Japan's Web3 games and NFTs, minus the hype

What does Japan's web3 gaming scene look like now?

If you arrived in Japan expecting every game studio to be minting NFTsNon-fungible token: a unique on-chain record proving who owns a specific digital item, such as artwork, a game item or a membership pass., you'd be disappointed. Japan had its boom like everyone else. Between 2021 and 2022, major publishers signed up to run a gaming blockchain, crypto exchanges opened NFT marketplaces, LINE launched its own NFT store, and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's web3 project team published a "web3 White Paper" in April 2023 urging the government to treat web3 as a national growth strategy.

Then came the shakeout. LINE NFT closed in January 2024. LINE NEXT's global platform DOSI was scheduled to shut down all services on 30 December 2025. SoftBank's NFT LAB closed on 28 September 2025, and the platform that took it over, SBINFT Market, itself shut on 30 June 2026. Binance's global NFT marketplace ended with a withdrawal deadline of 3 July 2026 (UTC). That's a lot of churn for a market that was supposed to be about permanent ownership.

What survived tends to be either attached to something bigger (an exchange account, the Mercari app) or rooted in a real community. This page walks through the game companies, the marketplaces you can actually use from Japan, the municipal NFT projects that made international news, government policy, tax, and the risks. For prices and listings of Japan-born tokens like OAS and ASTR, see our Japanese cryptocurrencies guide.

Are SEGA, Square Enix and Bandai Namco making blockchain games?

The headline project is Oasys, a blockchain designed for games that went live on mainnet in December 2022. Its 21 initial validatorsA participant that checks and confirms transactions on a blockchain. On Oasys these are companies, which lends the network credibility. included SEGA, Square Enix, Bandai Namco Research and Ubisoft, which is why foreign media wrote it up as Japan's gaming giants going on-chain. Oasys uses a two-tier design: a base chain plus game-specific layer-2A separate processing layer built on top of a main blockchain to make transactions cheaper and faster. Oasys calls its layer-2 chains Verses. chains called Verses.

Running a validator node is not the same as putting your flagship franchise on a blockchain, though. We could not find any official 2026 announcement of a new blockchain game from SEGA or Bandai Namco. The market has noticed: OAS ranked somewhere past 2,000th by market capitalization on CoinGecko on 22 October 2026. Keep the token price and the gaming business separate in your head; one is not a reliable signal for the other.

Square Enix did ship something. SYMBIOGENESIS, launched in 2023, was an NFT collectible-art project where character NFTs unlocked parts of a mystery story. It was reported to be winding down with its final chapter in July 2025, after a May 2025 campaign tied to Sony's Soneium chain. We have not seen an official update since.

The most Japanese story belongs to double jump.tokyo, the Tokyo studio behind My Crypto Heroes and Brave Frontier Heroes. The company now positions itself mainly as enterprise web3 infrastructure, selling an MPC wallet service called N Suite among other tools. When it announced Brave Frontier Heroes would end on 31 October 2025, players crowdfunded the game: the $50,000 goal was hit on 17 October 2025 and the title continues under an independent operator. In May 2026 the company also announced the closure of HOME Verse, its own layer-2 on Oasys.

Where can you buy NFTs from Japan?

You have three practical routes, and which one fits depends on whether you live here.

Exchange-run markets. Coincheck NFT launched in 2021 as a marketplace built into the Coincheck exchange account: you list, buy and store NFTs using the crypto already in your account. We found no closure notice, and 2026 company profiles still describe it as operating, but Coincheck's site was unreachable when we checked, so confirm the current terms yourself. You'll need a Coincheck account, which means passing Japanese ID checks with a residence card (在留カード, zairyu card). Our Coincheck review covers fees and deposits. Adam byGMO, run by the GMO Internet group, began in 2021, announced 100,000 users in 2023 and was still announcing new NFT ticket drops in June 2025.

App-based markets. Mercari NFT, launched on 28 January 2025, lets you buy popular NFTs that are listed on OpenSea directly inside the Mercari app. According to Mercari's help pages you pay with Merpay balance, Mercari points or a credit card; bitcoin isn't accepted for NFTs. NFTs bought there can be resold there, but you can't bring in NFTs bought elsewhere. SBI VC Trade's Web3 Wallet is a custodial wallet where NFTs trade in yen; it also became the home for NFTs handed out by the Osaka Expo's official app.

Global markets with your own wallet. OpenSea and similar sites work the same in Japan as anywhere else. The friction is getting crypto out of a Japanese exchange. Under the Travel RuleA rule requiring exchanges to pass sender and recipient details along with crypto transfers. Japan has applied it since June 2023., domestic exchanges usually ask you to declare that a withdrawal address is your own walletAn app or device that stores the keys to your crypto and NFTs. Self-custody wallets like MetaMask leave you in sole control., and some require you to register it in advance. Our wallet guide explains the process exchange by exchange.

How did a mountain village get 1,700 digital residents?

