CryptoSlate recently had the opportunity to talk with the CEO of EMURGO, Ken Kodama. EMURGO is the commercial arm of Cardano. As CEO of EMURGO, Kodama leads the overall mission to drive the adoption of Cardano by building, investing in, and advising projects or organizations that adopt Cardano’s third-generation decentralized blockchain ecosystem. Below is our interview with Mr. Kodama.
Tell us about the major milestones Cardano and EMURGO have accomplished over the past 2 years. In what ways does EMURGO help drive the adoption of Cardano and add value to ADA holders?
Ken Kodama (KK): EMURGO, as the official commercial arm of Cardano & its Cardano ecosystem partners IOHK and the Cardano Foundation recently celebrated the 2nd year anniversary of Cardano’s ADA first exchange listing in September 2017. Over the past two years, EMURGO has rapidly expanded its bases in Singapore, Japan, India, Indonesia and New York.
From the onset, EMURGO has strategically laid out a multi-pronged approach to build a global Cardano by embracing a set of dual objectives:
- Add value to ADA holders by building, investing in, and advising projects or organizations that adopt Cardano’s decentralized blockchain ecosystem.
- Accelerate and drive the practical application of ADA and provide utility & liquidity to ADA holders. For example: getting ADA listed on exchanges, getting merchants to adopt ADA payments, developing a mobile ADA wallet, developing a Cardano Blockchain Explorer (Seiza), and so on.
Over the past two years, EMURGO has been steadfastly working incredibly hard to achieve these dual objectives and accomplished several milestones in the process.
EMURGO Milestones
Through EMURGO’s four established business units – tailored systems development, education & academy, investment & acceleration, and advisory services – EMURGO has developed in-house tailored products for the worldwide Cardano community. These products include Yoroi Wallet (which we just celebrated its 1st Year Anniversary) – a safe & reliable way to send and receive Cardano ADA through iOS, Android, Chrome, and Firefox; Seiza Cardano Blockchain Explorer which lets Cardano ADA users seamlessly track ADA transactions and other relevant data on Cardano’s public blockchain; and most recently, Tangata Manu – a new fully open source codebase library for third-party developers & enterprises to create their own secure light wallets and explorers for Cardano ADA on Internet browsers and mobile devices.
For investment milestones, EMURGO announced an anchor investment into Y2X – a leading New York-based digital merchant & investment bank for the decentralized economy – that will offer a platform for entrepreneurs to raise capital for expansion through Securities Token Offerings (STOs) and other means. Cardano will become the protocol of choice for Y2X and its portfolio firms.
