South Korea's most popular metaverse blockchain Klaytn is set to benefit from deeper liquidity and improved token swaps through a new partnership with decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol 1inch Network.

Klaytn has enjoyed success in South Korea as the country continues to see prolific nonfungible token (NFT) and GameFi use. Klaytn is a product of tech behemoth Kakao, which commands a user base of some 52 million people that use its flagship KakaoTalk application and suite of software products.

Klaytn derived its proprietary blockchain technology from the Ethereum Virtual Machine and powers various play-to-earn and AAA games, NFT marketplaces and Metaverses. As its user base continues to grow, the platform is looking to improve its scalability, efficiency and affordability.

Klaytn already aggregates over 50 enterprise-level decentralized finance (DeFi) service providers and decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and the addition of 1inch unlocks a further 257 liquidity sources. Klaytn’s touts the ability to process 4,000 transactions per second and is in the process of implementing a dynamic gas fee mechanism. This is in response to previous exploits of its fixed low gas prices.

The ongoing integration of layer two service chains is set to improve token management and oracle services on the metaverse blockchain. Klaytn reported $2.5 billion of total value locked on its protocol in March 2022 and the ongoing merge of various DeFi platforms creates further interoperability between different protocols.

Related: DeFi market has room for growth in Korea: 1inch co-founder — KBW 2022

1inch’s integration with Klaytn provides both userbases access to the 1inch Limit Order Protocol v2, KokonutSwap, KlaySwap, Klap and ClaimSwap.

Klaytn plugged into the wider NFT ecosystem through a partnership with NFT marketplace OpenSea in June 2022, giving its users access to a host of NFTs and digital collectibles minted on the Ethereum, Polygon and Solana blockchains.

1inch co-founder Sergej Kunz hinted at a move into the Asian market during the Korean Blockchain Week 2022 in Seoul, citing the popularity of blockchain-based games as a potential driver for DeFi adoption.

The company's chief communications officer Sergey Maslennikov echoed these sentiments in correspondence with Cointelegraph as the partnership was unveiled on Aug. 9.

“It is quite obvious that Korean share of this market is huge. That’s why we’ve been in thorough and lasting negotiations with Klaytn as an undisputed leader in Korea which ended up in today’s partnership.”

Maslennikov also stressed that interoperability between blockchains has been a focus of the DeFi aggregator and the addition of a bridge into the Klaytn ecosystem adds another major blockchain platform to its network.