From NFT Metaverse to AI Toolbox: Krafton's Quiet Web3 Bet With Overdare

In 2023, the company behind PUBG: Battlegrounds, a game with roughly 289 million monthly players at the time, said it was building something very different: a mobile world where anyone could make games and sell what they made as NFTs. Its working name was Project Migaloo.

Three years later, that project exists as Overdare, a mobile creation platform run by Krafton and Naver Z. But when Overdare made news in April 2026, it was for AI tools, not tokens. Krafton's web3 story is less a boom-and-bust than a slow, careful drift, and that may be the most interesting thing about it.

Project Migaloo

Krafton's first public step into blockchain came in March 2022, when it announced a partnership with Solana Labs to develop games on the Solana network. Little was heard about that deal afterwards.

The bigger move came in April 2023. Krafton and Naver Z, the company behind the avatar app Zepeto, formed a joint venture to build Migaloo, a user-generated content platform with a "create-to-earn" model: users would make in-game items and experiences and buy and sell them as NFTs. Krafton took 85% of the venture and Naver Z 15%. The project was to be built by a AAA-calibre team on Unreal Engine 5.

Overdare and the USDC plan

In September 2023, Migaloo got its real name: Overdare. The joint venture's total investment was 48 billion won, with Krafton putting in 40.8 billion won and Naver Z 7.2 billion won. For blockchain, Overdare chose Settlus, a network in the Cosmos ecosystem built to license creators' work as NFTs and pay them in USDC, a US dollar stablecoin. A soft launch was planned for December 2023 and a global launch for the first half of 2024.

In February 2024, Overdare announced a partnership with Circle, the company that issues USDC. Circle's programmable wallets would let creators set up in-game wallets and receive USDC payouts. Overdare's chief executive Henry Park called Circle a company "distinguished by its regulatory compliance and trustworthiness".

The test, the delays and the AI turn

The launch did not arrive on the original schedule. From 22 May to 19 June 2024, Overdare ran an alpha test on Android in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia, with original modes such as Magic Mafia, a 3-on-3 futsal game called Rushball and a café where players could chat with an AI cat owner. The press release for the test talked about create-to-earn but did not mention blockchain at all.

By June 2025, Krafton told Korean media that no coin had been issued and that a stablecoin was the direction of travel, with details to come. Then, on 8 April 2026, Overdare unveiled AI features for Overdare Studio: a "Studio Agent" that takes plain-language instructions and edits the game directly, and an "AI Costume" tool that creates outfit textures from a description. Both were in live testing.

Why it matters

Compared with Wemade or Netmarble, Krafton has never put a token at the centre of its business, and never put crypto anywhere near PUBG. Its web3 work has stayed inside a separate joint venture, used a dollar stablecoin instead of its own coin, and has shifted its public message toward AI as the market changed.

That caution has cost Krafton nothing so far. But it also means the big question remains open: whether a creator platform from Korea can win creators by paying them in crypto, or whether, like Roblox, it will simply pay them in normal money. As of November 2026, we could not confirm a date for a full global launch.

This article is not investment advice.