Asian blockchain infrastructure IOST says it has partnered with the largest crowdfunding platform in Eastern Europe to help motivated entrepreneurs broaden their fundraising reach. The partnership is with Russia-based Boomstarter, a platform that has so far helped projects raise over $7.5 million. It is to enable projects from the region raise funds without the supporters being limited to hold the Russian Ruble.

Boomstarter will join the IOST ecosystem as a Partner Node as well as include other Russian nodes to continue growing IOST penetration particularly among Russia’s over 144 million population. The $IOST token will be integrated into the crowdfunding platform hence will be used as a global fundraising currency on Boomstarter. As a result, its over 850,000 registered users can be free to support entrepreneurs and builders in an international expansion plan spanning Southeast Asia, India, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

A recent report by P2PMarketData says the Commonwealth of Independent States region (Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Moldova and Belarus) experienced the fastest crowdfunding growth in Europe (465%) in 2019. It is also widely known that crypto-related activities are on the rise in the region due to various factors including inflation. However, whether the partnership with Boomstarter, which was founded in 2012, would guarantee IOST inroad into Eastern Europe remain to be seen. The fundraising platform has supported over 1,900 projects including to raise money to set up and run hospitals in remote villages in Nicaragua and Guatemala for a team of doctors that want to help fight infectious tropical diseases.

“IOST views Russia and Eastern Europe as some of the most promising areas for expansion. Certain areas around the world — such as Eastern Europe and Russia — do not have as strong of a legacy financial system as the West or China, which means that the average citizen or small business entrepreneur may be overlooked and access to funding is quite limited,” says the CEO of IOST, Jimmy Zhong, via email.

He adds on what the expansion drive means to his public blockchain as a crypto business enabler:

“We believe that crowdfunding is one of the first practical crypto use cases for domestic businesses looking to access international capital. As the crypto markets develop over time, more cryptocurrency use cases will start to emerge prominently in areas such as P2P lending, business loans, collateral, and international payments. IOST will leverage on our Russian and European node partners to continue our rapid penetration in Eastern Europe, cement new partnerships, and lead the space in these activities.”

IOST prides itself as a public blockchain network aimed at facilitating mainstream adoption and use through partnerships such as with Amazon Web Services to provide “blockchain as a service” for developers to launch blockchain services in five minutes. It is the world’s first online IDE to support Facebook’s Libra, has partnered with Enterprise Singapore to support the growth of the Singaporean blockchain ecosystem and also partnered China-based autonomous vehicle company, Ehang, to provide flight data analytics to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (the NASA of China).