ICONLOOP CEO JH Kim recently sat down for an interview with Korean-language business news website BusinessWatch.
Of course, he talked a lot about ICONLOOP’s “MyID” decentralized identification service and the “MyID Alliance” that has been created around it.
Kim explained that if decentralized services have to rely on IDs tied to a particular service, you won’t get full value out of decentralization, calling into doubt the utility of blockchain itself. This is why ICONLOOP has focused on decentralized identity, or DID, since 2018.
You’d think institutions and companies that have provided existing ID certification services would be wary of DID. But Kim said companies find it burdensome to possess ID data they don’t need — it’s a bigger risk for them if anything goes wrong. For example, when screening a loan application, a bank needs to know only whether you make more than KRW 50 million a year. It doesn’t need to know your exact yearly income. If it does possess your exact income information, however, it needs to take on the cost of safely storing that information. This is where DID can help.
Kim also discussed some of ICONLOOP’s other use cases. For example, ICONLOOP’s blockchain engine “loopchain” has been incorporated into Seoul Metropolitan Government’s standard blockchain platform. Since blockchain has been applied to the city’s infrastructure, little has outwardly changed with administrative duties. However, blockchain has been used to improve the reliability of city elections, simplify the identification process and confirm that recipients of benefits meet requirements.
Blockchain hasn’t made possible any new administrative functions, but it can make existing functions more trustworthy and transparent. He concedes that you’d be hard-pressed to find higher efficiency or value or reductions in cost just because you’ve adopted blockchain, but if later it becomes possible to calculate the value from improved usability, transparency and trust, you’ll be able to confirm blockchain’s benefits.
Kim said ICONLOOP plans to continue B2B operations through its blockchain core and use cases. It also plans to continue solution services and SaaS by broadening its partnerships.
He said he wants to create a platform through MyID, not collect fees every time somebody uses the ID. You could do a lot with that platform. For example, if MyID were to expand, you could directly chat with people rather than use centralized messaging services. He notes how all Internet protocols were originally created decentralized, but were later centralized for efficiency. If IDs are decentralized, this could reconstitute a fundamental part of existing services — and Kim thinks there are business opportunities in that, though what form those opportunities is hard to predict at this stage.
Oh, and congratulations, loopchain Enterprise
ICONLOOP announced on Friday that its enterprise blockchain solution loopchain Enterpise V1.0 won the grand prize at the 6th Korea Software Quality Awards.
The awards, hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and organized by the Telecommunications Technology Association, discover and reward outstanding locally made software with the aim of promoting an appreciation of the importance of software quality.
Loopchain Enterprise is currently being used in CHAIN ID, Kyobo Life’s blockchain-based smart claims system, Seoul Metropolitan Government’s blockchain platform, the Korea Customs Service’s customs clearance platform, SBI Savings Bank’s personal authentication service and elsewhere.
ICONLOOP plans to apply it to MyID, too.
