Live from Token2049, a premier crypto event organized annually in Singapore and London, Josh Kriger meets the leading voices in the crypto space. David Shin and Youngsik Shin from Klaytn talk about the company’s interesting roots and share what’s going on with Klaytn and why it’s globally significant to both the web2 and web3 worlds. Dreamer, the President at Kingdom Studios, also talks about their collaboration with Klaytn and how Kingdom Studios is gamifying DeFi Kingdom. Don’t miss this episode to learn more about the market, the web3 gaming culture, and a blockchain solution everyone needs to know about from the founders and executives themselves.
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Edge Of Asia 2: Token2049 & All That Matters, Feat. David Shin & Youngsik (Yoshi) Shin Of Klaytn & Dreamer Of DeFi Kingdom
Hello, everyone. This is Josh Kriger with Edge of NFT. I’m one of the co-hosts here live at Token2049. I’m honored to be here with Klaytn's Global Head of Adoption, David Shin, who is an OG in this space. I've been told by many that I have to get a little bit of that background from you. We may not have all heard about Klaytn in the US, but I heard about it in Asia. It's an exciting company that has some interesting roots. I had the pleasure of talking with Yoshi and learning more about his background with Klaytn. I want to go into more in-depth with those because people need to understand what's going on with Klaytn and why it's significant globally to both Web2 and Web3. First, let's learn a little bit more about you. How did you get into the space and to where you are now?
Thanks for having me, first of all. It's awesome to be here. I got involved in 2012. I started out as one of the first ASIC miners, and then I quickly rotated in 2013 to create my own startup called PayWise. I was based out of Hong Kong at the time. While I was doing all that, I was an investment banker. Being a regulated banker, I had to disclose a lot of what I was doing. In the early days of banks' compliance, they didn't know what Bitcoin mining was, so they said yes to everything. The Silk Road event happened in 2013, and they pulled me aside and I almost got fired. I remember that much. I told them, "I would rather choose to do what I'm doing. If you want to fire me, let me go.”
They ended up keeping me because they realized that at some stage, they may want to go down the path of having a blockchain strategy. This is a large European bank. I continued on. I was able to set up a company called PayWise out of Hong Kong. It caught the attention of a guy named Gary Kremen out of Silicon Valley. Gary Kremen was the founder of Match.com. He called me up and said, “I need you to come in and speak to Chris Larsen because PayWise was essentially looking at using Ripple to disrupt Swift." Now, when you think about Ripple, for those of those people in your audience, they'll probably think, "Isn't that what they do? Don't they go after the cross board of Swift-type use cases?" They didn't in the early days.
I had quite an effect in changing and having them look at this use case. To finish off that story, I flew out to San Francisco. I met Chris. I spent about three days whiteboarding for him and his team, and why they should be going after Swift. Long story short, they did that. Shortly thereafter, I introduced them to a good friend of mine because of Bitcoin named Matthew Mellon, who passed away in 2018. Matthew was a part of the Mellon family, Carnegie Mellon, Bank of New York Mellon. He was into Bitcoin early on because of the Winklevoss twins.
He was interested in Bitcoin in Asia. That's how we became good friends. I told Matt that for his profile, it would be a lot better for him to work with Chris and Ripple. He did that. For those of you out there, you can google the name Matthew Mellon and Ripple. You'll see how much he was involved with them after that introduction. I've got a long history. I decided in 2019 that I would retire from banking completely and stop playing this Bruce Wayne Batman thing.
Fully out of the closet.
That's a great way to present it. At that stage, I decided to go help my friend Roger Ver set up his exchange for Bitcoin.com. I told Roger one of the conditions would be that I want to get paid in Bitcoin. I love the fact that I was taking a full year's salary in Bitcoin, but it gave my wife a lot of brain damage.
You also got to get some of those old stodgy suits out of the closet, and she could put some more dresses in there.
Correct, because I burned all those suits.
I remember that day when I got rid of all my suits from my old consulting days. That’s one of the big perks of the crypto industry.
I'm sure you're the same as me. I will never put another suit on. No one will ever make me wear a suit unless I have to go to a funeral.
