# Advantages of Astra

Because of that, there are other unique advantages of Astra rewards that further increase the trust, adoption and liquidity:

1. **Anyone can be a Reward Provider:** Reward points are decentralized tokens meaning anyone in the world can be a Reward Provider and users without the need to ask permission from a central authority like American Airlines to use their miles. Astra token can be acquired, stored and rewarded with a few touches on the phone by a 1-man shop in Africa without the complicated system or any upfront investment in tech, aside from the budget (as small as a few dollars) to try. This means thousands if not millions of accepting venues and use-cases globally for the Astra reward tokens
2. **Extremely liquid and unlimited usages:** most centralized reward points are tightly controlled and hard to exchange (mostly 1 way redemption from points to 1 or 2 services), Astra token are designed to be freely exchanged multiple ways between Reward Providers and receivers, among its users and Reward Providers to each other on multiple exchanges from decentralized Astra Hub to exchange partners like Tiki (<https://exchange.tiki.vn>) and potentially crypto exchanges like Binance. This leads to Astra not only being redeemed for millions of products and services but exchanged to other tokens including stablecoins (USDT, USDC) and other cryptographic assets (BTC, ETH…)&#x20;
3. **Utilities beyond reward points:** Astra is an entire new platform and technology infrastructure to build, run a global decentralized reward network that allows anyone (developers, companies, individuals) to create new applications on top. Astra token is the required medium of exchange, unit of account and store of value of the Astra Chain/network. Astra is needed to secure the network, verify transactions, and interact with applications. Astra does double duty as reward points and an energy source powering and securing the network. The more participants (users, developers, Reward Providers), the higher demand for Astra. The higher demand for Astra, the higher value it imputes, which then makes Astra more valuable to both users and Reward Providers.&#x20;
4. **Market value:** unlike traditional reward points which usually have fixed or declining value, Astra as a utility token has its value derived from its usage, demand and determined fairly by the market. It means like Bitcoin or Ethereum, Astra value can increase as demand and adoption increase. The result is users see their reward points become valuable over time and have strong interest to seek out and are motivated to stay loyal with the Reward Providers that reward Astra. From Reward Providers perspective, loyalty program used to be a cost center now has the potential to be an alternative appreciating asset and become a profit center (e.g. imagine a company buys gold at a lower price to reward its customers for business activities, and then as gold has more adoption and usage, the company has valuable, appreciating asset on its balance sheet)
5. **Triple network effect:** network effect is when a product gains additional value as more people use it. For a double sided marketplace like Amazon or Tiki, the more sellers, the more value for users and vice versa. However users of the marketplace don’t have the positive effect as more users join, and more sellers may see negative effects as competition intensifies as more sellers join the network. Hence for a double sided marketplace model. Astra has a triple positive network effect:&#x20;
   1. Network effect between companies & users: more rewards providers (companies) brings more benefits to its users & vice versa (same with marketplace);&#x20;
   2. Network effect between companies: more Reward Providers => more usage, more demand => increase Astra value that companies are holding as an asset, and make the reward more valuable.&#x20;
   3. Network effect between users: More users => bigger community => more counterparties to exchange => deeper liquidity. A bigger, 100% aligned community is also a powerful marketing and branding force that adds intrinsic value to the network & Astra token.

<figure><img src="https://4259002093-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2Fm0OD9tYRFtKikoYAjUeS%2Fuploads%2FKdf5CEF3jlRPXpX6oPsi%2FNetwork%20effect.jpg?alt=media&#x26;token=62dd99b7-7833-41e3-a43a-de5ea82474c7" alt=""><figcaption><p>Figure 1. Triple Network Effect on Astra Chain</p></figcaption></figure>

6. **Privacy and scalability:** On the blockchain, everything is done by default in public sight, including data. The decision between making someone's activities visible to the public or keeping it private is the essence of privacy, though. The Payment Channel technology enables this privacy protection even when the usual technical tooling does not. This also brings many advantages:

* **Privacy** – Off-chain transactions do not show up in the public ledger. Thus, the detail of these intermediate off-chain transactions is not publicly visible.
* **Throughput** – The number of off-chain transactions that can be processed is not limited by the blockchain’s throughput and be able to [reach 1,000 transactions per second](https://bottlepay.com/blog/bitcoin-lightning-benchmarking-performance/) (tps) per pair.. With each of the 1,000 pairs of nodes operating at 1,000 tps, [the overall network capacity reaches 1 million tps](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/lightning-network-payment-technology-advantages).
* **Latency** – Instantaneous settlement of payments.
* **Cost** – The transactions consume the capital locked into payment channel only, instead of the on-chain limited blocks and energy. More nodes and liquidity drive payment competition, which mean lower fee.

This technology is being researched and developed. Released soon!

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