The Hive Team here in Davao City, Philippines, started our December with a crypto event supporting our community members and volunteers from the Davao DeFi Community (@davaodeficom) on their Chat and Chill crypto meetup organized by Gains Network in cooperation with the DDC and NFT Davao (@nftdavao.org).
As an independent journalist and the blogger behind PhilNews.xyz and part of the Hive Team, we were invited to join the crypto event and make some connections with the community. The Chat and Chill: Gains Davao Meetup was held last Friday, December 1, 2023, at the Empire Hub, located at 129 Dacudao Avenue, Davao City, Philippines.
I went to the venue as early as 6:00 PM to interview the organizer, Rod Albores, a Web3 community manager and blockchain enthusiast, and the Gains Network representative who sponsored the event.
Meeting Rick, Gains Network Representative
After meeting some familiar faces in the Web3 space here in Davao City, Rod Albores, the organizer, introduced me to Rick, the Dutch representative from Gains Network.
I was so grateful to meet Rick and ask him for some background about the Gains Network and their plans for the Philippine Market because this is their very first crypto event here in the Philippines.
The representative from Gains Network did not divulge more details about the company's founder, as Rick only stated that Gains Network is a decentralized leverage trading platform and wanted to expand its reach here in the Philippines.
Although I am unfamiliar with leverage trading, I understand some of Gain's plans to get into the Philippine market with the help of the crypto community here in Davao City. Rick was also thankful for the news article I posted on PhilNews.xyz about the event, his first here in the Philippines.
Nathan Senn's Arrival and Discussion with Rick
At around 6:45 PM, a few minutes before the formal opening of the Chat and Chill Gains Meetup, my fellow Hive user and co-founder of DBuzz, Nathan Senn (@nathansenn), arrived and immediately proceeded to my table while I was having a conversation with the Gains representative.
Nathan Senn introduced DBuzz, Hive, and even Retzark to Rick, the representative from Gains Network. They discussed some technicalities about leverage trading and other topics about the crypto industry here in the Philippines.
Rick was also interested in working closely with Nathan for future collaborations as he was already familiar with the Steem blockchain but needed to learn about recent developments in the Hive blockchain.
The DBuzz co-founder also opened up the possibility of listing Hive to the Gains Network's leverage trading platform, GTrade, and they need a lot of time to discuss the technicalities of Nathan's proposal.
Fellow Hive Users & DBuzz Representatives Joining the Team
Around 20 minutes after Nathan Senn arrived at the venue, our fellow Hive users and DBuzz representatives Jan Charles Tana (@jancharlest) and his girlfriend Kim (@kimminashi) came to join us in the Chat and Chill Meetup.
The event started at around 7:25, and we were having a great time during the not-so-formal event; at first, we introduced ourselves individually to the group of approximately 50 to 60 Web3 enthusiasts from different groups here in Davao City.
Free Food and Drinks
Before the informal meetup and event, the host, Rod Albores, gave all the attendees some time to enjoy our food and drinks free of charge.
The BLOKC group, headed by their CEO Emerson Fonseca, joined us and came all the way from Manila. The visitors from Manila are part of the Arbitrum Foundation.
Presentation by Rick from Gains Network
The Gains Network representative presented their product GTrade and the Gains Network, their plans here in the Philippines, and even demonstrated a live trading activity during the event.
Rick shared the history of Gains Network and how it started but did not mention any names of the founders or the people behind the project. He just revealed that there are more than $1 million USD of total trades in the network, and they had 16,000 plus avid traders.
Nathan Senn, as a Panel Member
After the presentation of the Gains Network, the host Rod Albores invited Nathan Senn, Rick from Gains, Emerson Fonseca from The BLOKC, and blockchain investigator Ferdie Nervida to be part of a short panel presentation to discuss the recent news about crypto exchanges in the Philippines.
The panel discussion was hosted by DDC founder Ruben Lacumba (@rubzcomms), who asked the panel members some interesting questions. Still, most of the topic focused on the recent advisory by SEC to Binance and the common problem of Web3 mass adoption in the country.
According to Ferdie Nervida, the Binance fiasco is bound to happen because before Binance could get its license, the government closed the application after the local exchanges secured their VASP license.
Although Nervida suspects that the government has already closed the application, the company Binance had a vast pool of lawyers, and they are now working closely with the government to secure such a license to operate here in the country.
When Nathan was asked about the possible effects of the SEC issuing an advisory to Binance to DApps like DBuzz, the veteran crypto coder said the issues with Binance would not affect so much.
According to Nathan, the Binance issue will not affect so much because the decentralized application built on Hive was not involved in the exchange of crypto assets, and DBuzz only provides a platform for people to post content and will not have so much impact on DBuzz when compared to the other crypto products.
Watch Nathan Senn Representing Hive During a Panel Discussion
Nathan also emphasized that DBuzz only provides a free platform for people to post online, and the DApp is not a financial product.
When asked about the adoption of DBuzz here in the Philippines, Nathan admitted that it'd been a challenge on his part. Still, his team is working on new initiatives like the plans to provide free internet access to a particular university, and the requirement for the students is to post once a week on DBuzz to get their free internet access.
According to Nathan, their new strategy is more effective than onboarding individual users because inside a university, every student knows each other, and they will likely stay with the platform because their friends are already there.
Rick from Gains Network, on his part about crypto adoption in the Philippines and worldwide, was of the perspective that generally, the UX of onboarding in crypto is still complicated.
He would say that many people were used to the user experience of Web2 companies. Binance did it exceptionally well; however, as a leverage trading platform company, GTrade is doing its best to make its product and the UX more user-friendly, as he admitted that the onboarding problem was not only limited to one company or DApps but the entire Web3 ecosystem.
On his part, Emerson Fonseca said there are problems in the mass adoption of the crypto industry in the Philippines after the host asked him what he could say about the millions of expenses incurred by crypto companies to promote and market their product here in the country.
According to Fonseca, education is vital in mass adoption, the Web3 space still needs to grow, and talent scarcity regarding developers is prevalent. He thinks India and Vietnam are stronger countries in the crypto developer community.
Summary of the Chat and Chill Event
Overall, the event was successfully held, and we got some interesting insights, particularly during the panel discussions focusing on the Web3 community's reactions to the Binance fiasco. Nathan Senn once again got everybody's attention when he emphasized that the Binance issue was unlikely to significantly affect DBuzz since it primarily serves as a content platform rather than a financial product.
Additionally, the DBuzz co-founder highlighted efforts to promote Web3 mass adoption by providing free internet access to university students in exchange for posting on the platform. Rick from Gains and Emerson Fonseca from The BLOKC discussed challenges in crypto adoption in the country, including the complexity of onboarding users to the Web3 ecosystem and the importance of education.
Generally speaking the panel provided valuable insights into the local crypto landscape and the challenges and opportunities faced by various projects in the Philippines.
Photos During the Chat and Chilll Event
Image source: All images in this article are all taken by the author unless stated otherwise.