While June brought more regulatory scrutiny on the crypto industry in the US, Japanese regulators continued embracing the innovation potential, affecting clear rules for stablecoins, and removing some of the tax barriers known as the Sota Watanabe Problem.
At Astar, we used the quiet of the bear market to build and share our renewed vision for the future named Astar 2.0 - which lays out the roadmap for delivering web3 to billions.
Read on for an overview of all the things that happened at Astar in June.
Network
Astar 2.0
Our biggest update in June was the launch of our new vision paper, outlining how Astar will evolve soon. Astar 2.0 will change all aspects of our network to create a holistic ecosystem capable of onboarding billions to web3. Among other things, we are rethinking our tokenomics, enhancing our dApp staking program, and laying the groundwork to establish a reliable governance for the network.
You can explore Astar 2.0 on our website and learn more about its background on our blog.
20,000 unique stakers
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And not only did we see growth in the number of stakers, we also welcomed 2 new projects to dApp staking,
FiDi and ArtZero join dApp staking
FiDi, an advanced analytics platform for all your Astar Network assets, has successfully passed its application to dApp staking. It’s joined by ArtZero, a marketplace that recently added support for Astar NFTs and features a unique NFT collection distributing some of its revenue to its community.
A warm welcome to these new additions, and if you want to support them, don’t forget to stake.
Sony Incubation Candidates #4
In advance of hosting our Sony Demo Day, we introduced the 4th batch of candidates on our blog. They include teams from all over the world building with Astar to address challenges such as identification online, to adding a social layer to web3.
Check out our post to learn more about how DeSoul, Cosmize, SkyArk, and Lemonade leverage blockchain for their projects.
EasyA Astar Challenge launched.
Early in June, the team at EasyA launched their Astar challenge allowing anyone interested in learning how to develop on Astar to do so on the go using only their phone. Over 1,000 builders have already signed up for the challenge earning XP and getting ready to code on Astar. The Astar challenge forms part of the bigger #60daysof Polkadot series in which top learners can win a share of $30k in DOT.
Ready to start? Download the EasyA app here.
Peers Program applications still open.
We take decentralization seriously at Astar. And part of that also means decentralizing the network archive nodes that keep track of the transaction history. To encourage new node runners who are in areas where we aren’t well-represented yet, we’ve opened our Peers Program.
To help new peers out, they can receive an amount of ASTAR equal to $200, which will cover the cost of a Raspberry Pi, the device needed to run a node. Requirements to join include being in one of the following regions: South America, Africa, West & South East Asia, or Australia, and the ability to have 80% uptime.
Technical expertise is not required. Raspberry Pis are quiet and also don’t require much energy making them perfect to run at home. All you need to know: https://twitter.com/AstarNetwork/status/1670884228719054848?s=20 and if you are ready to apply: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScHmmQe04ijwnMFLZiLWW5S3hPFCK6vNr1rAJ44LPETp7VJLQ/viewform
Community
Airlyft campaign
To celebrate the launch of Astar 2.0, we partnered with Airlyft to distribute tokens of appreciation to our active community members. Throughout this campaign, you’ll be able to earn NFTs and tokens for completing simple tasks and helping us spread the word on Astar 2.0, and Supernova, the big announcement we’ll make in the next few weeks.
Astar University Registrations are now open
We believe that education is a crucial pillar driving web3 adoption. Nevertheless, it can be hard to get started when faced with a plethora of information all over the place. That’s why we put together Astar University, a holistic program that will teach developers all they need to know to build their first app on top of Astar.
Sign-ups are still open until July 7th; join to become a blockchain hero: https://astar.network/developers/university
Infrastructure and Tools
Banana SDK now live on Astar
Wallets, and seed phrase management remain a friction point for anyone trying to onboard non-crypto natives. Fortunately, with the advent of smart contract wallets, onboarding might become a lot easier as it’s now possible to pre-fund wallets and abstract away the complexity of seed phrases.
Banana SDK leverages account abstraction to provide a seamless user experience based on the ERC-4337 standard and is now accessible to builders on Astar.
Check our Docs to learn how and build your first Banana powered onboarding flow: https://docs.astar.network/docs/build/EVM/developer-tooling/banana/
Enterprise
Startale Labs forming a Capital Alliance with Sony Network Communications.
At IVS Kyoto, our CEO Sota Watanabe shared the news that Startale Labs, an entity in the Astar ecosystem, had raised $3.5 million in seed funding from Sony Network Communications. This will form the base for an alliance between the two aimed at onboarding enterprises to web3 in Japan.
Startale also plays a crucial role in bringing on billions and fulfilling our Astar 2.0 vision.
The news also got picked up by major news outlets such as Coindesk and Yahoo: https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2023/02/17/sony-teams-up-with-astar-network-for-web3-incubation-program/
Events
June has been packed with events from hackathons to meetups and ending with Decoded and IVS Kyoto. So here are just some of our highlights.
Polkadot Pioneers AMA
Toma from our team led the first Polkadot pioneers AMA, answering questions from the community and sharing more on what builders are creating with the ink! smart contract programming language.
We’re excited to be part of more of these calls.
Sony Demo Day
A big thanks to everyone who joined us in Tokyo at Sony’s Headquarters for our Demo Day and all those who were following it online in the Cosmize Metaverse. During the Demo Day 16, projects showcased what they were building, including anything from payment solutions to platforms bridging the gap between digital assets and the physical world.
Stay tuned for more from these projects and what they’re creating on top of Astar.
Ai x Crypto Hackathon
In June, Astar also sponsored prizes for an AI x Crypto Hackathon hosted by Aikindo in Japan. During the nearly 4 weeks, multiple teams built on our infrastructure, and in the end, 8 of the 10 finalists were using Astar tools.
The winners of the Astar prizes include a tool to help train AI, a detective mystery game, a ticketing solution, and a vacation home rental/sharing platform. All the teams will continue working on their ideas to develop them further and bring them to market.
IVS Crypto
IVS is Japan’s biggest startup event and was hosted in Kyoto during the last week of June. IVS Crypto is a sub-section of the broader conference and the biggest crypto event in Japan, where international and Japanese projects, investors, and the community meet.
This time, over 10,000 participants joined, marking a 5-fold increase from last year. Astars’ booth was well-visited, and we also hosted and joined various side events. It’s encouraging to see such engagement and interest in the Japanese market and to meet many passionate builders. Our CEO, Sota, held a keynote talking about the future of Web3 in Japan and shared the news of the recent investment by Sony Network Communications in Startale Labs.
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We also held a community call, participated in an Easy A Hackathon in London, joined the NEAR Vietnam team for an AMA, and more. It’s been a busy month, and thanks to everyone making time to listen in and support our community.
Your Astar team