South Korea's financial giants have decided that they've had enough of the dollar's dominance in digital currencies. Eight of the country's largest banks – from national leaders to local branches of international banks such as Citi Bank and SC First Bank, as well as Nonghyup, Shinhan, Woori and KB Kookmin, IBK, Suhyup – joined forces and decided to work on a large-scale project.
Their task? Create a common stablecoin, the exchange rate of which will be stably linked to the Korean won. They no longer want to depend on the American currency and seek to create their own digital alternative.

According to information from the well-known publication "Economic Review", the banking alliance is already in full operation. Major industry players, the Open Association of Blockchain and DID (OBDIA) and the Korea Financial Telecommunications and Clearing Institute (KFTC), act as the main advisers and companions in this ambitious project. Now they are working together on the details of a new joint business, the name of which immediately reveals the essence – "Stablecoin linked to won."

For the first time, all major private banks in the country have joined together in an official union to deal with digital assets together. In fact, this is a serious sign for the market and regulatory authorities: the leading players no longer consider digital assets to be something insignificant, but see them as a strategically important area in which leadership must be fought at the state level. They perceive stablecoin as a way to maintain financial independence in the digital world.

They are currently working on creating a common, secure and extensible technology platform that will form the basis for the release and use of the new token. But in order to launch it, regulatory issues need to be resolved. Banks are actively communicating with lawmakers, hoping for changes in financial legislation that will allow the legal issuance of bank stablecoins and clearly define the rules for this. If everything goes according to plan, then the joint brainchild can be officially registered and will start working at the end of this year or at the beginning of next year.

The main subject of debate is the design of the future stablecoin. Two main options are currently being actively explored, each with its own characteristics, technologies, and legal aspects. The first option is a trust model, where tokens are issued after the clients' money is transferred to trust management. The second option is the deposit token model, where tokens are directly linked to bank deposits in a one-to-one ratio.

Deciding which of these models to choose will affect not only the technical side of the issue, but also how much users will trust the stablecoin and how international markets will react to its launch. There is a lot at stake in this struggle for digital sovereignty.