MANILA, Philippines — The second day afternoon session of Blockchain Week shifted the conversation from theory to execution, as founders, payment operators and creative technologists laid out concrete plans to put blockchain to work across Asia.
Across sessions, the message was consistent: the tools exist, the capital is available, and the next bottleneck is everyday usability, not technology.
A push to fund Asia’s next builders
The afternoon opened with a rallying call for developers.
Organizers behind an APAC Hackathon spotlighted a prize pool anchored by a 60,000 US dollar headline award, with additional developer prizes layered on top, framing the contest as one of the largest building opportunities in the Asia Pacific region.
Speakers pointed to Southeast Asia’s roughly 600 million people as a fast-moving digital economy still underserved by simple financial tools.
The ask to builders was specific: easy payments, decentralized finance backed by real assets, and consumer apps that people will actually open and use.
Support on offer included workshops, mentors and a cross-country builder network spanning Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Local results were used as proof of momentum.
A recent April program on the Stellar network drew more than 500 builders worldwide, about half of whom took home prizes.
Seventeen of those winners came from the Philippines, a figure organizers cited to argue that Filipino developers are already competitive on a global stage.
Builder programs are set to run through June, July and August, with satellite events and Stellar Philippines community meetups offering smaller incentives for newcomers.
NET25 was acknowledged from the stage during the segment, with the network providing small gifts for participants, part of its presence at the country’s technology and entrepreneurship community.
Democratizing high-end animation with AI
The pitch of the day came from the founder of Kooolab, who introduced Crew Lab, an AI-assisted platform built to make studio-grade animation and visual effects affordable for individuals and small teams.
The presenter argued that AI should be treated as a renaissance for creatives rather than a threat.
The platform guides a project from story and script through AI-assisted editing, concept design, asset creation and final production, while keeping human direction at the center of every decision.
The demonstration shown on stage was described as entirely AI-generated, including a short film featuring a young Filipina girl and her dog.
The economics were the headline.
Crew Lab is targeting a cost below one cent per second of finished animation, against current industry ranges that can run from 15 cents to 15 dollars per second.
The founder framed the technology as a way for the Philippines, which has run a working animation industry since 1984, to originate its own internationally competitive intellectual property rather than only servicing foreign studios.
The platform is aiming to be fully operational by August, with several schools already on board and an open invitation for co-productions.
Connecting the world through digital money
A payments panel was brought together for a grounded look at where digital money goes next.
Their shared diagnosis: the biggest barrier to adoption is not the blockchain itself but accessibility.
Merchants need simple integration, ideally a single API that exposes dozens of payment methods, and consumers need to trust the experience.
A live demonstration showed a Dash payment settling in roughly two seconds at a transaction cost under one cent, illustrating the kind of speed and price the panel said everyday commerce requires.
The discussion turned toward a coming wave of agentic AI payments, in which autonomous software agents make large volumes of tiny transactions on a user’s behalf.
That future, panelists agreed, demands near-instant settlement, very low cost and new accountability tools such as Know Your Agent verification.
On regulation, the group viewed emerging frameworks like the European Union’s MiCA as an opportunity for operators that bridge traditional banking and crypto.
Their candid take on market hype: stablecoins and core infrastructure remain underappreciated, while some neobanks and tokenized real-world asset plays are overstated.
Blockchain in the service of public trust
One panel tackled government adoption and the question of how blockchain can strengthen, rather than complicate, public institutions.
Panelists returned repeatedly to three properties they said give the technology its value in the public sphere: trustlessness, immutability and immediate transparency.
The discussion cited Liberia’s use of blockchain at election voting stations as one of the first national-scale experiments, presented as evidence that the approach can work when kept simple.
The recommended path was sequential: understand what citizens actually need, translate those needs into clear requirements for builders, then partner with institutions to scale.
The strongest caution was against overcomplication and against any design that allows records to be reversed or tampered with, since that would erase the core benefit.
Governments, the panel suggested, should favor a measured test-and-learn posture over heavy-handed early regulation.
The throughline
If Day 2 had a single theme, it was that the conversation has matured from whether blockchain and AI matter to how they get used, by whom, and at what cost.
From hackathon prizes meant to seed local builders, to animation priced for indie creators, to payment rails fast enough for autonomous agents, to public systems built for verifiable trust, the speakers shared a common belief that the region is positioned to lead rather than follow.
Blockchain Week continues tomorrow.
