The blockchain ecosystem is constantly evolving, yet there always seems to be one overarching sector dominating at a given time. For example, decentra
The blockchain ecosystem is constantly evolving, yet there always seems to be one overarching sector dominating at a given time. For example, decentralized finance (DeFi) projects received an impressive amount of venture capital funding in 2021, making it the most invested sector last year. Findings further show that nonfungible tokens (NFTs) were the second most invested sector, while Web3 and infrastructure ranked third.
Now, Web3 is proving to be the most sought-after investment sector in the blockchain industry. New findings from Cointelegraph Research confirm this, showing that Web3 captured around 42% of all individual deals during Q2 this year, while DeFi came in a distant second at 16%. Increasing interest in Web3 has also become apparent as venture capital giants like Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) close billion-dollar funds dedicated to investing in Web3 projects.
Web3 has also captured the attention of Wing Venture Capital, a Silicon-Valley-based investment firm focused on early-stage enterprise technology companies. Wing recently hosted a virtual Web3 Builders Summit with Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX, and Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, to help early-stage founders better understand best practices for building Web3 ecosystems.
Zach DeWitt, partner at Wing and host of the summit, told Cointelegraph that the firm has been investing in Web3 since 2017 but that structurally there is more capital than ever before dedicated to the sector. “The best time to invest is in bear markets historically. Prices are down and tourists are scared off,” he said.
Come join me tomorrow at 10am PST for discussions with @SBF_FTX and @aeyakovenko about building in Web3!https://t.co/aARnfa9GRM
— Zach DeWitt (@ZacharyDeWitt) July 18, 2022
Yet, confusion around Web3 still remains, as DeWitt noted that although Wing conducts many interviews with founders, there are still a handful of early-stage companies that may not be aware of how to build and scale. Given this, DeWitt commented that the recent Web3 Builders Summit aimed to address these issues. “We wanted this virtual summit to focus on building, scaling and founder lessons — things that the early Web3 community can absorb and which will hopefully make the whole ecosystem stronger,” he remarked.
Learning from mistakes
Wing’s Web3 Builder’s Summit began with Bankman-Fried discussing some of the mistakes he made early in his career. “There were plenty of things we screwed up,” the executive admitted. For example, Bankman-Fried shared that an embarrassing moment for him occurred when FTX was initially launched, noting that, at the time, he thought that 99% of uptime would be a great achievement:
“I thought this would be damn good, even though 100% would have been better. But this didn’t turn out to be correct, as it turns out that it’s incredibly important for customers to trade whenever they want to trade. It would be horrific if we are down for even 10 minutes every month, so we had to go back and rework some of our systems.”
Bankman-Fried also mentioned that early on, FTX was focused heavily on product prioritization, yet he noted that many products the crypto exchange initially launched did not receive traction.
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“When you look at institutional traders, order throughput means a lot. We should have prioritized that earlier,” he said. Bankman-Fried further pointed out that FTX customers were phished during the exchange’s early days. He said that FTX had security features that could have prevented this, yet these were optional. “Many of these features are now mandatory because we realized this was really important for our users. Security can’t be optional,” he remarked.
Yakovenko, who formerly worked at Qualcomm leading the development of operating systems, told Cointelegraph that he has helped develop products such as the Amazon Fire phone and other devices that have previously failed. With this in mind, Yakovenko explained that he intends to build Solana’s Android mobile device Saga for a small audience consisting of the Solana developer ecosystem and the crypto community. “The initial user target are developers, hard core Solana folks that use Magic Eden NFTs and DeFi. There are already about 2 million monthly active users, but our goal is to reach 50,000 active Web3 mobile users moving forward,” he said.
During his fireside chat, Yakovenko added that founders launching Web3 products should pick their partners intelligently. To put this in perspective, Yakovenko explained that he connected with Bankman-Fried early in his career, noting that the FTX CEO told him there was a need to make blockchains faster. Yakovenko explained that FTX’s engineers then slammed the Solana network, which led the company to develop Project Serum, a decentralized derivatives exchange for Solana. “Early-stage founders need partners who are aligned on their…
cointelegraph.com