The Busan Blockchain Industry Association holds a forum Thursday to promote the idea of building a blockchain city in Busan. Photo courtesy of BIA

Busan braces for blockchain-related corporations

South Korea is trying to build a blockchain district in Busan, the country’s second-largest city, so as to realize the potential of the new technology.

The Busan Blockchain Industry Association (BIA) recently held a forum with government officials and experts to promote the idea of taking advantage of blockchain technology.

“The government has designated Busan as the blockchain city so that corporations and start-ups can test new ideas here without having to worry much about regulations,” Busan official Park Kwang-hee said.

“We plan to come up with various projects to underpin the blockchain industry in Busan. For one, a big building would be set up by 2025 to accommodate blockchain companies at very affordable prices. We also plan to establish an exchange for digital assets.”

Park said that the number of blockchain-related companies in Busan had jumped from 24 in 2019 to 54 last year and 87 early this year.

The BIA welcomed the idea.

“Politicians propose a new ministry to take charge of blockchain. In line with the move, we hope that a blockchain cluster would spring up in regulation-free Busan,” BIA Chairman Kim Tae-gyung commented.

High-tech trailblazers

Korea Blockchain Association Vice-Chairman Moon Young-bae said that there are promising blockchain technologies to revolutionize the daily life of people.

“Ethereum maker Vitalik Buterin once talked about the trilemma of blockchain as it is difficult to achieve decentralization, security, and scalability at the same time,” Moon said.

“But many have tried to overcome the trilemma, and some came up with tangible results. I hope that Busan can make competent blockchain networks compete so that the city can make a big breakthrough in bracing for the technology.”

Moon took an example of Locus Chain, which was developed by South Korean start-up Bloom Technology.

Bloom Technology has claimed that its Locus Chain technology creates a unique ledger structure that brings faster transactions so as to solve the trilemma of Vitalik Buterin.

Locus Chain is a public blockchain just like the Bitcoin network where anybody can join the network as validators. But the public blockchain’s commercial viability has been hampered due to the slow transaction speed, or the scalability issue.

“Bloom Technology adopted unique approaches to solving the speed problem. As a public blockchain, that is quite an exploit. I think that other good solutions will continue to emerge from nowhere,” Moon said.

Moon criticized that private and consortium blockchains are not real deals because just a few validators can control the whole network.

“The recent shutdown of Solana or Klaytn demonstrates that we have to depend on public blockchain,” he said.
이 기사를 공유합니다
Copyright © The Korea News Plus