One of the key contributing factors of Web3’s success and its rapid expansion is, apparently, Filipinos. This is according to BlockChainSpace Founder, Peter Ing, as revealed to us before his final panel of the day for the Philippine Web3 Festival 2022 held last November 14 to 18 at Taguig, BGC.
BlockChainSpace is one of the major organizers and a strong proponent of expanding the Philippine crypto space even further.
The Philippine Web3 Festival is a 5-day event where industry experts, Web 3 game developers, publishers, Guilds, Web 3 Suppliers, and Payment Gateway partners come together for this massive sharing of knowledge, best practices, plotting trends and creating decisive networks. This is also the first time global leaders from the world of crypto and web3 convened in the Philippines for this – creating an important mark for the country as a hub for Web3 and crypto development.
Web3, or the third iteration of the internet where instead of just having the ability to consume and create media, you also have the ability to own data as well. Big concepts of Web3 includes decentralization, security, free-flowing banking, and interoperability – all of these riding on the backs of blockchain technology where crypto currencies are minted.
Mounting a huge event on Web3 gaming and inviting global leaders to the Philippines is no easy feat. That’s why we just had to ask what inspired BlockChainSpace to help co-organize this. Apparently it all boils down to collaboration and housing everyone in one hub – something BlockChainSpace knows extensively a lot.
See, what a lot of people may not know, BlockChainSpace started nurturing brick-and-mortal business before they transitioned to the digital space.
“BlockChainSpace basically started off as a physical co-working space where we field offline communities. We used to host a lot of (on-ground) events and we used to nurture those communities helping them to grow in the offline setting,” said Peter.
Interesting enough, most of those communities they helped nurturing were already participating in the Web3 space.
“When the pandemic hit, we saw a lot of these communities jump online, create various discord servers and that’s when we decide to help and create a space for them – hence BlockChainSpace was born. These online communities are called Guilds and we’re providing infrastructure for them by providing various software solutions.
So, each guild is managing a lot of different people in it, they have various challenges. A lot of these communities are running business models on Web3 where they manage assets, earn revenues, and disburses payment. What we do is provide software solutions to help ease the burden on all these asset management and data tracking so they can just focus on building their community and onboarding more people.”
Essentially, BlockChainSpace provides a safe space for Guilds to thrive as the group also supposedly helps them with financing (should they require it). But even with all of this and the massive 2000+ attendees of Philippine Web3 Festival, crypto and Web3 gaming are still hitting some challenges along the way.
“[For] crypto and web3 native, like, they understand the need for this and how the software solution can help their community further. It’s those who may not be as equipped to understand what Web3 and Web3 gaming is that’s posing the challenge.”
And truly there are a lot of questions about Web3. It is, still, a highly technical landscape to understand, much so as to maneuver around it.
“Being a nascent technology, the user experience isn’t quite there yet, it’s not mature,” quips Peter Ing.
“An example of this is like in NFT games. When you play the game, it looks exactly like any other kind of game, but it also involves things like wallet, tokens, and exchanges and that’s where people (can) get really confused. Like, how do I open up a wallet, what’s a seed phrase? How do I make a transaction, how do I send a token from this wallet to that wallet? What is gas? And those are just scratching the surface. So, there’s a lot of technical details that still need to be taught by communities to help people understand how they can participate in this space.”
Farcana’s Booth at the PH Web3 Fest 2022
But somehow, events like Philippine Web3 Festival, which showcases games that look and feel like actual fun games baked into a Web3 foundation, can help ease more people into the community. Obviously, a huge factor for the rise of Web3 gaming was brought about by the boom of Axie infinity and the promise of huge cashouts from play to earn games. But one criticism that we here at UnGeek always encounter when we talk to people about NFT and Play-to-Earn Games is that somehow the software focuses more on the earn part rather than the play.
The games showcased and developers present in the event are slowly realizing this as well that’s why we’re definitely going to see more triple-A looking games on the Web3 gaming space.
Intergalactic Racing NFT with AstroXP: Holotraxx
Whether we like it or not, Web3 is here to stay and game developers, studios and publishers (especially major publishers) are busy developing and understanding the platform further. However, Peter Ing believes fervently that it’s the Filipinos that are driving force behind the rapid expansion of Web3 and Web3 gaming as a whole.
“I’m really glad that you came down to Philippines Web3 Festival. This is our opportunity to show that the Philippines is really leading innovation in this space. And when we say leading, it means that you have people that are building in this space, creating content (and value) and not just people opening up MetaMask wallets and being just users. They’re actually building in this space and actually showing the world like what kind of innovations (they) can come up with this. And I think that’s a great thing. Filipinos should be very proud, and they should identify other Filipinos to collaborate with and see how they’re existing skillsets can apply to Web3 Innovation moving forward.”
For more on the Philippine Web3 Festival, check out our event wrap-up article and follow them social at: https://www.facebook.com/phweb3festival