During the mask period, an Indonesian YouTube channel became popular during the suspension of various offline activities and quickly grew into one of the largest Web3 communities in Indonesia.

A year later, the community’s founders began running a training camp for 80 Indonesian government officials to explain the basics of blockchain.

A year later, they began to help the Indonesian local government build blockchain and connect to the Polkadot ecosystem.

This is not a fantasy, but a real story that is happening.

In this episode of Polkadot's official live dialogue, we invited Michael, co-founder of Mandala Chain, to share how they brought Web3 technology into the governance system of the world's fourth most populous country step by step, from content creator → community organizer → government partner.

From the West Java government chain with a population of 50 million to the Mandala blockchain architecture that will soon be implemented in multiple countries, from relay chains and parachains to cultural narratives and the revival of the historical token "Kepeng"...

This is a path where technology and culture go hand in hand, and community and institutions are built together.

Join us to learn how Mandala is making Polkadot’s possibilities a reality.

From Indonesian Community to Indonesian Government Blockchain

ET: I'm very happy to have Michael from Mandala Chain here with me today. I had the opportunity to talk to them last year when we were in Bali for CoinFest, and it was a very enlightening experience for me. I witnessed firsthand how enthusiastic the Indonesian people are about new technologies. Many people may not know that Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world, with a population of about 300 million people - more than 280 million to be exact, which is indeed a huge population.

Last year at CoinFest, Polkadot and Mandala were sponsors together, and we had a lot of people come to our booth, curious about the technology, wanting to know what Mandala is doing, and also interested in Polkadot. It was a very insightful and enjoyable experience, so I'm also happy to have you on this live stream again, Michael.

You are the co-founder of Republic Labs and Mandala Chain. Can you introduce these two projects to us first?

Michael: Of course, the two projects are actually connected. I am not Indonesian myself, I am Australian. In 2018, my wife and I moved to Indonesia for a short stay (before the outbreak of the new crown epidemic). Later, I fell in love with this place and felt that it was a very exciting and diverse gathering place for people. I started to get involved in blockchain in 2017, mainly trading Ethereum and other things at that time. Like most people, I lost a lot of Bitcoin in the first round of bull and bear.

We decided to stay. I had an online business at the time and could work remotely, so we lived in Indonesia. During the pandemic, all offline activities were suspended, and we were completely immersed in the blockchain world. It was also at that time that I discovered Polkadot and started to study it in depth shortly before our parachain was launched.

But at that time, we found that there were almost no good blockchain education resources in Indonesian, so we worked with some local friends who were also interested in the topic and created content in Indonesian during the lockdown. It quickly became popular. In about a year, our YouTube channel Republic Repair had 100,000 subscribers.

Repair is our playful way of saying the Indonesian currency, Rupiah. So the name sounds like "Dollar Republic", which is a clever pun. We gradually built a very large community and became one of the largest blockchain communities in Indonesia. It can be said that the whole process was very fast and exciting. Soon after the epidemic was over, I received a visit request from someone who I hadn't met yet, but I had heard of him a long time ago - because everyone knew each other in the circle when they were locked down at home.

His name is Anta, he's a local Balinese, he runs a development studio, and we found out that he started getting questions about blockchain from some of his colleagues in the government, so he came to me and said, "Hey, how do I explain this to them?" So we organized a two-day boot camp for about 80 government officials. We explained the basics of blockchain to them. After that, the government departments started to express the need to implement blockchain technology, and the opportunity for Mandala was born. That's how the Mandala project started, from my media team on one hand, and from his development team on the other.

ET: That’s great. So this is supposed to be after the pandemic is over, maybe 2022?

Michael: Yes, actually a little earlier, probably around the end of 2021.

ET: I remember Anta later became a student of Polkadot Blockchain Academy, right?

Michael: Yes, right after that, we were still thinking: how do we do this? What should we do next? And he had actually started developing at that time - after all, he was a blockchain developer. He had already developed an NFT market on Avalanche and was also working on various types of wallets. Then we started thinking about how to introduce blockchain into the government system without making this technology "different" - like becoming extremely centralized and losing its original purpose.

I am a big fan of Polkadot, so we thought: why not just copy Polkadot’s model!

Polkadot has a relay chain and a bunch of parallel chains. We can also build a relay chain, and the government's chain or government application will be forwarded through us or guaranteed by us.

