Quick take:

Other investors in the round included Foresight Ventures, OKX Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, Vertex Ventures and Comma3 Ventures, among others.

Dingaling, Grail, Wilson, Cristian, Skyline, Sam, Web3honey, and Elthen joined as angel investors.

Earlier this week, L3E7 initiated its inaugural testing phase, drawing participation from multiple builders.

L3E7, a 3D location-based (LBS) Web3 gaming studio has announced a $10 million funding round across two tranches completed between 2022 and 2023. LongLing Capital led the angel round, while Spartan Group and SevenX Ventures led the Series A round.

Other participants in the round included Foresight Ventures, OKX Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, Vertex Ventures, Comma3 Ventures, Meta Labs, Marvellous Creature, Giantwood, Mantle EcoFund, BitValue, Hailstone Labs, LiquidX, and Buzzone while Dingaling, Grail, Wilson, Cristian, Skyline, Sam, Web3honey and Elthen joined as angel investors. L3E7 did not disclose the valuation at which the funds were raised.

The company also announced it has its inaugural testing phase, with thousands of builders participating. 

L3E7’s core team of AAA gaming vets are leveraging proprietary technology and data sourced from Google Maps to build a game that depicts cyberpunk 3D Earth cities. 

The game’s native NFT collection, which debuted on OpenSea last November has already generated 4,412 ETH in volume. The collection acts as an early access pass, providing holders with a range of exclusive benefits.

L3E7 plans to use the fresh capital to fortify its brand presence, elevate game development endeavours and tap into the burgeoning web3 market by leveraging the distinctive appeal of LBS games, the company said in a statement on Friday.

L3E7’s player-versus-environment platform allows players to seize iconic real-world landmarks, accruing rewards based on their damage rankings, alongside robust team dynamics and social interactions.

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Solv Protocol, a decentralized finance (DeFi) project that aims to bring native yield to Bitcoin and other assets, has experienced a rapid increase in April. Its total value locked (TVL) figure has surged from $114 million at the beginning of the month to $672 million as of this writing, gaining 490% in four weeks, according to data from DefiLlama.

The spike propelled Solv to the top 40 DeFi protocols by TVL.

Solv offers native yield to multiple networks via tokenized trading strategies, although it focuses on Bitcoin, which lacks a staking ecosystem similar to that of Ethereum.

For example, users can deposit Bitcoin in Solv’s trading strategy vault and receive the liquid strategy token SolvBTC. The latter is compatible with Ethereum and DeFi apps, and more importantly, it offers native yield by generating Solv points. It is promoted as the first yield-bearing Bitcoin.

Solv supports other tokens, but Bitcoin accounts for 80% of all deposits with over $535 million.

https://defillama.com/protocol/solv-funds#tvl-charts

Solv is live on five blockchain networks, but Merlin, a Bitcoin layer 2, accounts for the lion’s share of TVL.

The yield protocol is now the largest DeFi project on Merlin, accounting for over 50% of its TVL.

Solv claims to have over 90,000 users and to have generated over $6.4 million in yield.

Solv Prepares Financial NFTs

The Solv team has introduced the ERC-3525 token standard on Ethereum, which enables the creation of semi-fungible tokens that can be applied in DeFi, real-world asset (RWA) protocols, and social applications.

The Ethereum Foundation approved the ERC-3525 as its 35th ERC standard at the end of 2022.

Solv is currently testing stUSD, a stablecoin vault that leverages this standard. It has over $1.5 million in testing capital, offering a fluctuating yield. stUSD is the vault’s share token, which enables stablecoin holders to access yield-bearing assets using ERC-3525.

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Quick take:

The campaign leverages SBINFT’s “SBINFT Mits” marketing platform to distribute NFTs and conduct giveaways without Futabasha collecting personal information.

Futabasha will use the “SBINFT Mits'” marketing platform to create a campaign website and run the lottery for giveaways.

All participants will receive a commemorative NFT with winners receiving a signed coloured paper book.

Futabasha, the Japanese publisher of a wide range of entertainment magazines has partnered with SBI Group subsidiary SBINFT’s comprehensive NFT management support service “SBINFT Mits” to launch a Web3 marketing campaign platform for brands. 

The collaboration will help brands distribute NFTs and conduct giveaway campaigns without Futabasha collecting personal information.

To kick off the partnership, the popular horse racing manga “Umanari 1 Furlong Theater ” is headlining the partnership with a special NFT giveaway campaign for fans.

According to the announcement, the companies believe that the campaign will unlock the potential of NFTs and “SBINFT Mits” for both fan engagement and secure gift distribution.

Futabasha will use the “SBINFT Mits'” marketing platform to create a campaign website and run the lottery for giveaways, with all participants in the “Umanari 1 Furlong Theater ” special NFT giveaway receiving a commemorative NFT. Winners of the lottery will receive a signed coloured paper book with delivery done without requiring any personal information.

The partnership is seen as a win-win-win scenario for all parties with a fresh avenue to connect with fans, distribute NFTs, and run giveaways effortlessly while SBINFT benefits by showcasing the capabilities of “SBINFT Mits” and driving wider adoption, the companies stated in a press release shared with NFTgators. “Fans win too, receiving a limited edition NFT and the chance to snag exclusive prizes.”

The companies view this partnership as a gateway for “groundbreaking” marketing campaigns driven by NFTs and Web3 technology.

Commenting on the announcement, Jangdeok Ko, CEO OF SBINFT said in a statement: “We are very pleased that our “SBINFT Mits” has enabled Futabasha to create co-creation marketing with fans using NFT. We believe that this initiative will be a very rare example in the world by delivering actual products to fans without obtaining their personal information using our marketing platform SBINFT Mits.”

Ko believes that the collaboration will pave the way for a new era of digital marketing using NFTs whilst also advocating for a wider adoption of NFT technology in society.

