Welcome to This Week in the Metaverse, where Fortune rounds out the week’s most interesting stories about NFTs, culture, web3-based gaming and, well, the metaverse. E-mail marco.quiroz-gutierrez@fortune.com with tips.
For our first edition, let’s start by taking a closer look at Horizon’s ambition for blockchain gaming.
It’s a tough time for crypto markets as even famously bullish VCs pull back, with global funding for venture-backed crypto startups dropping 50% from Q2 to Q3. But one bright spot is Horizon Blockchain Gamesthe Toronto-based Web3 products and infrastructure company that raised $40 million this week in a round led by Brevan Howard Digital and Morgan Creek Digital.
CEO Peter Kieltyka declined to reveal Horizon’s valuation after the funding, but he told me the money will be used to grow his 60-person team, especially in the marketing and business development departments.
“To be taken seriously, you need the money so you can hire the best so you can do the job,” Kieltyka said.
The company needs the extra hands for its expansion plans Seriesthe Web3 developer platform that forms the basis for the main product, the blockchain trading card game Skyweaver.
“It’s really an engine for enabling a new set of digital-good primitives and integrating them into your video game with ease,” Kieltyka added.
The Sequence platform also includes: Sequence Wallet, a non-custodial wallet built for Web3 games that has a social login — think Google or Apple or Facebook — to help new crypto newbies on board. Using smart contracts, wallet users can also easily transact across different chains using a stablecoin-like USDC.
One of Horizon’s leading investors, Brevin Howard, thinks Horizon has the potential to have an outrageous impact on the blockchain gaming space. It called Horizon the “web3 Epic Games + Google” and Kieltyka the “Tim Sweeney of Web3” in a blog post this week, drawing a parallel between Horizon’s Sequence platform and Epic’s Unreal Engine, which Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games, said. says it’s the underlying technology for nearly half of all upcoming console games.
Kieltyka himself didn’t exactly shy away from the comparison — “I’ve got 15 years to get there,” he told me — though he did say he wants Sequence’s platform to remain open source at some level. Still, he said he plans to launch a Sequence Pro model for businesses that could work as a software-as-a-service system.
Are NFT Sales Ready to Recover?
Monthly NFT Sales jumped above $947 million, Decrypt reported, in a rare sign of life for a market that is cratering. But things may not be as bad as they seem. DappRadar Head of Research Pedro Herrera told me that while, yes, volumes have declined, the number of transactions and the number of transactions remained constant at about 2 million from Q2 to Q3.
Thanks to DappRadar
Elsewhere
Cool Cats group received an undisclosed investment of Animoca brands, building on its gaming partnership. The company said the investment “will drive Cool Cats’ mission to become the largest global NFT brand and a robust media and content company, including by expanding its gaming offerings.”
Steve Youngthe former NFL quarterback who won the Super Bowl in 1995 plans to make his metaverse-related company public, movella, through a SPAC. The company specializes in sensors, software and analytics that enable the digitization of movement, according to a registration request.
UnlikelyBritish virtual world technology maker who worked on Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Otherside metaverse is approaching another $100 million round from blockchain tech firm Elrond that would value the company at $3 billion, according to the Financial times. While at the time the company raised $500 million in the largest-ever funding round for a UK startup, in 2017 it has used up almost all the money it has raised since its launch in 2012.
Three times as much NFT Trademarks filed this year compared to 2021, according to US Patent and Trademark Office data compiled by trademark attorney Mike Kondoudis. This means more companies are securing their intellectual property for potential Web3 products, although it doesn’t necessarily mean they will launch them.
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