I had a Jewish Orthodox wedding. I had to find a suit.
There's always going to be 1 or 2 reasons. That's it. I'm here at Klaytn now. Klaytn is Kakao’s blockchain. For those who don't know Kakao, it's the largest Web2 platform in Korea. When we say platform in Asia, super apps are a thing. A lot of people communicate by chat. That's what Kakao grew their business on. It was a chat application called Kakao Talk. Over 95% of the population of Korea is on it. Klaytn is their blockchain.
Given your history and how you seem to attach yourself to exciting projects with truly disruptive capabilities, there's a reason you chose Klaytn and Klaytn chose you. A chat app is fun and interesting. The adoption rate is incredible. What's the bigger story here? What do you see happening at Klaytn that gets you pumped?
I see a lot of Asia moving towards mobile as a platform and away from the desktop. Having that transition of users who are already pretty tech savvy in Asia, I'm sure you know the average person here is quite active digitally on the internet, but having them move and convert from a desktop platform to mobile creates a lot more opportunities, especially when it comes to Web3. What we're excited about is a lot of these projects are looking to continue to build infrastructure on Klaytn to create more mobile transactions because 90% of Asia, whether it's Southeast Asia or Northeast Asia, are all on mobile phones.
For Kakao, we know the mobile environment quite well. They are a super app. They're a platform business. It's probably worth noting that they were one of the first digital banks in Asia, and now they are the biggest digital bank in Asia. They're the biggest bank in Korea at this point. It says a lot. They launched in 2017 if I'm not mistaken, or 2016. That happened all within 5 to 6 years.
As we're thinking about leveraging this incredible community and how it applies to the metaverse and NFTs and gaming, you don't want to force-fit things. You guys want to be methodical and intentional about looking at these different aspects of the industry. You have plenty of resources to look at the trends and think hard about these different areas. What conclusions have you come to about these different aspects of Web3 and where this is going, and how Klaytn can support those ecosystem components?
When we look down at our crystal ball, we see a lot more social interactions that will happen on the chain. To be specific, if you think about our social activity now on Web2, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, a lot of these will transition in terms of how we interact on the chain. A lot of the data that gets collected on the chain will add tremendous value to traditional companies in the sense that they'll have more information on how people transact. The difference between how they transact in a social way in Web3 versus Web2 is a lot of these social interactions end up with some transaction, financial, economic or some swap. Monetizing a lot of that data will become interesting and important for traditional companies. When we get infrastructure and more data collection on the chain, we're going to see a plethora of traditional companies coming in.
Is that an opt-in experience for the user? There's a lot of criticism of not only your data. Brittany Kaiser has been on the show several times and spoke at NFT LA. How do you give brands that opportunity without encroaching on individual sovereignty?
I agree with that. I like to be kept private, but the data that I'm talking about is more metadata. It's not data about you per se, it's data about what you prefer. That's the important differentiation because I don't care about whether or not I know 100 people in Web3, who they are and how old they are. That data is not as important to me. It's more about whether there is a pattern of those 100 people in terms of what marketplace they went to or what type of NFT projects they liked. These types of data points are higher-level metadata points. This is where the monetization becomes quite interesting.
Is that a pathway to figure out how to activate the metaverse and make it more vibrant? Can data help with that as well?
It can because where that becomes relevant is if you think about the metaverse, it's going to be a 24 X 7, 365-day digital economy essentially.
There are places you drive to twelve hours a day in the US since desolate. It's commuter cities, where everyone's in the city for a few hours and then leaves. When you say it that way, there's a vacancy rate within the metaverse at times. It’s not that surprising.
My belief is in 5 to 10 years, when governments talk about GDP like trying to achieve 5% GDP or what have you, a percentage of that GDP will represent digital activities. It'll be primarily within the metaverse. This is why Facebook and Microsoft all have quite a bit of interest in developing one. More importantly, this data is important because you can't have people activated and providing services 24/7, 365 days on metaverse. What becomes important are NPCs.
NPC stands for?