Japan's best-known web3 story isn't a game at all. Yamakoshi, a former village now part of Nagaoka City in Niigata, was badly hit by the 2004 Chuetsu earthquake and has been shrinking ever since. In December 2021 the local residents' council started selling "Colored Carp" NFTs, artwork based on the region's famous nishikigoi koi, which double as an NFT resident card recognized by the city. Holders become digital villagers who can join project discussions and vote in "general elections" on how part of the NFT revenue is spent. That voting model is a DAODecentralized autonomous organization: a group that makes decisions by member votes under shared rules, without a single manager..

By November 2022 there were 1,032 digital villagers, more than the 794 people actually living there at the start of December 2022. Nagaoka City's materials put the figure at a little over 1,700 in October 2024, and in June 2024 the network expanded to Tenryukyo in Nagano and Shiiba village in Miyazaki. Japan's Digital Agency cited the Yamakoshi DAO in its 2022 web3 study-group materials. You don't need to live in Japan or hold Japanese nationality to own one; the NFTs are sold through the project's official app and trade on OpenSea.

Kaga City in Ishikawa took a different angle. In 2021 it launched what it calls Japan's first e-Residency, the e-Kaga citizen program, aimed at tourists, workationers and anyone with a link to the city. The e-Kaga citizen card is a free NFT. Since March 2024 it has been issued on Japan Open Chain and can be verified with a My Number card's digital certificate, which in practice suits people registered in Japan. A Cabinet Office presentation lists perks such as a ¥5,000 accommodation offer.

Hometown tax donations (furusato nozei) went on-chain too. Yoichi Town in Hokkaido, famous for wine and whisky, began offering 54 wine-themed NFT artworks on Polygon as donation gifts on the Furusato Choice portal from 7 May 2022, for donations starting at ¥120,000. Kamishihoro, also in Hokkaido, offered drone-show video NFTs around the same time; sources disagree on which came first. The Sapporo startup behind Yoichi's project, Alyawmu, later received backing from a Hokkaido Bank-linked fund. More on our Sapporo and Hokkaido page.

Does the Japanese government support web3?

On paper, yes. The LDP's web3 project team followed its 2023 white paper with a 2024 edition that listed separate taxation of crypto gains as an issue to fix immediately. The Digital Agency ran a web3 study group in 2022. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi sent a video message to the WebX conference in Tokyo in July 2026.

Some of that turned into law. The tax reform act promulgated on 31 March 2026 introduces 20.315% separate taxation for "specified crypto assets" traded through registered operators, starting on 1 January of the year after the new Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (FIEA) crypto rules take effect, which means 2028 at the earliest by our reading. The FIEA amendment itself was enacted on 15 July 2026 and brings insider-trading rules to crypto. Our 20% tax reform explainer and regulation guide have the timeline. Nothing published so far says NFTs are covered by the new rate, so don't plan around it for NFT income.

How are NFTs and game rewards taxed?

If you're a Japan tax resident, the National Tax Agency's Tax Answer No. 1525-2 sets the frame. Transactions in NFTs or fungible tokens that can be exchanged for valuable assets such as crypto are subject to income tax; tokens that can't be exchanged for anything of value aren't. How you got or got rid of the NFT decides the income category:

• Received as payment for work or services: business, employment or miscellaneous incomeZatsu shotoku: Japan's catch-all income category. It is added to your salary and taxed at progressive rates, up to 55% in total..
• Received by chance or as a one-off: occasional income (一時所得, ichiji shotoku), which has a ¥500,000 special deduction with half of the rest taxed.
• Sold: capital gains or miscellaneous income; miscellaneous or business income if you trade continuously for profit.

The trap most people miss is paying with crypto. Japan treats spending crypto as disposing of it, so buying an NFT with ETH realizes any gain on that ETH. Say you bought ETH for ¥20,000 and it's worth ¥30,000 when you swap it for an NFT: ¥10,000 is income that year. Sell the NFT later for the equivalent of ¥60,000 and the gain on the NFT is ¥30,000. Miscellaneous-income losses can't be set against your salary or carried forward. Our Japan crypto tax guide covers filing; for anything unusual, talk to the tax office or a licensed tax accountant (zeirishi).

What should you check before buying?

Japan's NFT and game platforms turn over every couple of years. Treat purchases as something you'd enjoy using, not an investment you need back. A short checklist:

• Is the project alive? Look at the date of the last official announcement or post.
• Where does the NFT sit, inside the marketplace or in your own wallet, and can you withdraw it if the service closes?
• Is anyone buying? Thinly traded NFTs and gaming tokens often can't be sold at the price shown.
• Never type your seed phraseThe 12 to 24 words that restore a wallet. Anyone who has them can take everything, so keep them offline and private. into any website or form, and be careful which contracts you approve.
• Avoid unregistered offshore platforms the FSA has warned (see offshore exchanges and Japan), and read our crypto scams guide.
• Keep records of what you paid, in which coin, and its yen value at the time.

New to the vocabulary? Our crypto glossary gives each term with its Japanese equivalent, and the crypto events calendar lists the conferences where Japan's gaming and NFT builders show up, from IVS in Kyoto to ETHTokyo.

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