As I parked my car in the basement car park, I had no idea about the challenges ahead that morning.

Climbing the narrow series of escalators that threaded their way through the converted shophouse, I reached the office on the third floor. I walked over to my manager’s room, shaded by wooden shutters overlooking the busy street in Chinatown below.

I was surprised by his absence.

We had an important business meeting later that morning, and we depended on him to lead it. The economic downturn was depressing sales, and the meeting was an important opportunity we could not forgo.

We repeatedly tried to reach him but without success. The taste of silent panic was acrid and growing. It was time to breathe slowly and focus.

We had most of the materials we needed for the meeting and sixty minutes before our visitors arrived. We gathered a small team and set to work. I don’t think I have seen a commercial presentation come together so quickly before or since.

We finished the materials five minutes ahead, and the meeting started on time. Our visitors were completely unaware of the panic that ensued ahead of their arrival. The meeting progressed well, and we secured the critical partnership that we had been seeking.

Also Read: 6 leadership lessons I learned after we raised our seed round

We subsequently learned that my manager had been unwell and later moved to a new company. This presented an important choice: should I follow him to the new company and continue our partnership, or should I pitch for his now vacant role? I was young and ambitious, and the opportunity of a leadership role was too alluring.

I decided to take on the challenge. I worked every hour available and secured promotion the following year. I soon moved on to a new role and several more after that. In each new role, I would study the objectives obsessively and engineer a plan to achieve them. I became a finely polished cog enmeshed in a corporate machine.

However, the more I focused on corporate objectives, the more frustrated and unfulfilled I became. Through many restructurings and rationalisations, I came to realise how ephemeral corporate objectives could be: these investments could evaporate overnight.

Moreover, the people around me became disengaged, and I developed a reputation for being difficult to work with. I knew that I needed to follow a different path.

The wake-up call

One afternoon a text message from a former colleague popped up on my phone: “When you have a minute, can you call me?”

The company had announced plans to divest three-quarters of its business in the region. As major job cuts were imminent, I was concerned for his welfare.

I had several hours of meetings before I could make the call. I was apprehensive but looking forward to catching up. Six months earlier, he had come to me for guidance. I helped him rewrite his CV and review his career plans.

His joyful tone was unmistakable. He had just secured a promotion in a new and growing team unaffected by the cuts and wanted to thank me. I could not have been more pleased both by the news and his enthusiasm to reconnect so many months after I had left. I walked around the office with a broad smile and a light step that afternoon and for several days thereafter. Despite the dark clouds outside, it felt bright and warm inside.

Also Read: 5 lessons from building a global tech platform in Malaysia

Moreover, I realised that the call had a deeper significance for me. It grounded a growing realisation that investments in people were more meaningful and valuable.

People first, please

I realised that my misplaced focus on organisation over people was a hindrance to my own growth and, more importantly, to those people around me. This focus was fracturing relationships, decreasing the quality of the working environment, and ultimately reducing the productivity of the team.

It became evident that when an organisation described their people as “human resources” either by intention or by implication, they were equating people with corporate commodities such as money, oil, steel and concrete. By using this term, they were diminishing the fundamental miracle of each and every person.

I learned that only by putting people first could I achieve personal fulfilment, create a productive working environment and ultimately optimise the shared value of the organisation. I learned that organisations are resources to achieve human objectives.

I leave you with a simple question:

Are you a human resource? If not, what are you doing to help yourself, your colleagues, and your organisation find a better path?

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Amidst talks of growing adoption and decentralisation becoming the norm, the great decentralised exchange (DEX) vs centralised exchange (CEX) debate is more prominent now than ever. This debate has many case studies for us to refer to.

The latest would be FTX. FTX owes nearly US$3.1 billion to the top 50 creditors and is estimated to have “more than 100,000” creditors.

Why trustless DEX is the way forward

• Individual data and asset control

CEX holds custody of your deposited assets and all your personal information. You have no control over how the assets and data are being used. While in a DEX environment, it is non-custodial; typically, only an individual wallet address is connected to the exchange. In other words, you have complete control over your assets.

