Fractal, a Solana based gaming NFTs marketplace, raises $35 Million in a seed funding round led by Paradigm and Multicoin Capital.
The latest funding round also attracted participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Solana Labs, Animoca, Coinbase Ventures, Play Ventures, Position Ventures, Zynga founder Mark Pincus, Crossover, Shrug Capital, TerraForm CEO Do Kwon, Tim Ferriss, the founders of Ramp, and many more. Fractal revealed that Paradigm’s Matt Huang will be joining the company’s board.
The seed financing comes two months after Fractal public launch in December. Goat Capital previously led Fractal’s seed round in January.
The company will use the new funds to hire more engineers, recruit and support game developers, and grow a vibrant ecosystem of GameFi participants.
Founded by Justin Kan, the co-founder of the popular video live streaming service Twitch, Fractal is an open marketplace for gaming NFTs. Game companies are able to list NFT drops for durable in-game assets and sell directly to players. Players are able to discover new NFT games, buy NFTs and resell their NFTs.
Justin Kan, Co-Founder of Fractal, pointed out that NFT marketplaces are still the wild west right now, with many projects not keeping their promises.
Fractal claims that it is building a trust layer in the web3 gaming ecosystem. “We are working with the best AAA gaming studios with large communities to bring the coolest game experiences to players. The transition to blockchain assets is a new business model for gaming, and in 10 years will be an even bigger shift in the gaming world than Twitch was,” Justin added.
“Game companies want to list on a marketplace that focuses on and supports the gaming community,” said Bill Karamouzis, CEO of Addicting Games, the gaming studio behind blockchain game ev.io. “The Fractal team has been a great partner for us as we ramp up towards our initial launch.”
Fractal mentioned in its seed funding announcement that selling digital, in-game assets has become a huge industry in recent years, as blockbusters like FIFA and Fortnite have raked in tens of billions from selling digital items.
Today, greater numbers of games are moving to listing their virtual items on public blockchains, giving players complete control over those assets, and allowing them to own and resell them later. Gaming NFTs are the fastest growing category of NFTs, and have recently surpassed 1 million active crypto wallets holding gaming NFTs last month.
Huang, co-founder and managing partner at Paradigm, said, “We’re in the middle of a generational shift in gaming, powered by crypto, where players expect a greater degree of ownership and control of their digital items.”
Mable Jiang, partner at Multicoin Capital, said, “The Fractal team is supporting games that are creating truly open, decentralized economies. Just like free-to-play games launched a new business model for gaming over a decade ago, we believe that blockchain will enable a paradigm shift to the models for games of the future.”
Fractal intends to bring onboard the next 100 million crypto users through blockchain games.
Read Also: Animoca Brands Raises $89M At $1B Valuation
