Klaytn is an enterprise-grade blockchain platform focused on GameFi and creative content. It is an affiliate of internet giant Kakao, which operates South Korea’s biggest messaging and social media service. Using a modular network design, the Klaytn platform aims to make it easy and convenient for businesses to customize and operate their own service-oriented blockchains. In the Klaytn world, these autonomous subnetworks are called Service Chains and make up a core part of the platform’s offering tailored to large enterprises.
Soon after the mainnet launch in 2019, Klaytn unveiled the world’s first smartphone preloaded with blockchain applications, in collaboration with Samsung. Today it supports a vibrant ecosystem of third party blockchain services such as cryptocurrency wallet Klip, which is linked to the KakaoTalk messenger app.
Having experienced success domestically, Klaytn is now undergoing global business expansion from its international base in Singapore. These business expansion activities are supported by the US$500m Klaytn Growth Fund, which aims to grow the ecosystem of companies built on Klaytn. The blockchain protocol has attracted more than 40 Initial Service Providers across a broad range of industries for different use cases including entertainment, e-commerce, healthcare and finance.
The ultimate goal of Klaytn is to accelerate the mass adoption of blockchain technology, and it aims to achieve this driven by a simple fundamental principle: to provide the same smooth user experience we have come to expect from popular web and mobile applications, eventually making the underlying technology invisible to the users. Following this basic principle, Klaytn has been designed to guarantee low transaction fees at all times, offer human-readable account addresses, and enable fee delegation for more flexible business models like freemiums or subscriptions among other things.
Klaytn recognizes that Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanisms have drawbacks, which is why the network relies on Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance with modifications to achieve the necessary blockchain network characteristics. Klaytn also introduces a Proof-of-contribution, which is designed to compensate all participants in the Klaytn token economy that make meaningful contributions. By combining these consensus mechanisms, Klaytn achieves a versatile, decentralized environment, ensuring that block validators are incentivized for performing their duties.
To offer an enterprise-ready and service-centric environment, Klaytn also uses a hybrid model combining both public and private blockchain networks. Public blockchains are used to keep data and governance decentralized, while private blockchains help improve scalability and reduce latency. Klaytn also provides a high-performance development environment that supports different levels of programming and engineering for a wide variety of applications.
Klaytn specifically uses the term ‘BApps’ for blockchain applications instead of ‘decentralized applications’, because the platform does not obligate its service providers to run decentralized web services on their service chains. Even a centralized BApp can interact with the public Klaytn blockchain to benefit from increased transparency and security, while containing some data within the private blockchain should that be a requirement for an enterprise-grade use case for example.
The list of BApps currently running on Klaytn is growing rapidly, with names projects including:
The Klaytn Governance Council is responsible for operating the consensus node network and driving ecosystem growth, voting on proposals to make changes to the platform such as Layer 2 solutions, transaction fee policies, and other structural adjustments. It is an alliance of large corporations and organizations including Kakao, LG Electronics, Hashkey Group, Ground X.
The Klaytn Improvement Reserve (KIR) is a reward-based system that utilizes the KLAY token to incentivize commitment to maintaining the growth of the Klaytn ecosystem. By submitting proposals about community incentives, making changes to the platform, and the user/developer experience, applicants can be rewarded or subsidized for their contribution to the ecosystem.
The system also helps non-profit organizations implement blockchain services, and provides a range of developer tools to simplify the process of creating blockchain-based applications to be used in conjunction with legacy systems.
Lastly, the native KLAY token powers the Klaytn blockchain and the BApps that operate across the network. KLAY is used to pay for transaction fees, staking, and as a medium of exchange across the various BApps in the Klaytn ecosystem.
