Where Tradition Meets Innovation: Avalanche’s Growing Influence in Japan

Japan has always been a bridge between tradition and innovation, home to centuries-old cultural heritage and world-leading technology industries. That duality is now accelerating into finance and blockchain. Cashless payments have surged from 13% in 2010 to 42.8% in 2024, surpassing the government’s 40% goal a year early. At the same time, Japan’s blockchain market is projected to expand from $499 million in 2022 to nearly $75 billion by 2030 (an 88.8% CAGR), with broader forecasts pointing to $251.8 billion by 2033.

Against this backdrop of rapid digital adoption, Avalanche has emerged as a trusted foundation for Japan’s experiments in tokenization, mobility, stablecoins, and digital currency. From luxury collectibles to regulated financial products, Avalanche’s speed, flexibility, and modular design are powering innovation across industries.

Tradition Meets Tokenization: Bowmore x Suntory

Heritage brands are finding new ways to engage collectors. Bowmore, one of Scotland’s oldest distilleries and part of the Suntory family, launched its first-ever line of tokenized whisky bottles in collaboration with Avalanche.

The collection debuted with two tiers: Bowmore 30-Year-Old Collector’s Edition and Bowmore 12-Year-Old Edition, capped at 150 bottles, offering a more accessible entry point for enthusiasts.

Each bottle is tied to a uniquely numbered NFT on Avalanche’s high-performance C-Chain. NFC tags embedded in the bottles provide tamper-proof authentication, while redemption can be done in person at TOKEN2049. Buyers can claim their NFTs via Suntory’s website using either a crypto wallet or a traditional email login, bridging Web3 natives and traditional whisky collectors alike.

Beyond the bottles, holders also gain access to the first-ever Bowmore Community. This membership layer includes exclusive brand merchandise, early access to news about upcoming releases, and priority invitations to purchase future limited-edition bottles through invitation-only sales. For collectors, it’s not just ownership of a rare whisky, its entry into a curated community experience that blends tradition, exclusivity, and digital-first access.

Rethinking Mobility: Toyota Blockchain Lab

As Japan’s automotive industry reimagines vehicle ownership and financing, Toyota Blockchain Lab has turned to Avalanche to prototype a new model for mobility networks.

In its newly published techpaper, MON: Orchestrating Trust into Mobility Ecosystems, Toyota Blockchain Lab explores how blockchain can interconnect financing, ownership, and vehicle lifecycle services across industries. Rather than one monolithic chain, the paper envisions a multi-network world where specialized systems for assets, finance, and services interoperate. Avalanche’s architecture—application-specific Layer 1s that are fully EVM-compatible and interoperable—was chosen as the backbone for the prototype.

The prototype demonstrated Avalanche’s advantages: sub-second finality, high throughput, and the ability to launch purpose-built blockchains that can cooperate without sacrificing speed.

This approach could reshape a global automotive fintech market projected to surpass $112 billion by 2031. With U.S. auto loans alone totaling $67 billion in December 2024, the demand for transparent, efficient systems is clear. Avalanche’s track record in powering tokenized marketplaces illustrates its ability to handle finance at scale.

“The ‘MON’ concept is a thoughtful and advanced approach to the future of mobility ecosystems. It was a meaningful experience to demonstrate how Avalanche’s architecture could support the flexible, interoperable vision Toyota conceived.” – Roi Hirata, Head of Japan at Ava Labs

Every other chain is one lane. Avalanche is the highway.

Building Financial Rails: Simplex PoC

Stablecoins are moving from theory to financial-grade infrastructure. Tokyo-based Simplex partnered with Ava Labs to conduct a proof-of-concept demonstrating that Avalanche and AvaCloud can deliver the performance and availability required for commercial stablecoin use.

The PoC combined:

• Simplex Stablecoin - issuance and redemption system

• Simplex Fourth - secure wallet and private key management

• AvaCloud, Avalanche’s managed L1 service, is used to spin up a private L1 chain in minutes

The results:

• Throughput: above 1000 transactions per second

• Latency: ~1 second to finality for remittances

• High Availability: Multi-region redundancy without performance degradation

For financial institutions, these metrics prove that Avalanche can handle the reliability and speed demanded by payments, escrow, and settlement networks.

By leveraging AvaCloud’s no-code subnet deployment, Simplex demonstrated how businesses can build stablecoin infrastructure that meets financial service-level standards. This removes barriers for new entrants and expands the use of stablecoins beyond issuance and redemption into real-world payments and remittances.

As the stablecoin market accelerates globally, Avalanche is emerging as the infrastructure of choice for Japanese enterprises seeking regulatory-compliant, high-performance systems.

Financial Scale: Densan and SMBC Group

Stablecoins in Japan have moved beyond theory into real financial infrastructure. In a landmark agreement, Densan System and SMBC Group—one of Japan’s three megabanks—are collaborating with Avalanche to jointly explore stablecoin-based services across issuance, distribution, settlement, and operation.

The collaboration reflects the momentum created by Japan’s revised Payment Services Act, which legally positioned stablecoins as “electronic payment instruments.” With this regulatory clarity, Densan and SMBC see an opportunity to leverage Avalanche’s blockchain infrastructure to make payments faster, cheaper, and more efficient than existing rails.

The potential use cases are broad:

• International remittances that bypass legacy intermediaries

• B2B settlements with faster finality and lower costs

• Consumer payments, leveraging Densan’s vast network of 65,000+ convenience stores and drugstores across Japan

Densan brings decades of experience as a pioneer in Japan’s payments infrastructure, while SMBC adds the credibility and reach of one of the nation’s largest banks. Together, they aim not only to test use cases but to pursue continuous business application and commercialization, a significant step beyond one-off PoC experiments.

Regulated Currency: JPYC Stablecoin

In one of the most significant milestones for Japan’s blockchain landscape, JPYC received approval as the first money transfer business licensed to issue a yen-backed stablecoin under the revised Payment Services Act.

The new JPYC stablecoin is backed 1:1 by Japanese yen, held in deposits and government bonds, and classified as an “electronic payment instrument” under Japanese law, distinct from volatile crypto assets. This regulatory clarity ensures that every JPYC token can be redeemed for fiat yen on demand.

JPYC launching on Avalanche will bring the stability of the yen onto a programmable, interoperable blockchain. Businesses and individuals can use JPYC for cross-border payments, DeFi, and digital commerce, with the assurance of regulatory oversight and Avalanche’s proven performance.

The launch marks a turning point: for the first time, Japanese users can access a fully compliant, onchain yen that integrates seamlessly with financial applications.

Closing Thoughts

From cultural icons like Bowmore whisky to regulated financial infrastructure with JPYC, Avalanche is embedding itself into Japan’s blockchain future. Toyota’s research shows Avalanche as the architecture for multi-chain mobility networks, Simplex has proven that the network can deliver stablecoin-grade performance, and the Densan × SMBC collaboration highlights how major banks and payment processors are moving toward commercialization.

The common thread is clear: whether it’s collectibles, vehicles, payments, or currency itself, Avalanche provides the speed, compliance, and modular design Japan’s innovators demand. Avalanche is not just entering the APAC region; it’s becoming the foundation where tradition, industry, and finance converge onchain.