KODA, a Korean-based digital asset custody offering founded by Kookmin Bank, Korea’s largest bank, signed a contract with Wemade, an online games company, and its blockchain subsidiary Wemade Tree.
Kookmin Bank partnered with blockchain technology company Haechi Labs and blockchain investment firm Hashed to develop KODA, which launched less than a month ago.
Currently, KODA only supports Bitcoin, Ethereum and KLAY, the token for Korea’s KLAYTN blockchain network, which seems to be planning to support a central bank digital currency.
Wemade is KODA’s first external client. Besides running a games company, Wemade’s business areas include intellectual property licensing and investing, and Bitcoin is a part of the company’s portfolio and the listed business has a market capitalization of $770 million.
The company is also involved in blockchain through WEMIX, a platform that supports blockchain-based online games launched by Wemade Tree where non-fungible tokens (NFTs) can represent in-game assets. Individual games use private blockchains with one for each game, and these connect to a public blockchain via a bridge.
KODA’s services will support Wemade’s Bitcoin assets but may also enhance WEMIX’s users’ experience on the platform. WEMIX users must conduct transactions in the games through a digital wallet where KODA may facilitate the management of the assets in the wallets.
This fits in with KODA’s plans to expand into managing other virtual assets, namely non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Due to recent auctions of NFTs, such as Beeple’s $69 million digital art piece and the collection of nine CryptoPunks selling for $17 million, NFTs are starting to be perceived as investment options. As such, a service like KODA’s will be key to further enhancing the credibility of NFTs.
As for Wemade’s WEMIX, it reached 50,000 daily users within four months of launching and might be loosely defined as a competitor to Dapper’s Flow blockchain and WAX. Flow accounted for over $500 million in transactions through NBA Top Shot alone. WAX has Topps as one of its clients, which has the rights for digital collectibles of various sports leagues, including Major League Baseball.