Weekly Summary: Focus on Web3 Gaming as Voodoo Acquires Gen Z Social Platform BeReal

In this edition, Blockchain gaming takes centre-stage as mobile games publisher Voodoo buys BeReal at a $500 million valuation, while Pixelverse secures $5.5 million for its Telegram-based game.

Jun 14, 2024

Blockchain gaming ‘is here to stay’

The blockchain gaming industry has been one of the most resilient segments of the crypto market. While there aren’t many new blockchain games being launched as was the case two years ago when the industry was booming, growth has continued behind the scenes as developers continue to build better infrastructure.

According to DappRadar, blockchain games also appear to be attracting the most loyal crypto users, accounting for about 30% of all dApp activity and attracting over 2.1 million active wallets per day during the first quarter of 2024.

Most of that activity was driven by Polygon, according to the report published in April, which shows a 419% increase in daily active wallets from the previous quarter to 1.1 million.

Such traction saw leading traditional gaming marketplaces like the Epic Games store list multiple blockchain games, while other blockchains like Oasys, Polkadot and Axelar also experienced an acceleration in their gaming ecosystems through partnerships.

Voodoo, which publishes both traditional and blockchain-based games has become the latest to seek growth opportunities by tapping into the mainstream.

The company just announced its acquisition of Gen Z social media platform BeReal, which could help it realise that goal.

And talking of social media platforms and gaming, Telegram-based Pixelverse secured significant funding to supercharge ecosystem growth amid a rapid acquisition of users, who stood at 15 million in just a month.

Web3 Mobile Games Publisher Voodoo Acquires BeReal at €500M Valuation

The acquisition is part of Voodoo’s strategy of diversifying into consumer-focused apps.
Voodoo also plans to further invest in BeReal and offer its expertise in product strategy, growth, and infrastructure.

“Together, Voodoo and BeReal will be ideally positioned to deliver on BeReal’s potential and unlock synergies afforded by the platform’s significant global user base. Voodoo intends to further invest in BeReal while providing its expertise in product strategy, growth, and infrastructure,” Voodoo wrote.

“BeReal achieved incredible user loyalty and growth, showing there is a universal need to share real, unfiltered experiences with close friends,” said Alexandre Yazdi, Voodoo co-founder and CEO. “We are very excited to bring our teams together and leverage Voodoo’s know-how and differentiated technologies to scale BeReal into the iconic social network for authenticity.”

Pixelverse Secures $5.5M to Expand Its Tap-to-Earn Game on Telegram

The fundraising attracted participation from Delphi Ventures, Merit Circle, and former Nexon CEO Joonmo (James) Kwon.
Bitscale Capital, Ghaf Capital, Big Brain Holdings, LiquidX, Foresight Ventures and The Sandbox founder Sébastien Borget also joined the round.

Delphi Ventures founding partner Piers Kicks said in a statement: “We are pleased to be backing Pixelverse as they aggressively leverage Telegram’s distribution to drive a massive audience into their ecosystem.”

Kori Leon, COO of Pixelverse and former Binance Listing team commented: “Never in my time at Binance did I see a company with such strong adoption metrics in such a short space of time. Pixelverse is truly a game changer for web3 adoption and it’s incredible to see not only the growth in our userbase but also the deep connections and interactions formed within the community.”

Paradigm Wraps Up Third Fund

Paradigm has been one of the leading crypto investment companies over the past six years, backing leading Web3 technology disruptors like Uniswap, Optimism and Flashbots.

This year, the firm already took leading roles in a $55 million fundraising for zero-knowledge proofs startup Succinct, which occurred in March before leading an even bigger round for high-performance EVM-compatible Layer-1 Monad Labs’ $225 million raise announced in April.

Paradigm demonstrated how strongly it believes in the potential of the crypto industry back in 2021 when it set up a $2.5 billion fund for crypto projects and protocols.

Now, it is accelerating its strategy with another fund that seeks to support crypto projects at their earliest stages.

Paradigm Closes $850M Third Fund to Invest in Early-Stage Crypto Projects

The announcement comes just months after the technology investment firm revealed it was raising $750 million to $850 million for a new crypto fund.
The new fund will focus on investing in early-stage crypto projects, the company said in a statement on Thursday.

Commenting on its early investments in Uniswap, Optimism and Flashbots, Paradigm wrote: “This is the sort of early-stage work that we love contributing to, and it’s what we’ll be increasingly focused on going forward.”

More Crypto Fundraising News

Web3 funding during Q2 remains on track to exceed the total raised by crypto startups in Q1, which would illustrate continued growth.

As of this writing crypto startups have raised more than $1.6 billion according to CunchBase, which is just $200 million shy of the $1.8 billion raised in Q1.

That figure has already surpassed the $1.4 billion raised in Q3 2023 and the $1.2 billion raised in the final quarter of last year.

This week, Layer3, Squads Labs and Nexus Labs join those contributing to the crypto fundraising growth story with their successful fundraises.

Nexus Labs Raises $25M Series A Round Led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Pantera Capital

The fundraising also attracted participation from Dragonfly Capital, Faction Ventures, and Blockchain Builders Fund.
Nexus is building a range of zero-knowledge privacy tools to be used to support technologies like AI, cybersecurity, cloud computing, and privacy-enhancing technologies.

Daniel Marin, founder and CEO of Nexus said in a statement: “We want to bring to market an entirely new form of computation – verifiable computation. We believe this is a fundamental step for humanity, as was the advent of the Internet, cloud computing and AI. Our goal is to make zero-knowledge proofs accessible to any developer, and drive the cost of zero-knowledge proofs down by orders of magnitude.”

ParaFi and Greenfield Capital Co-Lead $15M Series A for Token Distribution Protocol Layer3

The fundraising also attracted participation from Electric Capital, Immutable, Lattice, Tioga, LeadBlock, and Amber Group.
Layer3 offers a token distribution protocol that enables projects to distribute tokens to their fans across multiple blockchains.

Layer3 co-founder Brandon Kumar: “These tokens, in large part, serve as a Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) mechanism and will, over time, find the most efficient routes for distribution. Protocols like Layer3 are poised to capture the majority of this demand given our direct relationship with the consumer, efficiency, and targeting capability.”

Electric Capital Leads $10M Series A Round for Solana-Based Multisig Protocol Squads

The fundraising also attracted participation from Coinbase Ventures, Placeholder VC, RockawayX, L1 Digital and Mert Mumtaz.
The company is building a smart wallet that makes it easier for businesses, teams and individuals to securely transact, manage and own digital assets like tokens and treasuries.

Stepan Simkin, CEO of Squads Labs told the Block that his company does not really view Solana-based Phantom as a direct competitor: “While Phantom and other wallets focus on onboarding and connectivity, Fuse aims to be the ultimate savings account for your digital net worth, eliminating the need for solely relying on cold wallets or CEXs.”

On-Chain Analysis

Polygon NFT Buyers Surges to Record, Surpasses Solana in USD Sales

CryptoSlam data shows that the daily number of unique buyers of Polygon-based NFTs hit a record high on June 9 at 45,200.
NFT sales on Polygon also surpassed $3.4 million on June 7, the highest level since mid-January 2024.

Pendle’s Record TVL Propels it to 5th Spot in DeFi

The total value locked (TVL) of the protocol reached a new record on June 11 at $6.71 billion, momentarily making it the fifth-largest DeFi project by TVL, according to data tracked by DefiLlama.
Pendle TVL has surged 2,700% since the start of the year. At the beginning of January, $233 million worth of crypto was locked with the protocol.