China’s Huobi Group, the world’s leading digital asset solutions provider, announced on Wednesday that it plans to launch a public blockchain, called Huobi Chain, at a press conference in Singapore.

With the initiative, the company is moving toward establishing a next-generation decentralized autonomous organization(DAO) that would provide individuals and organizations with a trustworthy and autonomous platform for value exchange, fundraising, securitization, and more.

The company will fund the Huobi Chain Project with an initial investment of 30 million Huobi tokens(HT) which is about $162 million USD at the current exchange rate as it is seeking out a global technical “superhero”  to lead the development of the project. t present,there are nearly 45,000 HT addresses. The HT price moved nicely higher for four consecutive trading days before this press conference.

“ We firmly believe in a decentralized future and the main goal of the Huobi Chain project is to transform a centralized corporation to a decentralized one that’s run by the community. ” said founder and CEO of Huobi Group Li Lin, “Our dream is for Huobi to run on the public blockchain and become a truly decentralized autonomous organization.”

The development process of Huobi Chain project will be completed in the next 18 months.Once completed, all the code will be open-sourced, and Huobi will move its various business operations to the platform.

According to Huobi Group, Huobi Chain will reduce financial risks through transparent and open regulatory consensus, optimize transaction processes by leveraging blockchain technologies like smart contract, and protect users’ rights through the autonomous community.

Founded in 2013, Huobi is the operator of the world’s third-largest exchange by daily trading volume, Huobi Pro.In addition to this core business, the group also runs other businesses, such as  the autonomous digital asset exchange HADAX, Huobi Blockchain Application Research Institute,Huobi Capital, Huobi Labs, Huobi Mining Pool, among others.

On May 3, Huobi has launched a billion-dollar blockchain fund on the island of Hainan to support the blockchain industry globally and also to bolster its domestic business. Now Huobi is stepping up its efforts to expand to new markets including the US and Europe.