[Panel Recap] The Future of Web3 in the Philippines at PH Web3 Festival

Subscribe to our newsletter!

[newsletter_form type=”minimal”]

Editing by Nathaniel Cajuday

Peter Ing of BlockchainSpace highlighted the progress the Philippines has made in the web3 space, with the rise of local projects, communities, and builders in the field.
He credited the success of web3 adoption in the Philippines to the emergence of micro-communities, which he attributes to Filipino culture and a desire to educate and help people within their circles.
Kat Gonzales of YGG highlights the increasing number of Filipino builders and founders actively building the future of web3 in the country.

To conclude the three-day conference of the Philippine Web3 Festival, Peter Ing, the CEO of BlockchainSpace (BSPC), tackled the future of web3 in the country as he sat on the final segment of the event in a one-on-one discussion with Kat Gonzales of YGG Pilipinas, the Philippine arm of Yield Guild Games (YGG).

“This is quite an amazing journey for us, especially now, being at the day three of the conference, seeing so many of you guys being here. This is really impressive for our ecosystem,” Ing stated, as he recalled the beginnings of BlockchainSpace–which hosted offline events back in 2018 with only a couple of people attending.

Photo for the Article - [Panel Recap] The Future of Web3 in the Philippines at PH Web3 Festival — ***APPRECIATIVE!*** *Peter Ing recognized how the Web3 community in the country multiplied.*

The PH Web3 Fest is a week-long event held from November 14–18, featuring the most important creators and personalities in web3 today. It is held in celebration of the country as the global leader and epicenter of web3.

The festival, which was jointly organized by YGG and BSPC, had the participation of web3 industry leaders not only from the country but all over the world, including Jeffrey “Jihoz” Zirlin, the co-founder of Axie Infinity; Yat Sui, Animoca Brands CEO; Nuseir Yassin of Nas Daily; Siddhartha Jain, Polygon Network Vice President; and many more.

Axie Infinity’s Jeff Zirlin, YGG, BlockchainSpace, to Star PH WEB3 Festival

“We invited Jiho from Axie Infinity to Manila back in 2019, (where) we were able to put Jiho in front of 40 people in our co-working space, but today we were able to bring him back onto the stage in front of 2,000 people, and that’s just kind of symbolic of how far the Philippine ecosystem has gone,” Ing stated.

He also highlighted that with the progress the country has made throughout the years in this field, the Philippines now have a lot of local projects, communities, and builders in the space:

“I just feel like this is now just going to proliferate exponentially from here.”

When asked about how Filipinos progressed in the web3 space, Ing stressed the rise of Axie Infinity and the GameFi industry that have ignited through micro-communities.

“A lot of those communities have been coming out of the Philippines, and (people) were like, ‘Why are there so many micro-communities?’ And it makes you ask another question, ’What is it about Filipinos that makes them want to set up micro-communities?’ And it’s basically something inherent in Filipino culture and nature. They want to educate people within their circles, their relatives, friends, colleagues, (and) even the people in the same town. They want to help people,” he explained.

He cited that during the Axie Infinity phenomenon, at least 20,000 micro-communities emerged in the Philippines alone:

“Now, just imagine that happening basically for the rest of web3 and for other applications. I think that’s the part about the Philippines that makes it so unique and why it’s been so successful with web3 adoption.”

And to onboard more Filipinos into the space and add more to the current 11 million Filipinos owning crypto, Ing stressed education as the key factor, as web3 is still “very technical” for the common folk, adding that understanding the meaning of technical terms such as seed phrases, wallets, chains, and others is necessary to get into the space, and “it’s not easy.”

“Until it becomes really simple until the customer experience really simplifies down, we’re just going to have to keep educating. And we are going to have to keep innovating. And we’re going to have to keep making that user experience better… that’s how we’re going to get more and more people in, we’re going to make it easy for people to get into the space. And of course, education is going to be one of those pillars,” he said.

Further, with large companies now also venturing into web3, Ing suggested that they should cooperate and be regulated under the Philippine government agencies that cover their specific industry, as this would provide them legitimacy to operate.

Moreover, the BSPC founder stressed that events such as the PH Web3 Fest are the perfect place to build future connections, not only locally but abroad as well:

“A lot of the Filipino founders now, we are not just looking at the Philippines as being the only, the sole market, we actually are all building global companies. When we think about web3, it’s not just one country. We think about the metaverse as being borderless. You are not thinking about just Filipino users anymore, you are thinking about the global user,” he highlighted.

On the other hand, he also addressed international companies looking at the Philippines, pointing out that one of the strengths of the country is its creator community, and they “don’t see them as just users, just gamers, we see them as contributors from a creation standpoint.“

“The truth is we were really builders of the space, whether it be in content creation, community management, marketing, all these things. We were seeing a lot of Filipinos builders and founders creating their own paths; not by just being consumers but are actively actually helping to build the future of web3,” Gonzales added.

For more articles and coverage from the PH Web3 Fest, click here.

This article is published on BitPinas: ‘Education A Key Factor to Onboard More Pinoy in Space as Web3 is Very Technical’ – BlockchainSpace’s Peter Ing

Disclaimer: BitPinas articles and its external content are not financial advice. The team serves to deliver independent, unbiased news to provide information for Philippine-crypto and beyond.