Peter & Min
Welcome to this week’s edition of RHIZOME Wire!
Peter Saddington interviews Min Kim
This week, Peter Saddington (a long-time ICON fan), connected with Min Kim for a lengthy (~45 minute interview) on a number of topics, including fatherhood, COVID-19, and—of course—ICON.
Here is Min answering a question about what he is most personally interested in when it comes to the possibility of ICON:
“Were very excited about the possibilities of using smart contracts, using the blockchain, for securities. And I think everyone knows that, at some point in the future, the blockchain will be the fundamental — the foundational — technology for everything that drives securities. It just takes time, as we are all using the legacy systems, and there aren’t any examples at the moment where blockchain technology is powering a lot of these security contracts. There are a few, but it’s still a work in progress.”
Min pointed out that a couple of years ago, he and the ICON team had briefly explored the idea of tokenized securities, only to quickly learn that the regulatory and market environments weren't quite there yet…
“Fast forward. It’s been two years, and we revisited, or we’re starting to revisit, security tokens again. Now, the regulation is a lot clearer, we have a lot more availability of partners that we can work with, we can negotiate much better prices. So we are in this area where we are exploring a POC-level of a security token at the moment.”
On the subject of DeFi, while Min pointed out the excitement around the space — particularly Compound’s yield mining — he did have some concern:
“My biggest concern is who are the actual borrowers in the DeFi space, I wouldn’t really claim traders who are borrowing money to trade more crypto are real mainstream users, so I think we are all still waiting for a mainstream use case of cryptocurrencies in the DeFi space, but the idea and the technology behind it, and the smart contracts that’s powering DeFi space is very very fascinating. And me just being able to play around with these new toys is super exciting.”
Here’s Min on the topic of governance:
“We’ve been exploring a lot of governance type models — I think Compound again is one example where governance is baked into a token. With ICON, most of our decision-making is on-chain. We have a lot of interest in coming up with some creative ways to run governance to include as many people as possible into the decision-making process so that we stay decentralized. These kind of governance issues are very interesting as we move forward to a more DAO-like world, where everything is becoming more like a network, and we sort of rely on each other, we want to make sure our privacy is preserved, we have the power to make decisions. We want to not only be a user, we want to be the owner of a network. So moving toward that future, I think governance is extremely, extremely important and there’s so many different governance models out there.
Toward the end of the conversation, Min and Peter discuss the best way to balance privacy vs. security in the context of the COVID pandemic, and the role that blockchain has to play in that balance.
Be sure to take some time to watch the entire interview!
News from ICON World
Min Kim weighs in on ICONLOOP progress
Balanced releases their Q2 update
ICON Foundation releases their June roadmap update
Corey Costa chats with Markus of ICON Hyperconnect
POSCO uses VisitMe for contactless admission to their new facility
Blockchain Industry News
Coinbase Custody To Allow Secure Cardano Staking this Year - CoinDesk
Cardano's staking protocol, Shelley, is expected to come online later this month with staking rewards beginning in mid-August.
NFT token sales hit $100 million as virtual economy booms - Decrypt
Referencing the (as of June 5) $96,186,581 worth of NFTs estimated to be sold according to nonfungible.com since 2017, Steinwold wrote in Bankless: “The above stats show just how early we are in a market that one day could be worth trillions of dollars.”
Huobi Becomes First Major Exchange to Run a Chainlink Node - Cointelegraph
Huobi Wallet CEO Will Huang stated:
“DeFi offers a unique value proposition of providing financial products that are transparent, open, and programmable. We are very excited to accelerate our involvement in this emerging trend by providing Chainlink users access to Huobi Global exchange data, as well as running our own Chainlink Node.”
The Man Who Tokenized Himself Gives Holders Power Over His Life - CoinDesk
The investors of $ALEX token are founders in the crypto industry who already have companies and want to help me out. I have thousands of followers on Twitter, and they like my energy and say I am young and funny. There are almost 30 people who want to invest and think about how I might grow up. My market cap is around $150,000 now. Yes, trust is not in cryptocurrency, but in the personalized token, people have to believe me.