Aura Network - Leveraging Their Southeast Asian Strength to Grow in a Multichain World

At Impossible Finance, we strongly believe that the Crypto market is closely tied to real-world growth, as it reflects the evolving financial landscape and technological advancements of our time. This belief stems from the idea that Crypto has the potential to disrupt traditional financial systems and provide alternative solutions for various industries beyond finance, such as supply chain management, voting systems, and healthcare records.

However, Crypto adoption varies significantly across the world, with some regions and countries embracing cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology more than others.

The diverse adoption level of Blockchain and Crypto in different countries often is the result of the difference in use cases of these technologies. Developed economies with well-established financial systems tend to focus on blockchain's potential for asset tokenization and secure ownership records. These regions are more likely to adopt blockchain for real estate, art, and digital asset management. Whereas in regions plagued by hyperinflation or unstable local currencies, cryptocurrencies are embraced as a hedge and a store of value; Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and Argentina are notable examples.

In this article, I would like to demonstrate how the future of multichain is tied to regional economic development and how different blockchains with tailored characteristics can best serve a particular user profile as well as how Aura Network, our #14 IDO, have been progressively evolved to better serve the Southeast Asian market.

This article is not used for the purpose of giving financial advice or to be written by a professional financial advisor, please do your own research!

Multichain world

Over the better part of the last two and a half years, Impossible Finance has grown from the original 6 to right now a strong team of 23. We hold 13 different passports and reside in 5 different continents. As a team of multi-nationale, we saw so many differences in how our daily life carried through and more importantly, how different each Country’s average Joe was using Blockchain and Crypto.

The world has 8 billion people, not everyone can afford ETH gas fee, (not that they should have to either!). Most people just want the basic access to the freedom of Crypto's financial services, escaping inflation, and freeing themselves of restrictions posted by local authorities. Of course the more fortunate ones can use Crypto to have their fun or to explore a new paradigm with NFT or On-chain activities on ETH. The point we want to make is not all public blockchain are the same, and they should not be.

Currently it is being observed the proliferation of application-specific chains (as DYDX for example), sector specific chains (as XAI or ImmutableX on gaming); in both cases focused in building specialized infrastructure and focused network effects that help them develop their ecosystems. The social tissue connecting developers and users within a blockchain ecosystem can also play a key role in the adoption of such infrastructure. Based on this fact, it makes sense to conceive region-specific chains; even for permissionless public blockchains that are globally accessible.

In this context, in the next section it is explored the adoption of web3 in emerging markets as key focus areas.

Crypto adoption in Emerging Markets

According to the IMF, in 2024, the fastest growing economies will be countries from the Sub-Saharan region, Latin America and South and South-East Asian countries.

For Crypto in particular, according to Chainalysis, we can also see a pretty similar trend in regions with the highest Crypto adoption index.

The table 1 displays the fastest growing economies according to the IMF, where most of the highlighted countries belong to Sub-Saharan, Latin America and South-East Asian countries.

Additionally, Table 2 displays trending countries with accelerated crypto adoption reported by Chainalysis.

Interestingly, Southeast Asian countries can be highlighted as they combine economic growth, large population (and markets), flexible regulatory and wide crypto adoption.

The reasons why we think South-East Asia is primed to capture the next wave of Mass Adoption and is a perfect fit for Impossible’s Emerging Markets thesis are:

A. Southeast Asia generally has a litigious regulatory environment for Blockchain and Crypto. In Southeast Asia, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Cambodia have officially recognized crypto. Meanwhile, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand have not yet fully recognized this industry. Vietnam in particular has the least regulation which poses concerns but in recent years, the country has been exploring options in creating a thorough framework for regulation.

B. Infrastructure here is modern, mobile-focused, has little legacy technology and therefore leapfrogging of new technologies can happen.

C. Southeast Asia has a large force of developers at a marginal cost compared to other parts in the world.

Aura Network on Emerging Markets

1. Aura Network is from Vietnam, they understand well that tailoring the approaches for distinct economic landscapes is crucial. The team has broad experience in providing Blockchain service for a variety of purposes from their days at Akachain, FPT’s Blockchain arm. To elaborate, FPT - Vietnam’s biggest Information Technology Service company was Aura Network’s incubator. In 2023, Aura Network had successfully raised $4m from Hashed and Coin98, they had spun out to create an independent entity that serves the general public users, not limited to just their corporate clients anymore. We believe that Aura Network’s experience has been carried over well into the work that they are doing in the public blockchain landscape. Aura Network even came above and beyond to further extend their already stacked team with the addition of their Chief BD Officier from Hashed, one of the most respected institutions in Crypto.
   
2. Coming from one of the lowest cost of living countries in the world, with a big population of nearly 100 million people, Aura Network understands that User Experience is their key to capture the market. The recent launch of Cosmos’s first native Account Abstraction on Aura proves that Aura Network has the technical advantage and is willing to go the extra mile to make their user's experience better.
   
3. Leveraging their existing network within South East Asia, Aura Network has been continuing to onboard more users to Web 3 through their partnerships with Web 2 companies leveraging their long time strength of providing Blockchain layer for day-to-day usage. Their recent collaboration with Ahamove, a ride sharing and delivery app in Vietnam further proves their ability to onboard users not just from Web 3 but also from Web 2.
   
4. Aura Network believes in the world of Multichain, in fact, they chose to build their Chain on Cosmos for max interoperability. As isolated blockchain emerged as well as ways to connect them, Aura Network believed that inter-blockchain communication protocol (Cosmos IBC) is the best method to connect these blockchain networks than alternatives like Cross-chain messages or Atomic swap. Now users in Aura Network can connect with over 72 different blockchains seamlessly thanks to the architecture that Aura Network has been building on.
   
5. Aura Network keeps on onboarding users by bringing quality projects to their native chain. The recent launch of Monsterra on Aura Network, the first Play-to-earn GameFi project on Cosmos which has a large community of over 450,000 users and achieved 100,000 downloads during Monsterra's first month of launch. This move proves Aura Network's commitment to bring exposure and adoption to their chain and Cosmos ecosystem.
   
6. Aura Network has been growing their user base focusing on Consumer Application of Blockchain and Crypto technology like Gaming or B2C consumer apps leveraging the widespread adoption of the technology and advanced mobile infrastructure of the region.

Aura Network is the team that we believe can capture the wave of Mass Adoption in South East Asia and other Emerging Markets with their novel approach to the Multichain Future. Impossible Finance is honoured to partner with Aura Network to facilitate the usage of Blockchain and Crypto network

About Aura Network

Aura Network is a high-performance L1, driving blockchain mass adoption with built-in modularity and account abstraction. The Aura Network blockchain is designed to address the trilemma of scalability, security, and decentralization.

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About Impossible Finance

Impossible is an on-chain native, research advisory firm with a DeFi launchpad and accelerator. We help projects kickstart, fundraise, scale and launch their tokens while enabling users to learn, discover and invest in high quality crypto opportunities.

Website | Twitter | Discord | Telegram | Blog