[Into the Stocks] Wemade Soars High Riding Blockchain Wave

160% Surge Inside the Box... Market Cap Rises to 5th Place
'Mir4' Global Success as a Catalyst
Intraday Record High Hits 190,000 Won

[Asia Economy Reporter Song Hwajeong] Wemade's upward momentum is fierce. It surged more than 160% last month alone, securing the 5th position in KOSDAQ market capitalization. What draws even more attention is that this growth is not simply due to game popularity but because of the integration of new technology, blockchain.

As of 9:35 a.m. on the 1st, Wemade is trading at 184,200 KRW, up 1,400 KRW (0.77%). Early in the session, it rose to 194,600 KRW, setting a new record high once again.

While the stock market has shown sluggish trends this month, Wemade demonstrated a remarkable stock price surge. It has risen more than 161% since the beginning of this month. The stock price, which was in the 70,000 KRW range at the end of last month, surpassed 180,000 KRW and touched 190,000 KRW during the session. Compared to the beginning of the year, it has increased by 379%. Market capitalization exceeded 2 trillion KRW for the first time in early September and surpassed 6 trillion KRW at the end of last month. Wemade, which was ranked 40th in market capitalization at the beginning of this month, jumped to 5th place.

The global success of the mobile massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) ‘Mir4’ was the catalyst for the stock price rise. Mir4 surpassed 800,000 simultaneous users on the 14th of last month, breaking the record of ‘Legend of Mir 2,’ and reached 1 million users on the 27th, just two weeks later. It is rare for an MMORPG to exceed 1 million simultaneous users on a single build. Released with 11 servers, the number of servers exceeded 100 within about a month, and thanks to continuous user growth, the total number increased to 169 as of the 27th of last month. The success of Mir4 is attributed to blockchain. Mir4 incorporates blockchain technology and features a ‘Play to Earn (P2E)’ system where players can earn money while playing. Mir4 users can mine ‘Heukcheol’ (Black Iron) in the game and convert it into a coin called ‘Draco.’ Draco can be exchanged for the cryptocurrency ‘Wemix’ through Wemade’s virtual currency wallet, ‘Wemix Wallet.’ Wemix is listed on cryptocurrency exchanges and can be converted into cash. Kim Suyeon, a researcher at Hanwha Investment & Securities, analyzed, “The reason the game could quickly establish a connection with blockchain is that the game itself had already built an ecosystem, and blockchain was simply introduced on top of it. Whereas games were previously considered a waste of time and money, now players can earn money while playing, so users accept it more quickly.”

Wemade plans to continue expanding into blockchain. On the 25th of last month, Wemade’s board of directors resolved to absorb and merge its subsidiary Wemade Tree, which was in charge of blockchain business. Through this merger, Wemade intends to concentrate company-wide capabilities on the metaverse business linking games and blockchain and build an open platform where all games can be converted to P2E. Lee Moonjong, a researcher at Shinhan Financial Investment, said, “Since Wemade has confirmed the global potential of P2E-structured non-fungible token (NFT) utilization games, companies prepared for this technology are expected to see stock price rerating.”