Kim Hojin, CEO of Hashed Open Finance: "Testnet for 'Maroo,' a privacy-enhanced blockchain built for regulatory compliance, to be unveiled soon"

"We plan to unveil soon the testnet for 'Maroo,' a sovereign Layer 1 blockchain project designed for the future KRW economy. We will also present wallet features for AI agents and real-world applications built on them."

Kim Hojin, CEO of Hashed Open Finance (pictured), said this on the 13th at the conference titled 'KRW Stablecoins as a Platform: Distribution, Use Cases, and Demand for Digital Payment Tokens,' held at Hashed Lounge in Gangnam, Seoul. He noted that while the stablecoin market has been expanding rapidly, the pace of adoption in real-world finance has fallen short of expectations, citing privacy exposure and unclear regulatory applicability as key reasons.

Kim said, "On public blockchains, transaction histories of individuals and companies are disclosed excessively," adding, "In an environment where even a company’s spending structure and supply-chain information are exposed, it is difficult to drive full-scale stablecoin adoption." He also said that "regulations in many countries have not been designed to fit on-chain environments," which has delayed institutional adoption. Maroo, he explained, aims to be a "regulation-adaptive open chain" to address these limitations.

In particular, Maroo proposed a dual-transaction processing architecture that routes transactions differently depending on their nature and size. The design automatically verifies and applies regulatory requirements at the time a transaction occurs, enabling financial institutions and companies to use stablecoins more reliably, he said.

To protect privacy, Maroo is also introducing a zero-knowledge-proof-based "verifiable privacy" framework. A key feature is that zero-knowledge proofs allow sensitive data to remain undisclosed while enabling regulators to confirm only the necessary facts. Through a legal oracle system that permits access to information only under specific conditions, the project aims to achieve both privacy and regulatory compliance.

Maroo also plans to unveil an account structure dedicated to AI agents in response to their proliferation. Kim said, "In an environment where agents become actors in economic activity, account designs with clear delegation of authority and responsibility structures are necessary," adding, "Through agent-specialized wallets, Maroo will provide infrastructure suited to the machine economy."

He said, "A true digital economy is difficult to complete without digital currency," adding, "As a 'sovereign blockchain' that is not dependent on any specific company, Maroo will build an open ecosystem." The Maroo testnet is expected to be released in the near future.