Hello 👋
Welcome to the 24th edition of Sfermion’s Collider where we highlight the latest & greatest news in the world of web3 and gaming!
Weekly, we aim to drop a curated list of the most exciting stories & updates that we believe are enabling the emergence of the metaverse.
If you're looking forward to reading this edition of Sfermion’s Collider, please don't forget to subscribe below and follow Sfermion on Twitter to get the latest! Check out our Seam (💰) bio here :)
Web3 Updates
Coinbase | SEC Lawsuit : Coinbase files a lawsuit against the SEC due to their consistent inability to provide regulatory guidance for the crypto industry. Check out the filing here.
Google Cloud | Web3 Startup Support : Google Cloud is looking to help Web3 builders fast-track their projects by expanding its early-stage support program for the community. The “Google for Startups Cloud Program” initiative, which provides support for startups and emerging projects, will now be offered to builders in the Web3 industry to scale their projects faster and more securely - offering up to $200,000 in Google Cloud credits and technical support over a couple years. Check out their web3 page here.
Optimism | Superchain Token List : The Superchain Token List will simplify the process of bridging tokens between Ethereum and OP Chains built on the OP stack, including OP Mainnet and Base. Read more on OP’s Superchain vision and how things will scale over time.
Google Cloud & Polygon | Tech Partnership : Google Cloud and Polygon Labs are partnering in an effort to simplify the deployment and management of Polygon nodes and increase the adoption of the ecosystem. As part of the alliance, Google Cloud’s Blockchain Node Engine will support Polygon.
Circle | Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol Launch : Circle has launched their awaited CCTP - a protocol for multichain stablecoin transfers with the value proposition of capital efficiency, security, and ease of access. They’re integrating with the top bridging providers and also went live with ETH and AVAX bridging here.
Venmo | Enabling Crypto Payments : Crypto transfers on Venmo are on the way, PayPal announced during Consensus 2023. Venmo customers will be able to transfer their crypto to friends natively on the app, and will also be able to move their digital holdings to external wallets and exchanges - a feature that has been live on PayPal since June 2022.
Dapper Labs & NFL | Recent Struggles & Deal Disaster : Dapper Labs realized NFL All Day wouldn’t generate enough revenue to cover the minimum guarantees it had agreed to pay. NFL players association JV OneTeam Partners threatened to sue. The two sides took months to renegotiate a new deal as the NFT market worsened. Dapper also failed to onboard more consumers as the vast majority of NFL All Day buyers had also previously bought NBA Top Shot NFTs. However, a new deal was renegotiated given the market downturn.
FTX | Sells LedgerX for $50M : FTX intends to sell its US-based crypto derivatives exchange LedgerX to M7 Holdings, a subsidiary of an options platform operating out of New Jersey. The bankruptcy estate of Sam Bankman-Fried’s former crypto exchange is expected to generate $50 million from the transaction. FTX CEO Ray confirmed separately that Miami-headquartered LedgerX operated independently from FTX’s other operations.
Binance | AI Sensei for Binance Academy : Binance Sensei is an innovative AI-driven learning tool that is seamlessly integrated with Binance Academy - the ultimate destination for free education on Web3, blockchain, and crypto.
Phantom | Multi-chain Expansion : Solana wallet Phantom is adding support for the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains, allowing users to now transact across 3 chains. The chain support will go live on May 1st!
Trust Wallet & Web3Auth | Simplifying Web3 Onboarding : Trust Wallet, one of the largest self-custodial and multi-chain wallets, has announced a partnership with Web3Auth to enable users to seamlessly onboard and access Web3 services using their existing social login credentials, in addition to other security factors.
Binance US & Unstoppable Domains | Web3 Domains with Polygon : Binance.US has partnered with Unstoppable Domains to offer exclusive .BinanceUS domain names to its customers. The .BinanceUS domain names will be minted on Polygon with no gas fees and renewal fees.
Solana Labs | Open-Sourced ChatGPT Plug-in : Solana Labs has created an open-source reference implementation for a ChatGPT plugin that lets users interact with the Solana network directly from ChatGPT. Users will be able to check wallet balances, transfer tokens, and purchase NFTs once ChatGPT plugins are available.
Magic Eden | Magic Eden AMM comes to Solana : Magic Eden goes live with their AMM on Solana! Check it out for zero fees, prize pools, new AMM features, and more.
NFTFi | Platform Rewards : NFT lending platform implements a reward system (also rewarding OG users with OG points) to incentivize platform usage and growth.
