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Barcelona summit attracted thousands of decentralized technology builders

Barcelona summit attracted thousands of decentralized technology builders

Ava Labs’ Avalanche summit on decentralized technology in Barcelona, Spain attracted more than 4,000 attendees -  composed of developers, investors, and industry leaders from all over the world - who saw innovations and met like-minded innovators realizing Web3's next phase.

Emin Gün Sirer, founder and CEO of AVA Labs said the interest among builders of decentralized technology comes amid censorship and monetization of people’s data on web2 social platforms.

“Why have so many people here today called us around this [decentralized] technology? Globalization has created intense pressure to centralize power and that centralization of power has led to censorship and monetization of ourselves, our data, and our very beings [on web2 social platform users],” said Emin Gün Sirer, founder and CEO of AVA Labs in his opening speech.

“It has very much led to abuse, fraud, and theft… because of the fact that these people can use their privileged positions inside the social networks. This is why we crypto, this is why we build the things we do,” he noted.

[Emin Gün Sirer, founder and CEO of AVA Labs, delivering his speech]

Bringing CeFi liquidity to DeFi

WOO Network VP of Ecosystem Ben Yorke joined this year’s roster of 300+ speakers, including heads at Amazon, Vodafone, Kronos Research, and Chainlink.

[Ben Yorke, WOO Network VP of Ecosystem, giving a workshop to share how applications can leverage simulated CeFi liquidity on-chain.]

Ben Yorke, VP of Ecosystem at WOO Network, spoke about how Kronos Research, an HFT CeFi market-maker with decentralized infrastructure, helped WOO Network develop a capital-efficient asset-swapping exchange. “By simulating aggregated CeFi liquidity through WOOFi Swap, Kronos helps Avalanche traders get the best price,” he said.

He said WOOFi Swap has processed over 200k cross-chain swaps and billions in volume, becoming a top 15 DEX on Defillama despite maintaining just a few million TVL on each chain. WOOFi is one of the only decentralized swaps that benefit other applications by offering  broker rebates. .

Other notable topics during the three-day summit include; Bringing Bitcoin to the Avalanche ecosystem; Ensuring regulatory compliance in web3 while preserving user privacy; Onchain derivatives for investing and trading; The news class of institutional DeFi; and The ticking time bomb of AML compliance.


Here are some of the photos from the event

[Seraphima Verhoeven and Ruslan Romanov from NOW Payments, with Arjun Arora of Orderly Network, and Ben Yorke of WOO Network.]

[Visitors at our WOOFi booth]

Related story: WOOFi, bullish on Layer 2s as it joins Hong Kong Web3 Festival

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