Walking on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, the hot and humid air, the lights that never stop all night, the roaring motorcycle army, and the passionate DJ Show in the center of the square all reveal the atmosphere of youth and vitality. Here, the Web3 industry is growing rapidly. 
20 million people have been exposed to digital assets, Vietnam is becoming a new generation of crypto hotspot
In 1986, Vietnam began to learn from China to implement "reform and opening up", thus entering a period of rapid economic development. In the past three decades, its GDP has grown by an average of 7% per year, surpassing all countries in the ASEAN region and successfully becoming one of the fastest growing countries in the world. In the global supply chain restructuring in recent years, Vietnam has also become a winner, and its position in the global manufacturing industry has continued to rise.
Vietnam is the third most populous country in Southeast Asia and has become the 15th country in the world with a population of over 100 million. Data shows that nearly 70% of Vietnam's population is of working age. At the same time, the proportion of young people in Vietnam's population has reached a historical high, with young people aged 10 to 24 accounting for 21.1% of the total population. The optimistic economic development prospects and the large group of young people have made the entire Web3 industry see the future market potential.
Back to the Web3 industry itself, Triple-A's report shows that more than 20 million people in Vietnam have held or used digital assets. In the Chainalysis 2023 report, Vietnam is the third country with the highest Crypto adoption index, and in the rankings in 2022 and 2021, Vietnam is the first. At the same time, on exchanges such as Binance, BingX, and MEXC, the Vietnamese market has become one of the top five countries in terms of trading volume . By December 2022, Vietnam has produced more than 200 blockchain projects, of which Coin98 and Coin68 (Kyros Ventures) are recognized as the leaders.
The panoramic view of Vietnam's crypto industry shared by Kyros Ventures CEO Zane well demonstrates the entire Vietnamese Web3 ecosystem. 
As one of the largest blockchain events in Vietnam, GM Vietnam 2024 is only the second year of the event. GM Vietnam 2023 had more than 2,500 participants and more than 15 peripheral activities. In 2024, the number of peripheral activities of the conference has rapidly expanded to more than 100. It seems that Web3 project activities can be seen everywhere on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City.
Whether it is old public chains such as Polygon, Avalanche, Polkadot, or relatively new projects such as SUI, Aptos, Ton, Starknet, Zetachain, Cyber, they are all active here. Of course, GM Vietnam is also a grand event for exchanges, and OKX, BingX, CoinEx, HTX, etc. all have booths in the venue. Followin, Rhythm, Foresight News, and Chain Catcher also came to Vietnam to report.
More than Gamefi, Web3 games are looking for diverse development directions in Vietnam
Thanks to the phenomenal popularity of the blockchain game Axie Infinity, games have become a very important part of Vietnam's Web3 ecosystem, and Web3 games are also exploring different development models.
The offline activities held by Web3 shooting mobile game MATR1X FIRE may be a microcosm of the localization development of Web3 games. On June 6, MATR1X FIRE held an offline competition, where 8 Vietnamese teams competed for the championship, and the champion can also participate in the Taipei Major Finals in August this year. At the competition site, the competing teams sat on both sides of the stage, and there were two professional hosts in the live video broadcast to give real-time passionate commentary, creating a full atmosphere of e-sports. 
The event was held at Vikings Esports Stadium, an internet cafe in Ho Chi Minh City. This is a professional internet cafe chain located in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, which has hosted many professional competitions in Vietnam. The Vikings professional team of the same name is also active in League of Legends (LOL), CSGO, PUBG and other game arenas.
At the same time, the organizer of the event, Flazers, is a gaming team of PUBG Mobile Super League, and has now entered Web3 and is a gaming union. Hardware configuration, local resources, event organization, MATR1X FIRE's model even makes people feel very "Web2". In the popular Web games of Gamefi, MATR1X FIRE is taking a unique path with its own playability and e-sports operations.
In addition to the MATR1X competition, the event venue also gathered a number of Gamefi game experiences such as Pirate Clash, Legend of Arcadik, and Last Odyssey. Sit in front of a designated computer and the staff will take you to quickly try out a game. After fully experiencing Pirate Clash, we found that "making money" seems to be the core essence, and there are not many surprises. However, at the event site, we can still see investors from South Korea, Singapore and other countries who come to inspect various game projects.
After the rocket-like rise of Notcoin on the TON network, many people realized that it might not be impossible to go to the extreme of "gold farming". At the Summer Night Bash event hosted by Followin, Haney, the founder of BeraSig, introduced us to the NOT-like project BeraBeeCatcher. Open it on Telegram , start the applet, and keep clicking on the little bees that appear on the screen. The number of bees you get can correspond to the future token SUGAR. Looking at the leaderboard of the game, there are more than 75,000 players. BeraSig itself is a mobile application and Chrome extension that allows users to experience Berachain in one stop. Using airdrops to attract interaction is certainly effective, but adding the story of the game and the surge in NOT may lead to a new round of "killing two birds with one stone".
According to Statista market forecast data, the penetration rate of Vietnamese game users will reach 10.1% in 2024 and 11.6% in 2029, which is nearly 12 million. The population aged 10-24 in Vietnam accounts for 21%, which is more than 20 million people. Whether it is games or gold farming, the prospects are very worth looking forward to.
On-chain transactions are booming, and Vietnamese investors are also actively moving onchain
Many people may think that most of Vietnam's crypto investors are still active in CEX. According to data shared by Kyros Ventures CEO Zane, currently 61% of Vietnam's crypto assets are stored in CEX, and 39% of the assets are directly stored on the chain. In the past 2023, "BRC-20" was ranked among the top five crypto search terms in Vietnam, and there were many Vietnamese users Ape in BRC20 Summer.
