Kakao Makers Runs ‘Upcycling Project’
'Kakao Makers,' Kakao's impact commerce brand announced that it had donated 20,000 pairs of upcycled socks for underprivileged children to the Green Umbrella Children's Foundation through an 'upcycling project'.
The upcycling project is a new type of eco-friendly activity that recycles used items into new products and utilizes them for good purposes. Going beyond recycling of wasted resources, adding new designs and making products for new uses can help protect the environment and donate at the same time.
This project recruited participants in February and went on for about 8 months from collecting T-shirts, to sorting, yarn-making, and production. A total of 2,000 users participated and donated 8,600 used T-shirts. Kakao Makers made a total of 24,000 pairs of recycled socks by making them from yarn (threads that make fabric). Of these, 20,000 pairs were donated to the Green Umbrella Children's Foundation and distributed to 116 children's institutions across the country. The remaining 4,000 pairs will go back to the project participants who donated their T-shirts.
In the process of selecting and sorting used T-shirts, an upcycling social enterprise, ‘Usisan’ participated and provided new jobs to six people with developmental disabilities. The recycled cotton yarn used for socks was jointly developed based on a business agreement with Taekwang Industrial, a specialized textile and petrochemical company.
Jeon Seong-chan, head of the creator team at Kakao Makers, said, “With the participation of many users, we were able to contribute to the environment and society.” He added, “We will continue to show our various activities that will bring positive changes to the environment and society.”
Kakao Makers is currently in the second round of the upcycling project to donate cardigans made from old sweaters to the elderly in poverty. In November, the company plans to recruit participants for the 3rd round under the name of ‘Saegabeochi (New Value)’.
Krafton Battlegrounds Mobile ‘Pro Series 2022 Season 4’ has been completed!
Krafton Co., Ltd. successfully finished Season 4 of the ‘PUPG Mobile Pro Series 2022’, PMPS 2022.
PMPS 2022 Season 4 is the second competition of the league in the second half of the year, and a total of 16 teams competed for 25 million won prize and the right to advance to the 'PUBG Mobile Global Championship (PMGC)', the top-tier international competition. This season, a total of 30 matches were held for 6 days over 3 weeks from September 23 to October 8, and DWG Kia won the championship with a total of 7 chicken dinners and 428 points.
DWG Kia showed an outstanding performance and became the star of this season. DWG Kia, who maintained 1st place from the 1st to the 4th day of the competition, allowed emTek StormX to hit back on the 5th day of the competition and came down to 2nd place for a while, but regained 1st place on the last day and eventually won the championship.
DWG Kia, after winning the ‘PUBG Mobile Rivals Cup 2022: KOREA vs JAPAN’, Rivals Cup 2022 Korea-Japan match held in September, lifted the championship cup and got qualified to compete in the PMGC.
EmTek StormX is a team that was founded as a professional game team ahead of this season, and is continuing its ideal career as a professional team that comes from the amateur league, winning runner-up this season again after winning last season 3. In particular, TIZ1 player recorded 65 kills this season, recording the most kills for three consecutive seasons following the final spring and season 3.
In addition, as DWG Kia, the team that won the championship this season, already secured the right to advance to the PMGC, by winning the Rivals Cup 2022 Korea-Japan match, the runner-up Em-Tek StormX gets to advance to the PMGC. With this, a total of three Korean teams will participate in the PMGC, including the winning team of the PMPS 2022 Final Pole, the final event of the year that will be held this week.
PMPS 2022 is a league that determines the strongest team among domestic professional Battleground Mobile teams, and is held in two leagues in the first half and the second half of the year. Each league consists of two seasons and there is a final competition at the end.
Meanwhile, more information about Battleground Mobile Esports including PMPS 2022 can be found on the PUBG Mobile Esports website.
Kakao Enterprise came out on top in the Global English Machine Reading Comprehension Competition.
Kakao Enterprise beat A.I powerhouses such as the U.S. and China at the global English reading comprehension competition, coming out on top at the competition. Back in 2019, and 2022 the company’s A.I. model ranked first in the evaluation of Korean machine reading comprehension called KorQuAd. But now the company has once again proved excellence in A.I technology at ELI5(Explain Like I'm 5), a global English reading comprehension competition.
ELIT(Explain Like I’m 5) is a global machine reading comprehension competition, hosted by “KILT Benchmarking of Meta AI.” Instead of finding a relevant answer to a question from the provided source material, in this competition, diverse questions require explanatory multi-sentence answers to the open-ended questions.
After all, ELIT(Explain Like I’m 5) is all the more challenging because A.I. models are assessed by how these models come up with elaborate and in-depth answers to open-ended questions.
Compared to other models, the “generative model” has recently become a subject of study in the field of machine reading comprehension. Taking the first place, Kakao Enterprise solidified its position as one of the most representative A.I. developers in Korea.
This model is an enhanced version of the existing model, named “LittleBird” which topped the list at the KorQuAD. This is tailored for the generative model. It is noteworthy that other companies introduced larger models to boast high performance, but Kakao Enterprise beat others with a lightweight model with optimized speed. The company’s lightweight model can be utilized for the actual services compared to its larger counterparts. And it is cost-effective given its compact size and high performances that were already proven on a global stage.
