Hi everyone, Sam (@Stakesaurus) here -- the Community Lifeguard (CLG) covering Southeast Asia (SEA)!

Thank you again for your overwhelming interest in participating in the Community Staking Fleet Initiative.

As we kick things off with Bitskwela and The Mu this week, we would like to share a small series of analyses on the SEA and Latin American (LATAM) landscapes with 2 goals in mind:

I will first present SEA below as the region I’m most familiar with and @enti will subsequently share his analysis on LATAM.

First, let’s look at some key statistics describing SEA and understand why this region is an ideal spawning ground for new home/solo stakers.

Key benefits of expanding the home/solo staking community in SEA:

Next, let’s understand the challenges of scaling the home/solo staking community in SEA.

Despite our close proximity, SEA is not a homogenous market. Each country has its own language, culture, regulations, infrastructure level, disposable income, and even physical landscape constraints.

Because of this diversity, Web3 communities in this region are numerous. This means a one-size-fits-all go-to-market/distribution strategy to grow the home/solo staking community is not likely to work.

The approach to scalable community engagement will instead need to be hyper-local and self-organising in nature.

Meme coins, points/airdrop farming, and other fast-moving narratives capture a disproportionate amount of mind share of users in SEA.

To be fair, this challenge is not exclusive to SEA, but it is amplified because of the low disposable income per capita. With lower capital to start with, it is more difficult for users to make meaningful income from running Ethereum validators. Even with Liquid Staking Technologies lowering the minimum staking requirement for node operators to as little as 1 ETH, many users will still be excluded by the financial barriers to entry.

However, there is a strong emphasis on education across Southeast Asia, especially in countries heavily influenced by Confucian values — e.g. Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, and Indonesia.

This is evident in 2 trends:

We leverage this culture by co-creating and funding educational initiatives on Ethereum node operations by working with communities across the region.

It is often assumed that operating Ethereum validator nodes (even with small stakes) should be left to institutions. This assumption arises from a misunderstanding of the degree of infrastructure and expertise required. For example, many people still think they will be slashed for simply going offline.

There are 2 causes for this in SEA:

As a result, translation efforts into respective local languages in each country will be required to scale the home/solo staking community in this region.

English Proficiency Categorisation in SEA by EPI Scores

By observing the challenges in SEA, we can derive that the general strategy will consist of 3 factors:

You will also notice that these 3 factors have been included in our suggested activities in the Community Staking Fleet proposal.

The CLGs are but 3 individuals with our own biases and blind spots. Hence, we would like to invite communities in SEA to share your thoughts and experiences from operating on the ground.

Are there better ways to engage the SEA communities? Do you view the opportunities and challenges of encouraging home/solo staking in this region differently? Are there emerging trends that you’d like to share?

Drop your comments below, and let’s grow home/solo staking in SEA together!