Altcoins Talks - Cryptocurrency Forum
Further Discussions => Blockchain Technology => Topic started by: felixesteban on May 30, 2018, 12:29:53 AM
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Kakao is a corporate giant that dominates the Korean mobile market. Its mobile messaging app Kakaotalk accounts for 94 percent of the domestic market. Based on this overwhelming market share, Kakao has successfully expanded its operations into markets such as advertising, gaming, mobile banking, taxi services and music.
As a result, Kakao employed 2,600 staff as of 2017 and recorded annual sales of 1.9723 trillion Korean won ($1.8 billion) with an operating profit of 165.3 billion KRW ($154 million).
The company recently announced a new blockchain business.
As one of the leading "middlemen" that has taken control of the mobile platform market in Korea, if Kakao chooses to embrace blockchain – which eliminates the middleman and allows users to directly exchange value – what would happen to the massive profits the company currently earns in its intermediary role?
"Until last year, nobody talked about business when they were making dapps (decentralized applications), but I think things will be different this year. Decentralization can't be the core of a service, it's just a method of providing the service. Tokens can't be the only kind of value that you offer to users. Tokens are only part of the value. What's important is the essence of the business itself."
Pinpointing the benefits
Kakao's proposed blockchain platform, Han said, could be summed up as "partial or gradual decentralization."
"Everyone is using blockchain these days because it's popular," he said. "I wish people would stop trying to put everything on blockchain."
Some of Kakao's services could be decentralized, while others cannot, Han explained. Rather than uploading a whole service to blockchain, certain functions of the components that make up the service could be separated out for decentralization and tokenization.
So, what are the benefits Kakao is seeking through blockchain?
"The token economy is a business model that no one could have imagined before," he said. "Until now, Kakao has only operated in Korea, but through blockchain we could expand into the global market. That means taking a portion of the profits we earn as an intermediary and using it to expand our market by sharing it with users."
For example, he said, if Kakao were currently earning 100 units in profits, then growing the market to 1,000 units would eventually allow the firm to give 300 back to users and keep 700 for itself.
"What kind of strategy could Kakao adopt if it wanted to export its successful service to the Asian market? Each country already has one or two established services. The only solution I can think of is offering incentives through blockchain. With blockchain, you can shake up the existing order."
Read more:
https://www.coindesk.com/meet-kakao-how-koreas-largest-mobile-giant-is-embracing-blockchain/