Vietnam-based blockchain game studio Whydah secured $25m today from investors including gaming guild Good Guild Games, decentralised technology provider Mask Network and blockchain technology developer KardiaChain as the market for play-to-earn (P2E) gaming continues to intensify.
Hashkey, an affiliate of automotive component producer Wanxiang, filled out the round together with decentralised fundraising platform Polkastarter, Eternity Ventures, Bitscale, Morningstar Ventures, Formless Capital, Youbi Capital and Axia 8 Ventures while KardiaChain took part through its strategic investment arm, Kardia Ventures.
Formed as a subsidiary of blockchain and decentralised finance (DeFi) investment firm Decom Holdings, Whydah aims to develop games by bringing together traditional studio models with distributed blockchain technology and community participation.
Blockchain and P2E gaming has been a magnet for funding recently, a trend highlighted by the deal flow in the past month alone.
Digital entertainment and blockchain technology developer Animoca Brands led an $18m series A round for P2E company Avocado Guild in late November that included fellow corporates Binance, Solana and Polygon, and Animoca Brands and Binance Smart Chain announced a $200m fund to invest in blockchain gaming earlier this week.
Another P2E gaming studio, Mythical Games, raked in $150m last month in a series C round featuring Binance, FTX and the National Football League. A few days earlier, Animoca Brands had led an $18m round for metaverse real estate game developer Upland at a $300m valuation.
Vietnam has been somewhat of a pioneer in blockchain gaming, with game developer Sky Mavis one of the first to see the potential in monetising gameplay via non-fungible tokens (NFTs) through its Axie Infinity game, in which players collect digital figures and use them in virtual battles. NFT sales-tracking firm DappRadar has Axie Infinity pegged as the owner of the largest collection of NFTs in the world.
The funding comes just two months after Whydah formed a cooperation agreement with the seven largest game studios in Vietnam – Topebox, Imba Game, Wolffun Game, Hiker Hames, Divmob, 1B Game Studio and KEIG Studio – to accelerate the onset of blockchain-based gaming.
The partnership, Iron Sail, will be a hybrid effort comprising both fundraising and token sales. In what could almost be described as a demonstration of the use case, Iron Sail – technically a special purpose acquisition company – offered investors buy-ins through a gamified interface set up as a treasure hunt across the seven seas in which they could buy one of 2,500 tokens, called $KEEYS, worth $10,000 each, for a total of $25m.
Duc Trung Phan, chairman of Decom Holdings, said: “Having access to a portfolio of games allows investors to minimise risk in each game. Another special feature of Iron Sail is that Decom Holdings will apply chain of custody standard which will reduce the fraud risk and be the foundation for accessing more attractive hybrid fundraising models in the future.”
