OKEx chief operating officer Andy Cheung announced Jan. 7 that he has resigned from the cryptocurrency exchange to form a new blockchain consultancy institute called Bitwork. The entrepreneur’s stated goal is to help projects connect to markets and drive mass adoption.

Helping create quality projects

Cheung claimed that his contribution toward the mass adoption of cryptocurrency is very limited within an exchange. Therefore, with OKEx’s blessing, he left to better achieve these stated goals with this new venture. His inspiration for Bitwork comes from his role at OKEx:

“The question I was always asked in OKEx was: How can my project get listed on your exchange?… we always tell the teams that project quality is the key… But how to improve the quality of a project? What do the markets need?”

Bitwork aims to help projects answer these questions, through exchange partnerships, advisory, marketing management, branding and public relations, fundraising and event management services.

Exchange listings are key

According to the announcement, the Hong Kong-based startup “is formed by a team of experienced blockchain experts from different cryptocurrency exchanges.”

Certainly having a prior relationship with an exchange would seem to be a benefit when presenting client projects for listing. And getting listed on exchanges certainly plays a large part in the success of a project.

As Cointelegraph reported, many are still prepared to pay substantial amounts to ensure visibility on the top exchanges. For example, Blockstack reportedly paid $250,000 to be listed on Binance for a year, and will commit to around $1.1 million in fees over a four year period.