이 기사는 2022년 01월 27일 07시58분 thebell에 표출된 기사입니다

Ground X, the blockchain arm of Kakao, has partnered with KT Alpha, a subsidiary of mobile carrier KT Corp, to further expand its presence in the South Korean non-fungible token (NFT) market.

Under the partnership, which was announced on Tuesday, the two companies will collaborate to launch an NFT marketplace run by KT Alpha’s K Shopping where its customers can buy, trade and store NFTs – in a similar manner to other NFT marketplaces operated by the country’s cryptocurrency exchanges such as Korbit and Upbit.

K Shopping plans to sell artwork and digital content produced by South Korean celebrities and artists in the form of NFTs. To that end, K Shopping signed a memorandum of understanding with Lay Village, which owns the copyrights for artwork by celebrities like Koo Jun-yup and Ha Jung-woo, on Monday.

NFTs will be created using Klaytn, Kakao’s public blockchain, rather than KT’s blockchain platform Giga Chain. “That was not part of the partnership with Ground X,” said an official at KT Alpha.

KT Alpha has decided to use Klaytn instead of Giga Chain, probably because of a user-friendly environment offered by Ground X.

In May last year, Ground X launched KrafterSpace, an NFT creation platform, where any user can make 10 NFTs each day for free. Blockchain fees, which occur when creating NFTs, are paid by Ground X. Users can sell their NFTs on OpenSea, one of the most popular NFT marketplaces in the world.

Corporate users, which need to create a large number of NFTs at once, can use a software development kit provided by Ground X. This could help enterprise users reduce the development burdens, enticing more companies to use Klaytn.

“Paying fees for KrafterSpace users is not a big burden for us because each user can create a limited number of NFTs a day. Nothing has been decided yet regarding when to start charging,” an official at Ground X said.

“We want to provide an opportunity to people to easily create their NFTs. The more individual and corporate users get familiar with NFTs, the more positive for the overall NFT ecosystem.”

Ground X also operates its own NFT marketplace, Klip Drops, which targets individual clients. On Kilip Drops, NFT auctions take place five days a week to sell artwork by various artists.


Ground X charges about 10% of the final auction price in fees. It also recently started the NFT trading service, collecting 5% of the transaction value in fees from sellers. (Reporting by Yun-ju Roh)