🟠 LIVE - Avalanche Summit Day 1: Emin Gün Sirer and AVAX in Barcelona

After a particularly successful event last year, Avalanche is back with its famous Avalanche Summit in Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia. As always, Avalanche is going all out, and Cointribune is excited to bring you all the latest news and important information straight from the heights of Barcelona in the heart of the beautiful Poble Español. As a blockchain technology journalist, I can’t wait to cover this event and share insights with our readers. Stay tuned for more updates on Day-2 and Day-3!

Leadership Duo at the Helm of Avalanche: A Glimpse into the World of Blockchain

The Avalanche Summit event welcomes attendees with an immersive experience, featuring a live band, a massive tent adorned with the red token colors, and dozens of booths and stages scattered throughout the Poble Español, which offers a representation of Spain’s diverse regions and cultures. From techno music to chess tournaments, Avalanche showcases a variety of activities.

The event provides a unique opportunity to explore the world of blockchain technology, with a focus on Avalanche’s leadership team and their vision for the future of decentralized finance. The summit promises to deliver insightful discussions and engaging activities, sure to inspire and educate both blockchain enthusiasts and newcomers alike.

Emin Gün Sirer, Founder et CEO of Ava Labs

After a welcome coffee, the president of Ava Labs took the stage to kick off the Avalanche Summit event in a circle at the heart of the tent. John Wu welcomed guests and immediately introduced the founder and visionary behind Avalanche, Emin Gün Sirer. As a former professor at the prestigious Cornell University in the United States, Sirer is one of the pioneers of Proof-of-Work and one of the foremost researchers on topics such as mining, decentralization, and many other key subjects.

Sirer then took to another stage to deliver his speech, diving straight into the heart of the matter.

“It has never been easier to be a global citizen”

Emin Gün Sirer

He then discusses the issues that arise from asset centralization, including theft, lack of trust, and growing inequality. The solution he proposes is to regain control through decentralization. In a world where there is no longer an all-powerful guardian and where new currencies can freely interact on blockchains described as “public spaces“.

Decentralization, the new revolution?

Emin Gün Sirer inquires as to why it took so long to bring about this revolution and provides three factors in response.

• The technology to scale decentralization does not yet exist, but subnets are one of the key elements for improving scalability.
• It was very difficult to achieve high performance without sacrificing elements of decentralization, but Avalanche is getting closer to this solution.
• Finally, the crypto community was chasing dreams but not taking action for the present. That is why Avalanche started with a small community but over time was able to convince many people.

Emin Gün Sirer emphasizes the importance of collaboration among developers, welcoming innovations, and working together on technologies that will serve today rather than a theoretical future. Bridges and consensus are among these direct solutions.

The CEO of Ava Labs even makes a small jab and tells us that Avalanche has built a cryptocurrency exchange so secure that even SBF could not use it to steal funds.

With these words, Emin Gün Sirer launches this 3-day Avalanche Summit event where many discussions and debates will take place. Cointribune will keep you updated through our live articles and a few others to come.

Let the discussions begin

Following a promising launch, the Avalanche Summit continues to impress us with various options for investors, users, enthusiasts, builders, and other members of the AVAX ecosystem. Avalanche values its community, and what better way to relax between partnership discussions than to visit the free massage tent? Ava Labs has hired masseurs and set up massage chairs. Additionally, beverages are available throughout the event. It’s worth noting that the temperature is 23 degrees with intense sunshine in the country’s second-largest city.

The massage tent offered by Ava Labs provides a comfortable respite, but discussions are also taking place under the main stage tent. The first crucial topic in the ecosystem is “Sustainable Reward Systems for Blockchain Gaming.” This expert panel provides insight into the future of rewards in Web3 gaming. We will provide a dedicated article on this topic shortly.

We have previously discussed the ReFi phenomenon, finance in service of ecology, a major topic in one of the other discussion theaters of the event. Specifically, how to design a green infrastructure for tomorrow and carbon market tokenization. This latter point is significant since Avalanche positions itself as the leader in asset and value tokenization. More details on tokenization will be provided in our upcoming article.

