Part of Decential Media’s celebration and recognition of Women’s History month

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Belinda Lim is a fixture in Singapore’s blockchain community. A web3 founder, author, lecturer, community builder and commentator, she’s the go-to when you need  an expert who can translate crypto jargon into plain English. Since 2017, Lim has been driven to make the world of blockchain technology accessible to the masses. 

With a degree in Banking and Finance and a Masters in Technopreneurship, Lim chose the world of technology over finance after her studies. It is not lost on her that her life has now come full circle with web3. After graduating, Lim joined the pioneering team of a startup cloud computing company that scaled very successfully. It was a dream opportunity that Lim credits with launching her “career in technology into hyperdrive.” With the support of bosses and mentors, Lim developed the skills, confidence and courage to evolve into an entrepreneur and become a tech founder. It has been a lonely place at times as a woman in tech in Singapore. But more on that later. 

An MIT Fintech certificate course in 2016 introduced Lim to blockchain technology. With her background in cloud computing, she was intrigued with this “new type of storage.” The message of decentralization resonated strongly, and she purchased her first Bitcoin in 2017. From that point on, Belinda Lim moved into the world of blockchain entrepreneurship. 

Her current venture, Me3, an embedded wallet solution, evolved from her previous startup Avarta.io which sought to bring regulation and compliance technology - the world of KYC (Know Your Customer), trust scoring, cyber security and anti-money laundering - to the web3 space.

As 2022 rolled around, it was gaming that piqued the interest of Avarta’s founders. Could mass adoption in web3 be driven by the gaming sector? It was something they were keen to test. 

Belinda at Philippine Blockchain Week 2022

Each year gaming market research company Niko publishes a series of region-specific reports. They projected that the “Asia-10 PC and mobile game market would reach $41.4 billion by 2026, representing more than 1 billion gamers.” The Asia-10 markets are India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. In its November 2022 findings it identified India, Indonesia and Thailand as the fastest growing markets. Web3 games are an emerging subset of this, categorized by players earning digital tokens and assets from their participation in these games. These digital tokens and assets are owned by the players and are either stored in their crypto wallets or traded. 

“With the Southeast Asian market we initially assumed that everyone has a Metamask, everyone has a wallet, everyone is happy,” Lim said to me recently. “But the truth is that people in our region are not native English speakers, and were going through hoops trying to understand the set up instructions and seed phrases. There were just too many steps to set up a wallet and onboard into web3. And if they got stuck on any step and asked for help in chat rooms, it opened the door to them getting scammed.” 

She added, “our entire business was built on online security and safety. We saw a need to build a new onboarding experience for our region.. So we pivoted and rebranded ourselves to Me3 and doubled down on creating a wallet experience that works for Southeast Asia’s gamers. Me3 is about fundamentals. It is about creating a better user experience.”

Me3 got early traction from investors Kakao Games and Outlier Ventures as well as EVOS, which is one of the largest eSports companies in the world. This anchored the startup and gave it the validation it needed to build tools that improve accessibility and facilitate a smoother onboarding experience for the Southeast Asian market. Me3 started in Indonesia with partners like EVOS. It is a market that Me3 is committed to grow with sights set on being the top wallet in Indonesia. 

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“There are a lot of wallets in the market, but what we see is that we are actually providing fundamental tools to improve accessibility for the overall market,” Lim said. “We have created a thing called KeySmith that devs can integrate into their platforms. Right now if you need to create a wallet you are diverted away from the gaming website to the third party site.” 

She continued, “Our KeySmith offering enables gaming companies to embed the Me3 multi-chain wallet as a plugin on their platforms, and onboard new players to the wallet dApp without leaving the site. It is safe and faster to deploy, with less drop off. We are looking to build more cross industry tools like this.”

Like so many women founders in web3, Lim feels strongly that participating in web3 should not be intimidating. With her unique ability to simplify complex technical processes, she’s a popular speaker at blockchain conferences in South East Asia. She has used her profile to educate women on the opportunities presented by the web3 economy. 

“When I first started out in 2017, it was very rare to find females speaking on stages at technology conferences,” she said. “I always found that whichever women were in the audience would flock to me at the end, happy to find ‘one of their own.’” This experience prompted her to write Blocklass, a book aimed at women that demystifies blockchain and cryptocurrencies. She is also Chair of the Women in Blockchain Asia Singapore Chapter. 

“I would love to have more women founders onboard, innovating in this space,” she said. “Women bring a different perspective in terms of how we run companies to be more sustainable. Women tend to be pretty good operators in terms of risk management and collaboration. I feel that this is a new era to grow web3 companies sustainably. The era for easy money has gone. No more ‘eat and run.’ We need more women founders in web3 in South East Asia.”