I don’t believe in this, I believe more in “Blue Chips” tools or projects that attract the masses, KOLs are only a necessary evil at some point, but right now we need strong bases to attract on chain users, KOLs don’t guarantee loyalty to the network, Blue Chips projects do.
Yes, that is why they have opted for this new strategy.
Actually I think the main focus is Japan which Astar is doing a brilliant job, specially with Startale pushing forwards blockchains and Web3 narratives among top tier companies over there and then Korea is the next target.
Sota himself said he would like to see tools we already have in web 3 to bring benefits to companies, people and city instead of building something from scratch.
Narratives are important at user level but when it comes to business (which I think is Astar main goal) bringing technologies for the companies to decide what they need and how they will use is the key factor… in the end users will use web3 without know they are using web3 > Bluechips problems solution are the KEY.
IMO education, awareness, hackathons are more effective than creating narratives from thin air.
I 100% agree with this!
I fully support what you say, keeping the focus on this will allow us to keep growing and expands the Astar brand!
I agree, it is only a question of time, the work is being done, but it will be good to develop in parallel some dApps to attract in the short term the masses on chain. I like your point of view.
There are various perspectives, and it makes for a good discussion. It’s educational.
My opinion is that “attracting new users to the Astar ecosystem” and “increasing liquidity” will be crucially influenced by the narrative of Polygon AggLayer. Despite the numerous challenges we still face following this incident, I believe that the Polygon AggLayer narrative will strengthen the Astar ecosystem.
As an agent, I also think that promoting the Polygon AggLayer narrative is a good way to attract new users and liquidity to the Astar ecosystem.
Aside from the business development sectors of core contributors such as Foundation or Startale Labs (where, of course, the unique direction of Astar towards enterprise solutions and mass adoption is crucial), actions that opinion leaders like ambassadors can undertake include creating narratives for organically attracting developers and for drawing in crypto-native users.
These two types of narratives might differ, but ultimately, if there is a large on-chain user base and an active community, it tends to entice developers to adopt the chain, making the two approaches, in fact, complementary.
Lately, onboarding on-chain users remains challenging, not to mention costly, and there’s STILL a prevalence of mercenary capital.
Today’s on-chain users, regrettably, are quite simplistic and not loyal to a single chain. Their motivation is purely transactional, focusing on which chain’s dApp received investments, is pre-token issuance, and how much they can expect as a reward for their on-chain activity with that dApp, making it difficult to attract them to Astar.
The simplest approach might be using ambassadors or KOLs to guide usage of apps that plan to issue tokens natively on Astar zkEVM, hinting at the rewards involved. However, if there aren’t many such zkEVM native projects, then ultimately, it would be necessary to use core contributors’ BD aspects and roadmap as narratives (These’d be mainly based on Japanese narratives. So, explaining why Japan is promising for the Web3 industry is also required), to promote the potential of the Astar network and create ASTR holder based on that promise, followed by dApp staking and exploration further.
The incentive of $ASTR through zkEVM onboarding might not draw considerable interest from current on-chain users, as they can figure out the $ASTR rewards are coming from Astar’s community treasury, which might take selling pressure, implying not a great amount. I think that Manta had no choice but to push huge amount of $MANTA tokens in order to participate the well know liquid restaking narrative.
Therefore, in the short term, if we cannot expect immediate cheap user onboarding costs through a massive killer app or Web2 corporate customer pool onboarding, we should diligently focus on producing $ASTR holders from new and light Web3 users, encouraging current available on-chain activities on Astar Network step by step, and pushing on-chain guides with a friendly approaches so that they can start from dApp Staking.
As for narratives for organic developer onboarding, if the huge community and dApp ecosystem are already established, it should be easy, but for now, before solving the chicken and egg problem, the focus might be on securing a first-mover advantage in the early ecosystem, explaining how AggLayer is concretely promising, and how much more bounty / dApp Staking grant are available compared to other ecosystems. I am not a developer, so I am not sure if there are better approaches besides this straightforward. I would like to hear more from others and get developers’ opinions on this matter.
Really love the discussion here.
Agreed that in my opinion the most important points atm are:
I think the Astar team is doing a great job with all the companies they involve in Japan and Korea. Hopefully more people will see this work in the future.