Since then, Anta has gone to Singapore to attend the Polkadot Blockchain Academy (PBA), from where he graduated, and we have been firmly on the Polkadot path ever since.

ET: That's great. What you just said about government officials reminded me of the event I attended with you guys in Bali last summer. In addition to Coinfest, there was also the Bali Blockchain Summit, which was a huge event with a lot of excitement. People from all over Indonesia came to attend, including government officials, which was really impressive. I remember the governor or mayor of Bali was there, and it was a big event.

What I learned during my own time in Indonesia is that the country is made up of thousands of islands with different languages ​​and cultures, which means that local governments often operate on completely different infrastructures. Although it is a unified country, it is actually divided into many small subdivisions, and communication between these subdivisions is very difficult.

So can you tell us about the reality in Indonesia and what MandalaChain wants to achieve?

Indonesia’s on-chain experiment: Mandala bridges government and Web3

Michael: First of all, we noticed that some government departments have proposed some very interesting application scenarios. There are about 12 to 15 application cases that seem very promising, but in terms of core infrastructure, we mainly focus on 4 to 6 very specific and realistic application scenarios and try to implement them.

Our goal is to create an environment where government, enterprise, and consumer applications can coexist and work together in a compatible and collaborative way.

As you said, Indonesia is a very fragmented country - the provinces are very different from each other. You can think of them like states in the United States, but each province has a high degree of autonomy. What I find most interesting is that some provinces actually retain the "kingdom" system, such as the one with a king. The kingdom is not a democratic system, but a monarchy controlled by the sultan.

Although these regions retain their own governance methods internally, they are still under the unified government of the Indonesian president. At the same time, there are also some fully democratic regions in Indonesia. Therefore, this is a very diverse and mixed governance structure.

They have strong autonomy, but as a country, there is little communication between them. And "data protection" and "data sovereignty" are big issues - there have been many data leaks or hacking incidents in the past.

So they began to think: How can we achieve "trust" without mutual trust? How can we unify data sharing? How can we use technology to solve real-world problems, such as identity verification, medical insurance, insurance system, and banking infrastructure (the Indonesian banking system is still underdeveloped)?

These are exactly the problems they want to solve through blockchain.

ET: Got it. I understand you're also working with some government entities, government departments, right? Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Michael: Yes, for example, West Java, which is one of the main islands of Indonesia, called Java.

Java Island. If you are not from this region, you may not have heard of this place. But in fact, this small island has more people than the entire Russia. If you drink coffee, you should be familiar with "Java". The "Java" of coffee comes from here.

Java is a major island in Indonesia, and "West Java" is one of its provinces, with a population of about 50 million, which is a very large area. Now they have launched their own Skyload blockchain, which is a Substrate-based chain, and they will run all the domestic nodes themselves. Although it is their own chain, it is actually a fork of Mandala Chain. Therefore, Mandala will serve as a relay chain to connect this government chain with the wider blockchain ecosystem.

This way, it can be connected to Polkadot, which in turn can be connected to Ethereum and other Substrate-based chains. Ultimately, the effect it achieves is to incorporate government applications into the new Web3 Internet system and achieve interoperability.

Their current focus is on data protection, and there is an application related to human resources, but now their main focus is actually on medical applications. They are trying to track and analyze traditional factors that lead to malnutrition. Many people in Indonesia are short and have "stunted growth" due to intergenerational malnutrition. They hope to track and find out how to improve this phenomenon through on-chain data, thereby improving the effectiveness of government public health programs. All of this will be done on-chain, and the data will be completely owned by the government, but through Mandala's parachain architecture, it will be interoperable with the broader Polkadot ecosystem.

ET: That’s great. The Indonesian government has also released the Vision 2045, which clearly proposes some key economic areas for development, such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, energy, etc., among which blockchain is one of the clear key directions. So Indonesia is actually a market full of opportunities.

But I would like to ask, are there any challenges in launching a project or building a blockchain in an emerging market like Indonesia?

Michael: There are indeed many challenges. Friends who have been following our project for a long time know that after we won the parachain slot, the mainnet has not yet been officially launched. This is not because we "can't do it", but because working with government departments itself will face a lot of complexity.

We have to move at their pace, which is why we are very grateful for the patience of our community members who have supported us for so long.

