If a commercial perspective is what you’re looking for from your P-rep, VELIC could be your candidate.
The Singapore-based financial services platform powered by the ICON network understands the challenges of creating and sustaining an enterprise — because they’ve done it themselves. “Having a great idea and operating a small company is one thing, but dealing with customer assets — we have 40,000 bitcoin transactions a day — that amount is a different caliber,” says Yoon Kim, VELIC’s director of business development. “Having a more professional enterprise would definitely help ICON gain adoption and expand.”
Helping DApps become sustainable
VELIC got into the P-rep race to lend a hand in expanding ICON’s ecosystem. They’ve been analyzing ICON and its community, and while they’ve been impressed by the technology and the effort of the people involved, they also think the project could use a fuller perspective on what it takes to create a DApp and keep it going.
“We think this is where VELIC can come in,” says Kim. “Our goal as a P-rep candidate is to support the ICON ecosystem by providing financial tools that can help accelerate DApps.”
VELIC also wants to introduce its customers to ICON’s ecosystem. They believe that by delivering feedback from new users to ICON and its community, and by ensuring that said feedback is reflected in the actual network, the ecosystem can grow.
“It is a big community, but we think it should be bigger,” says Kim. “We could be an outlet for consumers who don’t know ICON.”
Yoon Kim, Director of Business Development
A three-pronged approach
VELIC’s P-rep election platform centers on three major initiatives.
The first focuses on bringing value to the ICON ecosystem by providing services that encourage the consumption of ICX tokens. This involves providing financial services to ICX holders, generating sizable transactions to promote activity in the ecosystem and maintaining a node backed by institutional-level security.
The second is a pledge to offer services to DApps. As a service built on ICON, VELIC understands the integral role DApps play in the ICON network. The VELIC team believes supporting DApps is where they can help the most. Though plenty of teams propose great ideas and build great products, Kim explains, they find it difficult to keep going because of fundraising problems.
This is where VELIC could intervene. “If a team truly believes in the project, if they truly believe in the long-term benefit of creating a DApp and working with the ICON ecosystem, they should have a more operational and functional structure,” he says. “Since a lot of our coworkers have a financial background, that’s where we can help.”
Kim also explains that many DApp teams face difficulties introducing their products to the open market. Many exchanges demand fees or other onerous requirements to get listed. VELIC’s mission is to eliminate those barriers to allow projects to get listed and shown on the open market anytime sans cost. They’ll soon announce an MOU with ICON to create a vertically integrated, end-to-end solution in which ICON will help projects build their token structure and issue tokens. Later, when these projects want to raise funds or offer token sales, the end point will be done by VELIC.
Kim says, “From start to finish, we want to ensure the project remains sustainable.”
VELIC’s third initiative focuses on the ICON community. The project believes it’s really important that ordinary people learn about and use the ICON network. They will continue to build and offer products based on ICX tokens. They also want to fund capable and promising projects.
Once they are able to incubate projects, they want to structure their asset management and storage services to discourage teams from abandoning their projects without telling investors, something of an everyday occurrence in the blockchain space. Kim says, “We just want to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
A close working relationship
VELIC offers a wide range of financial services related to blockchain-based assets, including safe storage, trading, lending and investment of crypto assets. They take what are currently separate services — vaults, loans, exchanges, investment and so on — and unify them into a single “Digital Asset Financial Service.” Timothy Yang, VELIC’s chief strategy officer, said in an earlier interview with this publication that he hopes the project can “become the JP Morgan of the digital currency industry in that we can provide a multitude of services to VELIC’s users on a single platform.”
Believing cryptocurrency to be the way of the future, they are preparing the tools the new era will need. Kim says, “We want to leverage the power of traditional finance to create a sustainable ecosystem that is inspired by blockchain technology and the token economy.”
The project launched its beta service in March and completed its public sale earlier this month. They’ve opened a few pairing markets and will soon open a pairing market for ICX. They’ve been getting positive feedback from users. Kim says the product is fast, clean and safe.
VELIC wants to pair the many DApp coins with ICX. “There are all these different DApps, but they can’t really coordinate or communicate with one another,” says Kim. “If we are able to bring all these products together and have them trade freely using ICX, that could stimulate the ecosystem.”
Many of VELIC’s users thus far are in Southeast Asia. VELIC’s success in the region notwithstanding, Kim says local awareness of ICON could use some improvement. He cites a promotional event in which VELIC airdropped some ICX tokens. “A lot of people asked what ICX was, what ICON was,” he says. “So that’s one thing we need to constantly promote and market.”
Indeed, if there’s something VELIC wants to bring to the ICON network, it’s to boost ICON’s name recognition to get more people involved. “I know ICON has a pretty big community, but I want people to be more engaged,” says Kim. “One way to get people engaged is to give them incentives. In the future, VELIC will provide many ways to incentivize and motivate people who actually believe in the system, who want to expand it.”
“That’s VELIC’s core competency as a P-Rep candidate.”
