AIR at Coinfest Asia 2026 in Bali

AIR was at Coinfest Asia 2026, held at Melasti Beach in Bali on 20 and 21 August 2026. The festival runs dedicated tracks for institutions, builders and traders, and has become one of the larger annual gathering points for teams building for Asian markets.

Kenneth Shek, CEO of Moca Network, joined a panel on adoption across Southeast Asia, alongside regional operators working on ecosystem growth, market entry and user acquisition.

Adoption in the region is an onboarding problem

Southeast Asia is usually described in terms of demand: young populations, high mobile penetration, large remittance flows, and a meaningful share of adults still outside the formal financial system. All of that is real, and none of it is the binding constraint.

The constraint is what happens after a user decides to sign up. Identity verification in the region has to work for people whose documents vary by market, whose devices are mid-range, and whose connections are intermittent. A flow designed around a high-end phone, a passport and a stable connection excludes a large part of the population it was built to reach, and the drop-off lands squarely on acquisition cost.

Verifying once, across markets

The version of this that compounds is one where a user proves something once and reuses that proof. A person verified for one service holds a credential they can present to the next, and each service confirms only the attribute it actually needs, whether that is an age threshold, a jurisdiction, or that a unique human is behind the account.

That matters commercially as well as technically. Every verification a platform does not have to run is cost it does not pay, friction the user does not meet, and sensitive data the platform never has to store, a point we set out in the case against storing documents.

Where AIR fits

AIR Identity makes a single verification portable across services and markets, using zero-knowledge proofs so a partner confirms an attribute without receiving the underlying personal data. For platforms whose growth depends on turning paid demand into verified users, that shows up in acquisition rather than in compliance.

More from AIR: AIR Identity, verified user acquisition, or browse the full AIR blog.