Author: q_admin

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape where web3 innovation reshapes how communities interact and engage, Galxe has emerged as a transformative force. In 2025, the company received its first World Future Awards for Best Web3 Growth Platform.

Web3 businesses face growing challenges with fragmented tools, disjointed user experiences, and ineffective engagement. Galxe solves this with a secure, all-in-one platform that turns user base engagement into scalable, data-driven growth powered by automation and identity intelligence. Built on Gravity—Galxe’s ultra high-speed Layer 1 blockchain—the platform unifies onboarding, identity verification, automation, and user engagement into one seamless experience. Galxe has evolved into the largest community-building platform in web3, boasting over 34 million users and has partnered with over 7,000 brands in the space, such as Coinbase, Polygon, Forbes, and Avalanche.  

Leading this innovation is Charles Wayn, Co-founder of Galxe and Gravity, and a prominent blockchain entrepreneur. With a clear vision for scalability, decentralization, and user-centric design, Charles has helped shape Galxe into a cornerstone of the web3 ecosystem. Today, we sit down with Charles to explore his entrepreneurial journey, the breakthroughs powering Galxe, and the future of digital identity and community building.

Questions

WFA: Charles, what inspired you to co-found Galxe, and what gap in the Web3 ecosystem were you aiming to fill at the time?

When we started Galxe in early 2021, my co-founder Harry Zhang and I had been experimenting a lot with DeFi, like many others in the space at the time. We were fascinated by the possibilities of web3 and kept asking ourselves: beyond speculation, how could NFTs and DeFi actually be used to create real utility and impact, especially for community building?

That led us to our first idea: NFT-as-a-service. We wanted to give businesses a simple way to create and distribute NFTs, not just as collectibles, but as tools for recognizing status, achievements, and membership within a community. What really clicked for us was the potential to connect NFTs to actual user behavior. That’s where the concept of “credentials” came in, essentially behavioral data that could be composable, verifiable, and meaningful.

We then identified a bigger gap in Web3 around identity and contribution. Projects were struggling to understand who their real community members were. Not just wallet addresses, but real people actively participating, contributing, and building. Galxe set out to bridge that gap: to help projects recognize and reward meaningful engagement in a decentralized way. That mission still drives everything we build today.

WFA: Galxe has grown into a platform with over 34 million users and has partnered with over 7,000+ crypto brands. What have been the biggest challenges—and triumphs—on this journey?

The numbers are a testament to what we’ve built, and they prove that our model works. Which is why Galxe has become the leading community-building platform in Web3. But none of this would be possible without the incredible team we have. From engineering to ecosystem to marketing, our team is relentless in building innovative solutions and staying ahead in an industry that’s constantly evolving.

One of our biggest triumphs has been our ability to stay deeply connected to the community. We listen. We iterate. And we ship what people need.  At the end of the day, community is what makes or breaks a Web3 project. That principle is at the core of everything we do.

Of course, the excitement of this space comes with challenges. As an industry, we still have work to do when it comes to improving user experience and building greater trust. We’ve seen how complex onboarding or security concerns can become real entry barriers for newcomers. That’s why we’ve always prioritized both usability and safety, like a seamless UX and robust security infrastructure, making Galxe accessible and trustworthy for everyone, from first-time users to enterprise-level partners.

So, whether it’s helping a brand launch their first campaign or supporting an ecosystem’s long-term growth, our goal remains the same: an essential growth engine for web3 businesses — not just a helpful tool, but the central infrastructure that powers how web3 ecosystems scale, engage, and retain users.

WFA: Gravity, your new Layer 1 blockchain, boasts incredible performance. What sets Gravity apart from other blockchains, and why was building it a strategic priority for Galxe?

Gravity was purpose-built to push the boundaries of blockchain performance and user experience because we knew that to scale web3 adoption, we needed infrastructure that could actually keep up with demand. What sets Gravity apart is its high-performance Grevm engine, the fastest open-source parallel EVM available today. In benchmark conditions, it delivers up to 16.57 gigagas per second, with 1 gigagas/second targeted in real-world use, resulting in a 5.5× performance boost in high-conflict transaction scenarios compared to traditional engines.

