Japanese messaging app giant Line plans to give its 196 million active users the ability to use decentralized apps (dapps) such as games and utilities.
The social network, which is mainly used in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia, will debut with 30 dapps on its portal in late January and has plans for another 150 by the end of the first quarter, said Sam Seo, its chairman. from Kaia DLT Foundation, whose Kaia blockchain will host the applications.
Line’s initiative reflects a growing trend of social media and messaging apps integrating blockchain technology to offer a wider range of services. Telegram, which has more than 900 million users, offers games, including Catizen and Hamster Kombat, via the Open Network (TON) blockchain. So-called mini-dapps (dapps within apps) also build on the popularity of utility functions added to programs such as WeChat.
“Games are the biggest part,” Seo said in an interview with CoinDesk. “The others are social apps, some DeFi and AI-based chat dapps.”
The move to dapps comes after the relative failure of previous blockchain experiments with NFT functionality. In March 2023, Instagram said it would disable the NFT features it introduced last year that allowed people to share NFTs they created or purchased. And while Reddit’s Digital Collectibles still exist, Collectible Expressions – which were used to animate them – were removed in July this year.
Line itself also made a foray into NFTs, launching an NFT marketplace in Japan in April 2022 and introducing its own brand of NFT stickers.
“NFTs are too complicated for normal users. The ideas were good, but I think we needed to improve the UX and UI,” said Seo, referring to the user experience and UI.
“Previously, the way users and even creators looked at NFTs was purely as an investment tool, rather than as a tool for ownership. I think that was a kind of discrepancy between the intention and the result.”
