A CEO interview from the financial regulatory sandbox series, on video and in full.
This past August, Fintech Center Korea ran an interview series with the CEOs of companies designated under the financial regulatory sandbox. Here is our video and the full transcript.
What kind of company is ICONLOOP?
Since its founding in May 2016, ICONLOOP has been one of Korea's leading blockchain companies, driving technical innovation through blockchain platforms and services. We believe in the value of transparent, trustworthy blockchain technology, and we work every day to make blockchain something that seeps into everyday life and changes it.
As a front-runner in the Web3 era, ICONLOOP combines its own core and scaling blockchain technology with applied technologies such as DID, wallets, DeFi and NFTs to deliver technology and consulting across every area of Web3 business. We build the underlying infrastructure with our own blockchain framework, PARAMETA, and provide user authentication and identity through our own DID identity verification platform, MyID. On top of that foundation, we support the full stack of technology and operations so that businesses moving existing Web2 services to Web3 — or launching new Web3 platforms and services — can build and efficiently run a custom mainnet tuned to their business.
What kind of service is MyID?
MyID is an identity verification platform built on ICONLOOP's own DID technology. It was designated an Innovative Financial Service by the Financial Services Commission (FSC), which gave it the regulatory footing to establish trust in the financial sector. Around it we launched the MyID Alliance, a cooperative body dedicated to building a trustworthy, blockchain-based digital ID ecosystem, and through the MyID platform we are working to solve real problems in the existing market and real inconveniences for users. Eighty-five institutions and companies across banking, securities, e-commerce, manufacturing and other fields have joined as partners. Starting with the broader financial industry, we are extending those partnerships into fintech, e-commerce, the sharing economy, healthcare and beyond — building pioneering cases for blockchain that go well past DID.
What made you apply for Innovative Financial Service designation?
Digital ID today can only be used where and how a certification authority or a platform wants it to be used. To roll out blockchain-based services properly, the centralized ID system itself has to move onto blockchain first — that is why we went into the DID business. We wanted to start with finance, the field with the greatest impact, but it is a thoroughly regulated area and progress was difficult. The Innovative Financial Service program was what unlocked it, and it let us build a genuinely successful DID service case with the financial industry.
What changed after the designation?
After MyID was designated an Innovative Financial Service, ICONLOOP commercialized Korea's first DID service in the financial sector together with Shinhan Bank. We followed that with NH NongHyup Bank Financial Real-Name Verification, a MyID-based DID real-name verification service launched with NH NongHyup Bank. Collaboration with large financial institutions became possible because the designation made a simplified non-face-to-face identity verification process a reality.
Is there a real-world example of the designated service in use?
Let me use one of MyID's flagship references, NH NongHyup Bank Financial Real-Name Verification. A user with a NongHyup account can issue the credential through Zzeung, the app built on MyID. From then on, every financial transaction can be verified non-face-to-face in one simple step — no mobile phone authentication, no photographing an ID, no separate account ownership check. Banking tasks that require real-name verification include opening an account, signing up for financial products, changing a password, and issuing or changing authentication methods.
What sets ICONLOOP apart?
ICONLOOP is a first-generation blockchain company and the only one in Korea with proprietary blockchain technology proven on the global stage. We support private blockchains across many fields — public institutions such as the Seoul Metropolitan Government, financial institutions such as the Korea Financial Investment Association, and private companies such as the Korea Gold Exchange. We also provide end-to-end technology for public blockchains, including ICON, the interchain-focused global blockchain project run by more than 150 teams worldwide, and HAVAH, the NFT community portal and playground. That range has given us development and operations know-how on many fronts.
- * ICON: a global open-source project launched in 2017 under the leadership of the ICON Foundation and operated by more than 150 teams worldwide. It holds world-class technology in interchain — the connective layer between blockchains that is a core next-generation blockchain technology.
- * HAVAH: an interchain NFT entertainment platform that links NFTs issued on chains across gaming, social, finance and other domains, letting users move and use their NFTs freely regardless of chain or network.
A word for companies hoping to join the financial regulatory sandbox
The financial regulatory sandbox is a great program for actually running a business model you had only imagined. It gave ICONLOOP a great deal of experience and opportunity.
What are your ambitions, dreams and vision going forward?
As a blockchain specialist, ICONLOOP plans to keep pace with the sweeping paradigm shift toward Web3 by working alongside businesses that want to build Web3 ventures with DID and other blockchain technologies. That means acting as a collaborating partner rather than a mere technology vendor — building the ecosystem together, from consulting through token economy design. In the same spirit, we plan to ease MyID's supplementary service conditions and expand its use into non-financial areas, extending the service across many domains and industries to create far more practical use cases. Ultimately we want to grow it beyond digital ID into a data distribution platform grounded in individual ownership and control of data, and to maximize the social value the regulatory sandbox can deliver.
Life Meets Blockchain, ICONLOOP