Non-Player Character. These are non-intelligent drones that are embedded into games at the moment. They fill some space and some time in the game. We see them a lot in open-world games. I play Red Dead all the time. There are tons of NPCs. This data is important because the data will allow NPCs to be able to have more of a structured conversation with people who are coming into the metaverse. If you think about a donut franchise like Dunkin' Donuts had something in the metaverse, they were selling NFTs or they were providing some service, you can't have someone at that portion of the metaverse operating 24/7. You're going to have to have some NPC interaction. All that data that gets collected and processed through NPCs will derive the interaction that will be more interactive than what we're seeing in games now.
Let's continue the conversation about gaming. I would love to learn more about your perspective on what Klaytn’s doing there and how this social graphing is applicable.
If we think about where the social element of the chain is going, people are going to want to flex their NFTs. They're already doing that. People are going to want to talk about different projects. People are going to want to like, dislike, and all this stuff. All that social data needs to get captured on the chain. There's a lot of work being done now. Lens Protocol, CyberConnect, and all these projects are not working on our chain. They're working on other chains. At Klaytn, we're looking for projects that are doing similar things to help generate and collect social data.
Touching on the data point, when we have that kind of infrastructure, we're going to be able to social graph, which is going to be important because social graphing in Web2 is limited. Whatever you're doing on Facebook, you can't carry that social footprint or graph onto Twitter. Your social footprint becomes fragmented. In Web3, there won't be any walled gardens. Your social graph starts getting bigger and bigger. That's the real opportunity because now I can understand you and your preferences more than I could in Web2 because how you behave on Twitter could be different from how you behave and what you say on Instagram.
You mentioned walled gardens. Immediately, what popped into my head is your partnership with DeFi Kingdoms, a project I have a lot of respect for. Was this type of long-term thinking influencing you all to partner with them or was it more about these guys having a cool gaming experience that's rocking, fun and engaging?
It was a conversation that I had with one of their Founders, Dreamer, in New York. We talked about their ability to access Asia through Klaytn. That was the focal point. They've got a great game. Clearly, they know what they're doing. They've got an amazing community, but they haven't been able to amplify to the next level on Harmony. The discussion was about how we can amplify DeFi Kingdoms in Asia. That's when we talked about migrating Serendale, their biggest kingdom, over to Klaytn. We have an environment where we like incubating our projects. I don't think all layer-one blockchains are like that. Most of them will give you a grant or give you some sort of investment and away you go.
There's some variability in the level of TLC that's available.
We're fond of incubating them and growing them in Asia. We think they'll do quite well. We know the market in Asia. The gamers here are a lot more sophisticated. They appreciate good games. Also, it's a big crypto market. People love crypto out here at a retail level. Combining those two things, accessing huge swaths of the population that are playing games every day, we thought it was a great fit for them.
David, this has been fun. I've learned a lot from you and your perspective on where this industry is going. It is so helpful, given where you've come from. If folks want to stay in touch with Klaytn and yourself, what should they do?
You can look us up on Twitter or Facebook. Our tag is @Klaytn_Official. We're also on LinkedIn. You can also find us at www.Klaytn.Foundation.
For the people at home that are building interesting projects, take a look at Klaytn and what they're doing. There could be some interesting synergy there.
Thank you.
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I’m excited to be here with Dreamer, the President of Kingdom Studios. Previously nine years at Goldman Sachs. An interesting shift of business, but maybe not. We'll get into that. It’s nice to know that when you're not working on this killer game, some skydiving, surfing, scuba diving and martial arts get in the mix. Dreamer, it’s great to have you here.
I’m happy to be here.
How has the vibe been at Token2049 for you?
It's been incredible. I've been to a number of events so far in 2021. It's a bit different in Singapore. People come very intentional. They're organized. They come in teams and network like the best of them.
They are good networkers here.
I was surprised in every other event, merch people are lining up. They come and they're lining up to ask detailed questions. They like the merch, but they are asking for twenty-minute discussions, and people are waiting. It’s a different mindset here. Good energy in a market where sometimes it's hard to find that not toxic intoxicating good energy that's surrounding this place.
