[DigitalToday reporter Chi-gyu Hwang] Tiger Research, a Web3 research firm, on Sept. 17 released an analytical report on Maroo, a layer-1 blockchain developed by Hashed Open Finance under Hashed to target stablecoins.

According to the report, in the current domestic financial environment, transaction rules are fragmented within each service’s code. Each time standards such as the travel rule threshold change, inefficiency repeats as each operator must modify its system separately.

Maroo implemented these rules in the chain itself rather than at the service layer. A Legal Oracle committee, premised on participation by supervisory authorities, financial institutions and legal bodies, sets regulatory data directly on-chain, and a programmable compliance layer compares every transaction against the standards before execution.

Transactions that violate the rules are blocked before they are recorded in a block. When regulations change, updating parameters makes all services across the network follow the new standards at the same time.

The report explained Korea’s regulatory specificity through anti-money laundering standards. International recommendations present about $1,000 as a benchmark and the United States regulates transactions from $3,000 and above, but Korea recently removed even the 1 million won threshold and mandated transmission of sender and recipient information for all transactions regardless of amount.

It also highlighted setting the won stablecoin OKRW as the network’s base unit. On chains that charge gas fees in assets whose value is not fixed, network congestion and asset price rises can occur at the same time, doubling costs, but on won-based Maroo only congestion needs to be managed. Issuance authority is managed under protocol-level governance control.

As reasons for building a separate mainnet, the report cited the need for authority to control the network’s foundational rules so that, in emergencies such as hacking or illicit fund flows, freezing and recovery of assets and reissuance for victim relief can be handled at the protocol level.

The report said this is in the same context as a state protecting monetary sovereignty. Transaction privacy is designed based on zero-knowledge proofs so only the parties to a transaction can see the details, while supervisory authorities can access them through an audit key if legal requirements are met.

Maroo is led by Hashed Open Finance under Hashed, and partners include ShardLab, which has operated stablecoin payment infrastructure in Southeast Asia, and Delight Labs, which has operated multiple mainnets since 2018. All three organizations have teams in Seoul.

The report also highlighted timing, noting that implementation of the Electronic Securities Act is scheduled for February 2027 and that discussions on who will issue a won stablecoin are also under way.

The report assessed that the question of what will be used to settle tokenized securities will ultimately bring the two discussions to a single point, and said Maroo already has a structure designed to respond to various regulatory scenarios rather than a specific institutional conclusion.

Seung-sik Yoon (윤승식), head of Tiger Research’s research center, said, “With an approach of choosing infrastructure after a system is finalized, it is difficult to secure time to pre-empt the market.” He added, “Verifying in advance infrastructure that can reflect regulations no matter how they are finalized is a practical task for institutions.”