How zbyte Aims To Make Public Blockchain Adoption Easier For Enterprises

The adoption of blockchain is slowly but steadily picking up pace in the enterprise segment owing to its advantages such as decentralisation of business operations and data security. It has also resulted in a surge in the number of Web3 startups working on developing solutions for enterprises.

zbyte is one such Web3 startup working to accelerate blockchain adoption in the developer community and enterprises.

Cofounded by strategist Nitin Kumar, serial entrepreneur Krish Kupathil, deep technologist Ankush Tiwari and new economy executive Saurabh Radhakrishnan, zbyte has developed a blockchain-enabled low-code/ no-code platform to make it easy for developers and enterprises to build dApps.

Building Two Entities

Explaining the objective for founding the startup, the founders said that the idea was to democratise the Web3 ecosystem and increase the number of developers building for it.

When the founders looked at the Web3 ecosystem, they found that it was not seeing mass adoption as it was difficult to build in Web3, Tiwari said. 

“If you look at the Web2 space, there are millions of developers who are developing softwares but if you look at Web3, there are no more than 30,000 developers who are developing Web3 softwares. The question was how to create a developer ecosystem on Web3? Then we decided to standardise the Web3 developer ecosystem with zbyte’s low code/ no code platform,” he added.

The Web3 startup has two entities – zbyte Foundation and zblocks. While the initial idea was to build zbyte Foundation, Zblock was built on top of that, Tiwari said.

“There are two sides of what we are doing, there is zbyte which is the foundation, custodian of the open source dPlat that we released, and the other one is zblock for enterprises,” he explained.

dPlat is a decentralised platform that allows building decentralised applications (dApps) on existing Layer1 protocols via zbyte’s low-code/ no-code platform to help remove the complexity of wallet management and connectors. dPlat helps in building dApps without coding, deploying multi-chain with single token, and accessing blockchain with Gmail, Twitter, and Facebook accounts.

The zbyte Foundation will be a token-based community where developers can develop apps. It will also have an app store or dApp store. 

The Foundation aims to launch its token by the end of the fourth quarter of the ongoing fiscal year. It is working on Casper, Polygon, and Avalanche blockchains to launch the tokens. Other than rewarding developers, the tokens could be utilised to operate dPlat, and used as a single token to traverse multiple chains. 

Meanwhile, zblocks is creating dPlat Pro to enable enterprises to pay in fiat currency, eliminating the need to keep cryptocurrency on their balance sheets.

While it will protect enterprise investments by enabling the development of decentralised platforms across multiple blockchain Layer 1 protocols, it will also provide connectors to enterprise databases and applications such as CRM, marketing and ecommerce tools. The startup aims to have an invite-only launch for zblocks in November 2022.

How zbyte Plans To Target Enterprises 

According to Tiwari, the challenges are different for enterprise adoption as compared to community adoption. While the entry point for an enterprise to any new software is an email identity, the entry point for blockchain is always a wallet. However, there is nothing like a wallet for the enterprise market, Tiwari said.

zbyte is building enterprise identity connective for enterprises to make it easier for them to adopt blockchain. The identity connective will not only help enterprises join blockchain but also improve security.

“In blockchain, if something is lost, then the account is lost. In the enterprise world we need to have transferability…people will leave jobs, things will change, we need to be able to assign the same account to other emails,” he added.

Explaining the need for its solutions, Tiwari said that while large players like Polygon, Avalanche, and Ethereum offer a framework for public blockchain, they need to be looked at as lower-layer infrastructure providers on top of which solutions have to be built.

While there are players such as Moralis, Magiclink who offer point solutions, zbyte wants to bring all solutions under one umbrella for enterprises willing to adopt public blockchain, he added.

zbyte plans to have a typical fiat currency-based model for enterprises. The startup is primarily targeting enterprises in the retail, BFSI, and D2C segments currently. 

The Way Ahead

In July, Zbyte raised $10 Mn from private investors for building dApp stores to help developers and enterprises build such apps. 

Without giving any names, Tiwari said that the startup is currently working on six-seven pilots with enterprises. By the end of FY23, it aims to onboard 10-15 enterprises. 

“The enterprises who are willing to adopt blockchain, they can go for public blockchain due to economic benefits. Blockchain ecosystem will also improve with the right set of tools. dPlat is a tool that is required to give confidence to today’s world that they can embark on blockchain adoption,” he said. 

While blockchain startups have caught the attention of investors, there are challenges at the ecosystem level. Due to uncertainty around regulations and lack of awareness about Web3.

“When we took public cloud to the industry, be it banks or any heavily regulated industry, the first answer was absolute no…we can’t do that. Everyone missed that we were in the early stage of a digital revolution. Even the industry was not ready for the public cloud journey. We are at a similar juncture with public blockchain,” Tiwari said.

As per a report, the global blockchain technology market size was estimated to be worth roughly $4.8 Bn in 2021 and is expected to increase to $69 Bn by 2030. As the adoption of blockchain and Web3 technology picks up, this provides a big opportunity for startups like zbyte.

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