The financial crisis of 2008, famously known as the recession is a great example of how power vested in the hands of a few organizations can cause devastating effects on the global financial system. Almost no country in the world, developed or developing was able to escape the effects of this crisis, leading to increased rates of unemployment and business failures across the world.

Now today, even over a decade later, the global financial system is not immune to a recession like this one. Not to forget, billions of people across the world still remain unbanked, there is a high economic inequality, a large portion of the population has little to no access to wealth-generating assets, and power is still vested in the hands of a few centralized institutions.

It doesn’t take a genius to understand the flaw in the plan here. The system has made very little progress even after all these years. But, beneath the turbulent waters of the global financial system, a wave of revolution took birth in 2009. The Bitcoin genesis demonstrated the first real use of blockchain technology and brought with it the hope for an alternate financial system. One that is decentralized and universally accessible.

But the effects of blockchain technology did not stop here. Along with decentralized finance, blockchain technology also brought with it non-fungible tokens and a myriad of different digital assets that today, are on the way to make the metaverse a reality.

The efforts to build the metaverse and a new financial system along with it have come in from across the globe. But, it is the India at the helm of innovations in these industries. Indian blockchain startups are rewriting the global financial system and brining the metaverse to life with futuristic products and protocols.

Innovation Like Never Before

Today, the DeFi industry is worth over $200 billion and is home to some of the most innovative financial products of all time. The overarching theme within the industry is quite simple. Trust is placed on technology instead of centralized institutions, and power dynamics are shifted to level the playing field.

And in this context, the importance of decentralized exchanges (DEXs) can never be overstated. It is almost as if, DeFi is built on decentralized exchanges. They allow anyone across the globe to get ahold of any digital asset to either swap these assets, or provide liquidity to generate returns.

While many decentralized exchanges have emerged in the last couple of years, it is India-based QuickSwap takes this a level further. QuickSwap is a DEX built on the layer-2 blockchain network Polygon. Polygon’s architecture when combined with QuickSwap’s innovative approach ensures that users enjoy the comfort of high transaction speeds for almost zero gas costs when they swap digital assets.

While on the topic of exchanges, another Indian startup COMDEX emerged as a decentralized exchange for commodities. Commodities is an asset class that has proven to be profitable even in times of economic crisis and along with consistently beating inflation also acts as a good portfolio hedge. But, in the traditional financial setup, this asset class is vastly under-represented and accessible only to a few players.

However, COMDEX makes this asset class universally accessible. This is achieved through commodity synthetics that can provide exposure to the price fluctuations of real-world assets through collateralized crypto holdings. With protocols like this coming into the picture, wealth generation is easier than ever and investment options for users are numerous, to say the least.

Then there’s also EasyFi from India, a layer-2 money market protocol that aims to democratize lending and borrowing. But, through its signature product BLEND, EasyFi is bringing advanced configurable smart contracts to the industry to help build DeFi 2.0 applications. These smart contracts allow anyone to launch their own staking programs and offer fixed-yield to all participants. EasyFi’s main aim is to close the gap between demand and supply of yield generating products.

A single look at all of these products gives us a sliver of the progress this novel financial system has made within just a few years of inception. With a multitude of projects like these waiting to take shape from countries like India, the present problems with the global financial system could become a thing of the past, paving the way for a superior one.

But, beyond DeFi applications, Indian startups, as mentioned before, are significantly contributing to the development of the metaverse. A look at Trace Network will give us an idea of the extent of these developments. Trace Network is a lifestyle protocol for the metaverse. In this sense, the protocol brings digital avatars to life and allows people to make realistic representations of themselves to experience the metaverse. These avatars can be moved across different chains and Trace also features an NFT marketplace BLING that allows users to customize their avatars with accessories, jewelry, and outfits, all sold as NFTs.

Building the Future

The DeFi, and NFT-metaverse industries of today are still in their nascent stages and yet paint a big picture for the future of our world. These industries not only promise a better financial infrastructure to everyone but also a future of immersive, interactive life-like experiences. In this regard, the Indian-startups emerging from these industries have the potential to make this future a reality, playing a pivotal role in building the digital world.