I couldn't agree more. I'm enjoying our time here. I'm glad we came to Singapore. It's important for the cross-pollination of the ecosystem. We got this “bear market.” A lot of building is still happening including what you guys are doing. There’s this big announcement about the launch of a partnership with Klaytn. I had a chance to talk to Yoshi and David from Klaytn. I would love your perspective on that collaboration. Why did you guys choose to collaborate with this amazing South Korean venture?
First of all, Yoshi and David, both separately and together are incredible. I love them both. I met Dave in NFT NYC. We started talking about what we are focusing on at DeFi Kingdoms. Some of the Three Sigma events that happened impacted a lot of us. We were not excluded from the impact there. We were thinking about how to be strategic. In a bear market, you have to do a couple of things in order to survive, staying relevant, finding ways to be deflationary with your economy and your endgame tokens, and also getting good partners where there are good incentives. A result of that conversation with Dave led to a move to Klaytn. An expansion to Klaytn and a partnership with Klaytn are what we need in this market. They have a strong team. They have a great targeted focus in a region that we didn't have a strong hold on yet.
You mean close to 100% adoption for their Messenger app in South Korea. That's unheard of.
It's not a new app either. It's an app that has been around for over a decade. I lived in Korea for a few years in the early 2000s. I was using that app. Before we started using messaging apps in the US, they were already on it. A lot of stickiness with that user base. Therefore, the majority of the country is using that. That collaboration with Klaytn is huge. They also have a lot of other interesting partnerships.
Their professionalism is incredible, from marketing to tech to the ecosystem. DeFi Kingdoms has a lot of transactions. When we're looking at chains, it's not just who wants us, it's who can partner with us because we're high maintenance. We need to make sure that we don't break the chain. We need to make sure that our users aren't frustrated with their experience, and that we have good co-marketing. Avalanche has been that for us. Other partners in the past were a little bit less so. We're learning to identify good partnerships. We're excited about this one with Klaytn.
Let's rewind a little bit because I almost assume everyone knows about DeFi Kingdoms at this point. Maybe you can describe DeFi Kingdoms in a nutshell to folks, and then let's go into what's new in the world of DeFi Kingdoms.
For those that are wanting to get caught up, we launched a deck where we simplified DeFi, made it gamified, and made it a lot easier for people to get onboard and understand. They started staking in the decks or planting seeds in the garden. From there we launched our Hero NFT, which is like any RPG game that you might be familiar with. Take the hero, and make it an NFT. That hero has stats that are linked to battle and questing. Those stats get better as you play and level up. As you play and collect resources like Catch a Fish, that thing is a token.
I caught a few in my days.
I hope so. Hopefully, more than just floaters, although we love floaters. These tokens are then used to burn and make potions in the future and make equipment and weapons to make your heroes stronger. Your heroes can then travel through maps and realms. Each chain is gamified as a realm to fight each other in PVP to PVE campaigns, and have that RPG experience on the blockchain where your assets carry values that are interchangeable and “real” compared to traditional games where it's real to the player, but it's hard to convince somebody else of a set price or liquidity or any real digitally tangible value.
One of the real opportunities and challenges you have with DeFi Kingdoms is you've got this cryptocurrency community, which is trying to get a return on investment. That's what inspired a lot of them to get into space and certainly into DeFi. You've got this gaming experience that's quite vivid, fun, and engaging that it is about the game, and then we got this bear market. I'm sure that there's some pressure on you and the team to be thoughtful about how to create a sustainable economy. It sounds like in the process of reflecting and learning, which I know you guys are constantly iterating, you've come up with some new heroes, some new in-game assets, and some new features based on what's happened in 2021. I would love to learn more about that.
Part of the expansion of DeFi Kingdoms is looking at all the chains. There are a lot of EVM-compatible chains out there. They all have their own branding and theme. When we were on Harmony to start, and we have Serendale, a realm that was meant to be this peaceful realm to be harmonious with the whole theme of Harmony blockchain, we were looking at other partners, and Avalanche wanted us so bad. We created a realm Crystalvale that is more biking-esque.
The Crystal Token on my shirt looks like a triangle and a mountain. It's all ice themed. The new heroes that they got were related to their overall theme. As you look at the other change out there, there's a lot you can do in terms of creativity and building a realm around potentially Polygon, now Klaytn, where we're relaunching Serendale 2.0. We will make it fun. We had some updates to the map.
