South Korean tech juggernauts turn their characters into NFTs 

South Korea’s tech behemoths are turning the companies’ characters into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with the aim of creating an intellectual property ecosystem centering around them. 

IPX, the new name for Line Corp.’s Line Friends, is poised to turn the characters from the OOZ & Mates series into NFTs later this month. Line Friends’ original characters, Brown, Cony, and their friends are recognized internationally. 

Previously, the company unveiled its new characters as emoticons and stickers for use within the Line messenger platform. Now IPX is going ahead with the reveal in the form of digital collectibles.

There will be nine characters in total and 9,999 digital tokens with tweaks and variations to the basic design. 

By definition, each NFT has its own intellectual property rights, which allows the owner to create revenue by utilizing its IP in clothing, marketing, or content creation without paying additional royalties to IPX. 

Wireless carrier LG Uplus also issued the digital collectibles of its character Moono, designed to look like an octopus, late last month.

LG gave away 50 free tokens to fans of the brand who pre-registered for the issuance. It then issued 306 digital coins and circulated them in the market.

LG Corp.'s mobile network operating arm will issue its second batch of NFTs later in the year. 

Bora Network, for its part, issued NFTs based on Kakao Friends’ intellectual property last April. 

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Bored Ape Yacht Club, or often simply Bored Ape, is an NFT collection built on the Ethereum blockchain. 

The design is of an ape. Its details, such as the ape’s facial expressions, color, and clothing, are procedurally generated by an algorithm. 

There are 10,000 tokens in circulation, and the parent company is called Yuga Labs. 

The series' cumulative trade volume in 13 months exceeds $2 billion.

South Korean conglomerates are using their own characters to create digital collectibles around which they will create a market ecosystem.

Each character will have its distinct concept, which will encourage those who have bought the rights to the characters to create their own merchandise using the design. 

IPX explained that the OOZ & Mates characters are animals who used to live in the digital Friends World and crash-landed on Earth. They are looking for best friends on this planet. 

LG Uplus described Moono as being modeled after a young adult who has just entered the workforce, full of ambition and not afraid to say what is on his or her mind. 

Going back to the Bored Ape example, the idea came from a congregation place for bored billionaire “apes” to hang out, make memes, and talk numbers. 

This is how the backstory begins: “The year is 2031. BTC and ETH have taken over the world. Everyone who aped into crypto is rich beyond their wildest dreams.”

Major social media platforms are also embracing the business of NFTs – by allowing users to create their own characters to use in place of profile photos. 

Last month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that the company plans to start testing digital collectibles on Instagram and Facebook in the coming weeks.

Write to Han-Gyeol Seon at always@hankyung.com
Jee Abbey Lee edited this article.