(Kitco News) - Toyota, the world's largest car company in terms of sold cars, is wading deeper into its exploration of the potential applications of blockchain technology by sponsoring a Web3 hackathon for decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) developers.
The Astar Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping advance the development of the Astar Network (ASTR), announced the upcoming Web3 hackathon on Tuesday, the first such event put on by the project, which is scheduled to take place in February.
Astar Network is a multichain smart contract and decentralized application (DApp) that originally launched on Polkadot but now supports a variety of blockchains.
The hackathon is being hosted by HAKUHODO KEY3, a company co-founded by Astar, and HAKUHODO, one of the largest advertising companies in Japan. Participants are scheduled to attend a kick-off event on February 25, and will have until March 18 to complete their products. The hackathon will be hosted in Astar’s Polkadot-based metaverse, COZMISE.
The first round of judging will take palace on March 23, and the groups that make it past this round will be able to participate in a pitch event scheduled for March 25. A total of $100,000 will be rewarded to the winning projects, which will be chosen by Toyota, Astar Foundation, web3 Foundation, Alchemy, and HAKUHODO KEY3.
Toyota has its own ulterior motives for sponsoring the hackathon. The automaker is hoping that the event can help generate intra-company DAO support tools that its employees can use on future in-house projects.
“We are looking for potential products, not only for PoC [Proof of Concept] within Toyota, but also for scaling to external parties,” the announcement said. “By setting its own rules through smart contracts on the blockchain, the organization can be managed and operated transparently with the cooperation of many people. Anyone with access to the Internet can participate in this type of organization, and anyone with the tokens used by each organization can participate in decision-making.”
Toyota decided on the theme of developing DAO support tools for companies based on their belief that “if we could manage projects as a DAO, an organization in which team members can operate autonomously and decision-making is distributed, we could reduce the manager’s workload and at the same time help team members improve the impact that team members have on company growth.”
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For its part, Astar is dedicated to helping Toyota achieve this goal, as it will help bring an increased level of interaction to the Astar Network.
“During the event, we aim to develop the first PoC DAO tool for Toyota’s employees. If a good tool is produced, Toyota employees will interact daily with products on Astar Network,” said Sota Watanabe, the founder of 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.”
The ultimate goal of Astar is “to become the blockchain backed by Japan,” and the project has already established a new company named Startale Labs to help make this goal a reality. “The government, enterprises, and web3 solutions in Japan are actively working with Astar to bring together a global platform originating from Japan,” the announcement said. “Astar is accelerating to create a ‘new era.’”