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Quick take:

VeChain’s Marketplace-as-a-Service (MaaS) offers a no-code NFT platform for both digital and physical goods.

Fans of mainstream brands can own both the memorabilia enhanced with digital features.

The integration with Transak provides a seamless checkout solution for Genesis Racing’s largely web2-native community.

VeChain, the blockchain focused on the tokenisation of real-world assets has integrated Transak’s Fiat on/off ramp service with its Marketplace-as-a-Service platform. The integration opens fiat-to-NFT purchases for the platform in over 160 countries and at a low purchasing limit of $0.01.

Grecini Racing, the motorcycle racing team competing in the MotoGP World Championship has opened a Web3 marketplace on VeChain’s MaaS platform, also launching its first NFT collection. This provides a seamless checkout solution for Gresini’s largely web2-native community.

The Grecini Racing NFT collection is comprised of 10,000 digital collectible cards starting at €1.00, approximately 27.35 VeChain tokens (VET).

VeChain’s MaaS offers a no-code NFT platform for both digital and physical goods, allowing brands to offer “phygital collectibles”. This allows fans to own a piece of memorabilia that is both tangible and enhanced with digital features. 

The platform’s launch comes at a time when demand for tokenised rea-world assets is rising, with the MaaS platform streamlining the process for those unfamiliar with blockchain intricacies.

For sporting brands like Genesis Racing, the integration of Transak’s Web3-gaming-focused NFT Checkout solution opens up new avenues for fan engagement and monetization, allowing them to offer exclusive, tokenized content to a global audience.

Commenting on the announcement, Alessandro Raboni, Head of Growth at Transak, said: “We are thrilled to partner with Gresini Racing and for their new NFT marketplace launch on VeChain. This collaboration represents a significant leap in Web3 innovations as it effectively connects the world of motorsports with the new ownership-driven internet economy.”

According to Raboni, fans around the world will be able to purchase NFTs using their preferred payment methods from as little as $0.01 up to $75,000 per transaction. “This integration enhances accessibility and promotes a new dimension of fan engagement in motorsports,” he said.

Ben Moran, Product Manager at the VeChain Foundation believes the MaaS platform is a powerful new addition to our tool suite. “This collaboration with Transak as NFT checkout service provider, allows us to greatly streamline the ease of use for Gresini Racing’s Motorsport fans, and make the whole experience a simple and enjoyable one,” he said.

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Quick take:

The program is launched in partnership with the Digital Worlds Foundation.

It offers incentives for exploring games in the expansive Immutable ecosystem, which currently boasts more than 270 gaming titles.

Beginning April 25th, players can receive rewards by exploring quests, playing games and owning collections on Immutable.

Immutable has secured $50 million in token rewards for The Quest Program, a Web3 gaming rewards program that rewards players for engaging with the Immutable ecosystem. The company expects more token commitments to come from the games building on Immutable.

Launched in partnership with Digital Worlds Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the decentralization, growth and security of blockchain gaming, The Quest Program offers incentives for exploring games in the expansive Immutable ecosystem, which currently boasts more than 270 gaming titles.

According to the announcement, players will be able to receive rewards by exploring quests, playing games and owning collections on Immutable beginning April 25.

The Immutable ecosystem features some of the biggest gaming projects on the blockchain, including Pixelmon, Illuvium, Guild of Guardians, Space Nation and MetalCore, all of which have signed on to become the first 10 projects to be featured in the current phase of The Main Quest.

Commenting on the announcement, Immutable President and Co-founder, Robbie Ferguson said in a statement: “This is single-handedly the largest rewards program in web3 gaming. With The Main Quest, we are showing players what they can expect when we talk about the real benefits of digital ownership.”

“As more of our 300+ signed games go to market, the opportunities for players to be rewarded by the Immutable ecosystem will grow exponentially,” Ferguson added.

Other games joining The Main Quest’s inaugural rewards program include Blast Royale, Hunters on Chain, Treeverse, Pool Masters and The Bornless.

This announcement comes barely a month after Immutable partnered with King River Capital and Polygon for $100 million Inevitable Games Fund, which has already invested in Pixelmon, MetalCore and the Guild of Guardians, all of which have joined The Main Quest.

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Quick take:

Hack VC, Placeholder, Archetype, Maven 11, Robot Ventures, Figment Capital, Nomad Capital, Bankless Ventures, OKX Ventures, dao5, and Aptos Labs also joined the round.

The fundraising is part of Movement Lab’s vision to address smart contract vulnerabilities within the Ethereum ecosystem.

The company is introducing a novel execution environment capable of handling more than 30,000 transactions per second.

Movement Labs has completed a $38 million Series A round to bring the Move Virtual Machine (MoveVM) to the Ethereum ecosystem, the company said in a press release on Thursday.

Web3 venture firm Polychain Capital led the round with participation from Hack VC, Placeholder, Archetype, Maven 11, Robot Ventures, Figment Capital, Nomad Capital, Bankless Ventures, OKX Ventures, dao5, and Aptos Labs.

Movement Labs is building an integrated blockchain network capable of handling more than 30,000 transactions per second. The company is bringing the MoveVM to Ethereum through its flagship L2 and connected rollups with the Move Stack.

This fundraising follows Movement Labs’ $3.4 million pre-seed round announced in September 2023 and ahead of the network release this summer.

Movement Labs is leveraging a fully EVM-compatible bytecode interpreter and Ethereum for settlement to build the Movement Zero-Knowledge Layer 2 blockchain, which it says brings parallelization and smart contract security to users who wish to remain within the Ethereum ecosystem.

According to the announcement, the Movement Labs team is using what it calls an “Integrated Approach”, which deploys code that is fully verified at runtime, preventing attack vectors like reentrancy from executing, thus addressing smart contract vulnerabilities and enhancing transaction throughput.