We also engineered sub-second transaction finality, which is a game-changer for end users. It eliminates the lag and uncertainty that have plagued blockchain UX for years. At the core of this performance is Gravity’s innovative 5-stage pipelined architecture, which allows for parallel execution and consensus. This design isn’t just about speed; it enables scalable, decentralized interoperability across multiple blockchain ecosystems at lower cost and higher throughput.

Strategically, Gravity is foundational to Galxe’s mission to power growth in web3. Whether you’re a protocol, dApp, or ecosystem partner, you need infrastructure that can deliver on scalability.

WFA: Galxe Quest has powered over 1.1 billion quests. How does this product drive community engagement, and what does that say about the evolution of loyalty in decentralized spaces?

Galxe Quest drives engagement because it fundamentally flips the traditional loyalty mode. Instead of locking users into a brand’s ecosystem, it rewards participation with onchain assets users actually own. That simple shift from centralized to user-owned makes all the difference.

With every quest completed, users collect real value: tradable NFTs, interoperable points, and a transparent onchain history that’s theirs to keep and use across web3. That kind of ownership fosters deeper loyalty because users aren’t just being rewarded, they’re being recognized.

To me, the 1.1 billion+ quests reflect a broader shift in web3, loyalty isn’t just about frequency, it’s about freedom, transparency, and belonging. And that’s exactly what Galxe is building.

WFA: Galxe has a streamlined token distribution tool that simplifies airdrops for both projects and users – Earndrop. How does Earndrop’s automation and centralized claiming experience improve community engagement and user retention compared to traditional airdrops?

Earndrop fundamentally improves community engagement and user retention by addressing one of the biggest friction points in web3, token distribution. Unlike traditional airdrops that often require custom dev work, fragmented claim pages, or multiple user touchpoints, Earndrop offers a fully automated, cohesive experience. Users can check eligibility and claim tokens from multiple campaigns and across multiple chains in one place, which naturally encourages ongoing platform engagement.

On the project side, Earndrop is built on the same intelligent framework and highly-scalable infrastructure that powers Galxe Quest. That means projects can confidently distribute assets, whether it’s for a TGE, loyalty reward, or early access campaign, without worrying about performance, manual processes, or security gaps. It completes the distribution lifecycle that Quest starts, giving teams a flexible and secure way to convert on-chain actions into tangible token rewards.

Ultimately, Earndrop turns what was once a tedious backend process into a strategic growth tool. By eliminating distribution headaches and increasing transparency, it empowers web3 projects to focus on deeper community building and smarter token launch strategies.

WFA: Galxe recently launched ‘Starboard’, a data-driven growth and analytics tool. Why did the team build this solution, and why now?

We built Starboard to address a major gap we saw after working with thousands of projects. Web3 teams could attract users, but they couldn’t always identify who truly mattered.

Galxe helped kickstart growth for countless protocols through Quests, bringing millions of users into web3. But as the space matured, the conversation shifted from how many showed up to who actually stayed, contributed, and created value. Teams began asking smarter questions:

• Who brought in liquidity?
• Who kept showing up as a builder or brand advocate?
• Who’s driving real traction?

The answer wasn’t always visible; however, Starboard solves this by giving projects a unified view of onchain and offchain contributions, mapped directly to outcomes like protocol usage, developer activity, and community strength. It transforms fragmented campaign data into a clear leaderboard of impact, so every reward is tied to real progress, not just participation.

We didn’t build Starboard to replace Quests; Starboard is a complementary tool to Quest, completing the journey from first touch to long-term alignment. In web3, growth means building with the right people, and Starboard helps teams track what matters and reward real impact.

WFA: Galxe has evolved into an all-in-one platform, powered by analytics, automation, and engagement solutions. How do you see this integrated approach shaping the future of Web3?

Web3 has long struggled with fragmentation. Teams are often forced to piece together disconnected tools and systems just to drive basic growth. Galxe was built to change that. Our integrated approach brings together identity, analytics, engagement, and now distribution, meaning that projects no longer have to choose between scalability, usability, and depth of insight. 

By unifying the core elements of modern growth into a single platform, we empower teams to build smarter strategies, drive stronger community participation, and make decisions backed by real behavior-based data. It’s not just about convenience; it’s about unlocking a new standard for how web3 projects should launch, grow, and scale.

