banking and finance. The day kicked off with a ‘Visionary Dialogue: The Future of Money’, discussing the realities of fintech and emerging technologies with Ronit Ghose, Global Head, Future of Finance, at Citi.

As he explored the rapidly changing world of money, he said: “The future of money is going to be driven by a mixture of artificial intelligence, tokenisation and a mixed reality world, where what we used to call the metaverse or extended reality is going to become the next platform for commerce.”

Ghose also highlighted how semi-autonomous and autonomous agents will revolutionise consumer and small business finance on a five-to-seven-year horizon.

In addition, a conversation between experts, ’From ‘Next Wave’ to ‘Tide’—The Case for Embedded Finance’, looked at whether embedded finance is poised to redefine traditional banking. With the fintech landscape exploding, panelists discussed whether they think regulators can keep up.

Setting framework

Sailesh Malhotra, General Manager - GCC Region at Geidea, said: “You've got hundreds of thousands of fintechs all over the world innovating or coming up with one new product every minute. Regulators, at the end of the day will be outpaced, but the principles of the regulators stand good, meaning that regulators are not unrealistic or asking for anything which is not justified, or slowing down the growth. What they are simply saying is to keep within the parameters of the set framework, and then do whatever you want to do. However, fintechs are fintechs, and they will always figure out a way to breach it.”

During the session, Kelvin Tan, CEO of audax, also commented: “Everyone talks embedded finance, and Synapse as an example, and they’re all very Western-focused, however the world’s largest embedded finance player is WeBank in China, with 490 million customers and hardly any instances of fraud. The regulatory constraints around WeBank’s execution are massively comprehensive, so why is it that we don’t showcase something like that and have it as a reference point in conversations around scalability and how embedded finance can be instituted across, not just individuals, but SME’s and multiple product sets?”

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