Explaining his company’s goals in the announcement, Movement Co-Founder, Rushi Manche said in a statement: “The two biggest issues in blockchain infrastructure at the moment are poor user experience and smart contract exploits.” The company points to the more than $5.4 billion lost through smart contract exploits between 2022 and 2023.

According to Manche, he and fellow co-founder Cooper Scanlon “started building Movement to increase the velocity of innovation in crypto where the next Facebook can be built on-chain by developers who do not have the resources for large development teams and expensive auditors.”

“Move addresses the shortcomings of Solidity and we are bringing it to market in a crypto-native way,” Manche added.

Movement Labs is also introducing Move Stack, a multi-chain execution layer framework compatible with Optimism, Polygon, and Arbitrum. Move Stack is part of the company’s long-term plan of scaling smart contract execution for users on all networks and unifying them with a shared sequencer implementation.

Commenting on his company’s leading role in the fundraising, Polychain Capital’s Bobby Beniers said in a statement: “While the core focus of most other rollup teams is scalability, Movement’s key insight is that scalability alone is not why we are yet to see mass adoption. The MoveVM offers a developer experience that is intuitive and bug-resistant as well as highly scalable.”

According to Beniers, by marrying MoveVM’s benefits with the base-layer security guarantees of the Ethereum ecosystem, Movement Labs “can build a flourishing ecosystem that is home to a new generation of mainstream applications.”

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Quick take:

The company will use the funds to accelerate the development of its platform, which helps gamers monetize their data

Carv, which was last valued at $40 million in a seed round announced in 2022 did not disclose its current valuation in the latest round.

The company’s modular data layer will initially focus on gaming and AI before extending support to other verticals.

Carv, a modular data layer for gaming and AI has closed a $10 million Series A round led by Tribe Capital and IOSG Ventures. The fundraising also attracted participation from Arweave, Consensys, Draper Dragon, Fenbushi Capital, LiquidX, No Limit Holdings, OKX Ventures and the Korean gaming company Netmarble’s Web3 arm — MARBLEX.

Although Carv did not disclose its current valuation, the company was previously valued at $40 million in a $4 million seed round announced in 2022.

The company said it will use the fresh capital to enhance the design of its CARV Protocol to ensure it is scalable and can support a broader range of use cases. Carv’s platform will initially focus on gaming and AI before expanding to more use cases, the company said in an announcement on Thursday.

The company is developing three products, CARV Protocol — a modular layer that connects web2 identities with tokens on-chain, CARV Play — which is a cross-chain credentialing system and game distribution platform, and CARA — an AI agent that integrates with web3 wallets to provide guidance and assistance to gamers including recommending games, activities and projects.

Carv’s focus on gaming and AI is strategically poised as more game developers continue to integrate artificial intelligence at the intersection of blockchain gaming and AI. The company is addressing an emergent area of concern in the AI gaming sector as data privacy takes centre stage.

“Carv differentiates itself by putting data ownership and monetization rights in the hands of users. Any revenue generated from leveraging users’ data gets shared back with the data creators and themselves,” Victor Yu, co-founder and COO of Carv told TechCrunch.

“We’ve created a unified user ID standard (ERC-7231) that bridges web2 and web3, enabling seamless data portability versus today’s siloed solutions,” Yu added.

According to Yu, his company has been profitable since January 2023, generating a monthly recurring revenue of $1 million. 

Carv says its platform allows users to provide their data to its corporate customers in a way that preserves their privacy and is compliant with regulations. Companies can then use the data to train AI models and do market research among other use cases, the company said.

Carv now boasts 2.5 million registered users and over 350 integrated gaming and AI company partners. The company plans to launch CARV link — an on-chain identity and data authentication product, and CARV database — a data management system.

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Quick take:

The company will use the funds to accelerate the development of its platform ahead of its mainnet launch.

Aligned Layer already has a testnet working with Cosmos SDK, but plans to migrate to an EigenLayer testnet in the coming weeks.

The company’s UVL platform verifies proofs cheaply and quickly and then posts the results in Ethereum and any data availability layer that the developer wants.

Aligned Layer, a Universal Verification Layer (UVL) being built on Ethereum has announced a $20  million Series A round led by Hack VC. The fundraising also attracted participation from DAO5, L2 Iterative, Nomad Capital, Finality, Symbolic VC, Theta Capital, J17, EVG Ventures, Decima Fund and Protagonist.

The company plans to use the funds to accelerate the development of its platform ahead of a mainnet launch. Aligned, which already has a testnet working with Cosmos SDK plans to migrate to an EigenLayer testnet in the coming weeks.

According to the announcement, Aligned Layer will leverage EigenLayer’s ETH staking protocol to speed up the verification of ZK proofs on Ethereum whilst also making the process cheaper.

“We verify proofs cheaply and quickly and post their results in Ethereum and any DA (data availability) layer that the developer wants. We provide developers with new options to focus on building the best products possible for the users,” the company wrote in a post on X.

According to Aligned Layer, although dozens of companies are working on accelerating the speed at which proofs are generated, in the future, proof generation won’t be the biggest bottleneck but on-chain proof verification.

The company also highlighted the high costs of verifying some proving systems on Ethereum due to the way EVM works. That’s where its platform comes in, which it believes reduces barriers and friction for newcomers, decreases proving time and lowers the cost of on-chain verification.

“We verify these proofs and post the results in Ethereum and any DA layer. We provide the developer with an SDK to check the results of our verification of proofs in any smart contract,” the announcement reads.

According to Aligned Layer, this has been made possible by EigenLayer AVS, which runs different ZK and validity proofs verifiers written directly in Rust and Go without any VM in a decentralized network.

According to Aligned Layer’s Whitepaper, its platform can be used by bridging protocols, Rollups and Appchains, ZK Oracles, On-chain gaming platforms, P2P protocols, and Verifiable Machine Learning, among others.

