South Korea to Fund Blockchain-powered Platform for Apartment Dwellers

The South Korean government has pledged USD 1.27m in funding for a contact-free, blockchain-based services platform for apartment residents in the country – which operators say will allow residents to take part in electronic voting, manage parking spaces, and more.

Per ZDNet Korea, the South Korean Ministry of Science and ICT has selected a domestic firm named Ksign as the project’s operator.

The platform will make use of decentralized ID (DID) authentication technology and will allow groups of residents living in apartment complexes to take part in online meetings and cast their votes in blockchain-powered ballots when they need to vote on security contractor selection or other matters.

The platform will also allow for “electronic payments” – presumably allowing residents to settle their monthly apartment maintenance fee bills using the platform, although this could also include utilities bills, which can be bundled into apartment costs in many areas.

Over 50% of the South Korean population lives in apartment complexes, per Korean Statistical Information Service statistics and reported by Bloomberg back in 2017, and that number is as high as 85% in the capital Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi Province.

Most complexes hold regular meetings on issues pertaining to residents, but most of these have been put on hold for the past few months due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. As such, the government has been keen to pursue a wide range of “contact-free” solutions, making use of industry 4.0 innovations like blockchain, hoping that this will allow the nation to return to a semblance of “business as usual.”

Ksign spoke of creating a “token-powered ecosystem” that could be used on a local scale, and noted that the platform would be intuitive to the extent that “anyone can use it with ease, including homeowners, residents and managers.”