Fractal, the US-based operator of an online marketplace for gaming non-fungible tokens (NFTs), has received $35m in seed funding from investors including corporates Animoca Brands, Solana Labs and Coinbase.
Paradigm and Multicoin Capital co-led the round, and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase took part through its Coinbase Ventures unit while blockchain game developer Animoca Brands and blockchain technology provider Solana invested directly.
The round was filled out by Andreessen Horowitz, Shrug Capital, Crossover, Play Ventures, Position Ventures and private investors such as Mark Pincus, Do Kwon and Tim Ferriss.
Fractal came out of stealth in December 2021 and its platform will allow gamers to buy and sell NFTs in the primary market – in which they are dropped by the gaming companies themselves – and the secondary peer-to-peer markets.
The product will initially be built on the Solana blockchain due to the low cost and high-speed transactions, which would theoretically be more appealing to game developers. The seed financing will be used to grow its engineering and game development teams.
The company recently launched a launchpad for new games, helping developers sell the initial NFT collections online. Fractal claims only 5% of the applications are accepted and that every game which has gone through Fractal Launchpad sold out its NFT collection.
Fractal co-founder Justin Kan, who also founded gaming platform Twitch, said: “NFT marketplaces are still the wild west right now, with many teams failing to deliver on their promises. We are working with the best AAA gaming studios with large communities to bring the coolest game experiences to players.
“The transition to blockchain assets is a new business model for gaming, and in 10 years will be an even bigger shift in the gaming world than Twitch was. Fractal hopes to onboard the next 100 million crypto users through blockchain games.”
