Nfts
Ava Labs bets web3 will explode into $20 billion K-pop market – DL News
- In an interview, Justin Kim of Ava Labs claims that South Korean industrial giants are keen on Web3.
- NFTs can help K-pop artists protect their earnings from merchandise and content.
- The Avalanche blockchain is discreetly attracting its partners in South Korea for web3 applications.
K-pop fans are notorious for being obsessed with their favorite idols.
Their obsession with Korean pop groups has created an entertainment market that is expected to generate 20 billion dollars of event-related revenue by 2031, according to a recent report from Allied Market Research.
There is now an all-out effort to bring the legions of K-pop to web3, said Justin Kim, head of Ava Labs’ Korean operations.
“Some K-pop girl groups and boy groups are launching with Web3 features,” Kim said. DL News in an interview this week.
He put together a list of projects ranging from collectibles and ticketing to DAOs that will allow fans to vote on things to do with their favorite K-pop groups.
Chaebol meets K-pop
Ava Labs is the company behind Avalanche, the layer 1 blockchain network with $681 million in deposits, according to DefiLlama. In addition to South Korea, Ava Labs attracts users across Asia and has offices in Japan, Vietnam and India.
While South Korea has long been crazy about crypto – one in eight residents use cryptocurrency exchanges – Kim said these are the country’s old-fashioned industrial conglomerates, or chaebolwhich are the key to the expansion of Web3.
“Retail adoption is expected to happen at larger enterprises because they already have locked-in users. »
— Justin Kim, Ava Labs
SK Group, South Korea’s third-largest chaebol with $119 billion in annual revenue, began working with Ava Labs last year to offer NFT tickets for K-pop concerts. The group manufactures semiconductor technologies, batteries and many other products.
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“I think retail adoption should be at larger companies because they already have locked-in users,” Kim said. “The problem with small Web3 teams is that they have to search for users.”
Ava Labs also invested an undisclosed sum in Titan Content, a studio that mixes K-pop, NFTs and other web3 applications.
Titan is led by Han Se-min, who left his role as longtime head of SM Entertainment last November; it’s South Korea’s biggest K-pop studio and manages super popular groups like EXO and NCT.
Kim bets Web3 has a lot to offer the K-pop scene. One problem, for example, is that talent management companies often fail to compensate K-pop groups fairly.
Poorly transparent finances
“One of the major problems in the K-pop industry is that finances are not transparent,” Kim said. “The companies get all the benefits and the boy or girl groups never get paid. »
Such exploitation is an age-old problem in the music industry that blockchain technology can solve, he continued.
Using NFTs and cryptocurrencies for K-pop products will allow groups to record exactly how much money fans make.
“You can see how many people bought it. There’s no way for a company to get around this,” Kim said.
Ava Labs also plans to play in South Korea’s thriving intellectual property market for online games.
In March, the project announced that it was bringing one of Nexon’s flagship games, MapleStory, to the crypto space.
Ava Labs plans to use NFTs as in-game items to make it easier for players to trade them.
Callan Quinn is DL News’ Asia correspondent based in Hong Kong. Contact us at callan@dlnews.com.