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Korea Blockchain Week 2023

Marketing company wants 90% of Japanese population on Web3: KBW 2023

Ava Labs head of product Nick Mussallem explained how Japanese company Loyalty Marketing is aiming to introduce Web3 to its 100 million users.

Proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain platform Avalanche is expecting 5-10 million transactions on a subnet as a Japanese loyalty program company that claims to have 100 million users has partnered with the network to bring their mass-scale loyalty rewards program into a blockchain. 

Cointelegraph’s Andrew Fenton interviewed Nick Mussallem, Ava Labs' head of product at the Korea Blockchain Week 2023, held in Seoul, South Korea. The duo spoke about various topics including the recently announced partnership with blockchain services provider PlayThink and Japanese points service provider Loyalty Marketing to onboard more than 100 million users into the Web3 space.

Nick Mussallem at the Avalanche House area of the Korea Blockchain Week 2023. Source: Cointelegraph

According to Mussallem, Loyalty Marketing is expecting up to 10 million mints for its nonfungible token (NFT) program as it targets onboarding its entire user base into a Web3 system. On its website, the company claims to have around 280,000 partner stores across Japan and 112.6 million users, which is almost 90% of the entire population of the East Asian country. He explained: 

“With this deal, they are committed to trying to get the entire user base. They're taking the system that they have right now, and migrating the entire thing over in phases, to a Web3 system that's going to run on their subnet.”

Mussallem also highlighted that there are two areas where blockchain makes sense for the company. The Ava Labs executive explained that there’s a composability aspect for onboarding merchants and an engagement aspect for users.

Related: DYdX to launch decentralized order book exchange on Cosmos: KBW 2023

According to the executive, merchants being onboarded into the company’s system could be very tricky as they would have to get into their data systems and “figure out how it works.” However, the case is different for blockchains.

“When it's a blockchain, it's just the asset, especially in the way they run on subnets. It's very composable,” Mussallem explained. The executive also highlighted that this takes away the overhead that comes with onboarding new vendors and adding interoperability. 

When it comes to users, the executive believes that the benefits lie within engagement. Mussallem believes that the move is about giving them something “a bit more interesting.” This includes ownership of assets and the ability to spend their loyalty points across different types of stores.

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DYdX to launch decentralized order book exchange on Cosmos: KBW 2023

DYdX Foundation CEO Charles d’Haussy said that the exchange is taking a “new step forward” by decentralizing the order book.

Decentralized exchange (DEX) platform dYdX plans to offer a “purely decentralized” order book exchange as it migrates its ecosystem from the Ethereum network to the interchain network Cosmos.

At the Korea Blockchain Week 2023, Cointelegraph’s Andrew Fenton spoke with dYdX Foundation CEO Charles d’Haussy about the DEX’s plans to implement decentralized order books on the exchange and how it plans to shift its ecosystem to a new blockchain network.

Attendees at the Korea Blockchain Week 2023, held in Seoul, South Korea. Source: Cointelegraph

In the interview, d’Haussy told Cointelegraph that one of the issues faced by DEXs is the slow performance of on-chain order books. Because of this issue, order books for DEXs had to be taken off-chain to cater to the needs of the users. He explained:

“If you have like a one-second block time, you still have a one-second latency. And the market of crypto derivatives is a very high-frequency market. So, you cannot offer one-second latency.”

D’Haussy highlighted that dYdX is taking a “new step forward” in decentralization by making the order book decentralized. According to the executive, the order book will not be on the dYdX chain because it will still be slow, but it will instead be hosted within the validators.

“So, the architecture choice by dYdX engineers is to decentralize the order book, without adding it on-chain because it will be too slow. The decision was made to essentially host the order book within the memory of the validators,” d’Haussy added.

D’Haussy believes this method is a “new thing within the space.” The executive explained that validators usually validate blocks and create new blocks with a set of transactions. He also said the validators will still do this on the dYdX chain but will also store order books in their memory. “And that’s one solution, which we’ll use to essentially offer to the market a purely decentralized order book exchange,” he explained.

Related: 40% of crypto trading platforms are decentralized: World Federation of Exchanges

Apart from the decentralized order book, d’Haussy spoke about dYdX’s move to Cosmos. “DYdX is not expanding, dYdX is migrating. So, the Ethereum exchange will close within a few months [...] we are migrating the full ecosystem,” he explained.

According to d’Haussy, users will barely notice the change, which will be very smooth. Users will only need to connect their MetaMask wallets to the new dYdX chain, adding that dydx will “take care of all the heavy lifting.” 

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