Reflections from ZIL-3: Imagining a New Future for Zilliqa

As we planned for ZIL-3, we took the opportunity to reflect on our journey over the past three years. From all our successes and setbacks, we closely examined our vision today and what we wanted for Zilliqa moving forward. In light of this, the Board looked to reinvigorate our internal structure, with an emphasis on both strategic and commercial partnerships to broaden the Zilliqa ecosystem — and significantly boost the promotion and use of the ZIL token itself.

As part of this development, Colin JG Miles has been named Chief Commercial Officer of Zilliqa. In his role, part of a newly created “CEO’s office”, Colin will work alongside President Amrit Kumar to oversee the establishment of a more commercial outlook with the aim of making Zilliqa self-sustainable. This includes the increased commercialisation of SocialPay as well as strategic collaborations across sports, media, and entertainment among others.

During his time as Head of Marketing at Zilliqa, Colin was responsible for brand and marketing strategy and led our community engagement initiatives to greater heights. Throughout his 6-month tenure, he led innovative campaigns and oversaw some half a billion social engagements across our digital media platforms! His dynamic form of entrepreneurship and extensive business network is certain to accelerate the adoption of our blockchain, and we’re excited to have him guiding us through his new role.

Commenting on his appointment as CCO, Colin said: “Rarely have I seen a more complete platform for the development of decentralised, token-related services that can radically change the way people live, work, pay and play. I have been captivated by the team and the tech, and believe Zilliqa should be at the very top table in the global blockchain industry. We now have the partnerships and marketing muscle to achieve this, and it is my role to drive the company forward so it can fulfill its extraordinary commercial potential. It is a privilege to take on this enhanced level of corporate responsibility — and I sincerely thank the Board, all our team members, as well as the amazing Zilliqa community for such incredible support in recent months.”

As a result of our renewed focus and structure, the Growth moniker will be removed from the organisation. More excitingly, in a concerted effort to enrich the wider ecosystem and enhance community tokenomics, Han Wen Chua has been promoted to Senior Vice President of the now renamed Ecosystem team, and will lead a team of talented people to ensure this vision is realised.

In addition, Saayan Choudhury will be taking up a mission critical role of Senior Director, Commercial Technology, in which he is tasked with the immediate and profitable commercialisation of a wide range of nascent Zilliqa products and services, as well as the professional build of specialised custom projects, such as UFFS and Xcademy. Likewise, the demand for SocialPay, as well as other rewards and incentivisation products has literally been off the scale since launch. Major sports and media businesses are also looking to immediately integrate the Zilliqa blockchain into their overall offering, as revealed during ZIL-3.

Commenting on his new appointment, Saayan said: “I am delighted to accept the challenge to bring Zilliqa aggressively into the commercial domain and look forward to leveraging my development expertise, understanding of the Zilliqa infrastructure — as well as Scilla, to drive bigger adoption with our new partners. At the same time, productising the HGX solution provides another huge opportunity for the company’s growth in the year’s ahead.”

Finally, Kenneth Bok will be moving on to pursue other professional opportunities. During his tenure, he led key partner and market infrastructure relationships, including one with Singapore-based payments giant Xfers, whose XSGD stablecoin has been successfully powered and secured by Zilliqa. Kenneth’s in-depth knowledge of the ASEAN Fintech landscape is well documented. Representing the company across Tier-1 global and regional FinTech media such as Singapore Business Review, EuroMoney and Cointelegraph, he was instrumental in generating awareness on our numerous use cases, and the state of digital asset adoption and global blockchain regulations. Please do join us in wishing him the best of luck in his next vocational endeavour!

Clearly, we’ve got some significant changes underway which will yield only positive results for Zilliqa — building on our culture of resilience, and our proclivity for delivering innovation and cutting-edge tech. Speaking on the transition, President and CSO Amrit Kumar said: “Having had a chance to consider where we’d like to be as an organisation one, two or five years down the line, we have redesigned our organisational structure to make it operationally sleeker and more streamlined. As the applications of blockchain multiply globally, this set-up will help us deliver better and faster business results, drawing upon our experts’ skill-sets more effectively. Excited and hopeful as I look ahead, I am confident that the restructuring will help us fulfill our vision to catalyse secure, fast, and cost-effective commerce for global communities and industries.”