21M+
OK Cashbag members, nearly half the South Korean population, transitioned onto AvaCloud-managed L1 infrastructure with no disruption to the existing experience.
How SK Planet brought Korea's largest loyalty program, 21 million members strong, onchain.
South Korea's largest information and communications technology platform didn't ask its 21 million OK Cashbag members to learn Web3. It rebuilt the loyalty program underneath them, and they kept earning points.
LoyaltyWeb2.5KoreaEnterprise L1
The Web2.5 Challenge
Move 21 million users onto Web3, without making them notice.
OK Cashbag is the largest e-commerce loyalty program in Korea, comprising almost half the South Korean population. The hard part wasn't the blockchain. It was making sure tens of millions of customers earning points at 50,000+ stores never had to learn what one was.
100K
New users signed up in the first 48 hours after the Web3 launch, evidence that consumer-facing blockchain works when the technology stays invisible.
50,000+
Retail partner stores connected to OK Cashbag, each a real-world earn-and-burn touchpoint now backed by NFT rewards and self-sovereign asset ownership.
AvaCloud Solved the Problem
UPTN: a dedicated L1 for the Web3 layer of SK's entire ICT business.
UPTN is SK Planet's own Avalanche L1, deployed and managed end-to-end through AvaCloud. It serves as the foundation for digital collectibles, Web3 wallets, decentralized communities, and a growing portfolio of consumer applications across SK Square's ICT business.
The transition was deliberately invisible. Users were largely unaware and unaffected by the technical upgrade until it was already live, and then benefitted from new capabilities like NFT rewards, self-sovereign ownership, and richer membership benefits inside the apps they already used.
To make Web3 truly seamless, AvaCloud built a custom Gasless Relayer for SK Planet, now available to all clients, that abstracts away transaction costs entirely. End users never see a gas fee, never hold a token, and never leave the OK Cashbag app to sign a transaction.
"We see this new partnership between Ava Labs, the Avalanche Foundation, and SK Planet as an incredible opportunity to not only meet South Korea's enormous appetite for Web3 experiences, but expand what's possible in 21st century e-commerce.", Emin Gün Sirer, CEO, Ava Labs
Architecture
One L1, three layers, an entire ecosystem of consumer apps on top.
UPTN is built so SK Planet can keep adding services without re-architecting underneath. The base L1 stays the same. New apps plug in at the application layer. The end user never knows.
Layer 03Consumer apps
AppOK CashbagLoyalty · 21M users
AppNFT ticketingw/ Dreamus
AppDigital walletsSelf-custody
AppSK ICT servicesFuture
Layer 02UPTN L1
L1Sub-second finalityAvalanche
L1NFT issuanceNative
L1Gasless RelayerCustom
L1Crypto-free balance sheetOptional
Layer 01AvaCloud Ops
OpsValidator management24/7
OpsMonitoring & uptimeAround the clock
OpsCompliance & privacyKorea-tuned
OpsExpert Web3 supportAva Labs team
Application surfaceOnchain L1 (UPTN)SK Planet sovereigntyManaged by AvaCloud
Web2 vs. Web2.5
Same loyalty program. Same user. A different ownership model.
The Web2.5 approach moves the technology underneath the experience. End users keep doing what they already did, earning points, redeeming rewards, but their relationship to the assets they earn fundamentally changes.
OK Cashbag on legacy backend
21M users
Points lived in SK's database. Users had no claim outside the app.
- Points were ledger entries owned by the operator, not the customer.
- Rewards were limited to the partner-store catalog.
- No portable digital assets. No cross-app utility.
- Tickets to live events were vulnerable to scalping and counterfeiting.
- Building new categories of reward required custom integration each time.
OK Cashbag on UPTN (AvaCloud L1)
21M users
Same UX, plus self-sovereign ownership and a new asset class.
- Users own assets in their own wallets, with cryptographic guarantees.
- NFT rewards open new categories: collectibles, memberships, experiences.
- Gasless Relayer means zero blockchain friction for the end user.
- NFT-based event ticketing eliminates scalping and counterfeit tickets.
- New programs plug into the existing L1 instead of being rebuilt from scratch.
The Network SK Planet Joined
Korea's marquee Web3 partnership, now part of an Asia-wide fabric.
SK Planet was Ava Labs' first marquee partnership with a top South Korean enterprise, the cornerstone of its growth plans in the region. UPTN connects into a network of consumer-facing AvaCloud L1s that have only multiplied since.
South Korea
SK Planet
UPTN powers OK Cashbag (21M+ members), NFT-based event ticketing with Dreamus, and the Web3 layer of SK Square's broader ICT business.
UPTN · Live
South Korea
NHN KCP
Korea's largest payment processor moved settlement onchain on AvaCloud, $38B annual volume, sub-second finality, encryption-native privacy.
Payment Chain · 2026
Japan
Loyalty Marketing (Ponta)
Ponta, 100M+ Japanese loyalty members, brought onchain via PlayThink and AvaCloud. Mass-scale NFT issuance with no Web3 friction for end users.
Ponta L1 · Live
Global
FIFA
FIFA Collect runs on its own AvaCloud L1, EVM-compatible, future-ready blockchain infrastructure for hundreds of millions of football fans.
FIFA Blockchain · Live
What This Delivered
The economics of putting a national loyalty program onchain.
From user adoption to operational reach, the move to AvaCloud-managed L1 infrastructure changed what was possible, and gave SK Planet a reusable Web3 foundation for everything coming next.
Users migrated onto Web3 infrastructure
21M+
New users in the first 48 hours
100,000
Partner stores connected
50,000+
Onchain finality
Sub-second
Gas exposure for end users
Zero (Gasless Relayer)
Validator capex & ops complexity
Eliminated by AvaCloud
Sovereignty over fees, validators, exposure
Retained by SK Planet
Your loyalty program could be running this stack.
SK Planet didn't ask its 21 million users to learn Web3. It rebuilt the rails underneath them and turned blockchain into a quiet foundation for new kinds of digital ownership. Same playbook is available for your customer base, on AvaCloud-managed L1 infrastructure.