The Japanese subsidiary of the South Korean search behemoth Naver Corporation, LINE, has today launched its foray into the cryptocurrency arena with the release of the LINK digital token along with a blockchain network titled LINK Chain.
After its launch in Japan in 2011, the messaging platform quickly rose in popularity and had over 600 million users worldwide by the year 2015. Both the cryptocurrency and the blockchain network announced by LINE, have been built independently by the messaging platform. The press release announcing the launch of the cryptocurrency and blockchain network touts itself as being ‘one of the largest and most-established companies to develop and issue a cryptocurrency’.
Instead of going the route of providing tokens and following the trend of launching an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), LINK utilises a reward mechanism that provides an incentive to users for contributing and participating within the LINE platform. The token acquired via this process can then be used as a form of payment within the DApp services that are expected to launch shortly, alongside service categories such as content, commerce, social, gaming, and exchange amongst other.
The CEO of LINE, Takeshi Idezawa, addressed this momentous occasion for the company and said, “Over the last seven years, LINE was able to grow into a global service because of our users, and now with LINK, we wanted to build a user-friendly reward system that gives back to our users… With LINK, we would like to continue developing as a user participation-based platform, one that rewards and shares added value through the introduction of easy-to-use dApps for people’s daily lives.”
The LINK cryptocurrency has a total of a billion tokens which will be released to LINE users over a period that will be dictated by the rate at which the platform progresses. The total of a billion tokens in circulation is divided into two sections, the first 800 million tokens are reserved as incentives for users whereas the rest of the 200 million will be exclusive for LINE Tech Plus.
Till the time LINE receives its approval from financial regulators in Japan, it’s users residing there would be receiving their incentives for DApp services via LINE Point rather than in LINK tokens.
