Amid a bear market, one might not believe it when stepping into Token2049 this week in Singapore. Attendees were fueled by a shared mantra: 'Now is the time to build.' The event was a whirlwind of enthusiasm, bustling conference halls, pioneering projects, knowledgeable speakers, and entertaining side events.

What is Token2049?

Token2049 is one of the cryptocurrency world's most coveted events, held from September 13th to 14th, 2023, in Singapore. With a staggering 10,000+ registered attendees, over 5,000 companies represented, and 300+ expert speakers, it was nothing short of a crypto extravaganza—a formidable show of the industry's strength and influence.

The event exceeded its core program, offering an impressive 400+ independently organized side events. These ranged from meetups and workshops to hackathons, dinners, and parties, creating a weeklong whirlwind of learning and networking. Token2049 succeeded in uniting global cryptocurrency stakeholders, including entrepreneurs, investors, developers, industry enthusiasts, and the worldwide media.

In contrast to the tightening regulations in the United States and the European Union, Asia has warmly embraced cryptocurrencies. Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai are rapidly gaining recognition as crypto startup hubs, and the sheer vitality of projects showcased at Token2049 surprised many Western observers.

The event served as a convergence point for various crypto communities, including Ethereum, Solana, and Cardano. Our team proudly represented Cardano at the EMURGO Booth, engaging with various Cardano projects and builders. For more insights from the event, delve into our notes below:

Cardano at Token2049:

Cardano Spot

Cardano Spot is a social network developed for the Cardano Community. It aims to address fragmentation within the crypto media, provide a 360-view, and foster enhanced community interaction.

Cardano Spot aims to empower creators and provide a platform to reach the relevant audience. It helps both creators and users cut the noise and find the signal. The platform is building a place where creators can monetize their content and form their communities.

EMURGO

EMURGO is a founding member of Cardano, and it works across various facets. Nikhil, VP of Ecosystem EMURGO, gave a speech about the need to break barriers to crypto.

We must break these barriers and welcome new users if we want mass adoption. These barriers are at various levels like regulation, awareness, technical, and product-related. We must go hand-in-hand towards educating users, simplifying our offerings, bridging the gap with traditional finance, and creating forward-looking compliance.

Minswap

Minswap is the leading DEX and Dapp on Cardano. They launched in March '22 and have established themselves as market leaders with a nimble team and modest resources. The team has been largely anonymous but was in person attending the conference.

They mentioned how they were very pleased to have attended the TOKEN2049 conference in Singapore. It was a great opportunity to learn about the latest trends and developments in the crypto industry and connect with some of the leaders in the Cardano community at the EMURGO booth.

Minswap Labs shared some exciting updates coming to Minswap soon, such as the more efficient Minswap V2, a Stableswap aimed at empowering Stablecoin liquidity across Cardano, and a V2 of the Minswap launchpad product.

Claymates

Claymates is an OG NFT project led by Lenna and Joons. Clay Nation shared its vision and how they are building a project at the intersection of art, tech, and community. The project has been working on creating an immersive metaverse experience. They have partnered with various projects & artists like Sandbox, Ledger, Snoop Dogg & more.

The team mentioned how they are CLAYISH and grateful for the opportunity to represent Clay Nation at the EMURGO Booth.

Maestro

Maestro is a Dapp developer platform that is deeply rooted in its exclusive focus on Cardano and UTXO-based blockchains, and its platform provides valuable Cardano infrastructure services for developers to fund, build, and scale their Cardano dApp projects in a one-stop shop.

Maestro is building the complete Cardano stack, creating the fastest way to build on Cardano. At Token204, Maestro demoed their latest new product: Plug-and-day Smart contracts. It is a game-changing platform to deploy fully managed open-source contracts with a low code or no code interface.

Maestro empowers developers and businesses to leverage the power of Web3 and be a catalyst for ecosystem growth and adoption.

NEWM

NEWM is an entire music ecosystem with fairness and transparency at its core. By bringing music royalties on-chain, they are building a digital landscape for musicians to truly take ownership of their creative content and monetize their art from ‘conception’ to retirement. The ecosystem, or NEWMiverse as they like to call it, will include a music streaming platform, music rights marketplace, direct tipping via micropayments, ticketing for in-person and metaverse events, and the ability to buy, sell, and trade music royalty rights (currently only related to streaming royalties). They are putting artists and listeners first by creating a community-owned and governed platform where the value of music is front and center.  

Their flagship product, NEWM Studio, is currently in its first testing phase (woohoo!) and will launch later this year. NEWM Studio is a self-service music distribution platform that bridges Web2 and Web3, enabling artists to upload, mint (tokenize streaming royalties), and distribute their songs to 100+ streaming platforms, as well as set automated royalty splits to collaborators during the minting process. All other NEWM products are being developed in parallel, but this will be the first release due to the sensitive and legal nature of working with music copyrights.

We had the amazing opportunity to witness The Power of Bringing Music On-Chain in the Cardano booth at Token2049, which was truly a global experience. 

“I had so much fun, bumping into old friends and making new ones, connecting with artists, and reporting live updates to our community on X Spaces (formerly Twitter Spaces). There is so much positive energy in the blockchain community right now. I was blown away by the quality of the projects and the vast number of builders. Whenever I presented NEWM, no one asked me, “Which chain?” They immediately understood that our goal is mass adoption, and we’re aiming for the 95% of people who aren’t a part of Web3 yet.” - NEWM team

Intersect

Sheldon Hunt, community lead at IOG, presented Intersect. It is a member-based organization (MBO) that empowers the Cardano community to take ownership of the platform's direction. 

By embracing open-source principles and effective collaboration, Intersect enables viable governance of Cardano's operations, fostering a decentralized ecosystem that thrives on innovation, inclusivity, and shared vision.

He provided a call to action to the Cardano community to step up and join MBOs to create a sustainable and decentralized ecosystem.

CNS

Cardano Name Service is developing a blockchain-based Domain Name System (DNS) to record DNS data and ensure the integrity and security of the information related to DNS records.
CNS aims to create a world that seamlessly connects people by fostering trust, facilitating valuable interactions, and ultimately enabling users to own their digital identities.

By building infrastructure with the best Cardano technology, they empower users and developers with full ownership, security, and sovereignty over their data.