Because the project involves very powerful government agencies, we can only move forward at the pace they want. The process requires a lot of internal testing, and there are many different opinions - for example, how should security measures be implemented? How should "decentralization" be defined in government scenarios? To what extent can they achieve decentralization? Therefore, the pace of our team is often limited by these practical factors and cannot be completely at our own pace.

We have to listen to a lot of other people, and sometimes it feels like "herding cats," but we think it's all worth it in the end because we're really trying to maximize what we think is the best technology in this space and really bring it to the masses and achieve mass adoption.

The team behind the Mandala project

ET: I see. Good things take time. And it is very important to do things well. After all, you want the government to rely on you, so you have to do it perfectly.

However, your vision is not limited to Indonesia, and you also hope to expand to other regions. So I am also curious if you can tell us about your plans in this regard? In addition, your team is also very strong. Can you introduce the members and background of the Mandala team?

Michael: Of course. We designed this project as a decentralized structure from day one, and we even imitated a lot of Polkadot's architecture in the Web2 part.

For example, Anta's main business Bali Ola (Indonesian development team) is somewhat similar to Parity in the Polkadot system. We Republic Labs (mainly responsible for media and community) and Bali Ola jointly founded the Mandala Chain Foundation, which plays a role similar to the positioning of the Web3 Foundation.

I am mainly responsible for Republic Labs, handling community operations and some application development built on Mandala Chain; Bali Ola is mainly connected to the government and is responsible for the government's application development on the chain; the Mandala Chain Foundation is now the "manager" and executive agency of the entire project.

At the Foundation, we have a very good C-level management team.

The foundation is led by CEO Matt Paul, who is an excellent person with rich experience in the blockchain field. He has been involved in many Web3 game companies. He was originally an evangelist for Cardano, but we later "pulled" him over (laughs), and he has now "seen the pink light" (Polkadot's representative color) and joined us. He is very good and is currently leading the entire foundation.

The Chief Operating Officer is Alex Hogan, a former engineer with strong executive capabilities; the Head of Business Development, Matt Cook, has a rich background in traditional finance and BD and is an American who grew up in Hong Kong. The three of them form a very solid core management team and have successfully formed and expanded the technical team and established the core technical capabilities within the Mandala Chain Foundation. Now the underlying architecture of the entire chain is operated by the Foundation team.

We have assembled a “super team”, so to speak, from the region, gathering the best talent we could find.

ET: That’s awesome. I felt this energy when I was hanging out with your Web3 community at Coinfest in Bali last year. Everyone spoke very highly of the Mandala team.

People often say that old saying, especially in the venture capital circle, "You don't invest in products, you invest in teams" - your team is indeed trustworthy.

Sometimes, you don’t invest in the product, you invest in the team that makes it happen. And spending a week with you in Bali really showed me all the hard work you put in. I’m really excited about what’s next for Mandala.

Mandala is not only an Indonesian project, it will soon enter multiple countries and regions

So speaking of this, can you talk to us about the roadmap going forward? For example, where do you want Mandala Chain to be in five years?

Michael: I think the beauty of this project is its name "Mandala", which means "universe" in Sanskrit. Bali is an island dominated by Hindu culture, and many Sanskrit words have been integrated into the local language.

People who are familiar with the Cosmos ecosystem may know that the concept of Cosmos is the "Internet of Blockchains". I think Polkadot provides a more superior technical architecture. So in the Mandala project, we sincerely hope that it can become the "Internet of Blockchains", but with a more specific application scenario.

I think Indonesia is an ideal "sandbox" environment, after all, it is the fourth most populous country in the world. Here we can show what Web3 technology can do. To be honest, we are not developers at first, and this is actually a very "business-oriented" opportunity - bringing Web3 technology to a place where it has hardly been touched before.

We are very eager to expand this model to other countries. We are actually already in talks with other countries, and there are several very exciting collaborations that are about to be announced. Although we cannot officially announce it now, I can say that Mandala will not just be an Indonesian project, we will enter multiple countries and regions.

What we want to promote is a “hybrid model”: using a “semi-permissioned” environment where needed, and maintaining an “open and permissionless” environment elsewhere.

So five years from now, I hope we can see Mandala's technology stack being implemented in multiple jurisdictions, and all of this value will eventually feed back into the broader Polkadot ecosystem. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel, there are already many excellent brother and sister projects in the ecosystem, and "rising tides lift all boats", and we believe that this specific use case can open many doors that have never been opened before.

