Hashed Open Finance, a unit of Web3 venture capital firm Hashed, on Wednesday unveiled the first testnet for Maroo, a sovereign layer 1 blockchain that supports a South Korean won (KRW) stablecoin ecosystem.

The company said Maroo maintains the openness of a public chain that anyone can join, while reflecting requirements sought by regulated finance and fintech from the initial network design, including regulatory compliance, auditability and privacy protection.

Maroo aims to create an environment in which users can participate in the network using only won, without separate volatile assets. Fees on the testnet are paid in OKRW, a token for testing. The company said it will verify whether general users and regulated finance can share the same infrastructure smoothly through a dual-track model in which an Open Path that anyone can use on a single chain operates alongside a Regulated Path that goes through prior verification.

Kim Hojin (김호진), chief executive of Hashed Open Finance, said, "We implemented Maroo's core design presented in the light paper last January as an actual network environment in this testnet." He added, "A structure in which AI agents have unique on-chain identities and autonomously carry out financial transactions within user-defined rules will be a meaningful milestone for the coming blockchain-based finance."