Nexon brings 20 year old MapleStory into web3 with Haechi’s help

Image credit: The MapleStory universe

Nexon, one of the largest gaming companies in the world, is wading into web3 like some of its peers in Asia. The developer of MapleStory is creating a blockchain-powered ecosystem based on the twenty-year-old massively multiplayer online game, where players can trade in-game assets such as outfits, equipment, and virtual pets in the form of non-fungible tokens.

About 160,000 people in South Korea still play MapleStory today, the company recently wrote in a blog, citing data from KMS.

Blockchain games have been popping up everywhere in the last two years, but few have entered the mainstream, and even the popular ones, like the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, have been short-lived.

Nexon promises to create more sustainable crypto games. “There was a time when the notion of ‘blockchain = P2E’ was widely accepted and there was a lot of talk about using blockchain to make money,” Angela Son, Nexon’s blockchain business development and partnerships manager, told TechCrunch in 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’s still too early to say whether MapleStory N, Nexon’s first blockchain game, and MapleStory Universe, the NFT ecosystem based on the classic game’s IP, will ever reach the heights of their web2 version. Nexon has a rosy outlook, of course.

“MapleStory has more than 180 million accumulated global users, and there are even more people who love the MapleStory IP. We expect that MapleStory N and MapleStory Universe will be enjoyed by many players,” said Son.

The main criticism of monetization games is their flawed economies, where players buy NFTs only to create and sell these digital goods to those who buy into them. Nexon does not go down the pyramid scheme-like path.

In MapleStory N, there is no money 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 goods from others through the ecosystem’s secondary NFT marketplace. Eventually, players will also be able to trade their in-game assets on external marketplaces, according to Son.

On board the masses

Nexon is working with a handful of partners to enable the transition to web3. The firm has already announced that the MapleStory Universe digital goods will be traded on Polygon, an Ethereum scaling solution popular with game developers. Today, the South Korean gaming firm said it is teaming up with another web3 company, Haechi Labs, a provider of crypto auditing and wallet solutions used by over 500 companies.

“A number of gaming companies started knocking on our door after seeing Axie Infinity’s success since Haechi Labs has been offering smart contract security auditing and wallet solutions for the past 5 years,” company CEO Geon-gi Moon told TechCrunch in a written response.

“Nowhere else do you see such a high number of executives at AAA game companies who are so positive about integrating their games with blockchain, than South Korea.”

Most existing decentralized applications require users to log in via crypto wallets. But what if people have no previous web3 experience? Haechi is betting on 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 logged in, users will be able to access their Face Wallet accounts. Anyone who has used a self-managing wallet like MetaMask knows the stress of trying to keep the 16-word seed phrase safe. Losing your seed phrase means losing access to your wallet permanently. Custody solutions are easy to use, but on the other hand, asset owners are exposed to the risk of the platform being hacked or broken.

Face Wallet attempts to solve the escrow dilemma by offering a self-custodial wallet that allows users to log in with a six-digit password and gives them the ability to recover passwords.

Here’s how it works: When a user creates a wallet via Face Wallet, the key is split into two encrypted “shares”, Moon explained. Part 1 is stored in a secure infrastructure environment and usually also on the user’s device. Part 2 is kept in the Face Wallet team’s repository. The decrypted keys are never shared with Haechi; Nor can Haechi decrypt any of the encrypted keys, Moon added.

Haechi isn’t the only one trying to make self-service wallets more user-friendly. The Ethereum community itself is tackling this problem through a major technical upgrade called “account abstraction,” and developers, such as the venture-backed Soul Wallet, are racing to introduce wallets powered by smart contract capabilities.