In "Digital Collections with an Annual Transaction Volume of US$11 Billion, Is It a Bubble or the Future?" 》In the article, we noticed that although there is a huge bubble in the NFT market, the giants do not want to lag behind the times.
Domestic Tencent, Alibaba, Bilibili, etc. have all laid out digital collections. Review: Alibaba, NetEase Bilibili, etc. promote digital collections | Tencent iQiyi and others promote digital collections, covering many IPs from cultural blogs to animation, games and other fields.
In Japan, IPs such as Ultraman, Astro Boy, My Neighbor Totoro, Godzilla, Katsushika Hokusai, and giants such as Rakuten, Line, Mediado, etc. have all set foot in it. Reviewing the cultural and creative trend interpretation: Observation on the model of 12 NFT platforms in Japan: Giants enter the game, classic IP comes on stage
What is the scene like in South Korea?
According to incomplete statistics on the cultural and creative trend, Korean comic companies that have joined the NFT market include Kakao, Naver, Toomics, Kidari Studio, YLAB, Gtooon, Mrblue, etc., and game companies include NCSoft, Yumede, Com2us, Joycity, PearlAbyss, Devsisters, Krafton, etc. In addition, South Korea's large artist management companies SM, YG, HYBE, and JYP have also entered the market.
Virtual currency exchanges and various industries’ different perceptions of NFT
We have noticed that there are currently 4 virtual currency platforms trading in Korean won in South Korea, and they have all achieved good returns in 2021 under the influence of the virtual currency investment boom.
Among them, Dunamu, which operates the UPbit exchange, had annual sales of 3.7046 billion won, a year-on-year increase of 1,996%; net profit was 2.2411 billion won, a year-on-year increase of 4,598%. Bitthumb's full-year sales were 1.999 billion won, a year-on-year increase of 362%; net profit was 648.4 billion won, a year-on-year increase of 408%.
After entering 2022, due to the turmoil in the virtual currency market, all four trading platforms have been greatly affected. In order to achieve sustainable development, they noticed the emerging trend of NFT and started NFT business like many Internet companies.
However, many industries in South Korea have different understandings of the new field of NFT.
Games: It mainly promotes to the public models that can earn money from playing games through P2E (Play to Earn), PAE (Play And Earn), etc., in order to actively promote attempts to integrate NFT into games. However, South Korea's "Game Industry Promotion Law" currently does not allow such business activities, and the attitudes of game companies and players towards this model cannot be unified.
Film and television: Movies, TV series, variety shows, and OTT original content are all actively creating NFT content and auctioning it. Many related companies have successfully generated income once or even N times.
Music: Due to the current restrictions on concert activities due to the epidemic, many large brokerage companies and music platforms are trying to develop "music products" using NFT and actively create a music-centered metaverse. Large Korean brokerage companies such as SM, YG, HYBE, JYP, etc. have successively entered this field.
Webcomics: Minting classic scenes from webcomics and turning them into NFT content, and selling them in limited quantities to obtain high profits. South Korea's webtoon giant KakaoPage has successfully sold related products and established a subsidiary that can conduct transactions.
Fashion: Creating products in the virtual world, but currently it only remains at the level of advertising offline products in the virtual world, while actively exploring new models that can gain profits.
Since NFT is an emerging commercial market, South Korea has not yet formulated relevant laws to regulate it. Therefore, there are no clear regulations on the division of interests between creators, trading platforms, and consumers, so there are concerns about unfair transactions. And because most of these products are limited edition products, their prices fluctuate greatly and are not subject to market rules. They are more like stock investments than a product transaction.
After news broke that Musk would acquire Twitter, the price of an NFT owned by the Twitter founder plummeted from $2.9 million to $280. In addition, according to reports from overseas media, as of the beginning of this year, NFT transactions, which were once very popular, have continued to cool down, and the transaction volume of some trading platforms has even plummeted by 50%.
NFT performance of 7 webcom companies
Let’s look at some situations in South Korea’s NFT market.
Jiansong Art Museum, which holds the example version of South Korea's No. 70 National Treasure Hunmin Jeongeum, has produced 100 virtual collections of the work and sold them on the NFT trading platform. The price of a single product is as high as 100 million won (approximately RMB 530,000).
A virtual chess record of Korean Go player Lee Sedol playing against artificial intelligence Alpha Go was auctioned on the NFT platform for a high price of 250 million won (approximately RMB 1.325 million).
After NCSoft, a major Korean game company, announced that it would add NFT models to the game, the company's stock price soared 29.92%. The stock price of Wemade, which has integrated NFT in the overseas version of "Legend 4", soared 345%.
Cultural Creativity Trend here focuses on the practices of Korean webtoon companies.
1) Kakao
Kakao created the NFT trading platform Klip Drops specifically for NFT trading of its IP.
In December last year, as KakaoPage's super-popular comic "I Level Up Alone" came to an end, KakaoPage made the last scene of the comic finale into a virtual collection, selling a limited number of 100 pieces on the NFT trading platform, each priced at 500 Klay Coin. There are 200 auxiliary NFTs, each priced at 100Klay Coin. It sold out in just 1 minute.
