Kakao Entertainment to expand its webtoon NFTs

Having released its first webtoon NFTs of “Solo Leveling” Wednesday, Kakao Entertainment said it is seeking to expand its NFT business with “The Soulless Duchess.”

According to the company, the upcoming NFT is a joint project between Kakao Entertainment’s IP “The Soulless Duchess” and the generative art project company Treasures Club, making the country’s first ever generative webtoon NFT.

Generative art is a form of digital art in which the art works are randomly combined via computer algorithm.

The project is scheduled to produce a total of 7,777 different NFTs, including the characters, and the accessories and items used by the characters in the webtoon series.

Though the specific price and digital marketplace are yet to be announced, the pre-sale and main sale will be held at 10 p.m., Jan. 22 and Jan. 23.

The pre-sale will be opened to NFT users who have purchased a minimum of one NFT artwork in the past. The 3,000 NFTs can be bought for 50 KLAY coins, the cryptocurrency created by Kakao Corp.

At the main sale, 3,500 NFTs will be priced at 80 KLAY coins.

Additional sales are planned at OpenSea, one of the biggest NFT marketplaces.

While 850 NFTs are owned by Kakao Entertainment and Treasure Club, 427 NFTs scheduled to be released as a spcial airdrop event, for which more information has yet to be released. 

“The Soulless Duchess,” an adaptation of a web novel of the same title by author Jin Se-ha, is a Kakao webtoon reproduced by illustrator Han Jin-seo.

The romance fantasy centers around the female lead character who is restarting her life via time travel after dying a tragic death from her fiance’s betrayal. The series attracted many webtoon fans and readers by portraying an active and strong independent woman who throws away her past self and designs a new future.

The webtoon and web novel recorded over 110 million accumulated reads in total, securing the top slots in the fantasy genre.

“Following ‘Solo Leveling,’ Kakao Entertainment will release another webtoon NFT with ‘The Soulless Duchess’ to provide a special experience and opportunity for enjoying our IPs,” a Kakao Entertainment official said in a press release Tuesday. “We hope to broaden the cultural horizon and ways to create profit by merging our IPs with new technologies, like NFT and metaverse,” the official added.

By Lee Si-jin (sj_lee@heraldcorp.com)