Blockchain leaders gathered for the 8th IOS Old Friends Meeting

Press release

The IOSG Old Friends Meetup, one of the most influential blockchain events in Asia, was successfully concluded on December 19th in Shenzhen, China. The two-day event with a giant summit and the “Metaverse Festival” drew an audience that included founders, developers, investors and company leaders from 150 projects. The flagship project of the decentralized economy.

More than 2,000 visitors were there. Guest speakers are Eli Ben Sasson from StarkWare, Chang-Wu Chen from imToken, Harry Kalodne from Arbitrum, Alex Gluchowsk from Make a Different Labs, Benjamin Jones from Optimism, Zachary Williamson from Aztec, Kain Warwick from Synthetix, Sandeep Nailwal from Polygon, Kieran Warwick from Illuvium, Gabby Dizon from Yield Guild Games, Jiho from Axie Infinity, and many more.

December 18: Scaling Conference

The focus of the scaling conference is on the exchange of knowledge and the discussion of how the entire industry can use solutions successfully. Day One is jointly organized by StarkWare, imToken and Arbitrum and supported by partners MatterLabs, Optimism, Aurora, Aztec, Polygon, Celer, xDai, deBridge, Hop Protocol, Chainlink, Graph, Synthetix, ChainNews and Cointelegraph. The flagship event presented 15 panels and keynotes on aggregation, cross-chain connectivity, EVM, DeFi scaling, MEVs, game-centric chains, layer two solutions, DApps and an early conference on the current market landscape and what the future is for 2022 and also has it ready.

Jocy Lin, founding partner of IOSG Ventures, delivered a keynote entitled “Scale and Acceleration: The Beginning of the Website3.0 Era”.

“Our investment principle is the ‘three rights’: invest at the right time, contribute in the right direction and work with the right teams.” We strive to find the most visionary founders in the industry at an early stage and to help them with them to build and design the best possible processes to achieve their ambitions. It’s important to us to work with founders who have solid community management and leadership skills. ”

Jocy continued: “From the infrastructure to the application layer, our focus areas this year include scaling to level two, cross-chain, DeFi, GameFi and SocialFi.

“For layer two, IOSG values ​​the future of the modular blockchain. Not too hasty, but Layer 2 solutions are very likely to displace 80% of transactions on Layer solutions in the next year. Our investment logic in layer two is that opportunities continue to lead to layer two, middleware (cross-chain bridge) and the DApp ecosystem. The key to solving the scalability problem is to separate the execution layer from data availability.

Over the past two years we have invested in infrastructure projects such as Starkware, Aztec and Arbitrum. Going forward, we will invest in other middleware such as cross-chain infrastructure and data platforms that make it easier for developers to deploy on two levels. We will also invest in a new generation of DApps made possible by the unique advantages of Layer 2 technology.

As for DeFi, Ethereum remains the most diverse DeFi ecosystem. While this year the entire market on Ethereum has matured, IOSG believes that future innovations will still take place on Layer 2 DeFi protocols based on the original protocols. In addition, the primality, opportunity, and NFT financialization of multiple chains are new areas to explore.

The most important are the three characteristics of decentralization, composability and permissionlessness. In the future, derivative CEXs will be successively replaced by DEXs.

We have had great success with aggregators on the World Wide Web2, and when Internet3 users reach the 100 million mark, Net3 aggregators will become very important too. The number one reason IOSG invests in 1 inch / Matcha is efficiency and ease of use.

For GameFi we think first and foremost that the core of GameFi is not the game, but the fundamental shift from a centralized entertainment supply to a decentralized fun production and consumption model, cooperation and democratization.

Clans are the first port of call for World Wide Web2 players joining GameFi. Currently the market is quite fragmented and is being developed by local guilds.

In the gambling sector, we invest in visionaries who strive to revolutionize the means of production by empowering and encouraging individuals to make meaningful contributions to their communities.

SocialFi is one of the hottest topics in crypto this year. We see an opportunity for Net3 SocialFi in the predicament of Web2. Property is the key to today’s problems. In the booming era of the real estate economy, we invested in social tokenization / NFT platforms like Roll and JennyDAO, which allow crypto to directly affect society. Lately we have been focusing on projects that promote the creative industries. IOSG has invested in platforms such as MintSongs, Pianity and CreatorNFTs. We believe that the Web3 social platforms will grow soon. We are Galaxy seed investors and we are still looking in this direction, be it infrastructure, middleware or application layers.

Data analysis is the last direction we shared, and it’s also one of the most undervalued markets. We forecast that the market size of the Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Data Services market will grow exponentially through 2025.

In the public chain market, we strongly support Polkadot as we believe it will be a layer meta-protocol that is interoperable in the heterogeneous blockchain world. ”

December 19th: Metaverse Carnival

Aged Friends Reunion also brought the concept of the Metaverse to the stage and integrated over 15 keynotes and panels to find out how things went in the “Meta” and to delve into the innovations via the “Metaverse” “Lanes”. Supported by friends M7e, Axie Infinity, Illuvium, YGG, Aavegotchi, Roll, Move, Major Time Studios, Alethea AI and MetaverseLabs, Metaverse Carnival brought together industry decision-makers to discuss trends, the latest industry trends and different perspectives on identity, social-fi, creators to discuss economics, crypto art, GameFi, DAO, investments and any other advances in capacity building for ecosystem development.

Additionally, IOSG has partnered with Dragon Metropolis (the largest property in Decentraland) to create a virtual website for the Old Friends Reunion event for attendees who cannot come on-site to have fun together.

There is also the New Adventurer crypto art exhibition co-organized by IOSG, BCA and SuperRare to share the appeal of NFT and modern art with audiences.

IOSG Eighth Old Friends Reunion is the premier annual conference and exhibition focused on blockchain development and mainstream adoption. It’s not just a reunion, it’s an open-minded, informative, and thought-provoking event presented by the world’s leading innovators who make change and prominent leaders in the blockchain ecosystem. The currents of the world can never stop blockchain enthusiasts from moving forward. They come together to share, shine and always drive the recovery. We look forward to the next meeting in 2022!

About IOSG Ventures

The IOSG was founded in 2017 and is a community-friendly and thesis-based investment fund. We make friends with the founders and believe in persistence. As the first crypto fund to invest in the future of Website3, IOSG is committed to finding entrepreneurs from the decentralized economy and providing them with their first start-up capital.

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