CEO of Ground X, Kakao's blockchain subsidiary, talks about dapps, ICOs, and how he plans to bring decentralization to Korea's dominant mobile messaging service
Context & Ripple Effects
In this CoinDesk interview, the CEO of Ground X — the blockchain subsidiary Kakao set up inside Korea's dominant mobile messenger — lays out three commitments: supporting dapps, supporting ICOs, and decentralizing KakaoTalk itself. The interview lands in a window when Korea is positioning to fill the market void left by China's exit from blockchain activity.
What came after validates the ambition's scale: Ground X went on to launch its Klaytn blockchain platform with corporate backing including LG and nine initial dapps, and earlier raised $90M via a private coin offering to build paid services on its network. The subsidiary model itself is familiar Kakao playbook — its game arm had already raised $130M from Tencent ahead of IPO.
First-order effects
- Ground X's stated plan makes KakaoTalk — the default messaging layer for Korean consumers — the distribution vehicle for dapps and ICOs, putting token-based services in front of a mass audience rather than a crypto-native niche.
- Korea's blockchain developers gain a domestic platform backer at messenger scale just as China's retreat opens a regional leadership gap.
Second-order effects
- Large Korean corporates like LG end up co-signing the platform (as later seen with Klaytn), because alignment with the messenger's user base is cheaper than building rival chains — shifting blockchain infrastructure in Korea toward consortium-backed corporate chains.
- A dedicated coin offering ($90M) gives Ground X a funding path independent of Kakao's equity, letting the parent incubate crypto bets the way it did with Kakao Games' Tencent-backed pre-IPO raise.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Korean internet groups institutionalize blockchain as a subsidiary-and-spinoff discipline — separate balance sheets, separate tokens, separate listings — rather than embedding it in the core product, a structure visible again in Kakao's later plan to spin off its chat-app platform business into KakaoAI for a Korea Exchange relisting.
- Decentralization claims made by a subsidiary of the company that owns the messenger create a standing tension between token governance and founder control — a tension that resurfaces when founders step back, as Brian Kim did in quitting Kakao's board.
The trend: Korean platform giants are pursuing blockchain through separately capitalized subsidiaries riding their messenger distribution, with corporate consortia and eventual spinoffs defining how decentralized the result actually is.