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Quick take:

Hashkey Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Matter Labs, Draper Dragon, Faculty Group, Crypto.com Capital, Cogitent Ventures, DWF Labs and Morningstar Ventures also joined the round.

Tevaera says its inaugural multiplayer blockchain game “Teva Run” attracted over 850 soulbound gamers in the past year.

The company also announced the launch of its redesigned website, which serves as a “one-stop platform for gamers and developers.”

Tevaera has completed a $5 million funding round led by Nomura Group’s digital asset unit, Laser Digital. 

The fundraising also attracted participation from Hashkey Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Matter Labs, Draper Dragon, Faculty Group, Crypto.com Capital, Cogitent Ventures, Selini Capital, DWF Labs, Morningstar Ventures, DCF God, Momentum6, GBV Capital, Mapleblock Capital, GD10 Capital, Aquanow, Coinswitch, and others.

The company is building a “one-stop platform for gamers and developers,” announced as part of its newly redesigned website. 

Tevaera uses a game-IP-first approach, identifying and addressing challenges within the web3 gaming infrastructure. The platform has been in development over the past two years, which culminated in the company’s inaugural Web3 game “Teva Run” a year ago.

Since then, the Tevarea gaming ecosystem has grown rapidly attracting over 850,000 soulbound gamers from more than 100 countries, the company wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.

The game is powered by Guardian NFTs and is integrated with the platform’s comprehensive gaming marketplace, Teva Market.

Commenting on his company’s leading role in the fundraising, Jez Mohideen, CEO of Laser Digital, Nomura Group said in a statement: “Supporting Tevaera in its journey to unlock the next era of web3 games through a comprehensive, one-stop platform is an exciting opportunity. We are confident that this strategic investment will create new opportunities for ZK and on-chain powered gaming.”

Robin Babu and Gav Negi, co-founders of Tevaera echoed those remarks hailing the big support from the Tevaera community and its partners adding, “This funding not only validates our vision but also empowers us to set a new industry standard for building, launching, and playing multi-genre web3 games.”

Tevaera plans to use the fresh capital to expand its gaming ecosystem by building two new games. The company is also building a decentralised layer-3 chain on zkSync, as it paves the way for permissionless Web3 gaming.

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Quick take:

Merit Circle primarily looks at founder mentality to decipher who is in it for the long-term and who is looking for a “quick buck”. 

The company’s treasury grew by $94 million in the first quarter, with its studio arm among one of the main drivers.

Although the blockchain gaming industry is widely viewed as a genre, Marco thinks in five years, the technology may not be as widely advertised as it will be used in games.

Although blockchain gaming has been one of the most resilient categories of the Web3 industry, over the past several months, there has been an emerging trend. More Web3 gaming startups are beginning to focus on the technological side of the industry rather than launching new blockchain games.

Companies are now looking at ways to bring more scalability and interoperability to Web3 gaming, while others are looking at ways of leveraging artificial intelligence to create sustainable gaming ecosystems driven by user-generated content.

The industry seems to be evolving towards a future that perhaps Marco van den Heuvel, co-founder and chief gaming officer at Merit Circle expects in five years. “I don’t think that long-term we should see ‘blockchain technology’ as its own genre of games. There will be games that use blockchain technology and there will be games that don’t,” van den Heuvel told NFTgators in a Q&A.

The Merit Circle co-founder sees blockchain gaming evolving towards the underlying technology side of the industry where developers may choose to integrate the technology into their games, rather than a standalone category promoted as a unique genre.

“Today many studios advertise the usage of blockchain technology, in five years from now they’ll hopefully just advertise a game and it’ll feel natural enough for people to interact with the blockchain elements when available. Just like games today don’t advertise heavily which data, cloud, server solutions etc. they use.”

The focus has switched from merely building blockchain games to enabling game developers to integrate Web3 gaming elements in their games.

Van den Heuvel discusses more about how blockchain technology is transforming the gaming industry in the Q&A below.

Tell us a bit about yourself and your journey in Web3.

I discovered Bitcoin in early 2017, after which I immediately went down the rabbit hole so to speak. I started investing in stocks at a young age and have always been a big gamer, so digital economies and currencies made sense to me. It was when I discovered Ethereum and smart contracts that I got more excited though. While learning more about cryptocurrency myself, I started educating others by writing and talking about it online. Through this, I landed my first clients as a community manager in 2018. Throughout the years I’ve worked with numerous projects on the community and marketing side. 

When I discovered Axie Infinity early on, I became involved in its economy and with that combined my passion for gaming and web3. Through this, a small guild came into existence, which turned into Merit Circle.

Your organisation is building the Beam network, which it describes as an open-source blockchain focused on gaming. There are quite a few other chains that have chosen to specifically focus on gaming. What makes Beam so unique that developers would choose to build on it over others?

First and foremost, we are big gamers ourselves. Second, we started building Beam based on the feedback and experience we’ve gathered by investing in and working with over 65 (now 100+) studios in web3, throughout a now 3-year time period. Besides this, we have co-launched our own studio developing the title Forgotten Playland and have launched an NFT project named ‘Edenhorde’. That to say, we know the industry and pain points of developers inside out and were eager to contribute to the industry beyond our investments.

The Beam ecosystem is game-first and we’re eager to take blockchain experiences directly inside the game, in a way that feels natural to gamers. Rather than taking them out of the gaming experience into heavy blockchain front-end experiences.

I noticed that your portfolio of projects — though dominated by gaming-related projects — stretches beyond that. Which segments of your portfolio have benefitted the most from the current crypto bull market, and why is that?

Our treasury incl. all investments/positions may be found at: https://treasury.meritcircle.io/. Looking at the purchase value versus current value there, the treasury has most benefited from 1) its studio arm (Forgotten Playland, Castle of Blackwater, Snackclub) and 2) general investments. It’s hard to pinpoint it to one category, as various investments have performed very well.

