Hedera On The Cutting Edge of Permissionless 2023 Hot Topics

The HBAR Foundation, Swirlds Labs, and the Hedera community returned to Austin for three days of Permissionless 2023 to discuss all things DeFi and Web3. 

In addition to taking in a few panel discussions, the more personal conversations at the conference and side events were full of passion and enthusiasm for what’s on the verge for our industry.

Two topics in particular took the metaphorical main stage at Permissionless this year:

ONE: REAL-WORLD ASSETS (RWA) AND TOKENIZATION‍

More builders, entities, and investors are looking at Real-World Assets and tokenization to solve real world problems. 

Tokenizing real-world assets on-chain enhances liquidity by breaking down traditionally illiquid assets like real estate and art, or into easily transferable digital tokens, opening up investment opportunities to a wider range of people through utility like fractional ownership of high-value assets. 

On Hedera, Red Swan is a perfect example of RWA tokenization with $5B assets under management that they plan to tokenize through their upcoming token studio.  

Similarly, Quarter Home is leveraging the Hedera network for tokenizing home equity assets with TOKO from Hedera Governing Council member DLA Piper.

Plus, the transparency and security of tokenizing on an immutable public ledger reduces the risk of fraud by ensuring accurate ownership records. 

Add in smart contracts to automate compliance and regulatory processes and asset managers can also reduce administrative burdens and costs. We are looking forward to seeing how Abrdn leads the way to tokenize $532 billion in assets with Archax. 

TWO: STABLECOINS, STABLECOINS, AND STABLECOINS 

Stablecoins are often thought to be a bridge between traditional finance (TradFi) and DeFi because it’s a reliable medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account.

But their adoption goes much deeper into Web3.

Everyone from investors, developers, institutions, and corporations were all keen to further explore how they can utilize stablecoins.

And when you consider their versatility, ease of use, and quick settlement times relative to fiat currency, it’s easy to see how they’re a perfect solution for anyone who wants all the advantages of securely sending money on-chain without the volatility associated with cryptocurrencies. 

Investors are drawn to stablecoins as a means of preserving value during market fluctuations, while builders and developers - of all sizes and industries - recognize the growing demand and use cases for stablecoin solutions. 

Once again, we are on the cutting edge with Shinhan Bank, SCB TechX, and a Taiwanese financial institution successfully pilot stablecoin issuance and multi-currency swap.

Things seem to be trending in a direction leading to stablecoins becoming truly transformative assets.

Enthusiasm for new solutions will continue to fuel innovation and development of diverse stablecoin models, each with unique features and use cases, like Hedera’s newly launched Stablecoin Studio, an open source SDK that enables any organization to easily build stablecoin applications. 

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