From Seoul to Saigon: Vietnam (Second Leg of the IO Asia Tour)
Arrival – Ho Chi Minh City
We landed in Ho Chi Minh City on 26 September, the next stop for the IO Ecosystem team with colleagues from Midnight and Catalyst. I travelled in with @IOHK_Tim (@timbharrison on X); @taichiyokoyama (@taichiyokoyama_ on X) joined us later that evening. After the gridlock of Seoul, rainy-season Vietnam was pure motion. The air was heavy and warm, scooters filled every street, and old French buildings stood in gentle decay, green vines spilling from balconies.
Not long after arriving my watch strap broke, which became the happy excuse to get out and explore with Tim. We stepped into the noise and humidity, following narrow streets under neon as the rain began to fall. Mopeds came from every direction, horns quick and sharp. It was treacherous underfoot, dangerous and thrilling at once. Engines growled through the rain and the air smelled of wet foliage and frying food.
A tiny watch shop came to the rescue. The owner replaced the missing pin and waved away payment. First lesson learned: cash rules here, cards are not always taken. Even finding a taxi later proved near impossible without a handful of notes.
By the time we set off toward dinner, soaked and exhilarated, the city had already left its mark. Along the way I spotted an incredible seafood restaurant with a glass tower full of live fish and lobsters. It was mesmerising and a little sad because I felt sorry for the animals. There weren’t many customers, so maybe the food wasn’t that good either, and I decided not to eat there on the trip. Chaos and beauty in equal measure, and by the end of the walk I felt more awake than I had in the past couple of days.
Notes from my pocketbook
- Fourth largest country in the world in terms of crypto adoption, over 21 million people hold crypto and more than 220 billion dollars in market value.
- Cardano Vietnam Linktree
- Cardano Asia Team Linktree
- Eastern Cardano Council for APAC
Dinner in the Rain
The rain had eased to a steady drizzle as we approached our venue for the evening’s dinner. Out on the roads every scooter seemed wrapped in colour, riders covered in long plastic raincoats with headlights shining through the plastic, children tucked in behind them. I kept wondering what would happen if one of those sheets got caught in a wheel. Somehow it all worked, a moving river of light and raincoats threading through the traffic. Day slipped into dusk and then night, the city flickering between each.
And what a dinner for our first night in Vietnam. The restaurant was up a narrow spiral staircase on the third floor and Taichi, Tim, and I had the warmest of welcomes from members of the Vietnamese Cardano community: Ha Nguyen, Buck Nguyen from CASIA, Alyssa, Mie, and fellow visitor Seomon. Inside it felt cosy, with the sound of rain on the roof and the city below. We sat around a low table and were shown how to roll our food properly using thin rice paper sheets, herbs, noodles, and soup. Our hosts laughed as they guided us, patient and good-humoured despite my making a faux pas by picking food out with the narrow end of my chopsticks (you’re meant to use the thick end when you do that, and the narrow end when it goes in your mouth). And our first introduction to (the appropriately named?) ‘moon cake’, a seasonal speciality.
Buck from CASIA, which has the largest Cardano TikTok channel in Asia with around a quarter of a million followers, told us how proud and active the community is here. When I looked into it afterwards, Vietnam was clearly among the top three Cardano communities in Asia. Between dishes they spoke about Vietnam’s growing role in Cardano and how proud they were of what the local community had built.
At the end, we exchanged gifts in the old Cardano tradition, a bottle of Ardbeg from us, a pour-over coffee filter and beans for my wife, and an NVA helmet for my son. It was more like a reunion of old friends than a first meeting. Familiarity on X so often begets friendship IRL!
The Community Event
The next day, 27 September, was the Cardano Community Event at East West Brewing in District 1. I arrived with @taichiyokoyama (@taichiyokoyama on X), our Community Lead for Japan. Two hundred and thirty-five people filled the space. The smell of beer and coffee mixed with the sound of conversation and clinking glasses. It was standing room only.
Earlier in the day, Taichi had joined Charles and Lauren from Midnight at the offices of Orochi Network to meet their team. They discussed verifiability, privacy, and identity, and how those ideas are shaping the next generation of global infrastructure. Orochi’s founders, Chiro, Mary Kieu Diem, and Vivi shared how they are building for Vietnam’s rapidly growing Web3 ecosystem.
By evening, everyone gathered at East West Brewing for the community event. Charles spoke first about the responsibility that comes with building open systems, reminding everyone that decentralisation is only real when everyone participates. The applause that followed felt both proud and personal. @Kriss_Baird (@krissbaird on X) from Catalyst spoke about Fund 14, and the highest potential of human collaboration. He announced that Fund 15 will introduce a dedicated Midnight category, with $250,000 in funding for Compact DApp builders — a new collaboration between Catalyst and Midnight to support privacy-focused innovation. So far, 138 projects have already been funded in Vietnam, and this next step promises to grow that even further.
Lauren Lee from Midnight talked about programmable privacy for Web3 and how it could shape the next phase of decentralisation. Trym followed with Quantum Hosky, describing it as a layered metaverse, a four-dimensional sim crafter MMO where you mine with your mind.
When the event finished, a group of us from the community, including @Hakochan (@Hakochan on X) @mietran (@mietran0407 on X) and several of the women from Cardano Vietnam, headed to La Casa del Habano, the Cuban cigar lounge, with its warm amber light and quiet atmosphere. It felt like something out of a movie, opulent with leather sofas, glass, and smoke hanging in the air. We talked late into the night, sharing cigars, laughter, and swapping stories.