• Liquidity and market depth

Historically, CEX is known for deeper liquidity and market depth. DEXes, in general, are trying to catch up with CEX’s efficiency in matching and executing orders. But the top DEXes have good enough liquidity and market depth for the major coins, and in fact, DEX’s liquidity is more accurate and traceable.

• KYC and accessibility

KYC is often required for withdrawals exceeding a specific amount or specific trading products, and it is typically region-locked for most CEXes. While DEX has no KYC, traders only need a wallet address. This helps to drive accessibility to true financial freedom.

• User-friendliness

CEX provides a wide range of products, including spot and fiat on-ramps, which is most familiar to traditional and crypto traders, especially beginners. DEX products may be harder to grasp with insufficient onboarding guidelines for traders. Again, this point for DEX is changing.

Also Read: To leverage Web3 technologies, Web2 companies may start by building the right culture

The user interface and experience have significantly improved; some of the newer DEXes look and function exactly like CEX.

• Transaction costs

CEX is known for high transaction or platform costs, especially when the system is hugely loaded with trades at a single point in time. An increasing number of DEXes are integrating scaling solutions that will massively increase transaction workload while keeping costs low and passing the savings on to traders.

• Community involvement

CEXes, are often one-way, non-reciprocal communication from a central operator to traders. Individual traders are seen as clients utilising as service that the CEX provides. While DEXes focus on community-building and involvement, where traders can become stakeholders and have a say in protocol changes or share in transaction fees on the platform.

• Transparency

DEXes offer strong execution guarantees and increased transparency into the underlying mechanics of trading. Trades are trackable, traceable and data is permanently on-chain. This is one of the core basics and the beauty behind the ideology of DEXes.

A new DEX era

The challenge with CeFi and CEXes boils down to a lack of trust and security. This is continually reinforced time and again; this year is no different, with funds, exchanges and even established projects hitting the buffers and leaving behind affected, concerned investors and traders fearing for their assets.

News of increased risk with CEXes come into question of insolvency and possible withdrawal delays, causing widespread panic amongst traders.

I would like to discuss the following DEXes for your reference and research purposes.

dyxX

dYdX is a decentralised exchange (DEX) platform that offers perpetual trading options for over 35 popular cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE) and Cardano (ADA).

Non-custodial exchange dYdX has climbed to the top of the DEX rankings by trading volume, beating out Uniswap, for the first time. More than US$9 billion has been exchanged on the trading platform in the last 24 hours in 2021, according to data provider CoinMarketCap.

Also Read: Should Southeast Asian startups look to transition from Web2 to Web3?

Also during the same time, according to CoinGecko, dYdX has facilitated more than US$4.3 billion worth of trades in the past 24 hours, beating out Coinbase’s  US$3.7 billion

They changed how DEXes were perceived back then.

ApeX Pro

ApeX Pro is set out to be a dynamic non-custodial derivatives DEX powered by StarkWare’s Layer two scalability engine StarkEx — all to deliver a made-to-order, permissionless platform designed for precision trading.

This comes after ApeX Protocol’s initial ApeX elastic Automated Market Maker (eAMM) launch, where popular inverse perpetual contracts were supported; automatic, fully permissionless and without needing KYC. With full spectrum asset support, ApeX Protocol was able to uplift decentralised derivatives trades.

To add on, they are multi-chain supported. This responded well to the demand from the market.

Just Ex

Another multi-chain DEX is Just Ex. They are relatively new, and currently, they support APTOS, SUI and Solana. They will support Ethereum and BNB Chain later on. This strategy is also different, as we all know that most of these multi-chain DEXes are usually based on Ethereum first.

At the point of publishing, I have not tried the DEX yet, but the fact that it has no slippage, open trade and infrastructure API ready and that they are order-book based are worth exploring.

As usual, I will end with a quote:

The answer is to return to the basics of what blockchain is supposed to be. It is decentralisation and transparency. DeFi is one of the solutions, and we need to work together to build the future. For now, it cannot replace CeFi completely for obvious reasons, but this will not stop us from trying.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic

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FWD Group, a pan-Asian life insurance company with 10 million customers, has partnered with Malaysian VC firm Artem Ventures to launch TIM Ventures, an RM45 (US$10.2) million VC fund.

