Between Marseille and Nice, there is Toulon and the Var capital intends to exist in the Web 3 landscape. The desire is not new. Already at the start of 2023, TVT Innovation, the attractiveness agency of the Toulon Provence Méditerranée metropolis, had displayed its ambition: to make Toulon a stronghold of Web 3.
This ambition was accompanied by the launch of the Web3 Studio acceleration program. “This digital sector constitutes a real opportunity for economic development and influence for Toulon. The acceleration program, supported by the French Tech mission, made it possible to discover and grow nuggets, with which we wanted to go further”, explains Ouassila Kourde, operational director “attractiveness, sectors of excellence and international” at TVT Innovation.
From an event to the creation of a community
This “further” comes to fruition on July 3 with the organization of an event, the We3 Boat in the harbor of Toulon. On the program: conferences led by experts on blockchain, bitcoin, or cryptocurrency and moments to network, all aboard an XXL catamaran.
“The idea for us, locally, is to be able to draw the premises of a future Toulon community, which will serve to promote the number of players interested in this technology and then to gain in attractiveness to attract talent or investors,” confides Kevin Pardo, director of the Toulouse start-up Pleiad and member of the steering committee in charge of organizing this event.
A major festival
At his side, another Toulon entrepreneur, Saimi Barragan, is a regular at Web 3 festivals. These festivals are held throughout Europe and he has long wanted to organize an event of the same scale in Toulon, bringing together experts of European rank around round tables, workshops, evenings and a trade fair presenting the latest innovations. This will be the second stage of the rocket, scheduled for 2025.
“To succeed in such a format, we must first make ourselves known, we must generate and grow a community in Toulon, through monthly meetings, which already exist, then the We3 Boat event, on July 3,” explains the entrepreneur, who runs Startmining, a company often presented as being “a web3 locomotive made in Toulon” and which offers colocation for cryptocurrency mining.
Regional communities, such as BlockChain Innov or WallCrypt in Marseille, have already decided to join the We3 Boat event: “There is an energy that is not just ours and this gives credibility to our approach”, welcomes Saimi Barragan .
Democratizing Web3
Through these events, Kevin Pardo and Saimi Barragan also hope to show another image, than the often negative one conveyed by the media, of Web3. “This technological revolution offers billions of use cases and great opportunities, but also real development potential for traditional companies, which can rethink their existing economic model,” maintains Kevin Pardo. And, Saimi Barragan adds that “everything is being written, being played out now and we are facing an important challenge of acculturation of businesses and the local ecosystem.” The two entrepreneurs are convinced: Web3 technologies can bring value to a company’s product, its business model, its strategy, its culture, etc.
