Permissionless 2022 – Conference Summary

About Permissionless Conference 

Permissionless conference was a 3-day event where over 7,000 attendees gathered to hear the speeches of 150+ brightest names in the crypto industry. This marked the event as the largest DeFi & Metaverse conference to date, with topics ranging from metaverse, NFTs, Decentralized finance, Web3 innovations, and institutional adoption. 

The event took place in Palm Beach, Florida, from the 17th – the 19th of May. It was quite a particular time given the recent collapse of UST. Consequently, involving a lot of discussion during and after the event about UST and algorithmic stablecoins. 

Image credits: Permissionless

Permissionless in Numbers:

• Over 7,000 attendees
• 2,000 developers
• 150+ speakers
• Over 1,000 companies 

The conference offered side events, such as the VIP “Gatsby Whites” Dinner at the Palm Beach National Croquet Club, the NFT Collector’s Happy Hour with Dez Bryant in the Permissionless x OpenSea NFT Gallery, and, of course, after parties. 

Speakers at Permissionless Palm Beach 

• Ryan Sean Adams-  Co-Founder at  Bankless
• Matt Hougan- Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise
• Jake Chervinsky- Head of Policy at  Blockchain Association
• Chris Dixon-  General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz
• Perianne Boring- Founder & President at  Chamber of Digital Commerce
• Stani Kulechov- Founder & CEO at  Aave
• Do Kwon-  Founder & CEO at  Terra
• Bill Barhydt- Founder and CEO at  Abra
• Konstantin Richter- CEO & Founder at  Blockdaemon
• Meltem Demirors- Chief Strategy Officer at CoinShares Capital
• Sandeep Nailwal-Co-Founder at  Polygon
• Kyle Samani- Co-Founder & Managing Partner at   Multicoin Capital
• Haseeb Qureshi- Managing Partner at  Dragonfly Capital

Image credit: Permissionless Conference 

Permissionless Agenda

1st Day 17th May

Some of the key talks from Day 1:

• The State of Crypto in 2022 
• Building for Web3 
• DeFI: The Financial Backbone of the New Economy 

Panel discussion: Building for Web3 with Surojit Chatterjee

Image credits: Permissionless

The second day was marked by Surojit Chatterjee, the founder of Coinbase, who shared the intention of creating a wallet that provides access to decentralized finance, self-custody innovations, and easy fiat on-ramps. In addition, the new wallet can split its keys with Coinbase, providing self-custody and protection. 

After a quick coffee break, Robinhood Crypto’s Co-Founders Vlad Tenev and Baiju joined the same boat with Coinbase. They shared that they also want to launch an improved digital wallet that is non-custodial, enabling users to hold their keys, have decentralized finance, store NFTs, and trade without worrying about network fees. 

Both companies want to add features based on intelligent safety security- an essential component because, at the moment, Web3 lacks safety checks in non-custodial wallets. Before any “mistake” transaction, users would be able to have a warning alert depending on their activity with the added novel layer of security and protection. 

2nd Day 18th May 

Some of the key talks from Day 2:

• Raising the Standard for Security and Integrity in DeFI
• Web3 Social Media: Can Crypto Improve our Social Media Lives?
• Why Decentralization and Self Custody Matters
• Stable coins! Crypto’s Killer App
• DeFi Mullet: Integration DeFi & Fintech

Panel discussion DeFi Mullet: Integration DeFi & Fintech 

Speakers:

• Mohamed Elkasstawi from Tribal Credit– Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer
• Ryan Sean Adams from Bankless– Co-Founder
• Rex Hygate from DeFiSafety– Founder & President
• Johann Kerbrat from Robinhood Crypto -Chief Technology Officer
• Lincoln Bartlett  from Anchorage Digital– Head of Agency Trading
• Stephen Kenny from Aave Companies– Institutional Manager

Aave presented its aim towards a decent decentralized social infrastructure. 

Privacy and ownership of data and content are essential for users, which led to the development of decentralized Web3 social platforms. Their project proposal is called “Lens Protocol,” which provides a composable framework and graph which allows developers to construct social applications within the ecosystem. 

During the project presentation,  Aave’s co-owner and the CEO held their presentation on the Lens Protocol project and explained the features for users they intend to implement: decentralized profiles, the ability to carry their content, data, audience, and history in the ecosystem. The user profile is stored as NFT, and every interaction on the platform is linked to the blockchain enabling users to have non-custodial control over their content or data. 

