Author: @Jengajojo
Squad: @Jengajojo @lion917 @0xbaer @Studio07 @FINE
Summary:
Bankless South Asia DAO was formed early this year (as a subDAO of BDAO) with a goal of onboarding the next billion people in the south asia region. Since inception we have started producing content in 4 south asian languages and have 70+ members in the server which includes 20 active contributors. The SA DAO will continue to work with the IMN project to include the major languages and grow our presence in the region.
Background:
South Asia as a region enjoys a unique history of diversity and culture spread across many countries and is home to one of the most ancient civilizations in the world: The Indus Valley Civilization.
Sanskrit and Dravidian were the two languages popular in the area in ancient times. From these two ancient languages emerged Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and many more. The south asia region was originally a single entity which was a melting pot of culture and diversity all the way to the early industrial revolution when the colonizers carved the region up into smaller parts. They were able to divide the 2 billion people living in this area, but unable to divide the common heritage and language.
Here is a map of the distribution of languages in the south asia region
Some of the popular languages include:
Hindi: one of the national language in India is also understood by people living in pakistan, but not spoken by people living in the south of India.
Bengali: the national language of Bangladesh is also the main language in the state of west bengal in india
Tamil: The official language in sri lanka is also spoken by people living in south of India
Punjabi: A popular language in india and pakistan
Out of the 20 most spoken languages in the world, 7 are spoken and used exclusively in the south asia region. The south asia region is home to almost 2 billion people with accounts for a little more than 25% of the world population.
Over the past few years, the number of internet users in the south asia region has exploded
According to a 2021 report by chainalysis, India & pakistan are some of the fastest crypto adopters in the world.
Citing these trends, we believe that the South Asia region is the biggest market of opportunity for crypto as a whole in the coming years. Which is why we believe onboarding folks from this part of the world can accelerate crypto adoption as a whole and usher in growth and innovation for everyone.
Bankless South Asia DAO Many contributors from South Asia DAO are inhabitants of India, a country where all these languages are spoken and are used in official documents and legal proceedings of the local region/state. Thus it was clear for us that a DAO established in India could potentially benefit everyone living the south asia region. As the bankless community, we envision a world built on decentrzlied web3 protocols as opposed to the traditional system on nation-states governed by exploitative politics. We are the South Asia dao, and not India dao, because we inherit the cryptonative mindset as banklessdao members and want to open ourselves to all the apes from south asia and beyond to join us in our quest to onboard the next billion people to web3. The story so far…
Originally started as the Hindi node, the folks in the Hindi server opened their arms to their friends and neighbours who often speak 2-3 languages and include them in our collective mission and expand the languages we offer as a DAO.
We have identified Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil and Telugu as the languages we want to focus on in the initial phase of the DAO. Language nodes in Bengali, Tamil and Malayalam were started in the past season and as of 1st of May, these are the results:
Next steps:
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In the short term, we want to continue to expand into Telugu and Marathi and hence be the first crypto media to offer insightful content in majority of the south asian languages
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We want to diversify our source of income and hence we plan to launch a merch store for our audience and offer high-quality, low-cost merch to others in the web3 space
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Finally, want to make sure that we are consistently producing content in the major languages and sustaining our growth in the existing langauges.
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Reach out to local crypto businesses and DAOs for partnerships
Is this the right direction for the Bankless community?
- Yasssss
- Nay, this needs more thought
0 voters