I'm curious about what these heroes are going to be like.
I've been testing theories out while I've been here and asking loaded questions. It's interesting how we are on the right track because the questions they ask, people naturally come to the conclusion of the type of token that we're looking to launch because they'll get their own game token, just like Crystalvale has their own. JEWEL, which was previously Serendale's token, is getting repurposed to be a broad token that will be on all chains. Eventually, when we're on centralized exchanges, that will be the token that represents DeFi Kingdoms. It'll be gas, governance, fee sharing, and premium features. Klaytn will get their own token and new heroes.
In their own new gene sets.
The existing heroes that are out there right now, we are near 300,000, carry not only genes that are linked to gameplay, but physical gene sets that are fun.
Any specific ones that you're excited about that you can mention?
I'll say we're partnering with Klaytn in the brainstorming on all of this. We want to expand.
They've got a great brand and a creative team. Those must be some fun sessions.
They're great sessions. We are identifying holes or gaps in the gene sets to expand on them to be much more inclusive, especially in this part of the world. There will be some exciting stuff that is linked to some classes and gene sets to bring to life and bring into the fold in parts of the world that may not have been as represented.
That's great. Shout out to the Avalanche guys. I love what they do. Two million transactions a day, is that correct, what you guys are doing on Avalanche?
Yeah. Avalanche has a good explorer for those subnets. We're one of many subnets, but we are at the top of the heap when it comes to users and transactions. That has been greatly improved from the migration from Harmony as we prepare for Serendale 2.0. We are also ramping up feature utility parity on Crystalvale on the subnet. Transactions over the last few weeks have been in the over one million range. In the last few weeks, over two million. We had a huge spike of 3.6 or 3.7 million in a day. Immediately, Avalanche guys reached out and they were like, "Guys, this is great. It looks great, but we need to preserve the integrity of the chain. Let's look at gas fees. Let's look at ways we can optimize it."
We also looked at the game and said, “When you're questing, there are a lot of individual transactions.” Shout out to Magnus and Hubert. They put their heads together and said, “How can we make this easier for our users?” They came out with multi-questing. We've dropped transactions down to the 1.5 million to 2 million range where the chain is still functioning beautifully. It's a good experience for all. We're burning JEWEL, which will not have any more supply added from this point going forward. You can do the math there. Burning JEWEL through not only gas but other game features. No new supply. There are some interesting tokenomics there to consider. Transactions, subnet, and performance are all exciting We're happy with our partnership with Avalanche.
It's great to see you and get a little glimpse at what's happening in DeFi Kingdoms. I know you guys are going to keep on innovating. I wish you the best in the forthcoming quarter. Let's see you guys at NFT LA in 2023.
We're looking forward to it. What is the date again?
March 20th through the 23rd. We got a whole track just on gaming. You are going to be on stage, my friend.
I look forward to it.
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I am excited to be here with Yoshi, Game Partnership lead at Klaytn. We're going to talk about some fun stuff. I’m excited to expose our audience to all the amazing things that not only Klaytn is doing coming up, but what they've done in their history. This is a blockchain solution that everyone needs to learn more about. I've been here a couple of days. How about you?
I've been here a couple of days too. I'm having a little bit of jet lag.
We're both trying to experiment here. This is Tea and Coffee. Some of the locals here recommend this to us. I had a power nap. I think we're doing alright, all things considered. I'm excited to come to Seoul, Korea. We got this fun roadshow we're doing. This is my first time in Singapore. It's great to meet with you. You're one of our first interviews thanks to the Asia Blockchain and Gaming Alliance for having us together. They have a great event going on out of these doors. Let's get down to it. How did you get involved in blockchain? Tell us about your Klaytn legacy story. You've known about these guys since your teenage years.
I grew up in Korea as a normal kid. One day, Samsung released this idea called smartphones and they say that you can access all these types of different apps. I wasn't aware of those ideas back in elementary or middle school. Everyone starts using this messenger app called Kakao. I started using this app. It was phenomenal because back then, my mom wouldn't let me send more than 200 messages a month because it cost you more money. With Kakao, if you're connected to the internet, you can send free messages, but also pictures and videos and everything.
