Toyota taps Astar Network to explore Web3 in grand style

Although the crypto ecosystem has faced its fair share of bumps, Japanese automaker Toyota is seemingly bullish about the space and continue to look at Web3 as a promising opportunity.

Japan’s largest conglomerate has chosen blockchain innovation hub Astar Network to make use cases for its employees. Specifically, Toyota is exploring advances in the Web3 to create new experiences that will eventually be folded into concrete suggestions to improve the company’s operations.

Toyota is also sponsoring its first ever global Web3 hackathon as an initial step in the process. The guiding principle of that sort of crypto boot camp is to help Web3 developers build an intra-company DAO support tool on the Astar Network. Under the hood, this alliance allows them to create teams, issue governance tokens, and vote without needing to understand the details of Web3.

Zooming in on operations problems that need solving would enable Toyota to use the tools created during the hackathon to improve transparency and efficiency. Astar Network will take it a step further by providing the environment for developers and being tasked with product development support, as well as mentoring throughout the process.

Astar Network and Toyota believe that they could manage the projects as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), an emerging form of structure that has no central governing body. The system is developed to distribute decision-making, management, and managers’ workload.

Sota Watanabe, the Founder of Astar Network, said, “Needless to say, Toyota is the largest company in Japan and one of the world’s leading international companies. We are very excited to be hosting the Web3 Hackathon on Astar with Toyota. During the event, we aim to develop the first Proof-of-Concept DAO tool for Toyota’s employees. If a good tool is produced, Toyota employees will interact daily with Astar Network. Sometime in the future, I think we will see blockchain integrations in cars. Today, we are still in the exploratory stage, but very excited about the various possibilities.”

Takumi Sano, the Board member of HAKUHODO KEY3, added, “We are very excited to see what new web3 services will be built under the sponsorship of Toyota Motor Corporation. This could be an important hackathon that will change the course of history. We look forward to your participation.”

Astar Network is a Japanese-based bridge connecting layer-1 blockchains like Ethereum and Cosmos with the Polkadot ecosystem.

The Web3 move by Toyota is notably not the first time a Japanese giant is making its entry into the blockchain space or embracing Web3.0-focused technologies. To expedite the growth of Web3 in their native Japan, the smart contracts platform onboarded Japan’s top mobile carrier NTT Docomo to collaborate on mass adoption of Web3 as well as its social implementation.

NTT Docomo will invest as much as $4 billion on the next-generation internet technology as it seeks to take a leading position using its mobile infrastructure over the next 5-6 years.