Gaming Updates
Krafton & Naver Z | PUBG Creators Aim for Metaverse Launch : Krafton, the studio behind PUBG, said that its metaverse gaming platform (Migaloo) will launch in 2023. Krafton and South Korean augmented reality firm Naver Z have created a joint venture company based in North America and poured $36.8M into Migaloo’s development. Migaloo is being developed by a AAA game studio and aims to offer a “create-to-earn” system in which users can create, buy, and sell in-game assets as NFTs. It sounds like the world of Migaloo could resemble something like Roblox, but with NFTs.
Microsoft | Activision-Blizzard M&A Blocked by UK : Britain's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) are looking to block the Activision-Blizzard acquisition due to growing concerns around a monopoly forming in cloud gaming. There’s been a lot of back and forth around this deal, and this latest update makes it a bit more complicated for Microsoft to successfully close the deal. We shall see as things develop further.
Apple & Epic Games | Appeal Decision Update : Apple has won an appeal in an antitrust claim from Epic Games' following years of legal battles. Today's decision said Apple still violated California law for anti-steering, directing app users to different payment methods. It also signals that Apple’s control over the App Store and the fees it charges likely won’t significantly change as a result of an ongoing legal challenge by Epic Games. Epic may have to compensate the tech giant for its legal fees following the decision.
Razer & Roblox | Bundled Digital Items : Razer and Roblox have signed a partnership for branded peripherals bundled with in-game items. Roblox has been at the forefront of brand partnerships in gaming as its sandbox style and open platform has made the title a favorite platform for brands exploring the metaverse. However, this is the first time Roblox is releasing branded peripherals - this mix of physical and digital rewards/access will be interesting to see unfold. This whole thing screams NFTs to me!
Animoca & 1FC | Mobile Strategy Fighting Game : Notre Game, an Animoca Brands company, is making a MMA NFT-based mobile strategy fighting game alongside the MMA brand One Championship. The One Fight Arena game is currently slated for an early 2024 launch, with early player testing beginning later this year. One Fight Arena will also be released as a F2P mobile game for those looking to play entirely for free with no token elements in the mix.
Portalverse & Google Cloud | Web3 Cloud Gaming Support : Portalverse Network, the leading decentralized real-time rendering and cloud gaming network, has announced a new collaboration with Google Cloud to accelerate the development of Web3 cloud games. Portalverse will leverage Google Cloud’s world-class infrastructure and expertise to accelerate the development of the Portalverse Network, providing a seamless and immersive gaming experience for players around the world.
Microsoft | Game Pass Success : Xbox Game Pass appears to be the main growth driver within Microsoft's video game business, with revenue from subscriptions reaching nearly $1B this quarter.
Mythical Games & NFL | NFT Mobile Game : Mythical Games’ blockchain-enabled NFL Rivals is ready for primetime as the mobile video game is now available to the general public on Apple and Android. Mythical CEO sees NFL Rivals attracting more than 10 million gamers this year.
Mythical Games | Polkadot Superchain : Mythical Games and Polkadot have teamed up to create “the largest and most connected gaming ecosystem in web3.” The Mythos “Superchain” for the Mythos Ecosystem aims to lower barriers to entry into web3 gaming.
Mighty Action Heroes (💰) | Public Beta Access Window : During April 28th-30th 2023, Mighty Action Heroes will launch a brand new build with new heroes, abilities, and more. The playable content will still be token-gated to existing NFT holders. Should be a fun experience for those able to access!
Shrapnel (💰) | Token Airdrop Snapshot & Details : Operator holders, be sure to follow the steps here to link your NFT to a wallet BEFORE 5/1 to be eligible for a token airdrop. Follow along on Twitter or Discord for more details.
ChainMonsters | Paused Development : OG ETH NFT project and web3 game, ChainMonsters, have made the difficult decision to pause developments until they can source proper funding - which is the main focus to get back to game launch/development.
Kinetix | Text-to-Animation AI tool for UGC : Kinetix, the AI startup bringing emotes to video games and virtual worlds, has announced Text2Emotes, a generative AI technology that heralds a new era of UGC. Text2Emotes offers one of the first-ever examples of AI which can create high-quality, playable 3D animations and emotes from basic text input. Text2Emotes will be added to the Kinetix Studio and existing Kinetix SDK, which already offers a ready-made, fully customizable emote wheel and a constantly growing library of more than 1,000 emotes across PC, console, and mobile.
