Hashed Open Finance, a unit of Web3 venture capital firm Hashed, said on Thursday it released a lightpaper for its blockchain, Maroo, designed for the South Korean won (KRW) economy.

Maroo is a sovereign Layer 1 blockchain and a proprietary mainnet designed to maintain the openness and scalability of public blockchains while also considering compliance frameworks, auditability and privacy protection required by the financial industry, the company said.

Hashed Open Finance was established to commercialise stablecoins, real-world asset tokenisation (RWA) and security token offerings (STO). It is conducting research and development and commercialisation to apply blockchain to the domestic financial market. Maroo’s first target currency is the South Korean won, and it plans to expand to other fiat currencies in line with regulatory environments in each country.

South Korea is assessed as a market with advanced digital financial infrastructure, where most transactions such as wages, taxes and shopping payments are handled through account transfers and mobile payments, the company said. But there are structural limitations to moving these financial activities in earnest onto blockchain.

Existing public blockchains such as Ethereum and Bitcoin are designed around anonymity. That makes it difficult to apply anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) requirements consistently at the network level, and it is hard to identify transaction parties, limiting the ability to trace illegal funds and meet oversight requirements.

There are also limitations in terms of privacy. In a structure where all transactions are public, there is a risk that individuals’ assets and spending patterns, and even companies’ sensitive cost structures, could be exposed.

Maroo is designed so transaction fees are paid in a won stablecoin, lowering barriers to entry for users, it said. Users can use the blockchain without holding separate virtual assets. The company said it sees this leading to a virtuous cycle in which demand for and circulation of the won stablecoin increase as the ecosystem grows.

A "dual-track" transaction model is also applied. It is designed with an "Open Path" as the default, where anyone can create a wallet and transact, while also allowing transactions to be handled through a "Regulated Path" depending on identity verification status or transaction amount, the company said.

Hashed Open Finance said it also considered an environment in which AI becomes the主体 of financial activity. It said Maroo reflects an "AI Agent Oriented Design" by establishing controls that verify AI agents’ identities and the scope of their authority, set spending limits or block them immediately when necessary.

Hashed Open Finance CEO Hojin Kim (김호진) said the name "Maroo" was inspired by the daecheong maru in a traditional Korean hanok. He said that just as the daecheong maru is an open space where inside and outside, family and guests naturally meet, the Maroo chain aims for an open infrastructure where regulation and innovation, privacy and transparency coexist. Kim added that "Maroo" is also a pure Korean word meaning platform, and it reflects the aim of becoming a platform where various fintech services are launched based on a won stablecoin.

Hashed CEO Seojoon Kim (김서준) said stablecoins are emerging as an important pillar of financial infrastructure in the global market. He said Maroo is an experiment that respects South Korea’s regulatory environment while pursuing global-level technological openness. He said he hopes it becomes a foundation where banks, financial institutions and fintech companies can explore next-generation financial services together.