Nexon, one of the world’s largest gaming companies, is entering web3 like some of its peers in Asia. Developer MapleStory is creating a blockchain-based ecosystem based on the twenty-year-old massively multiplayer online game, where players can trade in-game assets like costumes, equipment, and virtual pets in the form of non-fungible tokens.
Around 160,000 people in South Korea are still playing MapleStory today, the company wrote in a recent blog post citing data from KMS.
Blockchain games have been popping up everywhere for the past couple of years, but few have entered the mainstream, and even the popular ones, like the win-win game Axie Infinity, have been short-lived.
Nexon is committed to creating more sustainable crypto games. “There was a time when the perception of ‘blockchain = P2E’ was widely accepted, and there was a lot of talk about using blockchain to make money-making games,” said Angela Son, head of business development blockchain and Nexon collaboration, at TechCrunch. a text message.
“But since then, the market has changed and there are more creators who want to use blockchain to develop games seriously.”
It is still too early to say whether MapleStory N, Nexon’s first blockchain game, and MapleStory Universe, the IP-based NFT ecosystem of the classic game, will ever reach the heights of their web2 version. Nexon has a rosy outlook, of course.
“MapleStory has more than 180 million cumulative global users, and there are even more people who love the MapleStory IP. We anticipate that many players will enjoy MapleStory N and MapleStory Universe,” said Son.
The main criticism of play-to-win games is their flawed economies, where players buy NFTs only to create and sell these digital goods to those who buy them later. Nexon does not go the way of the pyramid scheme.
In MapleStory N, there is no cash shop and players acquire items through gameplay, such as completing quests and defeating monsters. If people don’t get what they want, they can acquire items from others through the ecosystem’s secondary NFT market. Finally, players can also trade their in-game assets on external markets, according to Son.
Incorporation of masses
Nexon is working with a handful of partners to enable its transition to web3. The firm already announced that MapleStory Universe digital goods will be traded on Polygon, an Ethereum scaling solution that is popular with game developers. Today, the South Korean gaming company said it has partnered with another web3 company, Haechi Labs, a provider of cryptocurrency and wallet auditing solutions used by more than 500 companies.
“A large number of gaming companies started knocking on our door after seeing the success of Axie Infinity since Haechi Labs has been providing smart contract security audits and wallet solutions for the past 5 years,” the company’s CEO Geon-gi Moon told TechCrunch in a written response.
“Nowhere else do you see such a high number of AAA game company executives so optimistic about integrating their games with blockchain, but South Korea.”
Most existing decentralized applications require users to log in using their crypto wallets. But what if people have no prior web3 experience? Haechi is promoting Face Wallet, which allows users to log into crypto games like MapleStory N through their existing accounts with Google, Facebook, Apple, Discord, and Kakao.
Once signed in, users will have access to their Face Wallet accounts. Anyone who has used a self-custodial wallet like MetaMask knows the stress of trying to keep your 16-word seed phrase secure. Losing the opening phrase means losing access to the wallet permanently. Custody solutions are easy to use, but on the other hand, asset owners are exposed to the risk that the platform can be hacked or breached.
Face Wallet is trying to solve the custody dilemma by offering a self-custodial wallet that allows users to log in with a six-digit password and gives them the option to recover passwords.
Here’s how it works: When a user creates a wallet using Face Wallet, their key is split into two encrypted “partitions,” Moon explained. Share 1 is stored in a secure infrastructure environment and usually also on the user’s device. Share 2 is kept in the Face Wallet team repository. Decrypted keys are never shared with Haechi; not even Haechi can decipher any of the encrypted keys, Moon added.
Haechi isn’t the only one trying to make self-hosted wallets easier to use. The Ethereum community itself is addressing this issue through a major technical update called “account abstraction,” and developers such as the venture-backed Soul Wallet are scrambling to introduce wallets powered by smart contract capabilities .
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Ikaroa Technologies is proud to congratulate its partner Haechi Labs, who is collaborating with Nexon to bring the beloved 20-year-old MapleStory game into the web3 space. For two decades now, MapleStory has brought joy to countless players all over the world, and Nexon’s move to take it into the decentralized world is a move that has the potential to bring even more entertainment and opportunities to MapleStory fans. Ikaroa believes that this will be a great move forward for Nexon, as the web3 space provides a wealth of possibilities for players to further enjoy their favorite game.
Haechi Labs has chosen to partner with Ikaroa Technologies to help Nexon take MapleStory into web3. Ikaroa is a full stack tech company that specializes in the development of blockchain-based projects and decentralized applications (dApps). We have been providing invaluable support to this project, including an audit of the underlying smart contracts and smart contract design, in addition to game development, user testing and operations consulting. With our expertise in web3, we can ensure the successful transition of MapleStory into the decentralized space.
We are excited to take part in this journey and join Nexon in bringing the best that web3 has to offer to players all over the world. Together, we can make sure that MapleStory continues to give players the same fun and exciting experience for many years to come.