TIM Ventures seeks to invest in emerging startups in insurtech and Islamic fintech in Malaysia.

“We at TIM Ventures hope to support early-stage entrepreneurs in Malaysia by not just providing them with financing but also helping connect them with the networks and expertise they need to succeed,” said Sim Preston, MD and Group COO at FWD. “We hope to invest in businesses that share our vision as we work together to change how people feel about takaful (a Sharia-compliant insurance product).”

Also Read: How Islamic finance can work with fintech to promote financial inclusion in Malaysia

TIM Ventures has already invested in four startups:

Senang: an on-demand subscription-based insurance company

Pewarisan: an online platform providing digital solutions for Islamic inheritance planning

Du-It: a Malaysia-based fintech company

Blueduck: a zero-deposit insurance agency

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are a critical component of the Malaysian economy, contributing more than a third of the gross domestic product and providing job opportunities to more than four million workers in Malaysia.

Mahadhir Aziz, CEO of Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation, said: “We welcome the establishment of this venture capital fund to support the growth of Malaysia’s SMEs operating in these sectors. We will strive to ensure further effective collaborations are formed to support this growing technology ecosystem in line with our new national strategic initiative, Malaysia Digital. We are particularly focused on the innovative Islamic fintech segment, where Malaysia has been a global leader for eight consecutive years.”

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In an extended report recently published by the Coalition for Digital Prosperity for Asia (DPA), it was found that the full potential of Asia Pacific’s digital economy has not yet been realised.

Numbers paint a clearer picture: the value of the region’s digital economy, if captured in full, is estimated to be US$2 trillion in 2021, of which the region was only able to capture a mere 30 per cent.

Within the region, countries sit along the spectrum between “digital isolation”, where digital openness is restricted in order to protect and foster the development of local digital capabilities, and “digital globalism”, where digital openness is encouraged to facilitate cross-border dataflows and foreign direct investments.

By and large, governments have traditionally always needed to make a choice between these two extremes, viewing them as largely incompatible strategies to achieve disparate outcomes.

Yet, with most assumed dichotomies, humanity almost always finds a way to integrate seemingly opposing concepts to reap the best of both worlds, if you will. In this case, the DPA proposes a new approach to governing the digital economy, called “digital prosperity”, which combines the rapid innovation characteristic of “digital globalism” and the nurturing domestic environment of “digital isolation”.

To pursue “digital prosperity”, governments will have to focus on four key enablers of digital economies:

• Policies that facilitate data flow
• The establishment of a competitive business environment
• Strategies to build local digital capabilities
• Setting up the appropriate and adequate infrastructure to support the nation’s digital transformation

Yet, while the directions toward regional prosperity are clear, there is the fundamental groundwork upon which all else is built that is required to ensure that the full value of APAC’s digital economy can be realised.

Also Read: How insurgent brands are redefining India’s consumer growth story

This groundwork is the evolution of our relationship with trust in the digital economy.

Growth from within local economies: Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs)

To illustrate how evolving our relationship with trust is necessary to facilitate “digital prosperity”, let’s explore the critical mechanism by which countries can pursue local enablers of digital economies – the establishment of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs).

In this piece, we take PPPs to refer to a broader relationship in which public and private stakeholders collaborate and pool resources to achieve a common goal. The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) succinctly describes the necessity for PPPs in their Global Innovation Index report – PPPs create opportunities to reduce the risks associated with innovation, as it is shared between public and private partners, and this drives the development of new technologies that do not yet exist.

In other words, PPPs are both a means and an end to building local digital capabilities, as well as the set-up of adequate infrastructure to support the country’s digital transformation. In fact, the relationship between PPPs and digital projects is “symbiotic”, as described by the same report.

With PPPs, digital projects are able to find the financial support required for their undertaking, while on the other hand, public sector networks allow the outcomes of these digital projects to be put within reach of citizens – both financially, physically, and digitally.

Take India’s e-Mitra as an example – this is a PPP project that has allowed the government, through local service providers, to deliver e-services to its citizens (such as forms and birth certificates) via dedicated centres and kiosks.

It goes without saying that trust is important in such collaborations. Public and private stakeholders involved must be assured of their mutual participation in the project. Beyond the project’s partnership, if public funding is involved or if the outcome is meant for the larger community, it is important to foster open and trusted communication to earn society’s buy-in and support.

