Top Korean Blockchain Platform Joins Celo Alliance

While Facebook’s Libra project appears to have stagnated after facing international pushback from regulators, rival blockchain platform Celo is gaining momentum.

Klaytn, the public blockchain platform developed by Ground X, an affiliate of the major South Korean internet company, Kakao, joined Celo’s Alliance for Prosperity on May 8.

Celo, a distributed ledger technology, or DLT, based decentralized application and stablecoin platform and prominent rival to Facebook’s Libra project, has now attracted nearly 80 firms to its alliance — with Celo announcing more than 20 new members earlier this week.

Top Korean blockchain platform joins Celo alliance

According to a press release, Klaytn will research interoperability between the Klaytn and Celo platforms, and integrate support for its KLAY token on Celo’s ecosystem.

Chuck Kimble, the head of Celo’s Alliance for Prosperity, emphasized that Klaytn will comprise the first external blockchain that will interoperate with Celo.

“By building a bridge between Klaytn and Celo, Klaytn will expand its own ecosystem, and make it simple for people in Korea and across Asia to send and save with Celo,” Kimble said.

Sangmin Seo, Ground X’s head of platform group, asserted that the alliance “shares a mutual vision with Klaytn in making digital assets more accessible and useful in our everyday lives.”

Celo gains momentum while Libra faces regulatory challenges

While Libra has been hampered by regulatory concerns, Celo’s greater decentralization has allowed the project to make significant strides since launching the alliance just a couple of months ago.

Celo co-founder Sep Kamvar, told Cointelegraph that decentralized technologies provide “the opportunity for new stories to arise.”

While conceding that “there is some competition” among the major players in the burgeoning decentralized economy, he emphasized the opportunity for the DLT sector to rise to prominence amid the current global recession:

“This is our potential right now as a field, to tell beautiful stories and build technologies that align with the stories. The stories that lead to the most prosperity for all will lead to the most beautiful world for all.”

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Andy Ji, the co-founder of Ontology — a recent addition to the alliance, described both Celo and Libra as “excellent associations” that have “attract[ed] high-quality members thus far.”

“However, Celo is an open-source project run by a non-profit organization foundation,” Ji stated, predicting that “[d]ue to its decentralized nature, Celo may not face the same regulatory barriers as Libra.”