SKIES MAVIS, THE INVENTOR OF AXIE INFINITY, RAISES $152M BROUGHT BY A16Z

Source : Ayo News

Sky Mavis, the creators of NFTs breakout title, Axie Infinity, have announced a $152M USD Series B round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) with participation from Accel and Paradigm.

The round will be used to further build out a global team, scale infrastructure, and build their own distribution platform to support game developers to create blockchain-enabled games.

Sky Mavis invented the Play-To-Earn (P2E) concept which has revolutionized how people play, live, work and earn within virtual worlds. Sky Mavis’ first game to introduce this concept is Axie Infinity, a category-defining P2E blockchain-based NFT game where players breed, battle, and trade digital pets called Axie.

Play-to-Earn demonstrates how emerging technologies, such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and cryptocurrencies, are providing transformative economic opportunities for communities, especially in developing nations where jobs are lacking and COVID-19 crisis relief has been limited. NFT-based play-to-earn games are decentralized, meaning that the players own the in-game assets that they purchase and can generate real-world rewards for their in-game activities. Axie Infinity has helped create income-generating opportunities for underserved people around the world; 25% of players are unbanked, and 50% have not previously used cryptocurrencies. This level of ownership and accessibility within the Axie economy is upending society and creating an economically viable digital nation.

Axie has grown to be the largest NFT gaming ecosystem and has amassed players around the world with more than two million daily active users logging into the platform in August. Axie Infinity has already achieved $33 million in daily transactions, for a total volume of over $2 billion.

In traditional gaming, the publishers and the distribution platforms (app stores) have all the power. Sky Mavis is seeking to cut out the middleman and further build out its vision of a community-led digital nation by revolutionizing how games are distributed by building its own platform, The Mavis Hub. The Mavis Hub distributes games on both PCs and Macs, and will seamlessly connect to Sky Mavis’ proprietary Ronin Blockchain, which currently secures over $1.5Bn in assets. In addition to supporting Axie Infinity, The Mavis Hub will support game developers building and distributing blockchain-enabled games.

“Sky Mavis’ marquee game, Axie Infinity, has introduced a new way for anyone to turn their time into money through Play-to-Earn, a new mechanic that allows gamers to transform their skills and time into earnings and distribution rights for tokenized in-game items,” said Arianna Simpson, General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz. “The Axie team has unlocked a new way to build and play games that is already completely redefining this category. The game’s growth is a phenomenal testament to how deeply this model is resonating with people around the world. The Axie team has triggered an earthquake in gaming and the industry is now forever changed.”

“Axie Infinity is a category-defining game that is changing history by creating an entirely new digital economy. We are on a mission to create economic freedom for gamers and are making this happen by turning players into owners of in-game assets unlike the traditional model where publishers, distribution platforms and game developers retain control and benefit the most,” shared Trung Nguyen, Sky Mavis CEO.  “Two million people are playing Axie Infinity from almost every country across the world and we couldn’t have done it without our passionate team members and dedicated community who have jumped on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play a part in disrupting an industry and leaving our mark on history. At the end of the day, we don’t build products, we start movements.” 

Source : Ayo