Information quality is the first ticket to building trust between partners and the wider community. In the latest Edelman Trust Barometer report, when it comes to establishing trust for corporates, NGOs, governments, and media entities, information quality is the “most powerful trust builder”. When stakeholders are able to rely on your information, many outcomes instantly become reliable and trustworthy – such as your communications, financials, mission, and vision.

There are numerous ways to preserve information quality, from detailed reporting to effective summaries. The most important element of information quality, however, is the authenticity of the information. Such authenticity (whether the information is true-to-source, has been tampered with, or can be verified) can be achieved through the use of verifiable data – and this is the evolution of our relationship with trust.

Instead of relying on traditional, fallible ways of preserving information integrity, such as official stamps, signatures, and the like, we can create new standards of data formats that have trust built into their structure.

With verifiable data, stakeholders can be assured that the information they are working with is true-to-source and not tampered with – and when in doubt, they can instantly verify the information to validate its truthfulness.

Growth across economies: cross-border partnerships

When it comes to pursuing digital prosperity, we have to look at the other side of “digital isolation” and embrace “digital globalism” in the form of cross-border partnerships.

Cross-border partnerships are key to regional enablers of digital economies by facilitating data flows and the establishment of a competitive business environment. They do so through the creation of opportunities for technology and talent transfer and the influx of Foreign Direct Investments. When managed well, countries can harness such transfers of capability and resources to foster an environment of mutual learning and healthy competition.

Also Read: How technology has revolutionised operational efficiency in consumer finance

In a policy research paper undertaken by the World Bank, technology transfers that can result from cross-border partnerships can be encouraged through the establishment of joint venture partnerships, grant matching, and the improvement of information flows (such as business and regulatory information).

Yet, here is where we face the hurdle of trust again. Quoting Edelman’s Trust Barometer 2022 report, circles of trust are becoming more local, where an individual’s trust in people from other countries has decreased. Increasingly, individuals are more trusting of those who are close to them.

This trend of burgeoning distrust towards “outsiders”, when examined from a policy and business context, is harmful to the pursuit of digital prosperity. It espouses “digital isolation” and rejects “digital globalism”, but for digital prosperity to work and for us to realise the true potential of APAC’s digital economy, we must do both.

Again, we have to change our relationship with trust through the use of verifiable data. If data and information cannot be disputed by virtue of their verifiable and tamper-proof nature, then new doors for cross-border collaboration can open – despite circles of trust retreating inwards.

In fact, one could say that verifiable data is dismantling such circles entirely; when trust is an undeniable and guaranteed fact, when you can take trust for granted, then such circles of trust are no longer necessary.

Embrace the new trust and usher in an age of digital prosperity

To realise the full potential of APAC’s digital economy or even grow the pie, we have to facilitate the smooth transition of local economies towards digital ecosystems and technologies.

We have won half the battle if we begin focusing on the key enablers of digital economies:

• Policies that facilitate data flows
• The establishment of a competitive business environment
• Strategies to build local digital capabilities, and
• Setting up the appropriate and adequate infrastructure to support the nation’s digital transformation

The other half is won through transforming our relationship with trust. The digitalisation of our economies must go a step further than simply adopting digital data but also embrace verifiable data – to create the guaranteed trust necessary for digital prosperity to be possible.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic

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As we enter the era of Web3 that yielded an uptick in financial technology developments, many opportunities have arisen. However, along with this rise comes its associated potential threats. Such risks emphasise the importance of adopting better cybersecurity solutions to further ease and protect digital transactions at scale, especially in the cryptocurrency space.

To discuss the matter, e27 sits with Ze Chong Tan, Chief Strategy Officer at UKISS Technology, a tech firm specialising in blockchain solutions, network security, file encryption, identity authentication, and crypto wallets.

A closer look at cybersecurity with Ze Chong Tan of UKISS Technology

As a veteran in the cybersecurity space with over 30 years of experience in the cybersecurity and tech spaces, Tan shared a look back at his career beginnings in IT. It was at the time of the first dot-com boom in the Southeast Asian region where he was working in the connectivity provider and distributed server solutions industry. He then became part of the National Computer Board and NETS to create the first Public Certificate Authority (CA) in the Southeast Asian region.