What was her excuse then for you to still get your homework done and everything after that? She was out of bullets.
I still got my homework done. I was a pretty good student. She didn't care as long as I don't incur more costs. I went abroad to study in Washington DC.
I lived there after graduating college.
I went to Georgetown. The living expense there is crazy.
Especially Georgetown itself. That's the $18 hamburger.
It was phenomenal. When I want to call my parents or friends back home, I would still use Kakao. Back then, it was a good service. I didn't look deep into what it was bringing, but I later realized, "This is cool." When Kakao come to the realization that mobile internet is going to be successful and used by the masses, they come up with the idea of bringing free messenger to the Korean population. I grew this admiration for this company.
You weren't the only one. This product went viral.
Ninety-seven percent penetration rate in Korea. The norm in Korea is, “Talk me,” which means send me a Kakao Talk.
That’s part of the dictionary for Korean culture.
I grew admiring this company because they expanded based on that messenger because they had this community of users. They started rolling out like taxi hailing, payments, banking, and everything that you can imagine.
Did they get into dating?
I'm not sure if there's Kakao Tinder, but once you start dating, you probably use Kakao and send cheesy pictures.
You can do the home cooking and all that stuff. It's part of the culture.
After graduating from college, I wanted to go to a blood delivery company in Uganda because I was inspired by the idea of doing work that changes people's lives. I thought those traumatic ones about delivering blood or saving lives were what matters. Somehow, I came back to Korea. I was looking for jobs to apply for. I realized that Kakao was employing people to build a blockchain platform. I was like, “These guys did well in the Web2 space. They're going to do well in Web3 as well. It's going to be worthwhile.” That's why I joined in roughly 2017. It’s my fourth or fifth year with Klaytn. In the process, we've been having pretty big achievements and small achievements as well, but we're getting there.
We're trying to have blockchain adopted by the masses, not only in the Korean market but maybe further to the East Asian market and possibly globally. That's the vision we have. We've been engaging in a lot of endeavors to make this happen. Right now, I'm leading the game partnership side of Klaytn and we are heavily convinced by the idea that games will be the spearhead for global mass adoption of blockchain, whether that be Klaytn or any other main net. Our focus is let's get this technology known to people first. That's what matters at the moment.
In a lot of ways, gaming was the early adopter of concepts that we call NFTs now in terms of skins and everything. The idea of in-game assets has been part of gaming for quite some time. That makes sense. That's why we're excited to do a big gaming event on November 14th in LA to bring people together on where this all goes. When I look around in Singapore at these different events that we're going to, gaming keeps coming up over and over again.
It makes a lot of sense because history repeats itself. When we look back at how Kakao succeeded as the most dominant messenger app, they launched a simple Tetris kind of game on their messenger. It was called Anipang. What it does is they let you play maybe ten games for free, but then once you run out of the so-called energy, you have to go and ask your friends to send you more energy. Back then in maybe the early 2000s, this community concept in the gaming space was new. While the game itself is simple, the messenger was able to succeed because people were starting to interact on the mobile space on Web2.
We have the idea that people are usually intrigued by entertainment aspects. Giving them raw blockchain is not going to work. They're not going to be able to digest it. Let's put it in the form of a game and add community features to the game so that more and more people start enjoying this as a group. That's what we're pushing at the moment.
Is that game mobile only, or mobile and computer? Is it an app that you download?
The Anipang was like a mobile web. It was embedded inside the Kakao messenger app. People had to access Kakao messenger to play it, which also significantly contributed to Kakao’s growth because everyone has to log in to Kakao to play the game. That tactic was successful. Business or strategy, it transcends time and region. The essence stays the same. People talk about the way business is done on Web3 as different. I agree to some point, but I still think that the essence of doing business never changes. On Web3, it's probably going to be the same. We need a killer application or service that lures Web2 people to join this movement of Web3.
