Blog:
Newconomics 2023 - Meet our Speakers: Cynthia Huang
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Don’t forget to book your ticket now if you don’t want to miss out on hearing from leading business experts talk about practical use of web3 tech and future economics. We have an amazing line up, one of which is Cynthia Huang, CEO of Dtravel, a community owned ecosystem for creating rewarding travel experiences through connections and on-chain products. Cynthia kindly shared her thoughts on web3 ahead of the event.
“The opportunities I see with web3 technologies are huge across every industry, whether it’s as simple as tokenized loyalty, community led decision making on a roadmap (via governance voting) or creator royalties.
We talk a lot about technology in the web3 industry, but at the end of the day, any technology is really just an enabler of something. In Web1, the internet was an enabler of connecting and disseminating information all around the world. In web2, it was about connecting people through platforms and the creation of content on these platforms. In web3, it’s about ownership of everything you create, which is naturally the next evolution from web2.
It’s not the what (the technology) which is important, it’s the why - democratisation and ownership of access, data and capital, no matter where you are in the world, what you look like or your background. There are some hurdles we need to remove if we want to see web3 tech as something more inclusive though.
For adoption to happen, we need delightful user experience and design, as well as great dApps that actually solve a real problem. In 2017 we talked about blockchain solutions looking for a problem and while that’s less of an issue today, I still think there’s a lack of true product market fit in terms of applying blockchain solutions to actual problems. Starbucks is a great example of this where it completely removed the technical aspect of the user experience in terms of interacting with web3 technologies and took something that was already happening - collecting of various Starbucks assets such as gift cards, mugs, etc - and tokenized it via NFTs.
In the context of travel, one of the most obvious applications and product market fit is around loyalty and standardising loyalty currencies across different programs. The experience is terrible right now for anyone wanting to redeem travel rewards and this would make the user experience 100x better immediately and improve the transparency and transferability of rewards across multiple programs.
Another big area is around destination management companies and organisations (e.g. tourism boards) that can leverage the power of DAOs to have their communities rally to create content. They can also be local ambassadors and guides to help promote their communities, towns and cities to bring in more tourism dollars. This can help with sustainable tourism by bringing attention to places where tourism dollars are sorely needed and moving tourists away from big hubs that experience overtourism today and are suffering from infrastructure overload.
When it comes to improving the world of work, bias is one problem I think technology could potentially solve. One of the amazing things about web3 is the ability for people all over the world to contribute, no matter what they look like, where they’re from, what their background is. As long as they are passionate about a community and contributing, they can get hired. This really opens the door and lowers the barrier to entry for those who traditionally may have been discriminated against for various economic, social, physical or political reasons.”
Find out more about the new economics of Web3 and how it can change the way we work together at the Newconomics event in Lisbon. Full details and registration can be found on the website.
