Sei Partners With Graviton Concentrating Focus On The Burgeoning Indian Blockchain Market

By: Christos Makridis

In the wake of the “crypto winter” and collapse of FTX, Terra, and others, there are still many blockchain companies that are continuing to build. Sei Network – a decentralized layer-1 that is building a network-wide order-book exchange on the Cosmos ecosystem – announces today a new strategic partnership with Graviton – a cohort-based web 3 accelerator program providing a platform for Indian founders and builders to fast-track their growth. The 16-week cohort cycle includes live learning sessions by experts, problem-solving sessions with peers, and access to a crypto-native community allowing for a deeper network and shared learnings that can be leveraged throughout the product development cycle.

While the recent breaking news with FTX is “catastrophic for the [crypto] ecosystem in the short-term,” according to Jay Jog, co-founder of Sei Network, it does not affect their plans to continue building necessary blockchain infrastructure that will enable secure and rapid access to financial information. Instead, they are continuing to build a permissionless and highly customizable network for developers to build protocols on it. Following its mainnet launch, Sei is poised to be the fastest blockchain in the world, purpose-built to give traders nearly instantaneous information on trades through their decentralized app.

The partnership with Graviton is important given the rapid growth of crypto in the Indian market. The share of Indian activity on decentralized finance platforms was 59%, according to recent data from the Economic Times of India, which is even higher than that of Pakistan and Vietnam that are routinely cited as global hotbeds for crypto mass adoption. India stands out as a country with unique growth in its demand for digital coins, according to a recent Chainanalysis report.

“India has one of the largest developer populations, the largest user base of crypto, and a thriving startup (web2) community - essential ingredients that will help India lead the global web3 industry. However, web3 founders in India need a strong support ecosystem that can help them overcome obstacles and build sustainable businesses. Graviton seeks to meet this demand by collaborating with global players in the industry,” said Arpit Nik, CEO of Graviton.

Sei is doubling down on growth markets to bolster its developer ecosystem and their recent focus on India reflects a broader effort to increase the penetration of decentralized finance into an unbanked population in Asia. “India has consistently proven to be an essential market in DeFi in terms of developer talent and DeFi usage. Our focus on the Indian market is part of an overall effort to attract developers and users in Asia to the growing Sei Ecosystem. Sei’s novel innovations significantly improve upon transaction speed and throughput prevalent in existing L1s, and make it an ideal platform for DeFi in Asia,” Jog continued.

“It’s a huge market that’s largely untapped,” said Eloisa Marchesoni, a tokenomics engineer. “The developer talent in this region is especially inspired, and it seems there’s no stopping mass-adoption despite the eventual position of the government. No matter what their government decides, Indians can still use cold storage wallets and LocalCoinSwap or similar P2P platforms (no KYC) to keep using and exchanging crypto in order to participate in DeFi (where no KYC is required),” Marchesoni continued.

Graviton is recognized as a leader in developing new cohorts of competent developers in India. Teams in Graviton that build on Sei will receive priority consideration for Sei’s $50 million ecosystem fund, which will contribute to greater awareness of Sei in the Indian market.

Graviton will help Sei with developing and growing its ecosystem (developers & users), as well as creating awareness of Sei in the thriving Indian market. Graviton is headed by an extremely talented and competent team of web3 veterans from India, and Sei is confident of Graviton’s ability to execute well in attracting talented people in web3 from India into its accelerator. Teams in Graviton that build on Sei will receive priority consideration for Sei’s $50M ecosystem fund.