Panel discussion: Stable coins! Crypto’s Killer App

Image credits: Permissionless

Speakers: 

•  Kate Rooney from CNBC–  Technology Reporter
• Sam Kazemian from Frax Finance – Founder
• Nic Carter from Castle Island Ventures -Partner
• Catherine Gu from Visa – Director & Head of CBDC & Crypto Infrastructure Build
• Sam MacPherson from MakerDAO -Lead Developer
• Joao Reginatto from Circle– VP & Product Management

Nic Carter discussed UST, saying that its algorithm mechanism is not reflecting stablecoin because of its financial engineering, hoping for a complete decentralized stablecoin due to its ethos around composability, privacy, and autonomy. 

Sam MacPherson and Sam Kazemian shared that the stablecoin market is working on an innovative way of collateralizing stablecoins with non-digital assets. 

The general concept shared involves a long process for implementation, and it is under evaluation of how the market will develop and grow despite recent events. 

3rd Day 19th of May 

Some of the key talks from Day 3:

• Play and Earn Gaming
• The Verge of the Merge: Eth’s Transition to Proof of Stake 
• The Future of Financial Services and Digital Assets
• Where Web2 and Web3 Collide
• Wallets: The Gateway to Web3

Panel discussion: Play and Earn Gaming 

Speakers involved:

•  Kieran Warwick from Illuvium – Co-Founder
• Jeff ‘Jihoz’ Zirlin from Axie Infinity – Growth Lead & Co-Founder
• Kelvin Koh from Spartan Group – Co-Founder & Co-Managing Partner

In-game tokenization has increased in popularity, and users can have NFT from just playing games since their gaming experience can be monetized. The only turn-off with on-chain games is that they lack fun and entertainment. This is why Kieran Warwick is working towards solving this problem and intends to innovate gaming through distributed ledgers by creating an exciting game and building a fantastic community as a base. Web2 and Web3 developers strive to give users fun games that are entertaining to play while maintaining an innovative digital and economic system. 

Panel discussion: The Verge of the Merge: Eth’s Transition to Proof of Stake 

Speakers involved: 

• David Hoffman from Bankless – Co-Founder
• Lorien Gabel from Figment– CEO
• Justin Drake from The Ethereum Foundation– Researcher

Though institutions wish to devote many resources to discussing Ethereum, they are also developing alternatives that can operate in unison with this function. Opposite to this, platforms with DeFi, gaming, and the creative economy, where immense worth is placed by digital assets, are receiving a great deal of attention.

ETH transforms into an asset that will lead to higher returns, possibly deflating due to heavy demand. So Ethereum developers Preston van Loon and Justin Drake felt excitement when they stated that the shift from their PoW to PoS protocol would occur during August of this year.

To meet developmental needs related to institutional infrastructure, Coinbase’s cloud division, in partnership with Figment, a liquid staking provider, released a protocol known as Alluvial, which is considered the first of its kind and identifies and responds to such needs. As a result, alluvial serves as the first institutional-level liquid staking protocol and meets the demand of such institutions while simultaneously addressing the issues.

Liquid staking is an improvement over standard staking, where users lock their assets in exchange for a yield from securing the network and validating transactions. Instead, Liquidblockchain allows users to receive tokens for kinds of reservations that can be exchanged for other blockchain-facilitated services.

The final day of the Permissionless Conference concluded with an after-party featuring 3LAU, PLS&TY, and AMICAZ for the free flow of drinks while their sets were playing.

Side Events

Attendees had the opportunity to:

• relax and play croquet at the Permissionless Conference 2022
• VIP “Gatsby Whites” Dinner at the Palm Beach National Croquet Club
• attend NFT gallery & NFT Collector’s Happy Hour with Dez Bryant in the Permissionless x OpenSea NFT Gallery
• and let loose at the afterparties and side events.

Image credits: Permissionless 

Final Thoughts 

Permissionless Conference 2022 brought insights about how the new Web3 economy relies on greater compliance and safety, resulting in improved infrastructure for users and their applications and services. Developments are interconnected, and developers never stop to invent applications that necessitate a new financial, creative, and social infrastructure.

On top of all the discussions about the algorithmic stablecoin crash, developments and the Ethereum ecosystem, participants were welcomed to have a blast at the after-party events.

All in all, our verdict is that this is one of the conferences that certainly deserves its place in the conference calendar.