ICON x Deblock July Update — Building the ICON Ecosystem
It’s been a month since I joined Deblock, ICON’s official VC firm and accelerator as an investment manager, and the past month has been a flurry.
Everyday has been packed with back to back meetings with projects that are looking to build on ICON, and I wanted to provide a community update on what Deblock has been doing.
Relationship between Deblock & ICON
Deblock is the official VC arm/accelerator of ICON that’s dedicated to building the ICON ecosystem. Over a period of a month, we’ve met with over 50 projects. This means meeting several Korean projects daily, the majority of which already want to build on ICON. The rest? We incentivize.
ICON’s position in Korea
What kind of projects want to build on ICON? A wide spectrum that ranges from ideas from individuals to companies that dominate their industry. Regardless of differing positions of projects within this spectrum, ICON’s position is clear as Korea’s leading blockchain platform.
This becomes more evident from our perspective at Deblock. I’ve met with several Korean companies that have successful businesses looking to tokenize and their first thought in this process is, “I need to meet with ICON.”
Why you may ask? Because ICON has an established national reputation as the most successful Korean blockchain platform. They also have the largest national blockchain developer base with a team of more than 200 people of which 80% are developers.
For a traditional company that’s interested in tokenization, it makes sense to want to meet and consult with the best. This applies even more so to companies that are industry leaders as the largest corporations expect nothing less.
Deblock’s position in Korea
So where does that put Deblock? ICON is first and foremost a tech company, while Deblock is its investment arm. This puts us in a unique position to meet with the majority of all Korean projects. Of these, we selectively invest in and accelerate the best projects that want to build on ICON.
In doing so, we look for individuals and teams with proven track records, typically with successful, growing businesses. There is a general pessimism when it comes to dapps/tokenization in the blockchain space, and as a crypto investor for the past few years, I shared in this belief as I felt mass adoption was far away. But with the sheer quantity and scale of corporate tokenization happening in Korea, for the first time I’m cautiously optimistic.
These companies aren’t random people grouping together to ICO for the first time, they are industry leaders. The largest corporations in Korea are looking into blockchain as a new frontier to conquer in the same way that they did with the web and mobile sectors. And these companies bring with them a massive existing user base which is constantly growing.
Whether or not a tokenized business model can succeed is a question of its own. But the prospect of a failing business raising funds via an ICO is an entirely different one from a leading company trying to tokenize. With its growing user base and industry dominance, these companies remain the best shot at mainstream adoption, and at Deblock we ensure they have the right guidance to optimize their business models to adapt to a hyper-accelerated crypto world.
— By Markus: Twitter
