Fastex Harmony VI Underscores the Company's Leadership, Growth and Focus on Trust

Both literally and figuratively, Dubai sits at the center of trade and commerce. The roots run deep. Dating back to the spice routes of antiquity, the region has long connected East and West and served as a global hub.

Dubai is a major hub for trade and commerce, both literally and figuratively. The roots of this role go deep, with the region serving as a link between East and West since the days of the spice routes, facilitating global connections. Now, Dubai is a hotbed of blockchain and Web3 activity, making it the ideal location for Fastex’s Harmony VI meetup.

This gathering of experts, founders and CEOs, held at the Intercontinental Ras Al Khaimah, showcased Fastex's leadership, growth and focus on a critical concept: trust.

“At the end of the day, the user wants to trust you, trust the environment,” said Vakhtang Abrahamyan, CEO of Fastex. Fastex aims to integrate billions of people into Web3, and for this to happen, they need to trust it, explained Abrahamyan. “In the digital environment, I want to make sure that my transactions or assets are safe.”

Fastex's drive for global adoption – in a trusted, transparent and regulatory-compliant manner – was evident throughout Harmony VI. New partnerships in Korea, for instance, bring Fastex into a thriving Web3 ecosystem.

“FTN [Fasttoken] has Bahamut, which has very good scalability,” said Dr. James (Jeon Junghweon), CEO of Estaria. “It's faster and cheaper, making it a great fit for the Korean market.”

And the Korean market is booming. Dr. James shared a surprising statistic for those in the US: The 24-hour trading volume of cryptocurrencies in Korea reaches $14 billion. “Last month, the trading volume of cryptocurrency in Korea was more than the traditional Korean stock market,” he added.

This is partly why Fastex forged partnerships with both Estaria and iPrime. “Through the collaboration among FTN and Estaria and iPrime, we can leverage a whole cross-game financial ecosystem,” said Dr. James. “Not only gaming, but also payments and the NFT marketplace. It will be a success story.”

Another success story unfolds in Malta, where Fastex recently secured in-principle approval for a Virtual Financial Assets (VFA) Category 4 license from the country, reflecting the project's commitment to transparency and compliance. “Category 4 is the most demanding of the licenses we offer under the virtual financial assets regime,” said Kenneth Farrugia, CEO of the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA).

For a company like Fastex to obtain in-principle Category 4 approval, explained Farrugia, “we gather a lot of information regarding corporate governance, risk management, AML, financial stability and organizational structure.” (In other words, it's a thorough audit, and Fastex passed it.)

None of this global adoption would be possible without advancements in the underlying technology itself. Which brings us to Bahamut, where updates on Fastex's layer 1 blockchain are progressing at warp speed. “We've been working on implementing our in-house-developed consensus, called Proof of Stake and Activity, which is a new concept,” said Pavel Aramyan, Web3 program lead at Fastex. “No other blockchain is using this; it's the cornerstone of Bahamut.”

Aramyan's team has been rapidly iterating on the testnet for nearly two years, and now the main-net is about to be unleashed. “The time has finally come,” said Aramyan. “We're ready to deploy it…It will be ready by the end of January.”

These themes of progress, growth and partnerships were highlighted in the panel titled “Unlocking Blockchain's Potential: Strategic Leadership in Custody, Regulation and Innovation,” which featured thought leaders from across Web3. The panel also showcased just how quickly the space is evolving, especially in the realm of regulation.

“Fastex started about three years ago, and at that time, the regulation was quite theoretical,” said Abrahamyan. Since then, he explained, the regulators themselves have become more knowledgeable, and they now recognize that Web3 “is