Founder of Global Meta Blockchain
Please start by introducing yourself to our readers
I am an author, storyteller, and believer in the power of technology for social benefit. My mission is to provide real-world information on Blockchain, Web 3.0 Metaverse, and associated technologies and help people understand their social utility and impact. I am a Thinkers 360 Top 10 Global Thought Leader and Influencer on HealthTech, Sustainability
and Cryptocurrency, and Top 50 in Blockchain. I am the Chair of Kasei Holdings, a London-listed blockchain and Web 3.0 investment firm. I am on the editorial board of Journal of Metaverse and Frontiers in Blockchain, I am an
Industry Associate: University College London, Centre for Blockchain and I advise multiple blockchain social impact startups. I am the author of “Blockchain for Global Social Change,” Blockchainging the World” and “Applied Ethics in a Digital World.” For me, the most powerful thing is that the spirit of decentralization, democratizing access, rewarding artists, tackling global challenges, and creating new economies – is shining through. Some of the promising impact projects I have seen this year include EmerTech, Ecosystem, GovBlocks, Genopets, and Hiveonline, and the countless others I have neglected to mention continue to inspire me. Everyone can win in a carefully constructed, decentralized community.
Keep building in the spirit of decentralization!
Can you tell us about Global Meta Blockchain and the goal behind establishing it?
Global Meta Blockchain is a newly established UAE-based consulting firm, which provides consultancy and education on Blockchain, Web 3.0, and Metaverse
How do you see Dubai as a hub for investments in virtual assets?
The government of Dubai is very progressive in relation to incentivizing technologists to come here and has the ambition to be a global leader in digital assets and Metaverse. They are working on a progressive regulatory regime and have 3 tax-free economic zones for the registration of digital asset companies. It is a hub for conferences and attracts the leading global thought leaders and innovative projects. It has a vibrant and diverse community of tech innovators from around the world who are striving to create a decentralized future. It is an incredibly exciting place to be.
What are some of the real-world applications of DeFi, Metaverse & NFTs?
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) came to people’s attention in 2019, but at the time was not well understood. In 2020, it scaled fast and increased from $700 million at the beginning of 2020 to $15 billion by the end of 2020, and as of June 2022, the total value locked (TVL) reached a high of $256 billion. DeFi offers an accessible alternative to the current financial system. This explains its exponential growth in borrowing, lending, farming, and insurance.
The current financial system has left 1.7 billion people unbanked and, with a simple mobile phone, they can now access the financial system. DeFi is democratizing access to financial services for women, removing the need for intermediaries. The decentralized and pseudonymous nature of crypto transactions means that women will not be discriminated against based on their gender. With just a mobile phone, women have the possibility of participating in the global financial system.
My favorite NFT use case is for climate action. NFTs are increasingly being leveraged for climate change with initiatives ranging from awareness-raising to fundraising and as an immutable record for impact and carbon credits. SavePlanetEarth is launching certified Carbon Credit Smart NFTs. First Carbon is developing NFT-Based Carbon Credits, providing carbon credit issuers access to the Blockchain, enabling users to track, trade, and burn credits so there is no double counting. Another NFT use case, DigitalArt4Climate, is a multi-stakeholder partnership initiative that uses blockchain technology to turn art into digital assets, or NFTs, which can be collected and traded, which helps unlock potential for resource mobilization, youth engagement, and climate empowerment. Gameplay can incentivize widespread positive climate action.
The Metaverse is a combination of DeFi, NFTs, decentralized governance, decentralized cloud services, and self-sovereign identity and can enable the exchange of physical, economic, and content assets. An open, decentralized Metaverse is appealing to many, and NFTs are providing the means for decentralized Metaverse commerce.
Popular applications include commerce, entertainment, and gaming. Highstreet has products from brands like Hershey’s, L’Oréal, and Victoria’s Secret, which are tokenised and sold in the Metaverse. SPACE enables users to easily design their own virtual spaces, like shops, galleries, and concert venues. Many people are snapping up virtual lands in Decentraland.
The city of Seoul, Korea plans to create a Metaverse for its municipal administration. Neom, a planned city in the Tabuk Province of northwestern Saudi Arabia, plans to build a Metaverse platform bridging the real and virtual worlds. Beyond Metaverse is creating the future Healthcare Metaverse ecosystem. It offers ways to improve education and training and brings global healthcare professionals together for simultaneous education, training, and collaborative medical procedures. The potential use cases for the Metaverse are limited only by your imagination!
