Needed: The right ecosystem
Orbs, the Israeli start-up, has joined hands with Ground X in South Korea. Their partnership will boost the blockchain ecosystem in South Korea, and advance blockchain consumer app development.
South Korea has come a long way since the uncertainties in January 2018, when the country was mulling an outright ban on cryptocurrencies and ICOs as well. The country is now promoting blockchain technology with a positive view toward cryptocurrencies overall.
South Korea has taken many important steps to promote blockchain technology recently. The government plans to invest USÂ $4 billion. Crypto exchanges are destined to become financial institutions, coming under regulatory purview. Such pragmatic regulations are better than outright bans.
A new government department named the Financial Innovation Bureau will foster emerging technologies, including blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Lawmakers are thinking of a creating a “Blockchain Island”, i.e., a special zone with friendly regulations. Businesses are matching these positive steps. Blockchain in Korea is growing exponentially as a sector.
An industry can sustainably grow if it finds an ecosystem. Businesses of different flavors, organizations providing thought leadership, and research institutes are important. Stakeholders must forge partnerships, and together must create reusable assets as well as relevant standards. You cannot foster an ecosystem without these building blocks.
The right blockchain ecosystem needs more, though. Bitcoin is very popular, but you can’t buy coffee with it. Blockchain’s growth depends on how easily businesses can develop consumer apps with it. These apps must scale enough to support high transaction throughput so that they can compete with industry giants. A blockchain ecosystem needs to enable that.
Orbs and Giant X partnership fits the bill.
A promising partnership
Orbs and Ground X have the capabilities to make this partnership count.
Orbs is a hybrid blockchain platform, and a company with significant blockchain capabilities. They build technology solutions that complement base blockchain platforms. They are also experts in scaling blockchain networks. Their other capability is to bring interoperability features to blockchain networks like Ethereum.
Orbs had their ICO in June, and raised US $ 118 million. The company is focusing on large-scale consumer dApps complete with high security and consumer-app level scalability.
Ground X is a South Korean blockchain technology and service company, a subsidiary of the Korean Internet giant Kakao, the company that runs Koreas’ largest chat app KakaoTalk. Ground X is building a public blockchain platform. Their objective is to build a vibrant blockchain ecosystem with a variety of services. They plan to support public sector innovation projects while fostering a blockchain developers’ ecosystem is their other objective.
Orbs and Ground X plan to cooperate in blockchain research and development. They will develop components like mutual security audits, while they will also collaborate in building autonomous swaps to improve interoperability of crypto assets. The two companies will jointly publish research papers. They will also peer review each others’ core blockchain platform codes.
Orbs has already opened their Seoul office with five local employees. They will be physically involved in building an ecosystem for blockchain in Korea. For both companies, building consumer blockchain apps with large user bases, on-demand capacity, and predictable performance is vital. Bringing blockchain to everyday consumers is a high-priority area.