«No sponsors. Content only» – the motto of Melonport’s blockchain-centric «M-1» conference taking place in the center of Crypto Valley in Zug, Switzerland, is as straightforward as the keynotes that are being hosted here.

Melonport Conference: Focus on on-chain fintech

Focusing on fintech, discussions and panels addressed topics such as «The Asset Tokenization Thesis», «Battle of the Stablecoins» or «The Challenge of Trading Security Tokens». All of these keynotes follow a clear pattern of a short presentation by experts in their respective fields, followed by a quick Q&A – both condensed into 30-minute segments in order to keep up a healthy pace.

As Mona El Isa, co-founder of Melonport AG, and one of the main hosts for this two-day event put it: «The M1-Conference is about bringing the whole Ecosystem working on the on-chained Asset Management together».

What are the barriers to entering asset management?

The problem Mona and the other attendees hope to solve is that the barriers to entering asset management are still high – mostly because of the costs associated with building a manager fund. So far, technology hasn’t had a big impact on making access to asset management easier.

As Melonport’s CTO Jenna Zenk further elaborates: «There are probably a lot of talented asset managers out there, but they don’t have the network or the financial resources available to even get started in the field. In asset management, no matter how talented you are, if you don’t bring at least 200 Million USD to the table, it’s very improbable for you to succeed. We believe on-chain asset management has the potential of lowering those barriers.»

Questions to be answered

One of the big challenges for bringing fintech products onto the blockchain is to gain regulatory approval – the question here being: What kinds of securities do regulators demand in order to be able to protect the investors.

No wonder then that many of the keynotes revolve around the topic of government approval and similar legal topics such as «How (not) to fit crypto into existing custody law» – a discussion held by Charles Meraud, CEO of Woorton and Sebastian Higgs, Director of Business Development at Vo1t.

Ideas and visions from M1, condensed

In order to get a clearer idea of what attendee’s wishes, hopes, and visions are, our very own decentraLIVE crew was on location at the conference getting a feel for the Melonport community and honing in on the essence of what makes the Melonport project unique.