Why is weBloc Asia running for P-Rep? Steve Cho, the project’s Head of Global Business, says the answer is quite simple.
“The weBloc team is all about enlarging the ICON ecosystem, helping that ecosystem develop.”
As a P-Rep, the Jeju-based tokenized advertising platform and longtime ICON partner intends to help the ICON ecosystem by offering a range of services that will draw users to the network. These services will not only boost the number of transactions on ICON’s MainNet, but with a bit of luck, one may even become blockchain’s holy grail, a “killer” DApp that sparks mainstream adoption of the technology.
No one-trick pony
The weBloc team is building a blockchain-based advertising ecosystem with the ultimate goal of shifting the focus of advertising from advertisers to users.
As ICON’s official advertising partner, the project and its services run — or will run — on ICON’s MainNet.
“As advertising experts, we want to create and develop a series of services,” says Cho. “This will help us attract more users to the ICON ecosystem because whatever the service, when users come to our ecosystem, they have to create their own ICX wallets and use ICON’s MainNet with our tokens.”
“Our team is well-connected with ICON,” he adds. “Our system is best-suited to ICON’s MainNet.”
Cho contrasts weBloc with related projects, noting his team’s broader range of services. This breadth of service is one of the team’s main selling points to voters. “Most other advertising blockchain-based projects come up with just a single service or platform to attract more users to their ecosystem,” he says. “But we are more capable of launching a series of services. We have really good design resources, development resources and business development resources. We are launching three or four services in the very near future, in one or two months.”
He mentions three services in particular.
One is weCon, the project’s first service, an advertising DApp that rewards all parties in the advertising ecosystem. Beta testing for the service closed in March.
Another is IDOLTODAY, a fan-driven ranking system for K-pop stars. This DApp will not only rewards fans for their support of their favorite stars, but also provides a more transparent alternative to popular music charts. “We can see who’s actually more popular at the moment,” says Cho. “We figured that there’s a lot of problems with the music charts because they’re not transparent. Nobody knows how those rankings are generated.”
The third is called JUBJUB. This service will reward users for frequenting cafes in the area and provide advertisers and city authorities with the data they need to make better informed decisions. The service provides a map of Jeju that indicates the location of cafes. When users check into cafes, they receive weBloc’s WOK tokens as rewards, which can be used to get discounts, free parking and other benefits.
“People have at least one or two coffees a day when they visit Jeju,” says Cho. “This would help us get more behavior data in the future — what times people commonly drink coffee and which places are popular to visit when having coffee. If we can collect more and more data, we could provide it to the government, and the government could develop infrastructure in certain areas in collaboration with businesses.”
But more to the point, as far as the P-Rep voter is concerned, these services will drive traffic to ICON’s MainNet. Cho says, “All these activities will help ICON see bigger transactions.”
Ready to help you help ICON
Despite turbulent price action playing havoc with many blockchain projects, the weBloc team sees a bright future for ICON.
“I believe ICON has a very strong technical edge, a quality development team,” says Cho. “They have a good understanding of AI and blockchain technologies.”
He especially lauds ICON’s web of MOUs, which he thinks will give the platform an edge even after the proverbial big boys and girls muscle their way into the blockchain space. “ICON made a lot of MOUs and good connections with government and big corporations before big corporate-backed platforms could jump into the market,” he says. “This will be the seed to grow and expand their network in hereto unexpected ways.”
weBloc encourages voters to consider the team’s contributions to ICON. “Please vote for us,” says Cho. “I know there are a lot of P-rep candidates. Many are capable of running AWS servers, but the thing is, our team has been one of the closest supporters and enthusiasts of the ICON project.”
“Our team was the very first DApp team to launch its ICO TGE with ICX only,” he adds. “The main purpose for doing so was to make people buy ICX and promote a wider knowledge of ICON’s MainNet.”
The team has hosted plenty of other marketing and community-building activities for ICON, including the New Kids on the Block(chain) demo day.
“weBloc is one of ICON’s closest partners at the moment and will be in the future as well,” says Cho. “Anyone within the ICON ecosystem, we are ready to help them make a better result.”