As 2024 is the year of meme, the on-chain meme craze also occurred in Vietnam. During the Vietnam Blockchain Week that lasted for several days, the local meme coin project TRAU caught our attention. The founder wore a bull horn and happily introduced TRAU to many participants: "Buffaloes play an important role in the production and life of Vietnamese people and carry very rich cultural connotations."
Looking at the market data on the chain, we found that TRAU's market value once reached about 1 million US dollars, but now it has fallen to only 50,000 US dollars, and there are less than 200 holding addresses. In the eyes of many people, it is already a dead project, but the founder is still full of passion for CX. The official Twitter continues to update photos of various activities and introductions to buffalo culture, which is more capable of "doing things" than some "value coin" projects.
Due to the limitations of the Vietnamese market itself, and the fact that the buffalo itself may not be a cultural carrier with strong meme attributes and international commonality, the upper limit of TRAU may not be optimistic. This seems to be the natural dilemma of Vietnam's purely localized meme projects. 
Facing the rapidly expanding on-chain market, as one of the top exchanges participating in GM Vietnamt, OKX’s focus of publicity this time is the OKX wallet. In his speech at the main agenda, OKX President Hong Fang introduced in detail the features, advantages and product concepts of the OKX wallet; and at the booth, there were also a lot of OKX wallet function pages on display. Even in the official press release about OKX, the products highlighted are wallets, DEX, NFT markets and Web3 DeFi, with full on-chain attributes.
In fact, according to data disclosed by OKX, Vietnam has the largest number of active users among all countries and regions. Facing the ambitious goal of “Reaching Billions Onchain”, the Vietnamese market has become an important market for OKX to continue to develop.
The afternoon agenda on the first day of the conference was suddenly cancelled. Is there a shift in Vietnam's regulation?
In April this year, Vietnam News Agency reported that a representative of the Vietnamese Ministry of Justice said that cryptocurrencies are not banned in Vietnam, but it is necessary to develop a legal framework to ensure their normal development and prevent risks. At the same time, Cao Dang Vinh, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Economy and Civil Legislation of Vietnam, said that Vietnam has no regulations to manage the development of cryptocurrencies, and cryptocurrencies are not considered legal assets.
Not banned, but not completely legal either. This seems to be the current status of cryptocurrency in Vietnam. This may also be a state that many crypto practitioners are familiar with or accustomed to. But what happened at the GM Vietnam conference surprised many people. After the morning agenda of the first day ended smoothly, the afternoon agenda was delayed, and finally the participants were notified that all round tables were cancelled. On the second day of the conference, some of the main agenda links were still being promoted, but except for the peripheral booths that were still on display, all booths in the three venues were closed. The conference, which had been brewing and prepared for a long time, was presented to the participants in such a "tiger head and snake tail" way. In fact, as early as before the start of the main agenda, some peripheral activities had been temporarily cancelled due to warnings.
Sources revealed that the trigger for all this seemed to be a seminar on legal framework and investor protection organized by the Vietnam Blockchain Association a few days ago. "When the problem is clearly presented to the management, then for the sake of stability or protection, the management will still choose to intervene, and the reason for stopping it is that the organizer did not obtain the AMA (roundtable) license." Of course, the conference has obtained the license for the meeting and speech, but it does not have the AMA license.
Vietnamese practitioners said that this may be another intrigue within the industry. The association wanted to have more say, but after the incident, it was beyond the control of the association and hurt the entire Vietnamese encryption industry. After all, the actual result was that the conference sponsors were in tears and the participants called it outrageous.
Despite this, Vietnamese practitioners are not worried about the "one-size-fits-all" problem at all, and rather just regard it as a minor episode.
When Sun Wukong meets Mickey Mouse, Web3 Summer belongs to Vietnam
Many Chinese people feel strange yet familiar when they come to Vietnam. The similar political system and the radiation area of Chinese culture make people feel familiar. The army of motorcycles on the streets reminds people of the army of electric bicycles in China, and the street stalls on the streets also make people feel the street atmosphere of China.
But in the daily life of young Vietnamese, they watch Youtube and Netflix, browse Tiktok, search on Google, socialize on Facebook, and chat on Messenger. For most Chinese, this is a completely Western system. At the same time, the influence of French culture during the colonial period and the cultural integration brought about by the influx of a large number of Westerners as a tourist country all make people feel a Western atmosphere. In the pedestrian square of Nguyen Hue Street in Ho Chi Minh City, watching two Cosplayers in Monkey King and Mickey Mouse costumes standing side by side, this may be Vietnam in the eyes of many people.
When we return to Web3 from the real world, everything still tastes similar. At the Summer Night Bash event hosted by Followin, we communicated with many Vietnamese Web3ers. Vietnamese investors would complain about VC coins, lament that they missed out on NOT, and complain about the difficulty of this bull market. Young people still have strong ideals when facing Web3, hoping to make the next Killer App in their own hands. Entrepreneurs hope to step on the Notcoin trend and successfully build their own game projects. Contract traders will also go all-in at high times, get rich or go bankrupt. Retail investors will also angrily criticize domestic projects for having no pattern and cutting leeks, and local project parties will also look for English packaging and pretend to be foreigners. The same empathy, the same sense of déjà vu. The ups and downs, laughter and anger, are all a kind of enthusiasm and vitality belonging to Web3 in the hustle and bustle. 
Ho Chi Minh City is located in the tropics, and the temperature is above 30 degrees for more than half of the days of the year. Vietnam's Web3 Summer is equally hot. I met a tired friend who said that he discovered the truth of GM Vietnam. It is not about getting up early and saying "GM (Good Morning)" to everyone, but "GM" when you see the sun rise the next day after staying up all night!
