Korean-language business news outlet Money Today ran a lengthy interview with ICONLOOP’s CEO JH Kim on Tuesday.
Kim gave an overview of Korea’s blockchain industry and the direction in which it is moving.
He contrasted the development of Korea’s blockchain industry with those of the United States, Japan and China.
In the United States and Japan, regulatory authorities have been adjusting their regimes over a long period of time, while in China, the government has taken a lead in promoting blockchain.
In Korea, however, blockchain suddenly came under intense regulatory scrutiny in 2017 and 2018 as the technology became connected to cryptocurrency. Kim felt Korea could have taken a leading role globally, but had taken quite a few steps back.
Though Korea is taking steps to develop blockchain technology with several R&D projects and public initiatives under way, he regretted that the blockchain scene was now too focused on system integration projects for major corporations. He felt the government should cultivate the blockchain industry in a way that encourages the acquisition of source technology.
Of course, he introduced ICONLOOP’s decentralized identification solution “my-ID.” In particular, he contrasts it with the certified certificates commonly used in Korea. Unlike the certificates, which only prove that you are you, my-ID proves you are you AND includes personal information such as your age, where you live or bank account info. And all that info is protected by blockchain’s decentralization.
Kim also introduced the MyID Alliance, the ecosystem that links ICONLOOP, my-ID users and my-ID acceptors. There are currently 44 entities in the alliance, including financial companies, internet service providers and major corporations.
As a consultative group, the alliance also has an advisory committee led by Hun-Jai Lee, former finance ministry and current director-general of the Yeosijae Future Consensus Institute. Another advisory committee member is Je-Yoon Shin, former vice minister of finance and former head of the Financial Services Committee (FSC).
Since my-ID has been included in the FSC’s regulatory sandbox for innovative financial services, if you sign up for a particular financial product, you can get a my-ID identification, which you can then use to sign up for other financial products. Kim also thinks the existence of competing DID solutions is OK since users should be allowed to choose which ID they will use in an open environment. He thinks you could see a model emerge in which competing DID services form some sort of alliance.
He also introduced the blockchain-based self-sovereign identity authentication service DPASS and certification service Broof.
In particular, he noted that ICONLOOP uses DPASS — which runs on the public blockchain — internally for getting into the office and logging into the corporate intranet, and that he expects the service to synergize and eventually merge with my-ID. DPASS uses the same technology as my-ID, and its decentralized structure ensures the security of your data.
He also highlighted how ICONLOOP’s loopchain Enterprise V1.0 won top honors at the most recent Korea SW Product Quality Awards, noting in particular how the solution’s proprietary Loop Fault Tolerance consensus algorithm lets companies deploy blockchain networks at lower cost.
Pointing to Silicon Valley economist George Gilder’s “Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy,” Kim said data links and anti-monopoly regulations meant the end is nye for centralized platforms, and that even the likes of Facebook are pursuing blockchain projects. As the era of decentralization is inevitable, he wants ICONLOOP to become a blockchain company that leads that era with the goal of returning data sovereignty to the individual.