(Klay Coin is a virtual currency launched by Kakao. The price fluctuates greatly. When the product was sold in December, 1 coin was equivalent to approximately 1,600 won.)
After the success of the virtual collection of "I Level Up Alone", Kakao immediately launched "Duchess in the Shell", which also sold 7,777 virtual collection products. This product will use automatic art generation technology and will be the first virtual collection in South Korea supported by this technology.
2) Naver
Line, a subsidiary of Naver, launched the NFT exchange "Line NFT" in Japan. In the Japanese article on NFT market observation, the cultural and creative trends were listed. Review: Observation on the model of 12 NFT platforms in Japan: Giants enter the game, and classic IP comes on the scene.
Naver also issued 12 sets of NFT Sakura Gardens through its virtual social APP – ZEPETO, with a total of 1,200 units. They were sold for the first time in Crypto games, each priced at 500 yen. Then it was sold twice in the Line Bitemax NFT Market beta version.
Naver is also working hard to develop its own NFT trading market, and has created a subsidiary Line Next for this purpose. It is expected to launch the NFT trading market "City (도시)" in the first half of this year.
The platform will provide services in 8 languages and be available in 180 countries around the world, enabling borderless transactions. Moreover, the platform will not limit the types of trading currencies, allowing transactions in multiple currencies.
Currently, Naver has produced and sold 600,000 NFT products under its IP "Line Friends" in South Korea through its blockchain subsidiary Line techplus.
3)Toonmics
Toonmics, a webtoon platform that is available in many regions around the world and has 53 million monthly active users, launched TooNFT to combine webtoon IP with NFT, hoping to further expand the webtoon business.
TooNFT claimed that the project was launched to create a decentralized application software based on Toomics, provide a freer environment for the webtoon market, make readers' rewards for works and authors more transparent, and find a better model to protect creators' income and readers' rights. To this end, TooNFT will provide rewards for content creators and strive to solve existing problems in the webtoon market.
TooNFT allows authors to upload works without paying any fees, and users can create communities within the platform.
In addition, TooNFT also has NFT infrastructure, which is a benefit distribution system, which means that once a work uploaded on the platform triggers income, the creator will share the corresponding income. To this end, TOON virtual tokens will be circulated within the platform.
4) Kidari Studio
Kidari Studio, a Korean comic company that previously received a 250 million yuan investment from ByteDance, signed a cooperation agreement with Netmarble F&C, a subsidiary of South Korea's major game company Netmarble, on game content and blockchain platform-related businesses.
Through this agreement, Netmarble will be able to use the online literature IP held by Kidari to produce games and develop Metaverse content.
At the same time, Kidari will be able to carry out its NFT business holding IP (including LezhinComics, Bomtoon, and Delitoon) through the blockchain platform developed by Netmarble. Check out Kidari’s business: How does a Korean comic company, a Korean comic company invested by ByteDance with 250 million yuan, make web comics?
Kidari recently announced that it is cooperating with Yuan Airlines to produce NFT passports based on the movie "Hot Blood" adapted from its own online text IP and sell them on OpenSea.
"Hot Blood" will sell 2 products, one of which is a seal NFT and the other is a bullet NFT. Each product will be sold in 3 batches.
The first batch of seal NFT products is priced at 60MATIC, with a purchase limit of 5 per person; the second batch is 120MATIC, with a purchase limit of 8 per person; the third batch is priced at 180MATIC, with a purchase limit of 10 per person, and the quantity sold is not clearly limited.
Bullet NFT sells for 0MATIC, and only 20 are sold in each batch. The first batch of products is limited to 1 +WL per person, the second batch of products is limited to 3 +WL per person, and the third batch of products is limited to 5 +WL per person.
5) GToon Comics
Gtoon Comics owns a number of classic web comics, classic scenes from popular web comics, web comic characters, and IPs of various web texts. The company is currently focusing on developing an NFT trading platform for web comics and web articles based on blockchain technology that can be traded in multiple countries.
FanVerse is an NFT platform that provides communication between content creators and fans. It has developed various forms of NFT such as digital artworks, artist NFT fan cards, and fan tokens.
Not long ago, in order to successfully create an online literature NFT trading platform, Gtoon Comics signed a cooperation agreement with the FanVerse platform to plan, create, and trade web comic NFT products on the Fanverse platform.
6)YLAB
Webtoon creation studio YLAB has cooperated with blockchain startup BlockoXYZ and announced that it will officially enter the business of using webcomic IP to produce NFT products.
YLAB has not yet made it clear which NFT platform it will use and how it will trade its NFT products.
7)Mrblue
The Mrblue platform, which focuses on martial arts comics, also announced that it will use its martial arts comic IP to actively develop the NFT business.
To this end, Mrblue is actively cooperating with companies that possess NFT-related technologies and announced that it will circulate NFT products of its IP through the virtual currency trading platform Korbit in the future.
