Kaia-Backed Block Festa 2026 Opens in Seoul With Won Stablecoin Agenda

Block Festa 2026 Opens in Yeouido

Block Festa 2026, the blockchain and digital asset conference that has run in Seoul since 2018, opened on Thursday at IFC The Forum in the Yeouido financial district, with the won stablecoin and the tokenization of government bonds and equities at the center of its agenda. Sessions run from 10:00 to 17:00 local time under this year's theme, “Institutions, Standing on Chain,” and the stated aim is to move financial institutions' blockchain use beyond technical reviews and pilot projects into live services and real institutional markets.

The program was published ahead of the opening and brought together officials from financial institutions, digital asset companies, blockchain foundations, asset managers and securities firms to work through market applications and the regulatory questions attached to them. Lawmakers opened the day with congratulatory addresses: Min Byung-deok, senior vice chair of the Democratic Party's policy committee; Park Sang-hyuk, secretary of the National Assembly's Political Affairs Committee; and Kim Sang-hoon, chair of the People Power Party's special committee on stocks and digital assets, each spoke to the institutionalization of on-chain finance. The conference, which began in 2018, has served as Korea's main annual venue where domestic projects, investors, banks and policymakers compare global market trends with the country's own institutionalization agenda.

The first session, “Reshaping Finance: Beyond the Boundaries of Assets,” takes up the combination of digital assets and traditional finance, the global distribution of Korean capital markets and the competitiveness of a won-pegged stablecoin. Arthur Hayes, chief investment officer at Maelstrom, delivers the keynote on global digital asset markets, institutional capital movement and the growth potential of on-chain financial markets, a discussion that lands at a moment when the Bitcoin (BTC) price remains the reference point institutional desks watch. Kaia joined as title sponsor, with crypto exchange operators Upbit and Bithumb among the event's sponsors and KB Financial Group, Rails and AEON listed as gold sponsors.

Won Stablecoin and Tokenization Sessions

The afternoon agenda shows how specific Korean institutional questions have become. Kim Se-hee, a senior researcher at Eugene Investment & Securities, presents under the title “From K-Perps to Tokenization,” analyzing the trading demand that perpetual futures and tokenized stocks built on Korean equities have generated on overseas on-chain venues. She then joins Kim Jong-wan, head of digital assets at Mirae Asset Securities, and Kim Kang-ho, head of New Frontier Partners Group, in a panel on won stablecoin issuance, distribution and settlement, staged against the rapid expansion of dollar-pegged competitors.

Hong Je-seok, a senior researcher at Shinhan Investment & Securities, presents the current state of the tokenization market and its growth path, while Sung Sang-hyun, managing director at ABP Asset Management, covers financial innovation and expanded investment products built on digital assets. The second session, “Asian On-Chain Finance: The Start of an Infrastructure Race,” examines how regional governments and institutions are competing to claim institutional markets first. Seo Sang-min, chair of the Kaia DLT Foundation, keynotes on Asia's payment and settlement environment and the expansion potential of blockchain-based financial services.

Shim Min-seop, digital assets lead at Meritz Securities, presents on the tokenization of government bonds and stocks, the clearest case of traditional assets being issued and distributed on blockchains. Lee Yoon-ho, CEO of Kaia DLT, and Sungkyunkwan University professor Im Byung-hwa debate the role stablecoins can play in payments, fund transfers and settlement infrastructure. Leo Li, co-founder of AEON Protocol, and Thomas Chen, chief business officer of BNB Chain, share payment case studies from the global ecosystem, while John D'Agostino, head of institutional strategy at Coinbase, joins a fireside chat on the state of Asian on-chain finance. Spartan Group co-founder Kelvin Koh and Hashed co-founder Kim Sung-ho close with a discussion on connecting traditional finance and Web3 infrastructure.

Asia's Infrastructure Race Takes Shape

Read together, the two threads confirm a single arc: Korea's institutional on-chain push has moved past pilots into a contest over infrastructure. The event's published program, the primary document behind this report, places tokenization of government bonds and stocks at the core of the agenda, and in practice tokenized equity products now stretch from single stocks to benchmark wrappers such as the S&P 500 ETF. With dollar stablecoins widening their distribution lead, the question posed in Seoul was which jurisdiction supplies the market makers, liquidity and settlement rails institutions actually need. Kaia's title sponsorship shows how blockchain infrastructure firms are positioning themselves as the bridge between Korean finance and on-chain markets.