Conflux – Web3’s Next Billion Users

Why you should listen

Most of crypto, Liang argues, competes for the same users and capital, moving them between chains with bridges, compatible tooling and higher yields. The larger opportunity sits outside that circle: close to six billion mobile subscribers, five billion internet users and billions of banking customers, plus a projected wave of AI agents that Huawei estimates could reach 900 billion by 2035. His view is that moving existing users only changes market share, while creating new demand changes the size of the market. Telecom operators, with decades of relationships with billions of subscribers and the physical networks every digital economy runs on, are in his view the most natural route in.

The practical case rests on BSIM, which turns the SIM card already in everyone’s phone into a secure wallet that generates and stores private keys and signs transactions without the keys ever leaving the card. Liang describes a pilot in Shanghai, a commercial deployment in Hong Kong through a licensed telecom operator combining roaming data and stablecoin payments, and an enterprise rollout with an insurance partner in Hunan. His main lesson is that people should not have to become crypto experts to use Web3, and that asking newcomers to write down a 12-word recovery phrase works against mass adoption. He sees digital identity as the most valuable starting point, linking a subscriber’s network identity to a wallet with consent, so that a phone number can work as a payment address and operators could reward users for everyday calls.

The conversation then moves to AI. Liang argues that agents need money software can spend in very small amounts and settle instantly, with spending limits enforced in code, and points to standards such as x402 that already make this possible. His rule for what belongs on-chain is simple: anything that needs speed stays off-chain, while anything that needs agreement, such as payments, commitments and settlement, goes on the ledger. On privacy, he argues that personal AI agents will learn far more about their users than Web2 platforms ever did, and that combining telecom identity, wallets and blockchain could let people authorize agents without handing their data to a few large companies. He closes with stablecoins including USDT0 and AxCNH now on Conflux, a network upgrade completed in October, and his test for success: Web3 wins when it disappears into everyday life, the way nobody says they are using TCP/IP.

Supporting links

• Stabull Finance
• Conflux Network
• Conflux on X
• David on X
• Conflux developer docs
• Andy on X
• Brave New Coin on X
• Brave New Coin

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