Today’s guest is Ahmed Al-Balaghi, co-founder of Biconomy. Biconomy is a multichain relayer protocol that aims to improve the user onboarding and transaction experience on decentralized applications (DApps). The project’s declared goal is to make web3 products as intuitive and easy to use as web2 products. In short, Biconomy focuses on transaction management and gas optimization and can reduce gas costs by up to 40%. For several reasons, interactions with decentralized applications are nowhere near as seamless as for web2 applications. For instance, web3 applications require gas fees, but there is no equivalent of paying a usage fee for web2 applications. Gas fees on the Ethereum network are always paid in ETH, although users may not want to spend their Eth. Before starting Biconomy, Ahmed spent over 3 years within the blockchain industry in China, the U.K., and the UAE. He has developed deep industry expertise and regularly delivers talks and workshops. Ahmed previously worked for Viewfin, a leading Chinese blockchain company, by heading up their Middle Eastern expansion through office setup, deal sourcing, government, and investor relations. He advised and consulted clients building projects in this space before co-founding Biconomy. We discuss a variety of different topics, including Biconomy, Crypto Infrastructure, Web3 adoption, the early days of Crypto, and much more. We began our conversation by discussing how we met and Ahmed’s background. We discuss the crazy early days of crypto in China. We transition our discussion to focus on how Ahmed and his co-founders started Biconomy. Ahmed shares how hacking and tinkering around crypto eventually led them to start Biconomy. We transition our conversation to discuss the various ecosystems Biconomy supports on its platform and their strengths and weaknesses. We discuss why yield may not be crypto’s killer app. Ahmed explains why other crypto sectors are gaining more traction than DeFi, like GameFi and NFTs. Our following conversation focused on the institutional adoption of crypto. Ahmed teases a big announcement for Biconomy and also discusses some of the pain points for institutional clients as they try to enter the crypto space. We also discuss the continued adoption of Web3 by traditional industry companies and the appeal of incorporating Web3 technology into their products. We discuss how the biggest hurdles facing mass adoption are being addressed. Ahmed explains the role of Biconomy within the Web3 tech stack. Please enjoy my conversation with Ahmed Al-Balaghi.
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