What are the three most common characteristics of Web3 projects that Merit Circle has invested in?

We mainly look at the founder mentality. In an industry where many projects are looking to raise funding on a daily basis, and many projects fail on a daily basis, one of the main criteria that has done well for us was the founder’s background and mentality, whether they’re actually here to stay or rather as they’d say are looking ‘for a quick buck’.

Other than that, we’ve mainly invested in either game studios or gaming infrastructure. With exceptions of e.g. some AI investments.

What is the biggest challenge that blockchain games must overcome to — as you say— “revolutionize gaming”?

This is the golden question, that many would like to have a direct answer for. In my personal opinion, it is a mix of things. First of all, developing a proper game takes time. Gaming in web3 is still relatively young and it makes sense there haven’t been any sustainable big hits yet. As the core gameplay wasn’t sticky/fun enough for players to discover it and keep playing, without incentives added into the mix.

Second, many games to date are taking the gamers out of the gaming experience by adding blockchain elements into the mix in ways that don’t feel natural to gamers, e.g. requiring them to purchase NFTs before being able to access a game or requiring them to navigate out of the game, onto a browser marketplace to transact. We’re now getting into a phase where wallet solutions and other types of tooling are much more convenient to use, where this experience can be much improved upon.

Is your recent collaboration with Immutable part of that vision? If yes, how does it fit into your overall strategy?

It certainly is. I always like to say ‘We want to be where the gamers are, we want to be where the games are’. The Beam SDK is in essence chain agnostic. We want to enable developers to implement blockchain inside their game. We started on Avalanche with a subnet, because this was the first battle-tested solution we saw that made sense to enable the creation of a game-first ecosystem for multiple studios. This was the perfect breeding ground for us to start developing and testing our tooling. The Immutable zkEVM collaboration enables us to cater to even more studios, given Polygon and Immutable serve a large portion of all studios within web3 gaming. We’re incredibly excited to work together with these studios to further improve the overall experience of blockchain technology within games.

Where do you see the blockchain gaming industry in five years? Do you see it replacing traditional gaming structures with new economic models? Or could it be a new vertical that grows parallel to Mobile, Console gaming, etc?

I personally don’t think that long-term we should see ‘blockchain technology’ as its own genre of games. There will be games that use blockchain technology and there will be games that don’t. Today many studios advertise the usage of blockchain technology, five years from now they’ll hopefully just advertise a game and it’ll feel natural enough for people to interact with the blockchain elements when available. Just like games today don’t advertise heavily which data, cloud, server solutions etc. they use.

There will be different aspects within gaming:

– Creators earning money by making content they enjoy making

– Gamers earning money by playing the games they enjoy playing (or being able to take money out of game economies again after they’re done playing)

It’s not new, gray markets have existed for a long time now. Runescape Gold, League of Legends accounts, you name it, have been bought and sold for years now. Blockchain technology enables this to happen more transparently, (cost) efficiently and safely, in a way where game developers now also earn money through secondary sales fees.

Besides blockchain gaming, what other segments of the digital asset space are most exciting to you in 2024?

I am incredibly interested in AI and RWA. AI simply because it’s a fascinating technology that is advancing so quickly and is applicable in almost anything you can think of. Whereas real-world assets on the blockchain make sense to me like virtual currencies do. Taking things like real estate, loans, etc. onto the blockchain feels like a no-brainer.

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The number of buyers of Solana-based NFTs surged to an all-time high on April 23, according to CryptoSlam data. Although Solana NFT sales in USD terms were near the lowest level since December 23, a record number of over 61,000 unique buyers acquired Solana NFTs on Tuesday.  

According to CryptoSlam, one of the top collections by the number of buyers was DogeZuki Collection, which saw over 28,000 unique buyers during the last week and over 6,000 buyers during the last 24 hours.

https://www.cryptoslam.io/dogezuki-collection?tab=historical_sales_volume&headerPeriod=1d

DogeZuki is an NFT collection of 2,800 items inspired by a Shiba Inu dog.

Another popular collection is Deez Nuts, which saw over 11,000 unique buyers during the last 24 hours alone.

https://www.cryptoslam.io/deez-nuts-6?headerPeriod=1d

Deez Nuts is an NFT collection of 10,000 items representing ‘nuts’ characters.

Some new collections have also contributed to the increase in buyers, including Suit Up, Koma, and Ketamaniacs. All of them have been launched during the last few days.

Data from Tiexo also suggests that Solana had the most active unique wallets. For example, during the last 24 hours, Solana NFT unique wallets accounted for over 74% of all NFT activity.

https://tiexo.com/analytics?v=1&blockchain=ALL&activeMetric=marketplaces

Recently, Crypto Rand compiled Tiexo data for unique NFT wallets during the 7 days to April 21, showing Solana at the forefront.

https://twitter.com/crypto_rand/status/1782139744090222840/photo/1 Solana Drives Total NFT Buyers to Highest in 14 Months

Thanks to the recent intense activity on Solana, the total number of unique buyers as tracked by CryptoSlam soared on April 23 to the highest level since February 2023, with a total of more than 116,000 buyers.

https://www.cryptoslam.io/nftglobal?timeFrame=day

Polygon was another major contributor, with almost 30k unique buyers during that day. For Polygon, the last 7 days represent the second-best week on record in terms of unique buyers. We reported how Polygon’s surging NFT activity in April has been driven by Dew.

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Quick take:

The platform also offers a leaderboard where players are ranked according to the experience points earned.

Blocktrade Arcade boasts a 92% game completion rate, illustrating high engagement levels.

Players can play Fly & Collect, Bubble Shooter, and Match 3, with each game made for both casual and crypto enthusiasts.

Blocktrade the EU-regulated crypto trading platform has revealed that its Arcade gaming platform crossed one million gameplays three months after launch. The platform launched with three games Fly & Collect, Bubble Shooter, and Match 3, all made to meet the needs of both casual gamers and crypto enthusiasts.

