EMURGO Africa’s Adaverse hosted another Blockchain Founders Hangout #BFH3.0 in Abuja last weekend to bring together a community of entrepreneurs building digital solutions with Web 3 tools. The event attracted a huge gathering of startup founders, business leaders, experts in the blockchain space and entrepreneurs with solutions in the Nigerian market.
Present at the event was Vincent Li, founding partner at Adaverse; Chuta Chimezie, partner at Adaverse and Founder of Blockchain Nigeria User Group; Charles Okaformbah, CTO of Convexity; Nnamdi Uba, CEO of House Africa and other team members of Adaverse and EMURGO Africa.
The third edition of the blockchain founders hangout was focused on creating formidable structures for digital solutions in Africa to launch globally. Hence, the guest speakers addressed the key challenges facing startup founders and entrepreneurs in the African continent and Nigeria.
Chuta Chimezie said the lack of regulation is the biggest challenge in the space, which is also resulting in a loss of revenue for the government. He stressed that regulation is key for the survival of innovations such as the blockchain.
According to the expert, Nigeria will continue to lose money and will continue to lag behind without a proper regulatory framework. He said: “Regulations follow innovations and sometimes, innovation will get stalled because the right regulations are not there. “You need regulation, you need laws to caution people who do the wrong thing. When there is no regulation, it’s a loss for regulators, governments and policymakers. The Nigerian government should take the bold step to make policies and draft regulatory frameworks.
“We don’t want what happened in the first generation of the internet to happen to us in the blockchain. We need to be at the forefront and regulation and policy is what we need to get there,” he stressed.
Chimezie further said the lack of regulation will make it easy for criminals and fraudsters to infiltrate the market, defraud consumers and get away with it.
“The potential of blockchain technology is huge. It has one of the most promising abilities to transform the economic fortunes of Nigeria because it will help our government to be more transparent, and have a better way of managing resources, it will also provide opportunities for individuals, especially creative people. It has the capacity to entrench transgenerational wealth,” he said.
In addition to the lack of regulation, Chimezie said, another challenge facing the sector is the ‘huge’ talent gap. He however informed that Adaverse is playing a major role in building talents by providing funding, and mentorship, among others to purposeful youths ready to build a change. He said Adaverse has funding opportunities from about $100,000 to $500,000 for products that can solve real problems.
Chimezie informed that Adaverse currently has about 13 African startups in the programme that have received funding already, and have invested at least $1.3 million.
Vincent Li, the founding partner at Adaverse, noted that Nigeria has a lot of potential and possibilities in the blockchain space, adding that Adaverse is working to support Nigeria and Africa build blockchain technologies.
He said Adaverse does not just invest in startups but provides marketing support, technical advisory and financial advisory which are tailor-made to meet the needs of each company.
“All these are included in our post-investment support through our acceleration programme and we are very happy to do it,” he said.
About Adaverse
Adaverse is a catalyst for the Cardano ecosystem in Africa dedicated to investing, mentoring and providing tech support for African startups building the next wave of Web3 decentralized applications including NFTs, DeFi, and others on Cardano’s third-generation blockchain. Since its launch in 2021, through a joint venture partnership between EMURGO Africa and Everest Ventures, Adaverse has invested in thirteen (13) crypto-native startups building the future of Africa’s digital economy.
Entrepreneurs with solutions tailored for the African markets can apply for funding here
https://www.f6s.com/adaverse-accelerator/apply