Research & Interesting Reads
Outlier Ventures | Q1 2023 Fundraising Market Round-Up
1kx | Crypto-Native NFT IP : A New Era for Consumer Brands
Deconstructor of Fun | Web3 Gaming Consolidates to Survive
Starkware | Starknet Goals & Roadmap for 2023
Philip La | Unlocking Web3 Games on Mobile
TheCoreLoop | The Ronin Experience
NFT Drops & Updates
Yuga Labs | Wins Ryder Ripps Legal Battle : Yuga Labs wins an injunction against “copycat” NFTs, “RR/BAYC”. Yuga Labs initiated a lawsuit against the creators, Cahen and Ripps, last summer. The BAYC team accused them of scamming buyers by creating and selling counterfeit NFTs. The groundbreaking legal battle concluded with a victory for BAYC on Friday, despite the copyright project burning the NFTs in February.
RTFKT & Nike | Air Force Forging Live : Air Force 1 Forging Event is live, featuring Takashi Murakami’s first ever Air Force 1 collaborations. The Forging Event will run from April 24th until May 8th.
Doodles | The Stoodio Early Beta Access : As part of the larger Doodles 2 roll-out and migration to Flow, the Doodles team announces The Stoodio, the new home for the Doodles experience. Early beta access opens on April 28th.
PROOF & Mona | 3D World for Moonbirds Community : Proof is working with 3D world-building platform Mona to unveil “Moonbirds Monaverse,” a new social and virtual world for the Moonbirds community. Mona will provide technical support to help Proof expand the virtual world space, with the collaboration aimed at creating community experiences such as live town halls, viewing parties and art reveals.
VeeFriends & Snoop Dogg | NFT Music Single Collab : World-famous rapper and icon, Snoop Dogg, joins forces with VeeFriends. The initial announcement was made during VeeCon 2022. and will include the release of a new single by Snoop Dogg on 4/28 with burn mechanics and rewards along the way as incentives.
Steve Aoki & 3LAU | Punx NFT Music Single Collab : DJs Steve Aoki and 3LAU announced that their first single “Concentrate” from PUNX, the collaborative Web3 music project that uses CryptoPunks IP, which will drop to community members on April 28th. “Concentrate,” which includes the audio and accompanying art, will be available through Blau’s music rights marketplace, Royal, in efforts to democratize ownership in the song.
Lympo & DigiSports | Animoca Subsidiary & Former UFC Champion NFT Drop : Lympo, Animoca subsidiary and the sports NFT ecosystem, are partnering up with former UFC champion Rose Namajunas to bring the fighting fans to NFTs/Web3.
Notable Raises
Katmai | $22m raise : Katmai has raised $22M for its new take on remote work with a new 3D virtual office platform. The company integrates its video conferencing with a real-time 3D engine, bringing people together within immersive, customized, photorealistic environments — all accessible through a browser with no virtual reality headset needed.
Fluree | $10m raise : Fluree, which has developed a graph ledger database and data pipeline toolset for trusted-, interoperable-, secure-data management and sharing, announced it has closed a $10M Series A funding round led by SineWave Ventures, Eve Atlas, Augment Ventures, Nanban Ventures, Wave Financial, among others. Fluree will use the new capital to expand its Web3 data platforms and enterprise offerings to adopt trusted data ecosystems and secure data collaboration.
Metagravity | $9.5m raise : Next-generation virtual world and metaverse infrastructure, has raised $9.5M in a Seed round of funding from Sino Global, Spartan Group, Market One Capital, and several other investors. With the funding, Metagravity plans to offer unlimited scale, with the capacity to support over one million CCUs, deliver sustainable unit costs (with breakthrough efficiencies in cloud compute costs per user as low as 1% of current technologies), and aims to provide seamless integration into any game engine and cloud platform.
TinyTap | $8.5m raise : TinyTap, edtech company owned by Animoca Brands, raised $8.5M from investors, including Sequoia China and Polygon. TinyTap was founded in 2012 in Israel. It offers a library of over 250,000 educational games in 24 languages, made by teachers and publishers. The games are created using TinyTap's code-free authoring platform and can be accessed by users as part of a subscription or individual courses. TinyTap said it is among the top 10 grossing kids apps worldwide, with 9.2M registered users with content created by over 100,000 creators. Its educational content is focused on young learners from pre-K to grade 6.
Giddy | $6.9m raise : Crypto wallet startup Giddy has raised $6.9M in new funding. Investors in this round included Pelion Venture Partners, Peak Capital Partners, Clarke Capital and others. Giddy said proceeds will be used to further its strategy to bring crypto adoption to masses through its "recoverable self-custody smart wallet technology.”
