Modhaus, a South Korean blockchain-based K-pop startup, has raised $8 million in its Series A funding round led by Sfermion, an American venture capital fund, to fuel its growth and introduce more blockchain-based use cases to the Korean entertainment world .
The company said in a statement shared with The Block that the funding round also saw participation from investors including SM Culture Partners, Laguna Investment, KDDI Open Innovation Fund III and Foresight Ventures.
Formed in December 2021, Modhaus has formed tripleS – a K-pop girl group that has over 1.74 million subscribers on YouTube – via its non-fungible token voting system. On Modhaus’ COSMO app, fans can purchase NFT photo cards, which then count as voting tokens.
“By collecting photo cards in NFT format of their favorite idol members, fans will receive utility tokens that allow them to participate in decisions related to group operations, such as members’ activities, title songs, album cover photo shoots and selecting the city for these activities” , Modhaus said in the statement.
Jaden Jeong, CEO and co-founder of Modhaus, said K-pop fans often have sharp insights. “With their keen eye for talent and trend spotting, we want to increase the value of artists through greater fan engagement,” he added.
“Just as media and streaming transformed the music industry, web3 is expected to be the next game changer for the music industry,” said Simon Kim, CEO and Managing Partner of Hashed, which invested and incubated in Modhaus.
GD Kim, COO of UNOPND, a venture division of Hashed, told The Block that nearly 130,000 dedicated K-pop fans have purchased 1.2 million digital photo cards on COSMO since its launch. “Modhaus has shown a great example of driving the mass adoption of blockchain technology in the entertainment industry,” Kim said.
K-pop embraces Web3 and NFTs
K-pop, the Korean music genre, has that has taken the world by storm in recent years, with major Korean music labels announcing plans to make forays into the NFT and metaverse space.
HYBE – the largest K-pop agency managing popular K-pop acts such as BTS, SEVENTEEN and NewJeans – launched its NFT platform Momentica in October 2022 in collaboration with the Korean blockchain company Dunamu.
Last month, Momentica launched one NFT collection of videos and photos from SEVENTEEN when the 13-piece group released their new album Seventeenth Heaven. According to the collection, Momentica has attracted over 90,200 fans to purchase SEVENTEEN NFTs on the app to date page on the platform.