According to the announcement, the games have attracted high levels of engagement, boasting a 92% completion rate.

In Fly & Collect, players navigate obstacles while collecting tokens, whereas Bubble Shooter tests their skills in matching coloured bubbles. Match3 is a classic puzzle game that encourages strategic thinking.

Blocktrade Arcade allows players to accumulate experience points (XP) as rewards with a daily limit on earned XP from their gaming and trading activity. The points are used to determine how high they rank on a community leaderboard.

According to Blocktrade, the arcade-style games also foster a sense of excitement and community, a departure from the often solitary nature of trading.

“We are absolutely delighted with the success of our Arcade, one of the first exchange products to effectively merge the worlds of gaming and crypto,” said Blocktrade CEO Christian Niedermüller. “By offering an experience that is both stimulating and rewarding, we’re making the world of crypto more accessible and engaging for all.”

Blocktrade’s games last an average of 50 seconds, which it believes is perfect for players’ busy lifestyles. This also “encourages frequent platform visits,” Blocktrade wrote.

Although there are currently three Arcade games on Blocktrade, Niedermüller emphasised the company’s intentions to expand its offerings with more games and partnering with third-party game developers. The company also plans to integrate its $BTEX token into the platform.

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Quick take:

The multi-year partnership will begin with Quidd releasing a range of Man City-themed special edition digital collectibles for the fans.

The first series includes 200 bespoke player cards available on the Quidd Marketplace 2pm on Thursday 2nd May.

The first 10,000 Cityzens will be able to acquire two free packs plus exclusive access to ‘For The Fans’ packs within 72 hours of release.

Manchester City has announced a multi-year partnership with Quidd, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands. Founded in 2016, Quidd is a digital collectible and NFT marketplace enabling brands to bring real-world experiences to their fans through the blockchain.

On the other hand, Manchester City has grown to become one of Football’s biggest brands in the world over the past ten years, winning multiple trophies.

This partnership will see Quidd release a range of Manchester City-themed special edition digital collectibles for ‘Cityzens’ (the name referring to Man City fans). Fans will then use those collectibles to unlock different rewards including official Man City merch, hospitality tickets and an exclusive opportunity to watch a first-team training session at the City Football Academy.

The first series includes over 200 bespoke player cards available on the Quidd marketplace at 2pm on Thursday 2nd May. The first 10,000 ‘Cityzens’ will be able to acquire two free packs plus exclusive access to ‘For The Fans’ packs within 72 hours of release.

Commenting on the partnership Tom Boyle, Vice-President of global Partnerships Marketing and Operations at City Football Group, said in a statement: We’re excited to help transform the traditional football pastime of cards and collectibles in a new digital age alongside Quidd, enabling us to further connect with our fans across the globe. We look forward to working together on creating new digital experiences and games for our fans to enjoy.”

After collaborating with more than 325 global brands including Disney, Game of Thrones, Rick and Morty, the NBA, and Manchester City, Quidd has been one of the leading platforms for mainstream brands looking to offer digital experiences for their fans. 

Its platform offers different experiences that enable fans to swap and collect digital cards, bringing the traditional football culture of collecting stockers and cards to the digital realm.

Michael Bramlage, Chief Executive Officer at Quidd commented: “This partnership signals our intent to revolutionise the world of sport collectibles, so it makes sense for Quidd to align with Manchester City.” The collaboration will allow Man City fans to establish a deeper connection with the football club and their favourite players.

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Quick take:

The company plans to leverage Ultimate Wallet’s technology and team to “turbocharge” Jupiter Mobile.

Jupiter is Solana’s leading DEX platform, clearing over $10 billion in volume per week.

Ultimate said it will now proceed with a shutdown of the Ultimate App in the coming months.

Solana-based decentralised exchange (DEX) aggregator platform Jupiter has announced the acquisition of self-custody crypto wallet provider Ultimate Wallet. The acquisition is part of Jupiter’s strategy for expanding to mobile. 

The company wants to use mobile platforms to onboard “tens of millions of users” to its platform. Jupiter is already, the biggest DEX platform on Solana, clearing over $10 billion in transaction volume per week. 

The announcement comes just weeks ahead of Jupiter’s beta release slated for May.

Describing its vision for a mobile version of its DEX platform, Jupiter wrote on X, “Our main focus is a simplified user experience, similar to an automatic car. With Auto-Config, we reduce complexity, such as gas, slippage, or re-trying your transactions.”

The company believes its focus on Solana and Swapping allows it to provide “the best experience possible,” with zero fees.

The company describes Ultimate Wallet as one of the “best DeFi mobile apps,” adding that it will leverage the non-custodial wallet service provider’s technology and team to “turbocharge” Jupiter mobile.

“Jupiter Mobile is a key part of our strategy to accelerate the Meta by getting a critical mass of people to use crypto,” Jupiter wrote on X.

On the other hand, the Ultimate Wallet team expressed its excitement at the acquisition calling Jupiter one of “Solana’s most prolific teams of shippers.”

“Our values align perfectly, thus making Jupiter an excellent future home for Ultimate. Both of our products are laser-focused on providing the most amazing and fastest on-chain trading experience on Solana,” Ultimate wrote on X.

Ultimate Wallet will now sunset the Ultimate App on May 22, 2024, according to a post on X. Users will be able to use the wallet as normal up until then, the company said, also guaranteeing the security of their funds.

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Quick take:

The platform aggregates global compute enabling researchers to collaborate and train “state-of-the-art” AI models through distributed training.

Prime Intellect also allows researchers to share the ownership and benefits associated with the AI models they helped train.

The company will use the fresh capital to accelerate the development of its platform.

