Quick take:
- Proof of Play has completed a $33 million seed round co-led by A16z’s Chris Dixon and Greenoaks’ Neil Mehta.
- Naval Ravikant, and Balaji Srinivasan, as well as founders of Twitch, Anchorage Digital, Mercury, Firebase, Zynga, and Alchemy also joined the round.
- Proof-of-Play will use the funds to scale its team and develop infrastructure that empowers players to create feature-rich autonomous worlds.
Proof of Play has launched with a $33 million seed round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz Chris Dixon and Greenoaks’ Neil Mehta. The fundraising also attracted participation from Naval Ravikant, and Balaji Srinivasan, as well as founders of Twitch, Anchorage Digital, Mercury, Firebase, Zynga, and Alchemy.
The company plans to use the funds to scale its team and beef up studio technology and infrastructure that empowers players to create features to craft and scale autonomous worlds. The studio has also added former Twitch CEO and Co-founder, Emmett Shear to its board.
Proof of Play wants to revolutionise blockchain gaming with a concept that allows new players to join without learning about the technology and buying non-fungible tokens (NFTs). For reference, most blockchain games are token-gated, meaning players must purchase game tokens to gain access, while game assets and skins are sold as NFTs.
“Through a set of technological and product innovations, the company aims to quickly immerse players in fun gameplay, without having to learn new technologies, buy expensive NFTs, or experience other complicated barriers to entry,” the Studio wrote in a press material shared with NFTgators on Thursday.
Proof of Play was co-founded by former executives of some of the leading mainstream gaming companies including Epic Games, Zynga, EA, Activision, Google, Facebook, Disney, and Warner Brothers with FarmVille co-creator, Amitt Mahajan as its CEO.
The Studio’s inaugural game Pirate Nation, a social role-playing game (RPG) where players build their ships, recruit their crew, and battle fun enemies to rise up the ranks in a leaderboard was released in beta in December 2022.
Commenting on the fundraising, Amitt Mahajan, Co-Founder and CEO of Proof of Play said: “As one of the creators and lead developer of FarmVille, the #1 Facebook game played by over 300 million people, I saw first-hand what the amount of energy and storytelling players put into games they love. When the game shut down in 2020, however, over a billion hours of playtime, creativity, and investment was lost. Realizing this, I felt compelled to find a better way to make games timeless.”
According to Mahajan, Proof of Play is committed to developing fully on-chain games and has added tools that will help players create autonomous worlds, which in his view ensures longevity.
This level of autonomy gives players the ability to remix the game by adding or removing content, empowering them to actively participate in the game’s evolution.
The company’s novel infrastructure pushes the limits of decentralisation, which ultimately creates “a ‘Forever Game’ that does not rely on creator intervention or external servers to continue to operate,” Proof of Play wrote in a press release.
Chris Dixon, Founder and Managing Partner at A16z crypto commented: “We’re thrilled to be backing Proof of Play as they build an on-chain gaming future with composability, interoperability, and permanence at the core of gameplay, enabling players to truly own their assets and anyone to create a new game on top of another. Amitt is a brilliant founder with the unique ability to develop games that people love to play as well as innovate on the underlying tech stack to push the boundaries of on-chain performance and possibilities.”
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