Keywords of election promises on IT, ‘metaverse, NFT, blockchain’: Change comes from SME/startups

Keywords of the presidential election promisese on IT are ‘Metaverse, NFT, Blockchain’,

Change comes from SMEs and startups

• ‘metaverse, NFT, and blockchain’, which has emerged as keywords for technological change and innovation in IT, focuses on small but strong companies and startups that have started to secure competitiveness early on

• After establishing a blockchain research institute in 2018, E4Net, a small and medium-sized IT company specializing in IT for 27 years, introduced 'CHERRY', the first blockchain-based charity platform in Korea, expecting to create ‘good use’ examples of NFT and metaverse in 2022

• Establishment of a proptech investment company that combines real estate and cutting-edge technology with Jigbang, declaration of permanent remote work through metaverse

• Seoul Auction aggressively expands digital asset trading business by adding NFT technology to traditional art trading know-how

In the upcoming presidential election, there are key keywords that is on the lips of candidates every day and does not fall out as a representative IT industry-related policy. It is ‘metaverse, NFT, and blockchain’. It may be an unfamiliar concept to the majority of people who are not in the industry, only recently encountered through the news, but in fact, the industry change to these keywords began early on from startups and small and medium-sized enterprises.

Unlike large corporations that rely on capital power, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and startups, which need to survive with open thinking and agile response to the changing times, have taken the lead in creating new markets by adding innovation to existing business fields. Let's take a look at SMEs and startups that are leading innovation and preemptively responding to social changes toward ‘metaverse, NFT, and blockchain’.

Since its foundation in 1995, E4Net is an IT-specialized small and medium-sized company that has been developing payment solutions for a long time with major domestic financial companies as customers. Based on the know-how accumulated in the field of financial software, E4Net established a blockchain research institute in 2018 and entered the blockchain business field.

At the time of 2018, when blockchain was beginning to become widely known to the public, negative perceptions of the entire blockchain technology prevailed due to incidents such as overheating of cryptocurrency speculation and fraud. E4Net received great attention by overcoming this negative perception and proceeding with a project where the positive aspects of blockchain technology can be recognized for their value. It introduced Korea’s first blockchain-based charity platform ‘CHERRY’ that transparently discloses the flow of donations by utilizing the transparent and immutable characteristics of blockchain technology.

Furthermore, in December 2021, CHERRY introduced ‘The Fruit of Love × CHERRY’ Land, Korea's first metaverse for donation, on the metaverse platform Zepeto along with Community Chest of Korea. Later, in January 2022, E4Net signed an industry-university cooperation agreement with a university to advance into the NFT business using CHERRY blockchain technology and know-how, launching a full-fledged signal for business expansion into the NFT field as well as the metaverse.

NFT and metaverse have been mainly evaluated as excellent investment destinations with future marketability rather than the positive characteristics of the technology itself. As E4Net pays attention to the transparency of blockchain, which was dismissed as an alternative asset investment in the past, and succeeds in creating a case of 'good use' of technology through CHERRY, it fulfills its social responsibility by adding social value to metaverse and NFT technology. It is expected that it will be recognized as a company once again. In fact, at this year's kick-off ceremony, E4Net announced its identity transformation into a metaverse and NFT company by utilizing its know-how in developing blockchain technology.

In 2012, 'Zigbang', which started with the motto of 'room photo taken for oneself' and joined the ranks of unicorn companies with a corporate value of over 1 trillion won, established 'Breeze Investment', a venture capital (VC), in the early 20's, and jumped into discovering another startup with new technology. Through VC, Jigbang invested in interior services using virtual reality technology, which can be said to be the predecessor of the current metaverse, and went beyond a simple real estate brokerage platform to become a proptech (real estate + information technology) company, which was an unfamiliar concept in Korea at the time.

In addition to this, Jigbang recently issued guidelines for “permanent remote work unrelated to Corona 19” and withdrew its headquarters, which became a hot topic. About 600 employees started going to work in the virtual world through the metaverse. Through the virtual office ‘Metapolis’ program, Jigbang implemented the communication method that occurs in a real company, enabling face-to-face and voice conversations. Jigbang announced that it has reduced office building rental fees and various furnishing costs by nearly 90%, and has secured a competitive edge in attracting excellent talent regardless of region, and announced that it will carry out a metaverse profit business by leasing virtual office buildings to other companies.

On the other hand, 'Seoul Auction' drew attention by declaring its entry into the digital content asset market by utilizing traditional art trading know-how prior to growing interest in NFTs from mainstream K-culture content conglomerates such as Hive, SM Entertainment, and YG Entertainment. Seoul Auction discovered the potential of the art trading market through IT technology early on, and recruited talent from the IT industry such as Daum Kakao and Market Kurly to establish ‘Seoul Auction Blue’ in 2016 to promote online auctions and content businesses.

Since then, Seoul Auction Blue, which has introduced innovations in art trading methods that combine digital technology through services such as 'SOTWO', a joint art purchase platform, held an auction of limited edition NFT works in partnership with Dunamu, which owns the virtual asset exchange Upbit, last year. Through this, the winning bid was 3.5 Bitcoin (equivalent to 250 million won at the time), which produced an amazing result. Recently, it has signed a business agreement with the game company Krafton for an NFT project and announced that it will enter the NFT business related to blockchain-based games, raising expectations.

'Metaverse, NFT, Blockchain' started as a question about its feasibility, and is now growing as a major presidential election promise. Attention is focusing on whether SMEs and startups, which jumped into change ahead of others with a spirit of challenge for new technologies, will be able to grow into another legendary innovative company that has shared the historical moment of IT technology development.