Kaia: When Kakao's Klaytn and LINE's Finschia Merged Into One Chain

If you played a Korean blockchain game between 2019 and 2023, there's a good chance it ran on Klaytn. Born inside Kakao, the company behind KakaoTalk, Klaytn was Korea's flagship public blockchain. Across the sea, LINE, the messenger app that dominates in Japan, Taiwan and Thailand, had built its own network, which became Finschia.

In 2024 the two did something unusual for rival tech giants' projects: they merged. The combined chain is called Kaia, and its strategy rests on one huge advantage, access to messenger apps used by hundreds of millions of people.

Two messenger chains

Both chains grew from the same idea: Asia's biggest chat apps already had the users, so why not give them a blockchain?

• Klaytn was developed by Ground X, Kakao's blockchain subsidiary, and its mainnet launched in 2019. It became the default home for Korean web3 experiments, including many games and Kakao Games' BORA platform.
• Finschia grew out of LINE's blockchain work and was later run by a foundation of its own, serving LINE's audience in Japan and Southeast Asia.

Each had a big parent but a limited reach on its own. Klaytn's users were concentrated in Korea; Finschia's in LINE's markets.

The merger

The Klaytn and Finschia foundations proposed combining their networks at the start of 2024, and token holders on both sides voted to approve it. The merged mainnet, Kaia, launched later in 2024, with Klaytn's KLAY and Finschia's FNSA tokens converted into a single new token, KAIA. Technically, Kaia continues Klaytn's chain, so existing Klaytn apps and contracts carried on, while Finschia's ecosystem was brought across.

Kaia is a layer 1 blockchain compatible with Ethereum's tools, with fast block times and low fees. Its foundation is based outside Korea, reflecting both its pan-Asian ambitions and the tighter crypto rules at home.

LINE's mini dapps: the real bet

Kaia's most distinctive move came in early 2025, when "mini dapps" started appearing inside LINE itself. These are small apps, many of them casual games, that open inside the messenger with a built-in wallet, a bit like the Telegram mini-app games that boomed in 2024.

The logic is compelling. Instead of asking players to download a crypto wallet and find a game, you put the game in the chat app they already open every day. For game studios targeting Japan, Taiwan or Thailand, that's an enormous potential audience.

What it means for Korean gamers

For players in Korea, Kaia is a familiar name in new clothes. Many Klaytn-era games have closed, and Korea's ban on play-to-earn rewards still shapes what can be offered at home. Kaia's growth push is aimed mainly at LINE's markets abroad rather than at KakaoTalk users in Korea.

That leaves an interesting gap. Kakao, the company that started all this, is no longer the center of the chain it created. Kaia is now a pan-Asian project, with LINE's audience as its main growth engine.

Why it matters

Kaia is the biggest consolidation in Asian blockchain so far, and it's built on the same lesson as Ronin and Immutable's moves: fewer, bigger networks beat many small ones. Its unique card is distribution. If mini dapps on LINE turn into games people play for fun, rather than for rewards, Kaia could become the most widely used gaming chain most players never knew they were using.

For the wider race between gaming chains, see our feature on Polygon and its rivals.