Welcome to The Future
2022 Astar Network Recap + Building into 2023
We are excited to wrap up this year with our overview of the team’s sentiment on Astar Network’s accomplishments and what the team looks forward to in the coming year. With 2023 coming up, we have asked Sota Watanabe, CEO of Astar Network, and each department to share what past achievements and future updates they are excited about. Here is a rundown of what everyone had to say.
A message from Sota Watanabe, CEO of Astar Network
Proud moments of 2022:
I am proud of many things in 2022. First, Astar became a Polkadot parachain and launched mainnet. This was a critical milestone for us after two years of development. Second, we raised $22M, led by Polychain and followed by Coinbase, other legendary investors, and notable individuals like Gavin Wood. Third, as of today, we have more than 70 projects on the top of Astar, and some great enterprise partnerships have been announced, like NTT Docomo, the largest mobile provider in Japan. Lastly, I am very proud of our team. In 2022, we doubled the size of our team, and we are continuing to grow a global team. I am very glad to be able to work with the best talents in the ecosystem.
Looking forward to 2023:
2023 is a key year for Astar. We will focus on two things, WASM dApps, and Japan. Gavin Wood says WASM is the future of smart contracts, but ‘Legacy’ EVM is important now. I agree that WASM is the future, Astar will in turn become the multi-virtual machine smart contracts platform. In Q1, we will finally support WASM smart contracts and start to make innovative dApps. By the end of Q2, Astar will be recognized as the chain of Japan, and I will continue to bring big enterprises into our ecosystem.
Thoughts from the Development Team
Proud moments of 2022:
- Astar supports Ledger — 2022-Q3
- XVM live demo on Sub0–2022-Q4
- Swanky Suite Release v1–2022-Q4
- New Astar Portal launched — 2022-Q2
- dApp Staking v2 Launched — 2022-Q2
- Light Client Implementation — 2022-Q4
- DEX Showcase app on Shibuya — 2022-Q4
- First Parachain to support WASM Smart Contracts on Mainnet (pallet-contracts on Shiden) — 2022-Q2
- Decentralized Public Infrastructure — Shiden (2022-Q3) and Astar (2022-Q4) Mesh Network of public endpoints
Looking forward to 2023:
- Ink 4.0 Live
- Autostaking (Turing+Shiden) Live on Shiden
- More WASM Showcase dApps are coming to Shiden and Astar.
- WASM Smart Contracts Live on Astar (pallet-contracts on Astar)
- NFT Marketplace based on WASM smart contracts and supporting RMRK (on Shiden)
- Account Abstraction — solving the SS58 <> H160 problem in the Polkadot and Kusama Ecosystems.
Thoughts from the Marketing Team
Proud moments of 2022:
- Astar Flight Club launch.
- Astar Youtube channel launched.
- Hexa-Farming with 5 other projects.
- NTT Docomo and Astar Partnership.
- The Year of Andromeda is launched.
- Fukuoka City is the first city to join Astar Japan Lab.
- Polkadot Summit @ San Francisco Blockchain Week 2022.
- DOT Festival brought nearly $10M of DOT to Astar Network.
- Yoshitaka Amano brings fine art to Astar Network with huge success.
- Over 100 articles were delivered through the marketing team on Medium.
Looking forward to 2023:
- LATAM events.
- Cross-Parachain campaigns.
- Unlocking the Starmap with ecosystem updates.
- Create a hub for community-created content.
- Celebrate incoming Japanese artists and entrepreneurs.
Thoughts from the Business Development Team
Proud moments of 2022:
- Educate developers around dApp staking and create successful use cases.
- Improved documentation has been beneficial for developers coming into the Astar ecosystem.
- Being one of Japan’s most recognized L1 blockchains by organizing and attending important regional events.
- Opening HRMP channels with several projects on Polkadot: Moonbeam, Acala, Phala, Bifrost, Clover, Interlay.
- Launching successful EVM projects in our EVM environment.
- Bootstrapping the EVM environment on Astar Network.
- Having great integrations ready in the Astar ecosystem for EVM and already for WASM, working closely with: Alchemy, Subsquid, DIA, Subscan, Blockscout, SubQuery, Subwallet.
Looking forward to 2023:
- Creating PoC with other Parachains.
- Bring in more big enterprises and IPs.
- Create developer hubs across the world.
- Make Shiden, Kusama’s NFT playground.
- Bootstrapping WASM dApps in the Astar ecosystem.
The team has put a lot of heart into building the future of Astar Network, and we can see there is a lot to look forward to in 2023. We want to thank the community for supporting us and taking the time to continue building. It would be great to hear what you think was exciting for 2022 and some things you look forward to in 2023.
Please leave your comments below and let us know what you think.
Happy New Year!
About Astar
Astar Network — The Future of Smart Contracts for Multichain.
Astar Network supports the building of dApps with EVM and WASM smart contracts and offers developers true interoperability with cross-consensus messaging (XCM). Astar’s unique Build2Earn model empowers developers to get paid through a dApp staking mechanism for their code and the dApps they build.
Astar’s vibrant ecosystem has become Polkadot’s leading Parachain globally, supported by all major exchanges and tier 1 VCs. Astar offers the flexibility of all Ethereum and WASM toolings for developers to start building their dApps. To accelerate growth on Polkadot and Kusama Networks, Astar SpaceLabs offers an Incubation Hub for top TVL dApps.
