Last year was the Year of ‘No More Why Blockchain.’
In an interview with the Korean-language blockchain news outlet Blockmedia on Wednesday, ICONLOOP CEO JH Kim pointed to the growth of social awareness of blockchain in 2019.
Based on this wider social awareness, the blockchain industry should consult and work with one another more in the new year.
2019: DID and ICON decentralization
Kim said the most important issue last year for ICONLOOP was decentralized identification, or DID. ICONLOOP’s DID solution, my-ID, was admitted into the FSC’s regulatory sandbox, and the MyID Alliance has shown rapid progress.
The ICONLOOP CEO said they’d been preparing DID since 2018, but he didn’t expect to make such rapid progress. He expected slow progress, but once my-ID was admitted into the FSC sandbox, the project took off, so much so that everyone is talking about DID.
He pointed to the complete decentralization of ICON as another meaningful accomplishment. Though the public network had been run by ICONLOOP on commission, it was now completely operated by the community. Kim said he had directly witnessed decentralization, a value of blockchain.
A few regrets
Kim shared a few regrets from last year, too. No really tangible services emerged. The industry started to gravitate towards big corporations. And his organization didn’t decentralize as much as he had hoped.
Regarding this last point, he said he’d wanted to build a company culture befitting a blockchain company, but he felt he hadn’t sufficiently done so. He’d brought the company together for efficiency, but he wants to create a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, even if that means tolerating some inefficiency.
Working together as an industry
Kim said in 2019 people stopped asking, “Why blockchain?” No one doubts the utility of the technology. And with national governments everywhere recognizing blockchain and trying to bring it into the mainstream, a consensus has emerged on how we can use it. He is now thinking about how to realize blockchain’s true value in the future.
Kim stressed that in 2020, the blockchain industry needed to come together. Structurally, blockchain wasn’t like other sectors where it was enough for individual individual tech companies to lead it. Accordingly, he hoped the blockchain industry would naturally come together.
He also asked the government to create easier communication channels. Each government organization has its own conditions regarding the sandbox, and you have to apply to each even if you’re using similar technology. He said blockchain solutions often embrace several duty sectors rather than offer a single service, and it would be nice if there was a government channel through which the industry could horizontally discuss public business.
Share more, take control more
Kim shared a few more wishes for the new year, too.
He said to build agreement, we need to share information and understand we could be wrong. We need to discard the attitude of trying to convince the other side and be able to follow a majority decision even if it conflicts with your own opinion.
Paraphrasing Plato’s warning that the price for being disinterested in politics is to be ruled by evil men, Kim said the price for being disinterested in information is to be made to live according to the wishes of those who have the information. He hoped people would develop a sense of sovereignty over information.