Also read: RareSkills to help Web3 engineers harness their potential

“Security considerations played a significant role in the growth of the internet, and identifying and authenticating users coming to websites was the first purpose of setting up the Public CA. In a way, it was SingPass 1.0.,” explained Tan. “I was fortunate to participate in driving that development as public key infrastructure (PKI) was still an evolving standard at the time. Today, the mass proliferation of public key cryptography has created whole cybersecurity industries, with technologies like SSL, TLS, VPN, Symmetric/Asymmetric Encryption, and eventually, blockchain,” Tan added.

Fast forward to today, digital businesses transitioning their operations of running digital transactions from on-premise set-ups to the cloud have paved the way to more relevant cybersecurity solutions that adapt to this new web infrastructure, especially in Web3.

How UKISS Technology was founded

The need for a more robust cybersecurity system also applies to consumers, where the risk of preventing bad actors from entering these networks increases as the information is now online and data assets are no longer locked with a simple perimeter. This was the premise of how UKISS Technology was founded: to address the pain points of Web3 users by creating a haven to protect the entire life cycle of their private keys. 

“In Web3, private and public key cryptography forms the basis of all transactions. It is a world where the proof of ownership of the private key is central to enabling things to happen. This nature of Web3 security caused crypto owners a lot of pain when they lost access to their wallets, had their wallets hacked, or were conned into disclosing their private keys. We want to empower users to engage and navigate the decentralised world of Web3 easily and safely”, Tan shared.

Also read: Is “teleporting” between workspaces truly possible?

Tan has pioneered blockchain developments in Singapore and has played a significant role in creating Singapore’s first public Certificate Authority and the region’s earlier B2B digital payment solutions. In the advent of cloud computing, Tan shared further about the ramifications of how cybersecurity is delivered.

“Hybrid and complex connectivity meant it took a lot of work to guard gateways. Cybersecurity then evolved to take on a Zero Trust approach, which deemed any connection coming in or out of a machine hostile until proven otherwise. Blockchain technology provides an evolutionary public/private key mechanism that is effective and has widespread potential to enable trust in Zero Trust environments. UKISS Technology believes in bringing our users to a world where they are protected when providing proof to Web3 services. We’re engineering our solutions with the best security technology for the masses,” Tan explained.

Forging a path towards a more secure future

As global standards for cybersecurity solutions evolve with emerging needs and contexts, the industry is expanding its adoption of Decentralised Identifiers (DID), decentralised validation, and authentication, among others.

In this field, Tan foresees more structures of trust in the internet, delivered through the language of blockchain. “We have seen pandemic travellers producing health or vaccine certificates to prove they have been vaccinated or have not contracted COVID-19. The certificate, or some would call it Health Passport, is a form of Verifiable Credential. It is a Web3 application that leverages the certificate issuer’s DID for verification purposes. I believe trust in online documentation can be established quickly for the masses. I also foresee mainstream financial systems adopting blockchain ledgers to provide immutable evidence, just as we have seen in the crypto world,” Tan cited as an example.

Also read: The Big Leap roadshow kickstarts in Jakarta with a panel on the Gen Z market

Looking further ahead, this new way of digital exchange emphasises the imperative to build solutions that forge trust among actors on the web. This presents a challenge in cybersecurity, given the lack of trust in centralised systems and the concentration of critical data for financial gains. On the other hand, this also presents an opportunity to build a more robust infrastructure around transactions in the decentralised financial processing space. 

“Data and hacks could happen, and threats from outside and within centralised data institutions and financial exchanges will be palpable. To counter such threats, enhancing system resilience by decentralising data and security control will become more realistic,” Tan elaborated.

“Technology vendors should strive to break this cycle by establishing fundamental trust in all connections on the internet. Pushing for Web3 is one such way. I wish to see UKISS Technology providing the best and simplest Web3 tools for the masses. You do not need to be a crypto native to access the best protection of your assets and data,” he remarked.

For more information on UKISS Technology and its pioneering cybersecurity solutions, visit their official page.

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by UKISS Technology

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