Moving forward with Polkadot ecosystem partners

ET: Speaking of sibling chains, you also attended Decoded in Belgium last summer. Are you working with other Polkadot parachains or rollups? Are there any partnerships or exchanges of best practices?

Michael：Yes, we have been trying to reach out to as many teams as possible, and we should have communicated with most of the projects now. We are obviously very optimistic about some existing "old" chain projects, such as Moonbeam and Hydration - these are the infrastructures we think we will definitely use in the future.

But we are also paying special attention to “next-generation Polkadot projects” like Acurast, what they are doing with computing resources is very interesting, and this will also become a very important part of the Indonesian economy.

We also hope to integrate many technologies of Hyperbridge to enable cross-chain liquidity in the Ethereum ecosystem to enter Mandala and indirectly enter Polkadot. We are also discussing some real-world asset (RWA)-related cooperation with Xcavate, which I think will be very valuable in our area. Kylix is ​​another very interesting lending DeFi application. And Polimec has also been very supportive of us, and we have received their help at many critical moments.

We joined the Polkadot ecosystem because we don’t want to go it alone. We know this is a huge opportunity, and we want to rely on the strength of others and bring practical use cases to these projects in the future.

It’s important that Polkadot be visible to the public and that we spread the word about what we are doing!

ET: Great, all of these teams you mentioned are really great. We’re also doing a live stream with Acurast next week. Let’s switch gears a little bit. As the head of Republic Labs, you do a lot of community building and Web3 marketing.

How do you view Web3 marketing at the moment? Whether it’s KOL marketing, community building, use of Discord and Telegram, offline meetups, etc., feel free to speak up. What do you think of the current state of Web3 marketing?

Michael: Can we talk as sharply as we want?

ET: Of course the sharper the better, sharper means more hits! Hahahaha

Michael: Haha, let me be frank. Although I am not the kind of person who has built a huge business, our community is already quite large. The YouTube channel we operate has about 170,000 subscribers, and the entire Republic ecosystem has about 250,000 people interacting with us on various platforms every quarter. So I know very well how to operate a community, and I also understand what it feels like to be a KOL in this industry.

But oftentimes, it is very difficult to activate users. Even if they have “seen” a certain content, it is still not easy to really promote behavioral conversion. People’s opinions are difficult to change.

When we first started, everyone was talking about Binance’s various tokens. BSC (Binance Smart Chain) was a “fraud craze” at the time. It was the cheapest alternative after Ethereum. At that time, the entire summer was almost full of various messy projects of BSC.

Then everyone's attention turned to things like meme coins and AI agent projects on Solana.

But when it comes to Polkadot, I really think it is the strongest technology in the entire industry. But this is also because I am lucky enough to be able to study this content every day. I have a deep understanding of major ecosystems. We are a neutral platform (chain neutral), and I am the "Polkadot Head" within Republic.

We have worked with all the major blockchain foundations. Although I love Polkadot’s technology stack the most, I am also very clear that “mindshare” is equally important.

The worst thing is not that someone says bad things about you, but that no one mentions you.

I think it is very important to be seen by the public and to publicize what we are doing. It can't just be "we make the technology good and people will come naturally" - this path has been taken by many projects in 2017 and 2021, and many of them have failed.

So what you're doing on this channel, what Jay is doing on Kusumarian, is very important. But we need to bring technology to people. Sometimes developers think, "Let's just keep our heads down and build and build," but I personally don't think that equals success. Because I've seen too many projects with great technology that no one uses. So the key is to get in front of users.

Mandala to host PBA learning event in Bali in August

ET: I totally agree, and that’s why it’s important to attend events like Coinfest to get your brand out there to the crowd. Speaking of which, the Polkadot Blockchain Academy (PBA) is coming up in Bali, in August right? What are your plans there? I’m sure you’ll be there, can you give us a sneak peek of what’s going on that week?

Michael: We do have plans, and we will officially announce it with the PBA next week. We are very excited to host these partners in Bali. Indonesia is a country with great potential and a lot of young talents.

The province of Bali alone has a population of about 5 million people and 17 universities. We anticipate a very large group of participants, and we are really looking forward to bringing Polkadot's technology to more people.

Coinfest is a major event held in Southeast Asia every August, and PBA will be held right after Coinfest. So there will be a large wave of Polkadot teams participating, and we are also looking forward to hosting friends from Parity and Web3 Foundation.

