Busan, the second largest city in Korea, is planning to develop an open blockchain mainnet that is compatible with global mainnets like Ethereum and Cosmos. The city announced blockchain mainnet development as a mid-to-long-term task through the ‘Busan Digital Asset Exchange Establishment Promotion Plan and Future Schedule’.
Chineses reporter Wu Blockchain shared a tweet about an upcoming project in Busan.
According to the official release, Busan City has been experimenting with blockchain use cases in its trade-free zone. However, the projects gave businesses an undesirable experience since they were carried out on separate blockchains. This was one of the main drivers behind the city administration’s choosing a local public blockchain that can work with larger blockchain networks like Ethereum and Cosmos.
The Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) is overseeing the process of establishing a Blockchain Trust Framework (BTF) to determine the standards of the technology being developed. By outlining standards such as blockchain technological system, performance, and security level, the goal is to enhance the quality of private services and promote service connectivity.
A schedule was made to go for a public offering during the month of October and to launch the Busan Digital Asset Exchange Corporation in November. Full-fledged exchange operations are scheduled for completion during the first half of 2024. The purpose was to trade precious metals and raw materials like gold, silver, copper, and crude oil that were traded through Busan ports in a transparent way by tokenizing them. A future plan to tokenize and trade global Intellectual Property(IP) rights and carbon emissions rights was revealed.
To catalyze the transformation of Busan into Blockchain City, the city allocated 100 million won (equivalent to 75 million USD) under the initiative of Blockchain Innovation Fund (BIF). The goal was to acquire funding through public financial institutions in Busan, and the fund was operated by a steering committee.On top of that, the city is forecasting to form a Busan Blockchain Alliance (BBA) with an objective to establish Busan as a Blockchain city.
