NFTs
Ava Labs Bets Web3 Will Explode Into $20 Billion K-Pop Market – DL News
- In an interview, Justin Kim of Ava Labs said that South Korea’s industrial giants are interested in web3.
- NFTs can help K-pop artists protect their compensation from merchandise and content.
- The Avalanche blockchain is quietly gaining partners in South Korea for web3 applications.
K-pop fans are famous for being obsessed with their favorite idols.
His obsession with Korean pop bands is driving an entertainment market that is expected to generate US$20 billion in event-related revenue by 2031, according to a recent report from Allied Market Research.
Now there’s an all-out effort to get K-pop’s legions onto web3, said Justin Kim, head of Ava Labs’ Korean operation.
“Some of the K-pop girl groups and boy groups are launching with web3 features,” Kim said. DL News in an interview this week.
He rattled off a list of projects ranging from collectibles and tickets 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 US$681 million in deposits, according to DefiLlama. In addition to South Korea, Ava Labs is gaining users across Asia and has offices in Japan, Vietnam and India.
Although South Korea has long been crazy about crypto – one in eight residents uses cryptocurrency exchanges – Kim said these are the country’s traditional industrial conglomerates, or chaebolwhich are the key to the expansion of web3.
‘Retail adoption should happen with larger companies because they already have locked-in users.’
– Justin Kim, Ava Labs
SK Group, South Korea’s third-largest chaebol with annual revenue of $119 billion, began working with Ava Labs last year to offer NFT tickets for K-pop concerts. The group manufactures semiconductor technology, batteries and many other products.
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“I think retail adoption should happen with larger companies because they already have locked-in users,” Kim said. “The problem with smaller web3 teams is that they have to look for users.”
Ava Labs also invested an undisclosed amount in Titan Content, a studio that combines K-pop, NFTs and other web3 applications.
Titan is led by Han Se-min, who stepped down as longtime head of SM Entertainment last November; is the biggest K-pop studio in South Korea and manages super popular groups like EXO and NCT.
Kim is betting that web3 has a lot to offer the K-pop scene. One issue, for example, is how talent management companies often fail to fairly compensate K-pop bands.
Non-transparent finances
“One of the biggest problems in the K-pop industry is that the finances are not transparent,” Kim said. “Companies receive all the benefits and male or female groups never get paid.”
This exploration is a long-standing problem that music industry blockchain technology can solve, he continued.
Using NFTs and crypto for K-pop merchandise will allow groups to record exactly how much money is being made by fans.
“You can see how many people bought it. There is no way for a company to get around this,” Kim said.
Ava Labs is also eyeing 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 objects to make it easier for players to trade them.
Callan Quinn is DL News’ Asia correspondent based in Hong Kong. Get in touch at callan@dlnews.com.