Leading cryptocurrency exchange Huobi is seeking to build its first public and decentralised blockchain, according to South China Morning Post.
Huobi will fund the blockchain, dubbed ‘Huobi Chain,’ with 30 million Huobi Tokens (approximately $174 million). Once complete, Huobi said that it will move its cryptocurrency operations to the new platform.
“We firmly believe in a decentralised future and the main goal of the Huobi Chain project is to transform a centralised corporation to a decentralised one that’s run by the community,” said Leon Li Lin, founder and CEO of Huobi Group. “Our dream is for Huobi to run on the public blockchain and become a truly decentralised autonomous organisation.”
Li said that the code behind public blockchain will be completely open-sourced.
Founded in 2013, Huobi came under the scrutiny of the Chinese government, which ordered it to shut down its renminbi to cryptocurrency trading operations in September 2017. Following tighter regulations in China, Huobi moved its headquarters from Beijing to Singapore last October.
More recent, Huobi appointed former OKEx CEO Chris Lee to spearhead M&A strategy.