However, the Avalanche Summit does not welcome us in Spain for nothing. At 12:30, the paella marathon begins, featuring numerous meat and vegetarian tapas.

A busy day for the AVAX community.

The first day is not even over yet, and it is difficult to cover all the events and discussions taking place at the heart of the Catalan capital. With four stages – Main, Subnet, Theater, and Auditorium – as well as the Eco-dome and parallel events, one must be highly engaged to keep up with the fast-paced activities of Avalanche!

It is not feasible to cover all of the topics discussed, but we will mention a few to provide you with an overview. In the theater, we delved into the complex subject of Learn-to-Earn, which is difficult to sustain in the long run. Coinbase and Binance have attempted to tackle this issue with their own models, while others view Learn-to-Earn as the only way to bring developers or “builders” into the ecosystem. By sponsoring training programs on blockchain platforms like Avalanche or Solana, for example, one can ensure an increase in developers within these ecosystems. This is how many projects are attempting to bridge the gap between developers and blockchains, by creating a learning medium.

In a different vein, on the main stage, Mark Yeend from SHRAPNEL taught us about the keys to a successful marketing launch, including essential information on what types of media to use, where to invest funds, how to find the right marketing agencies, and, of course, how to secure the right media partnerships!

Numerous projects are launching into Web3. Development can be very expensive and may leave no room for marketing budgets, which is a very risky strategy. Even though Bitcoin did not require a marketing team, it remains one of the few exceptions. Therefore, it is important to work on one’s strategy and optimize Web3’s assets to increase community engagement. One prominent example is the creation of a free-mint, preferably multi-chain, to develop one’s community and massively share digital assets.

On another topic, Roy Confino of The Lemonade Foundation presents how blockchain can become a unique tool to combat famine issues worldwide. How? Through blockchain-based micro-insurance. This is how a coalition of companies under the name Lemonade Crypto Climate Action, including Avalanche, ChainLink, and many others, is helping farmers in need. These projects mainly target countries where traditional insurance no longer reaches, particularly in Africa and Asia. Thus, blockchain continues to assist those who do not have access to the banking or financial system.

The first day comes to a close

To wrap up the day, two major topics were discussed on the various stages of the Avalanche Summit:

• Firstly, the future of stablecoins was discussed with Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave companies, and Jacquelyn Melinek from TechCrunch. For Stani, although the Aave team has successfully built liquidity protocols and numerous other applications, one of the most important elements missing from the ecosystem is an on-chain payment method. This is why their stablecoin Go is currently in Testnet. The unique feature of Go is that it is fully community-controlled. Indeed, a DAO decides on almost all key elements, such as the percentage of returns, the aggressive or conservative approach, etc…. In this same logic, subnets are a small revolution in the future of payment methods, and subnets and supernets must therefore evolve together.

• Regarding governance by DAO, the other interesting point mentioned is that DAOs slow down project evolution because it is no longer a small team that decides everything, but an entire community. However, Stani defends this model as being more fair and virtuous in the long term. Finally, the CEO of Aave Protocol finds it interesting that the majority of stablecoins are tied to the US dollar, as users choose a stablecoin for its performance and values, rather than just its affiliated currency. Stani concludes, however, on the importance of developing stablecoins on other currencies in the future to offer users maximum options.

To conclude, a discussion was held on the future of e-sports in Web3 gaming with Dan Dinh, president of the world’s largest e-sports organization TSM, and the head of the Gaming department at Ava Labs, Ed Chang. Indeed, Avalanche and TSM have signed a new partnership aimed at boosting Web3 in e-sports and creating new opportunities. We will return to this topic in more detail in the article dedicated to gaming on Avalanche, which will be released soon.

On these high notes, we conclude this first day with numerous stimulating discussions and high-quality Spanish wine, providing the perfect setting to meet Emin Gün Sirer over a couple of cervezas. See you tomorrow!

To keep up with the second day of the event, please join us for the live article of the Avalanche Summit Day-2!