Stephanie Abou Chakra

My name is Stephanie Abou Chakra and I'm the marketing and community leader at OasisX. I grew up in Nigeria and came to Beirut when I was 13 years old where I found it very difficult to fit in because I didn’t speak Arabic. I went to architecture school where, because of my upbringing in Nigeria and because I used to see so much poverty, I decided to do architecture for humanity, which is not about building big houses, but building shelters. I loved it for so long, it gave me purpose. But then working with the UN and all the humanitarian agencies I saw it was shrouded in bureaucracy. I worked for long hours under the pretense of doing something good for someone else and so I wasn’t being compensated reasonably. After I turned 27 it just wasn't sustainable. I was working in refugee camps when I stumbled upon NFTs because a friend asked me to help some text. I was intrigued and started doing some digging. Initially I was interested in the art and technology behind it, but it boggled my mind because people were buying BAYC at astronomical prices. I wanted to know why. I kept going because when I started to help some projects with their marketing, they would pay crazy amounts of money and it wouldn’t matter because they would make it back in four minutes. Yeah, that's how it started, and I was just intrigued by why it was so valuable. We’re a startup here at OasisX so I wear many hats. I work on brand awareness, onboarding artist, and we have regular brainstorming chats to come up with and implement new ideas. Its a steep learning curve for all of us. What we believe in and know in our hearts is that web3 is a digital revolution that finally allows you to own your own data, allows you to trade digital assets, and allows transparency with transactions while removing the middleman, i.e. the bank or payment gateway. A lot of us turned to crypto after the banks were hit in Lebanon. However, I think we need a little bit of regulation to build trust. Only then will we start having mass adoption with big organizations jumping into the space. When that happens, people will be curious to learn more, and the market will grow. They’ll see that web3 simplifies our lives and gives you more that the current systems of web2.