South Korea’s Telecom Giant To Launch Blockchain-as-a-Service Platform

By Rishma Banerjee

As per reports from inews24, published on 21st February, KT Corp., South Korea’s telecom company giant is getting ready to roll out a blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) next month, in March. This will help in reducing entry barriers into the industry and foster an innovative ecosystem.

According to the report, the news was announced by KT CEO, Hwang Chang-Kyu at a blockchain enterprise-focused event, at which he was giving a presentation. The KT BaaS is slated to be cloud-based and is supposed to allow for blockchain accessibility, which according to KT has reportedly found to be the critical pain-point for many of the 43 companies in attendance at the event. The company explained that KT Baas is simple enough to use that the blockchain node can be “configured with a few clicks” and will allow for easy implementation of smart contracts.

South Korea’s journey in the world of blockchain has been quite interesting. The country has gone through initial coin offering (ICO) bans and numerable exchange hacking calamities. However, they have continued to pursue the technology in a big way.

KT has been making major strides in the development of blockchain technology, in the country, and made headlines when they rolled out a blockchain commercial network, which improves security. Moreover, they also have a cryptocurrency, “K coin,” which has explicitly been designed for the South Korean city of Gimpo.

In spite of the bans on ICOs, the local government  of Seoul, the capital has set out $1 billion worth of funding to blockchain and fintech startups as part of the “Seoul Innovation Growth Fund.” South Korea, much like Malta and Sweden, is looking to become the hub of blockchain development and is all the more likely to be an ongoing global influence to leaders, enterprises, industries, and governments who are endeavoring to tap the latent potential of blockchain and join the race.