FTX, Solana Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners announced an investment of $100 million in Web 3 gaming development today, CoinDesk reports. The funds will be used to support gaming tech and studios using the Solana blockchain in video games on mobile and desktop.
FTX and Lightspeed lead $21M round for Faraway
The first investment by the crypto exchange and Lightspeed is a $21 million funding round for gaming studio Faraway, announced yesterday. Lightspeed has invested $300 million in companies such as Alchemy, Epic Games, Offchain Labs, and more.
The popularity of Web 3 gaming keeps increasing with metaverse games like Decentraland and Sandbox and play-to-earn titles such as Axie Infinity. Part of the investment will be in new game titles. Another will be used to integrate Solana into existing games, creating in-game economies focusing on Solana wallet payments and NFTs.
Lightspeed partner Amy Wu said in a press release:
Gaming has a massive opportunity to bring the next billion users to Web 3. High-performance blockchains like Solana are now capable of delivering the kind of Web 2 experiences gamers expect while providing the advantages of decentralized Web 3 systems.
Faraway funding round used to integrate Solana in Mini Royale
The funds will be used to integrate the Solana blockchain into Mini Royale, the gaming company’s most popular title. This is a first-person-shooter game in the vein of Counter-Strike. Pantera Capital, a16z, Sequoia Capital, Jump Capital, and Solana also participated in the funding round.
Mini Royale uses economy compatible with Solana and FTXPay NFTs
Mini Royale will use an in-game economy compatible with Solana and FTXPay NFTs, making it the first multiplayer video game to achieve this.
Investors are very keen on funding studios that specialize in play to earn and virtual reality structures although Web 3 gaming is still in its infancy. Faraway CEO Alex Paley said:
Blockchain technology will unlock the potential for truly player-driven, open economies and will usher in the next wave of gaming and virtual worlds. Our goal for both current and future games is to create extremely fun and social games with open economies, giving players true ownership over their in-game assets and a true voice in how the game evolves over time.
Multiplayer gaming yet to see interest
Multiplayer gaming has yet to attract the same kind of interest from investors in spite of its long history of in-game economies with digital collectibles at their core.
