Changelog Speaker Spotlight — Do Kwon, Co-Founder of Terra
CoinGecko will be hosting sixteen exciting crypto projects at the upcoming Changelog stage during Invest Asia 2019 happening on 11–12 September 2019. The Changelog stage offers projects the opportunity to share important updates and development roadmap with conference attendees.
Today’s edition’s Changelog Speaker Spotlight features Do Kwon, the co-founder of Terra. Before co-founding Terra, Kwon also founded Anyfi, a peer-to-peer connectivity solutions using mesh network technology for last-mile telecommunications. Kwon also made to Forbes’s 30 under 30 Asia list for 2019.
Terra is a blockchain payments network powered by a price-stable digital currency. At Terra’s core lies an algorithmic stablecoin — also called Terra — and it keeps its price steady through a mechanism commonly used by world’s central banks: increasing and decreasing the money supply. It is also fully collateralized by a second mining token called Luna, which derives its value from Terra transaction fees.
To get Terra into the hands of millions Terra partnered with an ever-growing alliance of e-commerce platforms that will integrate Terra’s payment solution. This alliance, which includes Asia-Pacific giants like TMON, Woowa Brothers, Ebates, Carousell, and Tiki, now includes 25+ platforms that collectively process over $40 billion annually.
1) What is the main thing you will be highlighting at Terra?
We recently launched our blockchain payments network in Korea with a mobile payments app called CHAI, and the response has been explosive. Just 2 months after launching, CHAI has already reached over 400,000 unique users and has become the 4th and 13th most popular app on Apple’s App Store and GooglePlay respectively.
CHAI’s successful launch is a huge victory for both Terra and the blockchain industry as a whole. Not only is it amassing users at an unprecedented pace in an industry that has struggled to gain meaningful traction with everyday consumers, but by integrating with most major banks in Korea, it offers a simplified user experience where users can checkout with just a few clicks instead of dealing with complicated private keys or wallet addresses. CHAI is making headway in bringing blockchain technology to mainstream commerce, and there is no doubt that Terra will continue to play a huge role in the push towards the mass adoption of digital currencies.
(Here’s a short video on how to pay with CHAI.)
2) What’s the biggest challenge Terra faced this year and how was it resolved?
This year was filled with milestones, such as launching our mainnet, launching our payment product, and integrating with our first e-commerce partner. For our payment product, we considered easy fiat-onramp to be a must, and working with banks and government agencies to secure the right licenses was definitely a challenge. But that’s how Terra stands out from the rest. We’ve partnered with almost all major banks in Korea, so users only need to add their bank account to pay using Terra’s blockchain technology — no need for private keys or to sign up for crypto exchanges. We’ve simplified the user experience so that literally anyone can pay with Terra.
3) How would you describe Terra in one line?
Price-stable cryptocurrency actualizing Bitcoin’s original vision of becoming digital cash.
4) Describe your vision for the future of Terra.
We’ve started with online payments in Korea, but the ambition is to make the entire world run on Terra. We have ecommerce partners across the Asia-Pacific region, who will help us take over a significant market share of the payments industry. And moving beyond payments, we will branch out with other decentralized financial products such as high-yield savings, lending, cross-border payments, etc. Terra is an open platform, and we see it powering a wide suite of DeFi products in the near future.
5) What do you think is the biggest hindrance/roadblock to mainstream adoption of crypto in general?
Besides commonly mentioned roadblocks like regulation, price speculation and poor user experience come to mind. Most people still view crypto as purely an investment vehicle, and most times, they are. We asked ourselves how can we make crypto usable by regular people, and the first thing we solved for was price volatility. And when we designed our payment system, we made sure that the user experience is as seamless as PayPal or AliPay. Our product needs to be at the very least at par with mainstream payment methods, and hopefully better.
6) What mascot would you use for your project? If you already have one, what inspired you to pick said mascot?
Our mainnet is called Columbus, because we wanted to share that sense of adventure, discovery, and excitement in pioneering. We see ourselves at the forefront of making blockchain mainstream and would like everyone interested to join us!
Make sure you do not miss the Changelog event while attending Invest Asia. Don’t have a ticket yet? Get $300 discount off prevailing ticket rate if you use our special code SpkrDisc-gAMWo6cX. Sign up here at: https://www.coindesk.com/events/asia-2019/register