Based on this model, Kakao Enterprise plans to further upgrade its services such as AI contact center, named "Kakao i Connect Center" and AI chatbot, "Kakao i Connect Talk." Previously, each answer should be classified, but this model enables automation to comprise documents and generate answers directly. This is suitable for companies that frequently change their response manuals, and need quick service application.
Dongjin Choi, Chief A.I Officer and vice president of Kakao Enterprise said “Our model came out on top at Explain Like I’m 5 for its optimized speed, and light weight. This means a lot in the A.I. industry. We plan to produce more models with better performances and efficiency.” And he added, “ Though the continuous research&development, Kakao Contact Center and A.I. Chatbot will cater to the users by providing accurate information a customer wants and generating answers in a natural and conversational language.
In the meantime, the company’s A.I. model ranked first in the evaluation of Korean machine reading comprehension called KorQuAd in March 2019, and 2022. In 2019 KorQuAd 1.0, the score of the company model is 0.65 points higher than 91.20, the number which indicates the average level of human reading comprehension and sentence processing. With that score, Kakao Enterprise stood out as the best developer of A.I. which could process, and process sentences better than its human counterpart. This is not the end of the success story. In 2021, Kakao Entertainment ranked the first place in the field of what’s called “Passage Ranking” at the MS MARCO (Microsoft Machine Reading Comprehension).
The company is making tireless efforts to remain a representative AI company in Korea by winning first place in FRVT, a global AI face recognition contest in May and June, and delivering a four-page long thesis at Interspeech, a global speech processing conference in September.
NAVER D2 Startup Factory made another investment into NFT Bank, a startup that helps with NFT asset management
Naver D2SF announced it has newly invested in a startup named NFT Bank (corporate name: Contxts.io). This startup developed a platform that helps the management of NFT assets. In the global market, new financial projects based on non-fungible tokens are being carried out. With this trend, NFT bank became a fast-growing startup that specializes in Non-fungible tokens. This company boasts the capability to analyze data and understand the NFT market trend.
NFT Bank has developed a platform to evaluate and manage NFT assets. It is a platform that analyzes the value of NFT assets based on various data such as user propensity, NFT transaction status, and market trends to help NFT financial decisions. In particular, through its own algorithm of high reliability, it provides detailed asset evaluation information such as NFT's current value, lowest price, and return on investment.
NFT Bank is partnering with other companies, such as NFT Pie and Fine Protocol, which provide NFT financial services, and is providing expected prices by tracking assets of large-scale NFT projects. Individual users who own NFT can also check and manage their NFT asset value by wallet by accessing the NFT Bank website.
NFT Bank is a team with a good understanding of data and NFT, with members who have proven their capabilities on the global stage, such as Naver, Facebook, Kakao, Coupang, Ruid. These foreign and domestic companies are tech and asset management companies. CEO Kim Min-soo is a data scientist and has verified market opportunities by running various projects in the NFT community even before its establishment.
"NFT financial services, such as providing loan services with NFT as collateral or renting NFT itself, have recently emerged in the market," said Yang Sang-hwan, leader of Naver D2SF. He also added, "NFT Bank is a team that developed an asset value platform that is the basis of NFT finance and expects to grow further on the global stage."
"With this investment, we will actively hire talented people who are interested in data, finance, and NFT," said Kim Min-soo, CEO of NFT Bank. He also added, "Even if winter is coming for the NFT market, we will continue to strengthen our technology competitiveness and build up our customer base to become an exemplary case in the NFT market when spring comes."
Meanwhile, Naver D2SF has been making investments in startups that can serve as a platform in the blockchain and NFT fields. There are representative companies such as DSRV Labs, a startup of blockchain infrastructure technology, and Planetarium Labs, which developed a game engine based on blockchain.
Quick News
Neowiz is now partnering with Web3Earth to establish “Web 3 Wallet.”
Web3earth provides a solution that enables easy access to digital wallets thanks in large part to decentralization which gets rid of the so-called “seed phrase.” Seed phrase is a group of random words to open a crypto wallet.
Web3 Wallet, which utilizes Web3 Earth's solution, will be installed on the 'Intella X Wallet' based on Neowiz's blockchain game platform 'Intella X'.
New Pvp game, named “War-Haven” is launched.
Nexon will start a global beta test of WARHAVEN, a new PvP game. This beta test will run from Oct. 12 to Nov. 2, and it is open to anyone who uses STEAM.
Lee Eun-seok, director of Nexon, said, "War Haven is a game that anyone can join a battlefield in medieval era, and this is the first test that global users can enjoy it together," adding, "I hope you will experience the thrilling battle and pleasure of a large-scale battle."
WeMadeConnect’s mobile game, AbyssRium is making a comeback after 7 years of the release in Japan
WeMadeConnect announced that it is making remarkable achievements in the Japanese market with its mobile game "Abyssrium."
In its 7 years of release in Japan, Abyssrium has witnessed its popularity growing exponentially in the free app store category in Japan from 4th of this month to the latest. On Oct. 7th this game became the 3rd most popular game.
The company sees this unexpected popularity as the most meaningful because the company's expertise and its know-how has finally been proven in the Japanese market. The company’s know how has been accumulated through the company's policy of continuously researching and investigating customers and gaming markets.
Source: Pangyo Techno Valley Official Newsroom