After the research you have done on digital ethics, what do you think is the optimum way of reaching a digital governing system entity?
While automation and decentralization are attractive, it is important to consider the potential for inadvertent or deliberate automation of unethical conduct at scale. Blockchain creates ethical dilemmas for developers, investors, consumers, and regulators at the technology, application, and societal levels. Blockchain, as with all technology, is a tool and is as beneficial and useful as the care that is taken to make it. There remains a need to ensure that Blockchains are built and deployed with due concern for ethics.
Data ethics should be a consideration in every project—how will the ethics of data, algorithms, and practice be considered during design? How will data be governed? informed consent, customer understanding, the requirement for all data to be necessary for the purpose for which it is collected, and the extent of human oversight or intervention required in the decision process.
Where Blockchain is being deployed as part of an organization, it is relatively straightforward. However, when dealing with DAOs, where all governance is automated and decentralized, this becomes more complicated. The ethical issues need to be considered during design and built into the code and algorithms and execution plans. This is not impossible, but the majority of software developers have not had training in ethics, how to think about ethical questions and answer them. At this stage, there is no professional association for software developers, with a codified ethical standard. There is certainly scope for greater ethical reflection and purposeful consideration of ethics in the design of Blockchain and DeFi applications. There is no perfect answer, but this should include:
- Encourage greater ethical reflection from developers during design.
- Connect developers more closely to the ethical outcomes of their decisions and algorithms.
- Encourage the community and network to take a more active and demanding stance on ethics.
- Encourage the community and network to understand what is happening behind the scenes with governance and decisions.
How can we apply Blockchain Technology to achieve better social justice and social equality?
Blockchain is an enabler, unlocking new sources of financing and mobilizing existing industry pledges to carbon reduction through establishing new financing platforms. The technology could bring visibility to alignment with sustainability goals by enabling countries and stakeholders to track data and information on infrastructure projects. It can enhance awareness and access by acting as a transaction-enabling infrastructure for new market models. Stablecoins could significantly improve the real-time settlement of cross-border transactions, as an obvious example. We are increasingly witnessing a growth in the adoption of crypto in emerging economies, and the 10 countries with the highest number of users of cryptocurrency globally include Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Venezuela, Colombia, and Vietnam. This shows it has social utility and this trend will continue. Hiveonline ApS community finance platform in Sub-Saharan Africa supports the bottom of the pyramid communities of farmers, many of whom don’t have access to technology or literacy, and help all members of the community to get access to finance and identity via the community-based hub, which doesn’t require everyone to have a device. Now is an exciting time to bring together everyone who’s working on really exciting technology, innovation, and financial innovation and create a positive future for financial markets and build on the ideas of sustainability, fairness, and equity from the ground up. The pandemic has forced a major rethink of the global economy. It was a pandemic of inequality and brought into stark reality the issues that we have neglected people, we have neglected the planet and we have this economic system that drives the pursuit of profits above all else.
What does the future hold for Cryptocurrencies and DeFi?
In 2021, we saw the crypto market cap continue to rise, ETF listings, Coinbase went public, El Salvador declared Bitcoin legal tender, the DeFi market grew by 40 times, and stablecoins, one of the major pillars of DeFi, almost quadrupled in the first half of 2021 to $112 billion. Ethereum continues to suffer from network
congestion and rising gas fees, as Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Polkadot, Cosmos, Solana, Polygon, and Avalanche nip at its heels.
In the social impact space, we saw the new phenomenon of “play to earn games” providing new income streams for people in developing countries, a proliferation of “green” blockchain projects, and growing adoption in emerging markets.
What does the future hold?
- NFTs will continue to soar in popularity in art, music, gaming, and influencer fanbases, we will also start to see other ways that NFTs can be used for social utility including in health care, education, and rewarding communities.
- Institutional adoption will continue, and institutional investors will fuel the continued popularity of stablecoins which are seen as less volatile.
- Going Green – there will be a plethora of green blockchains and tokenizing carbon offsets and gamification to address climate issues.
- The adoption of DeFi and NFTs in GameFi has only just begun and we will see incredible innovation in this space with community-owned economies and on-ramps to the Metaverse.
- Metaverse – all this staying at home and living virtually has given a huge kick start to the Metaverse, and we will see tremendous innovation as people begin to realize how the Metaverse can be used in so many ways to improve collaboration, education, economic opportunities, and social engagement.
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