ICONLOOP CEO JH Kim spoke at the Korea Future Forum 2019 & Blockchain Tech Show in Seoul on Tuesday.
In his address (article in Korean), he presented ICON’s plan to elect the network’s P-Reps by the end of the year and become a completely decentralized blockchain platform ecosystem by 2020.
He also forecast the future of blockchain, comparing the technology with Amazon Web Service (AWS), the world’s largest cloud provider.
He said blockchain technology is now where cloud services were 10 years ago.
“Ten years ago, AWS’s biggest issue was explaining why you should use cloud computing,” he said. “Now we’re at the stage where you have to explain why you should maintain your existing on-premise software and not use the cloud.”
The first cloud storage service AWS launched after the company’s founding in 2006 was S3. AWS’s subsequent launch of EC2, with its scalable computing capacity, led to the full-scale expansion of the company’s cloud business.
Kim compared S3 to blockchain’s distributed ledger, and EC2 to the smart contract. Blockchain was still focused on the distributed ledger, he said, but the smart contract would be the catalyst to grow the market.
The ICONLOOP CEO also introduced the TX Challenge, ICON’s developer contest that aims to popularize smart contract technology.
“Blockchain is a new paradigm responding to ‘platform capitalism,’ where big platform providers such as Google and Facebook monopolize data and use it to expand their influence,” said Kim. “We will continue to work to develop the technology in the days ahead, too.”