Prime Intellect has raised $5.5 million in a funding round backed by Distributed Global, CoinFund, Compound VC, Collab + Currency and Protocol Labs. 

The fundraising also attracted participation from several angel investors including Andrew Kang of Mechanism Capital, Bool Capital from Wormhole, EigenLayer’s Robert Drost, Riva Tez of LayerZero, Worldcoin’s Dcbuilder, Scott Moore of Gitcoin, DCF God and Gmoney, among others.

Prime Intellect is building a decentralised AI infrastructure platform enabling collective ownership and governance of AI models. According to the announcement, its platform aggregates global compute enabling researchers to collaborate and train “state-of-the-art” AI models through distributed training.

Researchers are able to share the ownership and benefits associated with the AI models they help train.

“Through Prime Intellect, anyone will be able to contribute compute, capital and code to collaboratively train open AI models and share in their ownership and benefits. We envision this enabling a new wave of open AI progress, from community-driven language models to scientific breakthroughs,” co-founders Vincent Weisser and Johannes Hagemann wrote in a blog post on the company’s website.

Prime Intellect wants to build a platform that allows anyone to contribute resources including compute, capital and code, and enable globally distributed training across clusters.

According to Prime Intellect’s post on X, its platform is currently live in beta and aggregating supply from leading GPU providers, offering the most cost-effective, scalable on-demand compute.

“We’re preparing to provide access to clusters of 16-128+ GPUs and developing a framework for distributed training across clusters,” a post on X reads.

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The post Prime Intellect Secures $5.5M Seed Round for Decentralised AI Infrastructure Platform appeared first on NFTgators .

Merlin Chain, a new Layer 2 network for Bitcoin, has already attracted almost $1 billion in total value locked (TVL) across the 8 dapps that it supports at the moment.

DefiLlama data shows that Merlin’s TVL has surged to a record $980 million on April 23, up from only $15 million at the end of March.

Merlin is a recently launched Bitcoin layer 2 supporting Bitcoin tokens that leverage the Ordinals protocol and the new Runes protocol. The latter went live last week following the halving event.

Ordinals became popular last year after introducing a mechanism to create non-fungible tokens (NFTs) directly on the Bitcoin mainnet. They had the greatest contribution to the revival of the NFT market. During the last two months, Bitcoin NFTs accounted for over 50% of the total NFT trading volume, according to CryptoSlam data.

https://www.cryptoslam.io/blockchains

Following the success of Bitcoin NFTs, Ordinals have been used for a fungible token standard on Bitcoin. It’s called BRC-20, inspired by Ethereum’s ERC-20.

Merlin plans to bring scalability and efficiency to tokens built on protocols like BRC-20 or BRC-420, which is used for metaverse NFTs. It uses zero-knowledge (zk) rollups to settle transactions off-chain for better efficiency, similar to what Polygon does to Ethereum.

Merlin Secures Over $2B for Token Launch

On April 19, Merlin launched its governance token on BRC-20. To support the fair launch of MERL, the protocol held the so-called Merlin’s Seal event, calling for crypto investors to stake Bitcoin and other tokens to earn M-points, which determined the distribution of MERL.

DefiLlama data shows that Merlin’s Seal secured over $2 billion. Bitcoin accounts for over 80% of the staked crypto assets, which include BRC-20 tokens like STONE, SATS, ORDI, and RATS.

https://defillama.com/protocol/merlins-seal#tvl-charts

Merlin has already become the 10th largest chain by DeFi TVL, surpassing Polygon and OP.

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The post Bitcoin L2 Merlin Sees DeFi TVL Surging to Almost $1B appeared first on NFTgators .

Quick take:

Magic Eden is advancing its support for innovation on Bitcoin having been one of the non-BTC native NFT marketplaces to expand to Bitcoin.

This announcement follows the launch of the Runes Protocol last week, a new token standard that makes inscribing NFTs on Bitcoin faster and at lower gas fees.

Magic Eded said its platform will allow users to set up the amount of BTC they want to spend on Runes when making a transaction.

Magic Eden, the NFT marketplace originally based on Solana before expanding to other chains has launched the Magic Eden Runes platform. This announcement comes just days after Runes Protocol, a new token standard for Bitcoin inscription, launched on the day of Bitcoin halving, paving the way for faster inscriptions and lower gas fees.

Magic Eden’s Runes platform launches a day earlier than the scheduled debut date, April 23, according to a post on X.

Source: Magic Eden

Magic Eden co-founder and COO Zedd Yin has hailed the launch as a testament to the company’s commitment to being the “one-stop-shop for all things Bitcoin.” 

“As early supporters and first to build an Ordinals marketplace, it was important for us that we build the best Runes experience possible in this important evolutionary step for Bitcoin,” Yin said.

Magic Eden’s Runes platform, currently in beta, allows users to swap for BTC and buy runes and ordinals using their Magic Eden wallet. The company is advancing its support for innovation on Bitcoin having been one of the non-BTC native NFT marketplaces to expand to Bitcoin.

The platform also has a feature that allows users to set up the amount of BTC they want to spend on Runes when making a transaction.

Last week, Magic Eden collaborated with the NFT project CyberKongz to launch the BTC pre-runes collection Prometheans. The collection has already generated more than 316 BTC in TVL, approximately $20.8 million, Magic Eden Ordinals marketplace data shows.

Magic Eded has recently overtaken the likes of OpenSea, Blur and Tensor to become the biggest NFT platform by Marketplace users. The platform is also dominating in terms of transaction volume, which is largely driven by the number of traders trading Ordinals.

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Quick take:

The company will use the funds to accelerate the development of its abstraction layer for shared security primitive.

The platform allows developers to self-deploy custom computational services over trustless execution environments.

Othentic says its platform enables AVS developers to focus on their core services, thus minimising engineering overheads.

Othentic, a Web3 orchestration and abstraction layer for AVS developers on both EVM and non-EVM blockchains has secured a $4 million seed round co-led by Finality and Breyer Capital.

