The Proof of Play blockchain game project of former Zynga software development director Amit Mahajan has raised $33 million in seed funding.
Introducing Proof of Play, an onchain game studio & technology company.
We are delighted to announce our $33m seed round led by @a16z and Greenoaks, with participation from incredible angels & founders incl. @naval @balajis @justinkan @jtwald @immad @nikil @gabusch & many more. pic.twitter.com/c2BPShTdik
— Proof of Play (@ProofOfPlay) September 21, 2023
The round was led by venture capital firms a16z and Greenoaks. Among the participants: ex-CTO of Coinbase Balaji Srinivasan, Twitch co-founders Justin Kahn and Emmett Shear, as well as a number of other investors.
Proof of Play bills itself as both a game development studio and a technology company.
“Our mission is to create fun, accessible online games and in the process create new technologies that make it easier for everyone to implement these experiences,” said Mahajan, co-founder and CEO of the startup.
According to him, gamers don’t care what platform—AWS or Ethereum—their favorite game is built on. However, many blockchain products are perceived as complex and require expensive purchases. Therefore, Mahajan’s goal for Proof of Play is to provide users with a “simple and free gaming experience.”
Among the advantages of using decentralized solutions, he named ensuring ownership of in-game items and the permanence of created applications, the existence of which does not depend on the decision of the server owner.
“As one of the creators FarmVille, I’ve seen it firsthand: 300 million players have spent over a billion hours on their digital farms. In 2020, due to the shift from web technology to mobile gaming, FarmVille was shut down and billions of hours of gamer investment were lost forever. There had to be a better way,” Mahajan said.
He emphasized that any data not stored on the blockchain is essentially ephemeral.
According to the statement, Proof of Play will focus on developing its first product, Pirate Nation, which is in beta. This is a fully online role-playing game in which participants assemble their pirate crews, battle fantastic creatures and compete with each other.
Recall that in May 2022, a16z launched a fund of $600 million to invest in “gaming infrastructure and metaverse technologies.”
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