Infrachain Summit 2022 Report
The sixth edition of the Infrachain Summit was organised on October 4, 2022 during the Luxembourg Blockchain Week. The conference was hosted by Infrachain at the National Sports and Culture Centre – d’Coque in the heart of Luxembourg. From decentralized identities to verifiable credentials and Web3 to NFTs and metaverse, the event featured 3 high level keynote speakers, including a ministerial keynote by the Prime Minister and Minister for Communications and Media Xavier Bettel, eight use case presentations, three debates and an international audience of some 150 participants.
Following welcoming words by Fabrice Croiseaux, Chairman of the Board of Infrachain, Yael Rozencwajg, Founder of Blockchain Israel opened the conference with a keynote on “The Future of Blockchain – The real Challenges” where she explained that, “Blockchain is a foundational innovation, like the Internet, whose full transformational impact will play out over decades rather than years, because such innovations much overcome many barriers.”
Yael Rozencwajg, Founder of Blockchain Israel
The opening was followed by an industry keynote by Dr Gavin Johnson, Founder of aGenium, around NFTs and the challenge of reality. Dr Johnson discussed the NFTs in context and presented current use cases as well as legal frameworks, concluding with his point of view on the NFT evolution which should, “Evolve beyond that of a simple reduction to a data string.”
Kevin Thizy, Consultant at InTech, presented the first operational use case of the conference about “Identity for digital worlds”. Thizy pointed out the disadvantages of centralized identity systems (resilience, security, privacy and transparency) before presenting the ONCHAINID X Unreal Engine use case and its advantages (identification, access rights, visibility restriction, display truly owned and verified goods, and direct interactions).
The following use case centred around “License.rocks” which powers on-chain brand experiences for fans to trade and collect NFTs and was presented by its Founder Daud Zulfacar. After a brief introduction on NFTs, Zulfacar explained how blockchain and NFTs are unlocking new business opportunities and mentioned that, “In a digital world we need to think of ownership of the digital assets but also how ownership information will be consumed and needed to be provided in a better and more suitable way.”
The last use case of the morning was presented by Sean Cross, Co-Founder and President, Global Business Development & Revenue of Infinite Reality who presented the Metaverse entertainment and innovation company that partnered with the University of Luxembourg‘s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability, and Trust (SnT) to introduce a global, open metaverse, from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The global initiative aims to develop a Metaverse experience where creators have the ultimate control over their own monetisation potential.
The morning session was concluded by a debate on “Web 3.0 and Metaverse: opportunities for business?” with Rozencwajg, Dr Johnson, Thizy, Cross, Alessandra Nonnweiler, Head of Communication and Spokesperson at CFL-Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeois and was moderated by Kamel Amroune, Founder & CEO of The Dots.
Cross, Nonnweiler, Rozencwajg, Dr Johnson, Thizy and Amroune
Prime Minister and Minister for Digitalisation Xavier Bettel opened the afternoon session of the 6th edition of Infrachain Summit with a ministerial keynote which can be watch on replay here.
Prime Minister and Minister for Digitalisation Xavier Bettel
The keynote speech was followed by a presentation on “Blockchain and the metaverse – How does the GDPR apply?” by Dr. Catherine Di Lorenzo, Partner at Allen & Overy where the audience learned about data protection opportunities offered by blockchain such as ownership traceability, forgery prevention and transaction traceability, asset identification and ownership traceability, and user autonomy and data minimization.
Michael Jackson, Advisor at Concordium discussed “A verifiable credential ecosystem, for a billion people, built on Concordium” which focusses on the maritime industry and its increasing legal need for actors to check certificates through verifiable credentials. This allows to verify that the issuers are genuine and that credentials have not been tampered with.
The next use case was presented by Tony Malghem, CTO of Tokeny and Jean-Paul Scheuren, Founder of BlocHome and discussed “Use cases for DIDs: investment passports for tokenized real estate”. After briefly introducing decentralized identities, Malghem and Scheuren talked about the link between real world and digital world where they introduced ONCHAINID, an “open-source decentralized identity protocol that allows users to create and manage their decentralized ID on the blockchain.”
A debate on “Self-sovereign identity: Look into the Future” took place before the coffee break with Dr Di Lorenzo, Jackson, Malghem, Scheuren and Eric Weber, Project Manager at the Ministry for Digitalisation and was moderated by Petra Krizan, Managing Director of The Blockhouse Technology Ltd.
Weber, Scheuren, Jackson, Dr Di Lorenzo, Malghem and Krizan
The second afternoon session began with a presentation on “From Trade-Only to Zero-Value NFTs: The PCDS case” by Dr Denis Avrilionis, Founder & CEO of Compellio. Dr Avrilionis talked about the advantages of NFT-based PCDS (Product Circularity Data Sheet) system. Such benefits are global decentralised registry for PCDS, unique system-independent universal identifier for PCDS and instant worldwide PCDS verification.
Dr Denis Avrilionis, Founder & CEO of Compellio
The last presentation of the Infrachain Summit 2022 about “Designing a DEX (Decentralized Exchange) for NFTs using ABCDE dApp design method” was presented by Prof. Michele Marchesi, Founder of FlossLab who shared the ABCDE method to design blockchain apps. To better explain this method, Prof. Marchesi showcased a decentralized exchange (DEX) for NFTs on Ethereum developed by FlossLab. It is a transparent smart contract able to match offers and bids for NFTs without supervision.
To conclude the 2022 edition of the blockchain conference, SnT and Luxembourg Legal Hackers presented a panel discussion on “Economic and legal perspectives on the metaverse: ownership, venturing, and governance”. The discussion welcomed Prof. Gilbert Fridgen, Full professor in Digital Financial Services at SnT, Prof. Christian Fisch, Associate Professor for Business Economics and Entrepreneurship at SnT, Laura Beatrice Zanella, Legal Advisor and Co-Founder of NFT advisory firm Tabulia, Tobias Seidl, Co-Founder of Stokr and Jil Haberstig, Founder of the Luxembourg NFT community. It was moderated by Dr. Arianna Rossi, Research Scientist at SnT on legal design and data protection compliance, and co-founder of Luxembourg Legal Hackers.
Prof. Fridgen, Seidl, Prof. Fisch, Zanella and Dr. Arianna Rossi
The conference’s MCs Fabrice Croiseaux, Chairman of Infrachain, concluded the Infrachain Summit 2022 by thanking the Blockchain Master sponsor Etherna, the Blockchain Expert sponsors Opportunity Financial Services and The Blockhouse Technology Ltd., as well as SnT who sponsored the networking cocktail closing the event and the media partners Techsense, Farvest and Commit. Croiseaux also thanks all the participants and the speakers and looked forward to meeting again at the Infrachain Summit 2023.