The Fundraising also attracted participation from Coinbase Ventures, Collider VC, HashKey Capital, Bankless Ventures, Robot Ventures, Everstake, PunkDAO and several angel investors.

Othentic is building a distributed tech stack that allows developers to self-deploy custom computational services over trustless execution environments.

“The Othentic Stack orchestrates and abstracts the shared security primitive, allows AVS developers to self-deploy custom computational services over trustless execution environments and a network of Operators that run arbitrary compute tasks,” the company said in a post on X.

According to the company’s blog post on Mirror, Othentic is introducing what it calls “Stateless Rollups”, which gives AVS (actively validated services) access to decentralized compute scalability, offering “a flexible and secure framework for the execution of off-chain computations.” 

According to Othentic, stateless rollups are compatible with both EVM and non-EVM blockchains and provide their services to other networks and applications. They include coprocessors, relayer networks, decentralized RPCs, oracles, ZK provers, exploit prevention systems, privacy-preserving computations, and other novel services.

“Leveraging a library of production-ready components, AVS developers can focus on their core service, minimize engineering overheads, and abstract away low-level implementations and error-prone infrastructure details,” Othentic wrote on X.

This fundraising comes amid the rise of shared security and actively validated services on platforms like EigenLayer on Ethereum and Babylon Chain on Bitcoin, which have paved the path for the development of decentralised services.

“In the new shared security economy, networks are required to execute diverse on-chain and off-chain computation work that represent unique services offered by AVSs,” Othentic wrote in the blog post, highlighting the important role its orchestration layer will play in the evolving dApp ecosystem.

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The post Othentic Secures $4M Seed Round for Web3 Orchestration Layer appeared first on NFTgators .

Quick take:

The company will use the funds to accelerate the development of its abstraction layer for shared security primitive.

The platform allows developers to self-deploy custom computational services over trustless execution environments.

Othentic says its platform enables AVS developers to focus on their core services, thus minimising engineering overheads.

Othentic, a Web3 orchestration and abstraction layer for AVS developers on both EVM and non-EVM blockchains has secured a $4 million seed round co-led by Finality and Breyer Capital.

The Fundraising also attracted participation from Coinbase Ventures, Collider VC, HashKey Capital, Bankless Ventures, Robot Ventures, Everstake, PunkDAO and several angel investors.

Othentic is building a distributed tech stack that allows developers to self-deploy custom computational services over trustless execution environments.

“The Othentic Stack orchestrates and abstracts the shared security primitive, allows AVS developers to self-deploy custom computational services over trustless execution environments and a network of Operators that run arbitrary compute tasks,” the company said in a post on X.

According to the company’s blog post on Mirror, Othentic is introducing what it calls “Stateless Rollups”, which gives AVS (actively validated services) access to decentralized compute scalability, offering “a flexible and secure framework for the execution of off-chain computations.” 

According to Othentic, stateless rollups are compatible with both EVM and non-EVM blockchains and provide their services to other networks and applications. They include coprocessors, relayer networks, decentralized RPCs, oracles, ZK provers, exploit prevention systems, privacy-preserving computations, and other novel services.

“Leveraging a library of production-ready components, AVS developers can focus on their core service, minimize engineering overheads, and abstract away low-level implementations and error-prone infrastructure details,” Othentic wrote on X.

This fundraising comes amid the rise of shared security and actively validated services on platforms like EigenLayer on Ethereum and Babylon Chain on Bitcoin, which have paved the path for the development of decentralised services.

“In the new shared security economy, networks are required to execute diverse on-chain and off-chain computation work that represent unique services offered by AVSs,” Othentic wrote in the blog post, highlighting the important role its orchestration layer will play in the evolving dApp ecosystem.

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The post Othentic Secures $4M Seed Rould for Web3 Orchestration Layer appeared first on NFTgators .

NFT activity on Polygon has gained traction in April. CryptoSlam data shows that the number of unique buyers of Polygon-based NFTs surged on April 18 to the highest level since June 2023. Over 36,000 NFT purchases were recorded on that day.  

Polygon ranks fourth among blockchain networks by NFT trading volume after Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana.

As we reported via X, Dune data compiled by Sealaunch shows that Polygon NFT sales maintained above $1 million for seven consecutive days to April 18.

Weekly volumes recovered to the highest since mid-January of this year, breaking above $15 million.

https://www.theblock.co/data/nft-non-fungible-tokens/nft-overview/nft-trade-volume-by-chain

OpenSea continues to be the most popular NFT marketplace for the Polygon ecosystem, accounting for over 80% of all sales.

https://dune.com/sealaunch/polygon-nft Polygon’s NFT Aggregator Dew Drives NFT Sales

Interestingly, the majority of the NFT sales are conducted via Dew, an NFT aggregator for Polygon that connects to multiple marketplaces. Dew accounts for over 98% of all NFT trading activity on Polygon, according to on-chain data shared via Dune.

https://dune.com/scorz/polygon-nfts

Dew daily volume exploded from a few thousand USD at the beginning of April to over $1 million last week.

https://dappradar.com/dapp/dew

In fact, Dew is also the main driving force behind the surge in NFT sales on Polygon. Earlier this April, it launched an NFT collection called Origin Pass, which gives users access to multiple benefits from Dew and Dew Studio initiatives.

The Origin Pass is now the hottest NFT collection on the layer 2 network, securing over $4.5 million in sales over the last week.

Polygon, Immutable Raise $100M to Support Gaming

The increase in NFT activity follows reports that Polygon and Immutable were joining forces to establish a $100 million fund to support Web3 games, most of which use NFTs. The initiative, called The Inevitable Games Fund, will support early-stage gaming startups.

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The post Polygon NFT Activity Rebounds in April, Driven by Dew appeared first on NFTgators .