Quick take:
- Admission into the program is prioritised for guilds that commit to sustainability.
- The program will operate as a dedicated track within Launchpad Luna.
- The first cohort of guilds is schedule to start in May.
Hong Kong-based Web 3 venture capital firm Animoca Brands has partnered with leading global venture accelerator Brinc to launch a new Guild Accelerator Program. Offering a total investment capital of up to $30 million over two years, the program aims to build and grow the global play-to-earn (P2E) guild ecosystem.
This comes after Animoca Brands completed a $359M funding round in January, bringing the valuation of the VC firm to $5 billion. The VC firm’s founder Yat Siu said the company will use the funds to “finance more strategic acquisitions and investments.”
Led by Richard Robinson, entrepreneur-in-residence at Animoca Brands, the program will fund up to $500,000 per guild. The funds will go towards optimising each guild’s performances, scaling growth, driving innovation, setting up management and operational systems, expanding each guild’s user base, and more.
Also supporting the Guild Accelerator Program are experts and mentors such as Brendan Wong (founder of Avocado Guild), Saruboti Sasuke (head of partnerships for YGG), and Howard Xu (co-founder of the Vietnam-based guild Ancient8).
While the Guild Accelerator Program hopes to enable millions of P2E gamers around the world to generate income via blockchain gaming guilds, admission into the program is prioritised for guilds with a commitment to sustainability.
These include guilds that support and give back to player/scholar communities, place importance on energy-efficient proof-of-stake protocols and side chains, and have lower overall carbon footprints.
“As the world enters a new era of work and play, the play-to-earn guilds space has enormous potential for growth. The management of digital assets in games and in the open metaverse represents a significant source of income for hundreds of millions of people,” said Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands. “The future of work in the metaverse is being written today, and we are proud to foster the guilds that are driving the evolution of these new opportunities.”
Manav Gupta, founder and CEO of Brinc added that “guilds can help transform education, skill development, agriculture, R&D and almost any industry where access to tools and assets historically prevented anyone with time to innovate, up-skill and thus earn a living. We’re excited to meet founding teams that challenge the way we think about the applications and impact of guilds across all industries.”
As the fastest growing P2E gaming market, Asia accounts for 45% of the global total. Animoca Brands was an early investor in Axie Infinity and gaming guilds such as Yield Guild Games and Avocado Guild, all of which saw a meteoric rise in 2021.
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