Reflections at the War Memorial
The following morning Charles took the team to the War Remnants Museum. It was busy inside but the atmosphere was sober, people moving slowly between the picture frames and displays, shoes squeaking on the floor. Photographs and artifacts told the story from the Vietnamese perspective, a chronicle of a dreadful war that I knew little about outside of films.
The story it told was harrowing. One image showed jars holding the remains of babies affected by Agent Orange. Another showed survivors years later, disfigured but smiling together. One exhibition paid tribute to the photographers who came from across the world to tell the story of those years but never made it home. It was impossible not to feel the shared humanity on both sides, people caught in something vast and awful.
Walking back out into the humid air, I kept thinking about how the consequences of conflict don’t fade within a single generation. Its trauma echoes across time, shaping how people see themselves, each other, and the world. In our own era, the technologies we build and the conversations we choose to have will either repeat those mistakes or avoid them, deepen those wounds or help to heal them.
Side Mission: Hanoi
Hanoi wasn’t on the original schedule. It began as a small side quest and became one of the most memorable stops of the entire tour. We landed late, amid more rain, and my head hit the pillow around two in the morning. By 6:30 we were up again for breakfast before heading to the University of Transport and Communications.
Slidedecks
- University Network: Blockchain Pioneer Club (@bps_club on X) with slides published here.
- University Network: University Blockchain Alliance (UBA) represented by @Tien_Nguyen_Anh (@TienNgAnh on X) with slides here UBA - Our journey to integrated Blockchain in Universities.pdf (2.5 MB)
I didn’t know what to expect. Sometimes you arrive in places you haven’t been before and find yourself in a cupboard or a café. This time, it was neither. We stepped into a stunning wood-panelled conference room with microphones, translation screens, and rows of students already waiting. The welcome was warm and formal.
There were three presentations: one from the Blockchain Pioneer Club (@bps_club) with slides published here, another from Dr Minh Do, the university president, and a joint session with @Tien_Nguyen_Anh (@TienNgAnh on X) the University Blockchain Alliance (UBA).
The timing could not have been more significant. Just weeks earlier the Vietnamese government had issued Resolution 05/2025/NQ-CP, a landmark decision to pilot the country’s digital asset market. The roundtable we joined was devoted to understanding what that means for Vietnam’s future, bringing together government officials, academics, businesses, and students.
Mr Tien Nguyen Anh from Cardano2vn spoke about introducing Cardano into universities. Mr Thanh Khuat, president of the Blockchain Pioneer Club, outlined how the next generation of developers will grow after the new resolution. Dr Minh Do discussed the opportunities and challenges ahead. We shared international perspectives from IO, exploring how open collaboration could connect Vietnam’s builders with the global ecosystem.
Afterwards, we joined the faculty for lunch. Among the guests was The Vinh Nguyen, product owner of NDA Chain, Vietnam’s own blockchain project, before heading across town to meet VTechcom Labs.
VTechcom Labs
At VTechcom we met Tony Thanh, CEO of a team already putting Hydra into practice. Their office hummed with quiet focus, whiteboards covered in design sketches, screens alive with code, and developers deep in conversation. They walked us through a Hydra-powered payment system, a proof-of-concept game inspired by Flappy Bird, and four Project Catalyst proposals, three of which have now been funded, showing how quickly Vietnam’s builders are moving from theory to real products.
Slidedecks
- Hydra Deck: VTECHCOM Labs Vtechcom presents Hydra products.pdf (2.3 MB)
F14 Proposals Funded
- Hydra SDK – Fast, Modular, WASM Cardano Toolkit
- Hydra Hexcore – Tool for Deployment Multi-Hydra Party
- Hydra Hub – SaaS Node Distribution System Phase 1
We closed our afternoon with snacks and glasses of fresh beer (Bia Ho), a fresh, light lager brewed daily. We sat on little plastic stools in a local hostelry with some of the new friends we had made, including Do Manh Hung, an SPO running FIMI; one of Vietnam’s leading SPOs and a proper OG.
From the university halls that morning to a working Hydra lab that afternoon, Hanoi revealed how education, research, and entrepreneurship already connect in Vietnam. There was a real sense of community collaboration. These teams are not waiting for the future to arrive. They are building it.
Reflections from Vietnam
Before coming to Vietnam, when I thought about Asia I mostly thought about Japan, and I hadn’t realised how strong the Cardano community in Vietnam and across the region already was. Seeing it in person changed that completely. The energy here is youthful and relentless, full of builders and students who already see blockchain as part of their future. By the time we left, it was clear that Vietnam is no longer an emerging place. The opportunity across Asia is enormous, and Vietnam sits at the heart of it, optimistic, organised, and ready to grow. You learn far more by meeting people in their own environment than by having them come to you.
POSTSCRIPT: To everyone in Vietnam, thank you for your patience waiting for this post. Back home, nursing a sore throat from all the conversations and easing my way out of jet lag, I saw that several Vietnamese community Catalyst proposals had been funded. It felt like the perfect coda to the trip, the community we had just visited already taking its next step forward.
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please reply or share. I’ll be writing up the next journal, from Singapore, next week.