Cata Labs | $4.2m raise : Cata Labs, a blockchain infrastructure startup, has raised $4.2M. The round was led by Spartan Group and included participation from Robot Ventures, Maven 11, Alchemy Ventures, HashKey Capital, Circle Ventures and Superscrypt, among others. Cata Labs is building Catalyst, a cross-chain bridge that aims to make it easier for blockchains to communicate with each other.
Rise | $3.8m raise : Rise, payroll and compliance platform, raises a $3.8M seed round co-led by Sino Global Capital and Polymorphic Capital.
Flow | $3m raise : Flow, NFT aggregator and future NFT roll-up ecosystem, has raised $3M seed funding round led by Nima Capital and participation from Shima Capital. Flow will soon integrate AI into its platform such as LLM-based NFT analytics solutions, cutting-edge agents to automate trading and tools for the community to create and deploy NFTs.
MetaCRM | $2.5m raise : MetaCRM has raised $2.5M in a seed round led by Cherubic Ventures. MetaForm, collects feedback and data and offers other features like smart airdrop. MetaDesk aggregates customer tickets using on-chain tags to provide a single view of multichain transactions. MetaPanel compiles on and off-chain activities to create comprehensive user profiles and generate insights for brands. MetaCRM plans to integrate AI chatbot ChatGPT into the system.
Shield | $2.1m raise : Web3 security firm, Shield, has raised $2.1M in pre-seed funding to build an industry standard that keeps businesses and consumers safe from potential threats. The funding round for the company, which is also member of crypto investment firm a16z’s Crypto Startup School, included participation from Kraken Ventures, Eterna Capital, Alchemy, and MoonPay. Shield starts with a certification program that helps businesses determine where their vulnerabilities lie and then recommends products to keep users safe. Currently, Shield offers an API that helps identify potential scams within a protocol, as well as a Discord bot that helps monitor community-based malicious activity.
Tribe3 | $2.1m raise : Tribe3, a social and gamified decentralized NFT futures exchange, has raised $2.1M to drive the next phase of its development, including launching public beta (app.tribe3.xyz) on 5/3, accelerating growth, and scaling up operations. Investors that participated in the funding rounds include Spartan Capital, Newman Capital, Infinity Ventures Crypto, among others.
FlappyMoonbird | $2m raise : Flappy Moonbird raises $2M in Pre Series B led by FBG Capital for further game development and scaling.
HypeSaints | $1m raise : HypeSaints raises $1m in funding from Find Satoshi Labs and ProDigital Fund to built out their web3 entertainment ecosystem and NFT activations.
GOMBLE | Unknown raise : Binance Labs has committed investment in a seed funding round of GOMBLE, a blockchain-based game developer that is an affiliate of South Korean casual mobile game publisher 111Percent. GOMBLE aims to enable casual gamers globally to experience blockchain games with sustainable reward mechanisms. Another focus is on advancing NFT interoperability through the development of mobile-based blockchain.
DegenReborn | Unknown raise : DegenReborn, web3 text-based game, closes strategic funding from P12, CyberConnect, Galxe and Era7. The game has already gained significant traction, with over 17,599 unique paid wallet addresses and 395 $BNB in total volume during its 72-hour beta test, ranking #4 on Dappradar BNBChain Game Sector and BNB Chain Gas Buzzler charts.
Mo & Andrew's Curated
Metaverse Live Ep. 13 - Has Crypto Bottomed?
Zima Red Ep. 144 - Bilawal Sidhu - How AI is changing creative technology and everything else
Zima Red Ep. 145 - David Mařák - AR & VR: The future of immersive technology
Web3 Tweets
Coinbase takes another formal step to seek regulatory clarity from SEC for the crypto industry
Coinbase Blog, stories from the easiest and most trusted place to buy, sell, and use crypto
8,717
Coinbase integration to launch world’s first Bitcoin real estate marketplace
Learn more: solana.com/news/announcin…
Gaming Tweets
How are you today?
It couldn't come at a better time. With AI + new platforms, I believe it's the best moment in history to start a games company.
What to build? Well, here's a cheat sheet of AI x Games ideas we're looking for applicants in.
@PlayWildcard is the first project to receive our S-tier rating.
Find out why, as the founder of the WolvesDAO will share his insights
NFT Tweets
mdvmm.xyz
This drop is a collaboration between @adidas, @gmoneynft, & @punkscomics. The drop also includes seven other products available to non-token holders…
Random Tweets
We had a ton of fun building this!
Read on for the details:
View thread to see what it can do
Guess what: most teams and leaders suck at hiring. But they don't have to.
Here are ten tips to help you hire the best:
💰 = Sfermion Portfolio Company
Curated by @mopat1214 + @AndrewSteinwold
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