AUSTIN, TX – BCCN3 attended this year’s Consensus 2023 in Austin, Texas, interviewing several blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi) companies. From physical credit cards that access the blockchain to AAA web3 games, companies worldwide converged to show off the latest and greatest in blockchain technology. 

Arculus

Arculus is a revolutionary new cold storage wallet solution for securing crypto and NFTs. Using a best-in-class hardware classification, the Arculus Card encrypts and stores a user’s private keys, which are never stored online or saved on a mobile device. 

The Arculus Card is designed to resemble a familiar credit card and communicates with the blockchain through a tap-to-transact secure connection. Using three-factor authentication, the card confirms transactions when users tap their mobile devices.

By bridging the gap between traditional financial operations like credit cards and non-traditional DeFi transactions, Arculus is a game-changer in crypto security and digital identities. 

Listen to our podcast interview with Kristin Potocki, Research and Development Engineer at Arculus, or watch it on our YouTube channel. 

WisdomTree

WisdomTree is a leading asset management company in traditional finance (TradFi), making significant headway into DeFi investment vehicles. Its digital assets division exposes investors to virtual investment opportunities through exchange-traded funds (ETF) and other investment products. 

WisdomTree has filed for several Bitcoin ETFs with the SEC to improve financial systems' efficiency. With the continued growth of the digital assets market, WisdomTree’s investments are positioning the company for long-term success in this emerging market.

Provenance Blockchain

BCCN3 interviewed Anthony Moro, Managing Director at Provenance Blockchain. Founded in 2018, Provenance is a public proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain that enables regulated financial services firms of all sizes to deploy and manage the full life cycle of digitally-native financial assets in a secure and seamless manner.

Purpose-built to transform financial services, Provenance Blockchain enables institutions and fintechs to seamlessly and securely issue, transact, and service digitally-native financial assets at scale on a public blockchain, delivering material business and customer value, including significant cost and speed efficiencies.

Yellow Network

Yellow Network is a Layer-3 peer-to-peer network that provides cross-chain crypto liquidity. Yellow is a cutting-edge project that enables truly decentralized cross-chain trading by bringing together all parties involved in the trading process, from exchanges and blockchains to trading firms and brokers.

Yellow’s CEO, Louis Bellet, describes his company’s offering by saying, “Today, trading and speculation are the #1 use case for cryptocurrency, but most trading does not use any benefits of the blockchain. This is about to change.”

While most traders rely on centralized exchanges (CEXs) to execute trades, the trading operation occurs in data silos, with each CEX and DEX having a list of markets. This is unlike traditional finance, where markets are global. Yellow is changing this paradigm by allowing investors to swap assets across different exchanges without relying on block creation. This will create a network of brokerages, affording a more efficient trading infrastructure.

Listen to our podcast interview with Anastasiia Bobeshko, Head of Marketing at Yellow Network, or watch it on YouTube. 

Shrapnel

Shrapnel is a AAA first-person shooter strategy game built on Ethereum. Shrapnel has gained a lot of attention in the web3 gaming community due to its innovative approach to gaming, and it is one of the most highly anticipated games in the space.  

In Shrapnel, players battle to control a virtual world by deploying troops and resources, and the winner gains control of the territory. Players need to develop strategies and utilize their tokenized resources wisely to win. 

One unique aspect of Shrapnel is its decentralized gaming experience, meaning players have complete ownership and control over their digital assets. This creates a new paradigm for gaming where players have actual ownership of their virtual assets. 

Listen to our podcast interview with Marc Mercuri, Head of Blockchain Platform at Shrapnel, or watch it on YouTube here. 

Aurora

Aurora is a blockchain platform built on the NEAR protocol. The company has been making waves in DeFi with its fast, secure, and inexpensive transaction capabilities. The platform leverages NEAR’s scalable infrastructure to provide high throughput and low latency transactions, making it an attractive option for DeFi application developers.

Aurora also offers interoperability with Ethereum, allowing developers to migrate their Ethereum-based applications to the NEAR ecosystem easily. Developers and users recognize Aurora as a versatile and reliable DeFi platform.

Many successful projects have been built on the platform. One example is Rainbow Bridge, a decentralized exchange (DEX) that powers cross-chain trading between Ethereum and NEAR-based tokens. 

Listen to our interview with Aurora’s founder, Alex Shevchenko, at Consensus 2023 on our podcast or watch it on our YouTube channel. 

Snail Games

Snail Games is one of the oldest companies at Consensus 2023, founded in 2000. The company is primarily known for developing video games, such as the ARK collection, but has also made forays into blockchain technology. The company has stated that it plans to expand its use of blockchain technology, particularly in finance and supply chain management.

In 2018, Snail Games launched a gaming platform called ‘SnailChain’ that uses blockchain technology to create a secure and transparent player environment. SnailChain allows gamers to earn rewards in the form of cryptocurrency for playing games. It also provides its own ‘Snailcoin’ cryptocurrency and in-game marketplace where gamers can buy and sell digital assets. 

Consensus 2023

Unlike Consensus 2022, there was a noticeable lack of staking and yield farming companies at Consensus 2023. After last year’s bull market before the crypto winter, many companies built purely on speculation have disappeared.

In their place have come new companies that, until now, had limited media coverage while they honed in on research and development and product design. While Terraform Labs, FTX, and other exchanges were crashing the market, many of the companies at Consensus 2023 were quietly making improvements to their products. 

This year’s conference was the perfect place for these companies to come forward and show what they had to offer investors in stark contrast to last year's disastrous investments and products.