An interview with ICONLOOP CEO JH Kim, published on September 20.
Here is an interview with ICONLOOP CEO JH Kim, published on September 20.
As blockchain services multiply, so do the separate blockchains — mainnets — purpose-built and optimized for each kind of service. And as blockchain services find more uses and more users, services that were once tied to the single chain they launched on are expanding into multi-chain services, evolving toward interchain (or cross-chain) connectivity led by bridge solutions.
Read the interview for an introduction to PARAMETA, ICONLOOP's blockchain framework for building mainnets optimized for Web3 business, along with the current status of HAVAH, the first project built on it. :)
Even as the Merge upgrade and other changes make Ethereum more competitive, mainnets of many different kinds will still exist.
ICONLOOP intends to establish itself as the interchain infrastructure connecting them.
That is how ICONLOOP CEO JH Kim described the company's ambitions when we met him on September 14 at the ICONLOOP office in Jung-gu, Seoul. ICONLOOP is a blockchain technology company founded in 2016 under the name theloop. Its core technology is its own blockchain core engine, loopchain. In 2017 it supplied loopchain as the technology partner for ICON, and this year it unveiled PARAMETA, a blockchain framework built on loopchain.
━Positioning Itself as a Web3.0 Enabler with End-to-End Mainnet Support
ICONLOOP describes itself as a Web3.0 enabler. That is because it supports every stage of a Web3.0 business for companies that want to make the move — from infrastructure technology such as blockchain mainnets, wallets and explorers, to consulting on token economy design and community management.
The same thinking is behind the all-in-one package positioning of PARAMETA, which ICONLOOP recently launched. Kim stressed that PARAMETA is the only comprehensive toolset in the world that supports companies from mainnet development all the way through to running the business.
HAVAH, the first mainnet developed on PARAMETA, launches next month. It is a non-fungible token (NFT) entertainment platform where NFTs are not locked to a particular chain and can move freely between chains. What turned ICONLOOP's attention from MyID, the decentralized identifier (DID) platform it had been focused on, to a separate NFT platform was the low profitability of the MyData industry. As Kim explained, the NFT market allows for immediate revenue generation, and because it is still early, the problems worth focusing on were clearly visible. ICONLOOP's ultimate goal is to keep adding new platforms after MyID and HAVAH, building network infrastructure that connects every chain.
━Raise NFT Utility and the Market Will Recover
Kim expects the downturn to resolve itself once NFTs become more useful. If interchain technology solves the problem of connecting chains and NFTs come into wide use in gaming and entertainment, he said, the problem of falling prices will work itself out naturally.
He also offered a view on what the recent upgrade to Ethereum — the dominant force in the NFT market — means for interchain technology. Even with the Merge complete, Kim said, it will take a long time before performance genuinely improves. Going forward, he expects things to settle into a handful of base chains like Ethereum with many layers built on top; a variety of mainnets will still exist, and they will need connecting.
Source: Decenter, reporter Jungwoo Kim (September 20, 2022)
Life Meets Blockchain, ICONLOOP