The growing Asian crypto developer community w/ BUIDL Asia, APAC DAO – SlateCast #33

KryptoSeoul founder Erica Kang and APAC DAO co-founder Nicole Nguyen joined CryptoSlate’s Akiba to talk about the potential in the Asian markets and their joint event BUIDL Asia.

BUIDL Vietnam

Korean-based KryptoSeoul is a group of crypto enthusiasts who came together to create an ecosystem, foster growth and support global blockchain projects. In addition, the team offers translation, meetup, and community management services to decrease Asia’s alienation from the crypto world.

Vietnam-based APAC DAO, or the Asia-Pacific Decentralized Autonomous Organization, is a company comprised of entrepreneurs and investors to support Web3 start-ups to flourish and grow.

Erica and Nicole’s friendship dates years back. The two companies co-hosted BUIDL Asia 2022, which took place in Vietnam to bring the community together to serve both companies’ joint effort– growing a crypto ecosystem in Asia. To promote the idea of spreading across the region, BUIDL Asia was hosted in Vietnam, which made it the first conference that took place outside Korea.

Erica said:

“Current web 3 system is very small, with these activities we’ll motivate the community to expand. What we’re trying to do here, other than webinars and hackathons, we want to create a space for them to actually communicate across different communities.”

The event took place on Sept. 23-24, and hosted over 35 speakers that gave solo talks, made presentations, joined panel discussions, and held workshops.

Setbacks for the Asian community

“The Asian community needs support,” Erica said. Even though it is much easier for crypto-loving Asians to find a place to exercise their passion, there are still significant setbacks for the Asian community.

The first one of them is the language barrier. Erica mentioned that all primary project documents are released in English and include significant issues when translated into the local language. In addition, Crypto Twitter also operates English-based, which contributes to the information asymmetry in the Asian region. “This,” Erica said, “Puts the Asian market a bit back in terms of speed and depth.”

The second problem arises from the crypto community’s Twitter and Discord-oriented growth. Nicole and Erica said that the top social app in the region is Facebook. While the region is trying to adapt to Twitter and Discord, they remain very unfamiliar to many.

Another problem arises due to the fragmented structure of the Asian crypto market. “The market is huge,” Nicole said, “But localization and local partners are crucial.” In addition, the Asian culture values face-to-face contact and communication, which makes it harder for global projects to enter the Asian markets.

Potential of the Asian markets

After listing the setbacks, Erica and Nicole talked about the potential of the crypto sphere in Asia.

Erica described the crypto community in Korea as a “small population, but good talent.” According to her, the developer community and the builder market are keen on learning and applying what they have learned on Web3 projects.

Erica said that they were trying to answer the community’s demand for education and its movement toward execution. She stated:

“What we are trying to do is to bring about that interest in the builder space and not just talk about the price movements.”

Considering the setbacks and the isolation of the Asian markets, Nicole draws attention to the resourcefulness and resilience of the builder community in Asia. She said:

“…what they can do with significantly less resources, and without being able to rely on any of the centralized parties to launch a project.”

In addition to the strengths of the builder community, Nicole and Erica mentioned that the Gaming and DeFi markets in Asia are also huge, which could make the region a good choice for a test bet.

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