We also hope to have the Kusumarian media team on site again, and if any project teams happen to be in the area, you are welcome to attend.

Last year we showed how we can push the envelope in this region. And from Mandala's perspective, we're always open. Anyone who wants to do something here, we're willing to take you on a deep dive into everything there is to do there.

We are happy to see organizations like the PBA putting so much faith and resources into this area.

ET: I also highly recommend going to Bali during that week for Coinfest and PBA. There are so many great events going on around the island. Bali has a lot of digital nomads and expats, so you’ll see people from all over the world who are eager to build and create. I really recommend going.

If you’re in Southeast Asia right now, or even anywhere else in the world, and you need a reason to go to Bali, Coinfest is the perfect excuse.

You get to meet the Mandala team. And, let’s be honest, a lot of crypto conferences look the same: a few booths, people walking around, a little boring. But Coinfest is like a festival, it’s like a music festival made for blockchain — right on the beach, in perfect weather, it’s worth going.

You started working on this project during COVID, and have been heads down building and pushing forward. Are you close to launch now? Can you tell us about the plans for the next few months? I know some things are not public yet, but is there anything we can look forward to?

What's next for Mandala

Michael: We really want to go live as soon as possible because we can feel the momentum of adoption is brewing beneath the surface.

We see this momentum from two directions: on the one hand, the local Indonesian community has huge expectations because this is a local project and it will be the first time they have the opportunity to interact directly with the government on-chain. On the other hand, the entire Polkadot community has given us a lot of support and encouragement, far beyond our imagination.

We really can’t wait now. Technically we are ready and we are just waiting for the final green signal from some of our partners.

I know we’ve said “coming soon” before, in Q1 and Q2, but this time it’s really coming! Stay tuned. I’m sure we’ll see a Mandala celebration on Coinbase when the time comes.

So yes, we will be here soon. We are currently waiting for final confirmation from several local partners to launch these products. Technically, it is ready to go.

And we'll be launching a public beta soon - if you want to deploy apps on Mandala and try it out, you should be able to start playing with it next week. Please follow Mandala's X (Twitter) account, where we'll post all the documentation and links.

A lot of our development work has been done behind the scenes in the past, which is also because we are facing a government cooperation scenario, which involves some special policy and compliance considerations. But it can be said that there are really many exciting things about to happen.

I really wish we could live stream some of the meetings we've been involved in and the things we've seen over the past few months, but now everything is ready, the bullets are loaded and we're just waiting to press the fire button.

ET: Awesome, really excited, and super excited for your launch. Can you tell us where our audience can follow your latest developments, especially the launch information and token launch event?

Michael: You can follow us on Republic Labs. We produce about 40 different pieces of content per week, and a lot of video content. Our Indonesian channel is big, but we are also starting to publish content in English.

My personal account is Michael_republic, but the content of my personal account may not be that interesting. Sometimes I will complain about my football team, but there is also a lot of content about crypto technology.

If you want to get a full picture of what we’re doing, follow Mandala, Republic Labs, we both have Discord, Telegram, and YouTube channels, and content is updated simultaneously.

We are doing something that has never been done before in the blockchain space. I know a lot of people say this, but this is something that has never been done before.

Mandala Chain’s native token is called Kepeng (K-E-P-E-N-G), codenamed KPG. It is unique in that it is a real ancient currency.

The Majapahit Empire, which ruled Southeast Asia, used this currency. You may have seen it because it also circulated in China. It was a round metal coin with a square hole in the middle, made of gold or copper. There was a hole for a string, and the ancients used the string to string these coins together and carry them with them.

Later, when the colonial era arrived, Kepeng was banned and replaced by legal tender. But Kepeng did not disappear and still appears as a symbolic item in religious ceremonies or home decoration.

Now we are going to "restart" this ancient currency, but this time, it is no longer backed by gold, but security is provided by blockspace.

ET: I love this setting! The fusion of history, culture, and modern technology is amazing. Not only the meaning of the Sanskrit name “Mandala”, but also the story of the token Kepeng is very deep. I will definitely keep an eye on your launch progress!

Everyone, go follow @MandalaChain’s official account. As Michael said, everything is coming soon and you definitely don’t want to miss it. Michael, thank you very much today, and see you next time!

Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp8pe01j19E&t=3s

#Mandala #Polkadot