Once we have that traction going on, it's going to snowball big. In Klaytn, we've been shooting hard for the past four years to not only found the infrastructure to make the overall user experience comfortable but also to have that one killer application to bring this spiral coming. I'm hoping that that service would come out maybe by end of 2022. We have good services getting prepped to be launched on Klaytn by end of 2022.
Is Klaytn accessible globally? In the US, can I access Klaytn as well?
Klaytn is an open-source public main net. Anyone can access it by installing the Kaikas wallet. We do have a KYC custodial wallet embedded inside the Kakao messenger app for Korean users. Global users can still install Kaikas. It's like the MetaMask equivalent of Klaytn. They can enjoy all sorts of games. We're not as much listed in Western markets as we are in the East but still, there are probably ways to get them. We're trying hard to improve our liquidity in the Western markets.
Let's talk a little bit about what you guys are doing around gaming and supporting the Web3 game culture. Can you point to any specific examples of collaborations that have happened or are coming up?
Naming out the partners that we've been closely working with in the past few months, globally, we've been working hard with Reign of Terror, DeFi Kingdoms, and many other indie mid-sized games that are willing to build on Klaytn.
That's a huge partnership though. DeFi Kingdoms came out of nowhere and talk about an addictive product. I'm a user and a lot of my friends are users of DeFi Kingdoms. They had a bit of a challenge with Harmony that you guys are supporting a recovery effort.
We were glad to hear from the DeFi Kingdoms team that they were looking to expand their presence to the Asian market. They were thinking that Klaytn would be the number one choice in terms of going to the East. We welcome that idea because that is true. In regulatory terms, China is under strict regulation in terms of blockchain games. Japan is a little bit looking into this space starting now. Korea is the right market to start off if you want to come to Asia. Especially given the Korean population. They're all crazy to play games. I grew up going to PC cafes every day after school. It was a good fit.
They're moving their Serendale, the biggest game space on DeFi Kingdoms, onto Klaytn. Probably by end of 2022, we should be having Serendale users using Klaytn as their blockchain. That's pretty exciting. We also have Reign of Terror team. They're ex-Tencent game experts. They're building an MMORPG game on Klaytn as well. That's going to roll out soon too. They're having an NFT drop probably by October or November 2022. I would stay tuned for that as well.
Those are two exciting partnerships. It's helpful for folks to understand that Klaytn is open for business in terms of collaboration and co-creation globally. What are the best steps for folks to take if they want to explore collaborating with Klaytn?
Trying out the service would be the best effort or the best way to experience Klaytn, and to feel how this network is so much different from other existing main nets. I would suggest trying out games. DeFi Kingdoms or Reign of Terror are all good once they come out. Also, we have games called Ni No Kuni and A3: Still Alive running on Klaytn main net at the moment. I'm suggesting these two because it's been built by a company called Netmarble. It's one of the three biggest game companies in Korea, and it's one of the biggest companies for game publishing throughout East Asia as well.
In these games, one title would normally get 3 million to 5 million MAU once they roll out. They have been fact-checked in a way that their game quality is good. If you try it out, there are blockchain aspects that they integrated on Klaytn. You should be able to feel how seamless it is when it runs on Klaytn because we have feed delegation features, which greatly improve both user experience and developer experience.
That's exciting. To recap what we've talked about here, and correct me if I'm wrong, you've got this incredibly dominant and successful Web2 messenger company that has taken a shot at Web3 in a major way, built its own blockchain, and is partnering with some of the biggest players in the space in gaming, and is ready to do more in the space and excited to collaborate.
That is true. We think that a platform can be powerful, but for the platform to be powerful, what comes first is a service. Any service that can attract mass users is going to be the killer that places one platform above others. That's why we've been focusing hard to get good quality services running on our main net. Regarding the Kakao part, it is true that Kakao is deeply affiliated with and supporting our platform, but we're trying our best to decentralize our main net so that it stays true to the blockchain ideal. We are not willing to sacrifice our platform's effectiveness or our platform's technical advantages for the sake of decentralization.
