Binance & Animoca Brands Launch $200M GameFi Fund
- The newly established fund will focus on early-stage GameFi projects that are building on the Binance Smart Chain network.
- Both companies will contribute up to $100 million to the program, with Binance investing through its $1 Billion Growth Fund.
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Binance is collaborating with Animoca Brands on a $200 million investment fund that will support gaming projects built on Binance Smart Chain (BSC), the company said in a blog post on 6 December.
According to the announcement, both Binance and Animoca Brands will be contributing up to $100 million to the fund, which will invest in early-stage GameFi startups that are building on BSC. Binance will be investing through its BSC $1 Billion Growth Fund, which was set up earlier this year to become the ecosystem’s accelerator arm for decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and GameFi. The investment director at BSC, Gwendolyn Regina, said in a statement:
“Gaming is one of the strong pillars of Web 2.0, reaching billions of users. Its large-scale real life use case makes it one of the core focus areas for crypto’s mass adoption to onboard retail consumers into the Web 3.0 world. We look forward to working together with GameFi projects to build next-gen scalable blockchains and onboard the next one billion new users into crypto.”
Through this collaboration, GameFi projects building on BSC will have the opportunity to gain expertise from leading gaming giants such as Animoca Brands, as well as collaborate with blockchain experts from the BSC community. A mix of gaming and DeFi, GameFi refers to gaming projects that operate under the play-to-earn model rather than pay-to-win.
Being a major player in the blockchain gaming and open metaverse industries, Animoca Brands aims to provide property rights through NFT and gaming. The company not only has a majority stake in metaverse game The Sandbox, but has also invested in Axie Infinity, Harmony, Bitski, and in NFT trading platform OpenSea.
- Blockchain has not only affected the financial industry but also the gaming world, and game developers are increasingly incorporating the technology into their products.
- Although the technology is extremely secure, it is important to remember that safety starts with the user, and it is up to them to ensure their protection online.
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- The newly launched ecosystem fund is backed by Pantera Capital, Kraken Ventures, Jump Crypto, Kucoin Ventures, Delphi Labs, Flow Traders, Gate Labs and IDG Capital.
- Highest priority will be given to interoperability and DeFi projects, but the fund will also support developers that are building trading platforms, scalability solutions, and PoS infrastructure.
- Binance has officially launched its $1 billion industry recovery fund, and said it is ready to set aside another $1 billion in the near future “if the need arises”.
- Jump Crypto, Polygon Ventures, Aptos Labs, Animoca Brands, GSR, Kronos, and Brooker Group have all joined the fund with a combined contribution of $50 million.