Certainly these are the strengths, they just need to be aligned along the way and I am sure they will be achieved. Thank you for this debate
Hello guys,
Yesterday, I spoke with a web3 expert who is well-versed in South Korea’s situation. I felt that to stimulate the market, there must be something to attract people, even if it is somewhat speculative.
I also noticed a difference between Japan and South Korea. In South Korea, everyone believes and acts on the voices of influencers as a priority, but in Japan, despite the widespread use of the internet, YouTube, and social media, people fundamentally believe information from TV news and newspapers first. This is not a matter of good or bad. Depending on where people feel “trust,” the marketing strategies and targets of companies will change.
I used to have a negative view of memes. Therefore, I thought that the only way to aim for mass adoption was based on the principle that people will use something if it is convenient. However, recently, I have come to think that, even if the main purpose is speculative, it might be somewhat inevitable in this crypto market to first serve as a catalyst to energize the market.
I would like to utilize this perspective in future web3 business planning in Japan.
The information you share is very valuable, mainly because you are collecting data from two of the countries that use our network the most. I support what you mention about pushing or thinking about using Astar as a catalyst for this market, it needs to be done!
I love you idea. Fully support your initiatives =)
I agree with this. There is a huge demand for launchpads. Currently, big ones like Apr terminal, ChainGPT, DAO Maker, and Seedify would be nice to integrate with Astar (Parachain or zkEVM). I don’t know the current discussions that the Astar team is having on this matter.
Memecoins are inevitable due to the speculative nature of crypto combined with the sense of community that memecoins bring. Avalanche and some VCs are already investing in them as a way to onboard new users.
Yes, I have also come to understand that. In fact, recently, the TVL of Very Long Swap (VLS VeryLongSwap | Staking Airdrop | dApp Staking Proposal), a DEX on Astar zkEVM, has been increasing, and the overall TVL of the ecosystem has also been rising.
Recently, a meme called $NINJA was listed on VLS, and the momentum of this coin is still ongoing. I have been observing for the past 2-3 years that the community behind this coin has been forming a quite strong community in Japan from the beginning.
From this phenomenon, I have come to understand that memes are indispensable for the excitement of the community, become the “energy” of various project activities, and ultimately contribute to the ecosystem.
Wow, how nice to come across your proposal. I’ve been in web3 for more than 4 years. And although I’m not a dev, my forte is creating educational content about the projects I know. Since the beginning of the year I’m very excited to make Astar known in Peru, that’s why I joined the Ambassadors program. I think the program is a great opportunity to expand, but it is necessary to build bridges of communication for everyone’s work to be successful.
I’ve read many people talk about meetings to improve the storytelling and I’ve put in for them as well. I look forward to listening to them and learning as well.
Agree that the community-driven, often MEME, projects could certainly bring excitement and attention inside and outside of the existing community. Hope to see that the currently launched several MEME projects bring new inflows to the entire ecosystem as well as new dApps and projects to eventually grow the ecosystem.
I believe Meme is a good for community, although too many Memes especially the rugpull one, can kill the network reputation. We saw them in the past 3 years. No need to say but all of you know what I mean.
Take a look at Base and Solana, their network is having a good growth and became famous because of many meme token.
Hi @souleater,
Thank you for mentioning this topic.
Yes, I have also experienced a rug pull with NFTs before. I definitely agree that it’s something we need to be cautious about.
There may not be a clear best practice yet, but at the very least, credibility in projects offering Memes is necessary from various perspectives.
In a way, we who make choices need to become capable of conducting thorough due diligence, but it might be difficult for those who are currently less informed about web3/Crypto. This is a future issue.
Definitely agreed on both of you @souleater and @tksarah, rugpull projects at least should be minimized by all means to prevent any community member from being suffered; however, in a good sense, it leads some teams/devs/pioneers to provide couple of dApps and tools for users to prevent from being rugged, for example, Quick Intel. So, it is inevitable to see such projects showing up on the network, which can be seen as the popularity of the network itself.
In my opinion, having such rugpull projects on the network might not directly kill the network reputation; rather, handling them would eventually highly affect the network reputation.
In my opinion, having such rugpull projects on the network might not directly kill the network reputation; rather, handling them would eventually highly affect the network reputation.
I agree.
It’s the same logic as saying, ‘A knife can be used to cook and serve delicious meals, but it can also be used to injure and kill people.’