Line, With an Eye on Telegram's In-App Games Success, to Launch Mini Dapps Next Year

Social media apps' embrace of NFTs didn’t spur mass adoption. Now companies are trying again with blockchain-based games and utility functions.

Updated Nov 27, 2024, 10:04 a.m. Published Nov 27, 2024, 10:02 a.m.

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 in its portal by the end of January and plans for a further 150 by the end of the first quarter, said Sam Seo, the chairman of 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 over The Open Network (TON) blockchain. The 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 portion," Seo said in an interview with CoinDesk. "The others are social apps, some DeFi and AI-based chatting dapps.”

The move to dapps comes after the relative failure of earlier blockchain experiments with NFT functionality. In March 2023, Instagram said it would disable the NFT features it introduced the previous year that allowed people to share NFTs they created or bought. 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, starting an NFT marketplace in Japan in April 2022 and rolling out its own-brand NFT stickers.

“NFTs are too complicated for the normal users. The ideas were good, but I think we needed to improve the UX and UI,” Seo said, referring to the user experience and user interface.

“Previously, the way that users and even creators were looking at NFTs was just as an investment tool, rather than a tool for ownership. I think that was a kind of mismatch between the intention and then the result.”