There are arguments about how much decentralized a platform should have. Some people may argue that a platform has to be fully decentralized, but once it is, it becomes slow and expensive. It might work for some services that don't require quick speed or low gas fees, but for us, we think that it's critical. Getting these services with cheap gas costs and low latency is important for top-quality companies to start adopting blockchain once technology improves even better so that even with decentralization, maybe gas fees can stay low and latency can still stay low. We would be willing to adopt more decentralization, but at this point, we think we're at the optimal point to view our more Web2 companies to start adopting blockchain.
That totally makes sense. To take a step back, we often like to understand from our guests what inspires them in the space. In particular, what we're seeing in the US is a major focus on film, entertainment, and big brand integration. Is that happening in Korea too? Do you see the convergence of all these technologies with major entertainment and big brands? What inspires you in this space beyond that?
In terms of our collaboration with big brands, Kakao itself is pretty big. The messenger that has our wallet embedded inside has been quite phenomenal in the Korean market. We adopted a POS algorithm model, which means we have a selected number of governance council nodes that allow us to be faster and cheaper. These nodes are not just random individuals that we do not know of. These are companies that hold killer IPs. We have entertainment companies like Kakao Entertainment. We also have Binance Jump, Sigma, and Netmarble, game companies with huge IPs.
You are a big brand, but you've been collaborating with big brands for a while. This is a natural thing that we're talking about here.
Towards the end of 2022, MARBLEX, it’s their crypto subsidiaries name, is going to launch a P2E version of a game that had 10 million MEU in a Web2 version. It's called Let's Get Rich. It’s like an Asian version of Monopoly. Globally, when they launched a couple of years ago, the Web2 version had 10 million MAU. We usually have 10% of that Web2 user base switching over to Web3.
You can buy land in Korea, or is it a global property real estate empire building?
They're still planning out and sorting this out a little bit right now.
We got the metaverse. You could buy land in the metaverse too now.
The last update I got was that they're going to map the game with actual space around the world so that if a user buys land in the game, it corresponds with their land ownership in the real world. They're not buying land in the real world, but it gives them a feeling that they have a chunk of say the Eiffel Tower or they have a chunk of the Colosseum. They're trying to map the virtual map with what exists in the real world.
Gamify it. That's exciting. My other question was, outside of what you're doing in Klaytn, what inspires you that you're seeing in the Web3 space?
My biggest inspiration is assets being able to transcend from this virtual realm to reality. The borderline between virtual space and reality is crumbling down at the moment. We still have a long way to go. Case in point, the scholarship model that was popular in 2021 was intriguing because the game that adopt this scholarship model was successful too. That model itself was interesting because people come to a realization that they can start making money in the virtual space. That's because digital assets are more and more recognized as property. This trend is going to continue through mediums such as NFTs. What I'm inspired to look forward to occurring in the blockchain space is the economy that you see in Ready Player One. Have you seen the movie?
Yeah.
All these IPs interchange in one platform. People start trading their in-game items with each other for money. Some people are going out to gather money to buy more items to sell for real money. This change is interesting from my perspective. I look forward to that happening. I'm on the game side, but on Klaytn, there are also art projects that are moving towards this direction. For example, a well-drawn popular painting costs $1 million. Not many individuals can purchase a $1 million painting.
If you can cut that to 100 pieces so that one piece costs an affordable amount, people can start entering this type of investment. Blockchain is able to lower the hurdle for investors who are interested in participating in these kinds of investment opportunities. Given maybe in 5 or 10 years, once regulations start giving us proper guidelines, it would be possible for people to get loans by putting their NFTs as deposits. This hyper-liquidity is going to happen in the next few years. I'm looking forward to that because it's an opportunity for creators, studios, and users to benefit from this new type of technology.
I’m excited about what's to come in that regard. If folks want to learn more about Klaytn and stay in touch, where do they go?
It's simple. We have our website Klaytn.com. If you visit Klaytn.com, you should be able to see all the ecosystem partners and the tech stack that we provide. We also have our official Twitter, @Klaytn_Official. You should be able to see our news there as well.
Are you on Twitter as well?
Yes, I am, but I forgot mine.
We'll pass that on and we'll get you some Twitter love as well. Yoshi, thanks so much for spending some time together. We can make it through this week. We'll get the time to get invested hopefully before we leave. Cheers, my friend.
Cheers. Thank you, Josh.
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