We believe the future of Web3 will be shaped by platforms that prioritize simplicity, trust, and community. Galxe’s model reflects that vision, offering a fluid, secure, and future-ready foundation for builders and users.

WFA: Looking ahead, what excites you most about the next 12 months for Galxe, and what can the web3 community expect from your team?

The next year is an important one for us. With a product stack that now supports the full web3 growth cycle, we’re focused on collaborating with more teams that are building thoughtful, useful tools in the space. One major milestone ahead is the mainnet launch of Gravity, which we see as a meaningful step forward for both Galxe and the broader ecosystem. We’re continuing to develop tools that are more flexible, better integrated, and focused on helping teams drive real impact.

WFA: Thank you, Charles, for sharing your insights and pioneering vision. Your leadership continues to inspire innovation across the web3 space and beyond!

Visit https://www.galxe.com/ for more on the award-winning company.

In a time where healthcare and technology are converging at an unprecedented pace, visionary leadership is essential to drive transformation that is not only innovative but also inclusive. Dr. Umbereen S. Nehal exemplifies this rare combination of clinical expertise and technological foresight. A seasoned physician executive and founder of a digital health venture incubated at MIT, Dr. Nehal has been at the forefront of aligning digital innovation with frontline realities, advancing personalized, equitable, and system-wide healthcare solutions.

World Future Awards is honored to feature Dr. Nehal in this exclusive interview exploring The Role of Physician Leaders in Accelerating Digital Transformation in Healthcare. With a unique perspective shaped by her leadership across government, industry, and care delivery, Dr. Nehal brings deep insight into how data-driven, human-centered innovation can reshape the future of global health, especially in the U.S., where she has had her greatest impact.

Questions:

World Future Awards: You bring a rare dual lens as both a physician and a tech executive. How has this combined perspective shaped your approach to digital transformation in healthcare?

Dr. Umbereen S. Nehal: When done right, both clinical care and digital innovation serve the human end user, either as patient-centered clinical care or user-centered design of tech. I am not trying to “disrupt” or add more fragmentation; mine is a systems thinking approach. As a frontline physician, I experienced cumbersome tech that turned me into a data entry clerk. Frustrated that it took my focus away from what my patient needed, I became a “super user” to improve my own work. Now I do that at scale as a digital health founder. We need more coordination and efficiency so that tech can do mundane tasks so we can reduce clinician burnout and bring humanity back into healthcare.

WFA: What are the most critical areas of opportunity for physician leaders to accelerate digital transformation while maintaining clinical integrity and improving outcomes?

USN: I would advise physicians to engage as advisors, co-designers, or even founders. No one knows the pain points, needs, or workflows of healthcare better than practicing clinicians like doctors, nurses, pharmacists, etc. Physicians have been sold (or even mandated to buy) so much bad technology over the years that many are understandably sceptical of the latest promises on health tech. Sometimes doctors get described as “resistant” or “luddite.” I would take more of a driver’s seat. Learn some basics. Have the ability to ask smart, incisive, probing questions about tech. This is something that I have been developing a course on, in fact. Most conferences are now offering sessions on AI so any physicians can learn what is most critical for their field or clinical setting.

WFA: Your current venture, incubated at MIT, addresses a core pain point in clinical care—limited time during doctor visits. What inspired this focus, and how is your AI-enabled solution improving that experience for both patients and physicians?

USN:  While at MIT, I founded HER Heard based on my own patient experience of fragmented care, late diagnosis, and delays in getting care. I also saw how my stoic, dignified mother often got ignored by nurses and doctors compared to louder, more demanding patients. I do not think women need to “speak up” more; instead, the system needs to listen better. I think of it like how a queen is surrounded by those serving her, anticipating her needs. With AI agents, we can make that possible for the average woman, too.

Specifically, we have created a structured, pre-visit process that captures the nuance of the patient’s story and lived experience that fits into the healthcare system. We’re using AI as an interface and analysis tool for collecting, organizing, and synthesizing patient-reported data—symptoms, goals, concerns, and values. The system prepares the patient for the visit with education and prompts, while giving the clinician a summary that aligns both with their workflow and what insurance wants documented. Our platform and AI pre-visit medical assistant is built on best practices from AHRQ (Agency for Health Research and Quality), like Shared Decision Making (SDM). We’ve embedded patient-reported outcomes and quality-of-life measures because those are the metrics that matter for patients and are research-grade data.

