During Blockchain Week, Piper Alderman hosted a group of panelists across the blockchain industry to focus on decentralised finance, considering the factors necessary to future proof adoption and how we can build the rails for a decentralised future.
Speakers exploring the topic included:-
Patrick McNab, Head of Product & Co-Founder at Mycelium Ventures.
Adrian Manning, a Director of Sigma Prime;
Alexa Bowditch, Associate at Piper Alderman;
Adriana Belotti from the Digital Product and Community team at Prismatik; and
Michael Bacina, Partner at Piper Alderman.
Decentralised finance raises many challenges that span technical proficiency, government comfort and awareness of regulatory parameters. Specifically, Adrian pulled at the thread of security and the problems of faulty and abundant open sourced code. The theme was echoed throughout the panel of a need to improve capacity and accessibility of code auditors to minimise the harm which may befall the general community.
The panel also discussed practicalities of businesses accessing banking with Adriana supporting that simply "banks need to stop closing accounts" reflected by the Senator Andrew Bragg's sentiments earlier in the week that:
The absence of a legitimate regulatory framework for blockchain has made it harder to effectively target pernicious uses of these products. In some cases, Australian banks are avoiding dealings with crypto assets altogether.
Additionally, Alexa and Michael supported that there are a vast array of regulatory considerations for start ups when entering into the digital asset space, largely as a result of different uses of the technology falling into different regulatory regimes.
Importantly, the panelists also shared their tips and tricks for avoiding scams. First and foremost - unsurprisingly - do your due diligence.
Want to hear more? The full recordings are being published and released by Blockchain Australia.