According to reports from foreign media (Decrypt), South Korean tech giant Kakao is preparing to launch a 'won stablecoin' on the public chain Kaia, to connect its vast ecosystem of products and services to meet users' growing demand for faster payments, remittances, and on-chain settlements.
Kaia is a Layer 1 blockchain formed by the merger of Kakao's public chain 'Klaytn' and LINE's third-generation blockchain mainnet 'Finschia', claiming to be 'the world's fastest and most efficient EVM blockchain', focusing on 'low latency and low gas fees' to complete transactions instantly.
Kakao stated that it completed the trademark registrations for 'KRWGlobal', 'KRWGL', 'KRWKaia', and 'KaKRW' with the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) earlier this month. It is reported that this won stablecoin will serve as a 'bridge to dollar and yen stablecoins'.
Sangmin Seo, chairman of the Kaia Distributed Ledger Foundation, pointed out that Kakao's ecosystem has over 49 million monthly active users in South Korea, and in the future, users and merchants will be able to directly access DeFi protocols within the Kakao ecosystem app, bringing these on-chain financial services into the daily lives of the public.
However, the stablecoin legislation in South Korea is still in a tug of war. In June, the administrative department proposed a draft of the Digital Asset Basic Law, which allows companies meeting minimum capital requirements to issue tokens pegged to the won; the Bank of Korea argues that stablecoins should first be issued by banks and is studying the feasibility of issuing 'deposit tokens' on public chains.
At the end of last month, the ruling party and opposition party in South Korea each proposed different versions of the stablecoin bill, with the main disagreement being 'whether to allow stablecoin deposits to earn interest', but both sides agreed to adopt a 100% reserve system and grant regulatory authorities emergency disposal rights.
Market experts point out that compared to dollar stablecoins, the biggest challenge faced by won stablecoins is 'the lack of clear and convincing use cases', 'more research is needed to identify and develop practical applications.'
Presto quantitative trading firm analyst Min Jung stated: 'The true value of stablecoins lies in reducing friction in cross-border payments, rather than simply being used for domestic transaction payments—therefore, how to break through strict foreign exchange controls will be a key issue.'
However, before the regulatory rules in South Korea are officially finalized, the launch of Kakao or other competitors' won stablecoins still depends on key details such as the final issuance license, reserve requirements, handling of deposit interest, and the role of banks in this process.
This article is authorized for reprint from: (Blockke).
Original title: (Kakao prepares to launch 'won stablecoin' to connect 49 million users to the DeFi world)
Original author: Block Girl MEL
The article 'South Korea's Kakao continues to layout! Launching won stablecoin to connect 49 million people to the DeFi world' was first published on 'Crypto City'.