WFA: You’ve played leadership roles in public health, Medicaid reform, and digital health innovation. How do you connect government, industry, and clinical practice to design inclusive, data-driven health systems?

USN: From my various roles, I see the importance of data portability, ownership, and control over one’s own health data as a patient. As an advisor to federal agencies like the NIH, I have been involved in the community recruitment for the All of Us database, for instance. I am excited by what researchers can do with that data. For the average woman, though, she still struggles to access her own data for her own health in a way that informs her day-to-day health. From my work at a state and local level, I know the health landscape well. I don’t duplicate what exists but build according to the unmet needs. That allows me to tap into underserviced markets to bring more people along for digital health, reducing the digital divide.

WFA: “Equity by design” is a central theme in your work. Can you share how you ensure that inclusivity and health equity are embedded into digital health solutions from the start?

USN: Most digital tools start by empathy mapping for a primary user, usually the most tech-savvy. Designing for the ideal user can be efficient from a product standpoint, but it completely misses the complexity of healthcare realities. At HER Heard, we apply principles from universal design. We intentionally design for people called “the extreme user” who experience more challenges. Consider the woman working two jobs who also cares for aging parents – she has limited time, energy, and attention span, so she needs highly engaging and tailored UI/UX. We also think of family systems and community supports, not just one individual user at a time. Because women make 80% of healthcare decisions for their families, it is often said that a woman is the “Chief Medical Officer” of her family. In this way, we also strengthen the business model. Where a woman seeks care, her children, spouse, and parents may also go.

WFA: As a former Chief Medical Officer for 14 centers and co-author of a $1.8B Medicaid reform initiative, what lessons have you learned about operationalizing innovation in large-scale systems?

USN: At the state level, that $1.8B Medicaid transformation required enabling data transfer between a range of hospitals and several government agencies (Medicaid, Department of Public Health, CMS, etc). From that, I got into the weeds of data infrastructure and definitions needed for interoperability. It was a crash course in how legacy systems were not built with a future focus. Then, as the Chief Medical Officer managing a $100 million budget, I found that many vendors wanted to sell to us, even though their products were not built for our population.

This is the classic “build versus buy” dilemma. I recommend a hybrid approach: be a pilot site to co-design the innovation to suit your organization’s unique needs. I learned this best when I had oversight of a $300 million research budget for PCORI (Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute), where all our studies were co-designed and co-administered with community partners for true grassroots innovation.

WFA: What role do you see human-centered design and personalized medicine playing in the future of healthcare, especially when powered by AI and big data analytics?

USN: Patient-generated data from wearables or symptom diaries may be able to fill in gaps in research and make personalized medicine more accessible. If genomics is added in, the precision increases. With HER Heard, for instance, the primary goal is to serve individual women with personalized health. In addition, by designing to record research-grade data, we will create a valuable data lake over the years. If patients opt in to participating in research, the pooled data can help us better understand women’s health overall.

In tech, the term “GIGO” or garbage in, garbage out is used to describe bad data giving bad analyses. We can only get personalized medicine that works for everyone if we have the right data. For instance, women were not included in clinical trials until 1993. That means the textbooks used to teach doctors and nurses are wrong. Even many of the so-called “evidence-based guidelines” are incorrect.

Once we have better data that is more representative across all of humanity, we can offer better personalized healthcare. In order to get there, we do need everyone engaged. Privacy, understandably, is a concern for many. I am hopeful that decentralized AI will allow more data to stay secure on individual devices while only the key insights are shared. Personalized medicine is not just the clinical care being personalized, but even the level of data privacy itself being personalized. We are moving away from centralized data on servers or a cloud and towards individual choice. 

Thank you, Dr. Nehal, for sharing your time, insights, and visionary perspective—your work at the intersection of medicine, technology, and equity is truly inspiring and essential to the future of healthcare.

Visit Dr. Nehal’s LinkedIn profile to learn more: https://www.linkedin.com/in/usnehal/