Do you know what it is?
Astra is an innovative platform that provides a plug and play regulatory compliance solution for the growing DeFi protocols. It enables them to easily comply with KYC regulations without having to change their core business models. Drawing on the knowledge and experience of a team of legal professionals, and utilizing the capabilities of large, accredited legal and business consulting firms around the world, Astra helps even the newest protocols achieve regulatory compliance with confidence. In addition, it provides an unprecedented resolution service for both on-chain and off-chain disputes.
How does Astra work?
Astra is a decentralized legal layer that enables DeFi protocols to comply with ever-changing regulations, strengthening trust in the industry by allowing end-users to more easily avoid the outbound fraud, “rug-pulls” and hacks that have plagued the DeFi space.
By following the regulations, platforms that adopt Astra’s technology will be able to benefit from an additional wave of adoption as they will now be more attractive to private investors, institutional investors, and even government investment firms. Astra uses the Decentralized Legal Network to handle on-chain disputes. As a consortium of leading audit firms and some of the world’s leading legal experts, it has the depth and breadth of knowledge and experience needed to ensure that DeFi companies and protocols comply with relevant regulations, helping to craft and enforce legally binding agreements between the protocols, their users, and any parties involved.
Which Problem Does Astra Solve?
Astra is a solution that helps DeFi projects adapt to changing regulations, making the compliance process simple and affordable for investors and regulatory entities. The solution also helps make DeFi more attractive to institutional investors and increases diversity and funding in the DeFi space. In addition, Astra makes it easier for blockchain-based companies to expand into new territories and markets without needing an in-house legal team. This not only helps improve competition among DeFi protocols, but also unlocks access to new user groups and accelerates innovation in the industry.
Some Exclusive Features
With the ambitious goal of making DeFi more affordable and compliant, and providing benefits to both users and businesses, Astra relies on a variety of unique features to help you make a difference.
Among them are:
* KYC and AML: By providing companies with unique on-chain KYC and AML services, Astra helps them easily comply with relevant regulations in almost all global jurisdictions, making auditing much simpler and more cost-effective.
* On-chain identity NFTs: Astra is creating a model that will provide users with an on-chain identity NFT after completing an extensive KYC and verification process. NFT holders will then have easier access to several major DeFi protocols, IDO platforms, minting events, and more. This feature will be made available first to those who hold more than a minimum threshold of ASTRA tokens.
* Omni-compatibility: DeFi is growing rapidly and is rapidly expanding its horizons beyond the Ethereum ecosystem. Recognizing this, the Astra Protocol is designed to be blockchain agnostic, allowing products built on virtually any chain to use its technology to improve their regulatory compliance and dispute resolution processes.
* On-chain dispute resolution: the Astra Protocol facilitates dispute resolution in a public and verifiable manner — empowering projects to easily resolve administrative and customer-based disputes involving the operation and enforcement of smart contracts.
* Legal certainty: Astra’s extensive legal certainty framework ensures that projects always operate within the boundaries of any applicable legislation and regulatory guidelines, helping to protect both DeFi builders and their rapidly growing user bases.
* Plug-and-play: Achieving regulatory compliance and obtaining legal assurance should not be a challenge for developers. With that goal in mind, Astra Protocol has made it easy to plug its assurance layer and KYC/AML suite into any existing DeFi platform, helping to improve auditing, reporting, and perform the regulatory compliant user admission process.
Team and advisors
Astra is being built by a highly experienced global team, many of whom have previous experience working at the forefront of legal assurance and blockchain regulation.
Damien O’Brien, Arthur Ali, and Jez Noah Ali are the co-founders of Astra.
The founders have been developing patents and technologies in web2 and web3 since 2013, as well as scaling businesses from the gaming industry to the biomedical space. They saw the need for compliance in blockchain while recognizing the market potential, but also how to have sustainability within the industry in the long term, using their business and key contacts in regulatory bodies and governments around the world.
The Astra team has been working with technology patents for a few years and is one of the first participants in DeFi. They started developing governance solutions in the blockchain space, which led to a bridge because we wanted to inform governments about blockchain and make them understand. They also helped governments fight fraud and save costs through blockchain technology.
Token Utility
Regulation will continue to drive the tools, projects and protocols that fall under the DeFi umbrella to perform the necessary KYC and AML checks.
To help achieve broad adoption and penetration in the growing DeFi space, Astra has a native utility token called ASTRA. The token is used to enrich the Astra ecosystem, reward participants, and balance incentives for all stakeholders.
The Astra Protocol is initially being deployed on Ethereum due to the size and maturity of its DeFi ecosystem. However, the team behind the platform is exploring other blockchains and plans to make Astra a blockchain-agnostic protocol. The ASTRA utility token will initially be deployed as an ERC-20 token and will be available on other popular smart contract chains via a cross-chain bridge.
The ASTRA token plays a key role in the Astra Protocol ecosystem. Some of its initial uses include:
Income distribution: ASTRA stakers earn income derived from a fraction of the platform’s revenue.
Prioritization and queuing: DeFi protocols will need to stake ASTRA tokens to leverage their on-chain identity solutions. The order in which KYC checks are processed will depend on the relative size of each protocol’s wager, so that a platform that wagers 100 ASTRA tokens would have KYC priority over one that wagers 50.
User fees distributed to the DLN: for each KYC completed, the associated protocol will need to pay a fee in the form of ASTRA tokens, which will be distributed to the DLN.
Other exciting token features include:
Token lockout rewards
Non-transferable NFTs
Ecosystem rewards
ASTRA has a fixed supply of 1 billion tokens, which will be distributed carefully over time, along with the growth of the protocol. It is reasonable to assume that growing DeFi adoption, regulatory scrutiny, and demonstration of the advantages and utility of the Astra Protocol will progressively fuel demand for the ASTRA token, as the gateway to harnessing Astra technology.
Astra has established itself as a market leader in the decentralized compliance industry and will leverage its proprietary infrastructure and key relationships to maximize adherence.
Conclusion
The project is very complex and promising. Astra has patented the technology that they call The Proof of Trust for resolving claims,
they are basically going to take parcipants from the network that are trustworthy and verified to be Judges of the cases (called delegates).
The delegates in the Astra ecosystem are selected to judge a specific case based on their experience, trust rating, and information extracted from KYC procedures, and the protocol ensures that there is no communication between the delegates (there will be 3), and thus the the outcome of any case is not compromised. Besides this technology project will also deliver KYC, AML and Reports. Astra could be a huge solution to the crypto universe.
