San Francisco-based game developer Zynga, best known for the FarmVille and CSR Racing series, has announced plans to release its first blockchain and NFT-based games this year.
The billion-dollar game studio first made waves in the crypto world last year after appointing 30-year gaming industry veteran Matt Wolf as Vice President of Blockchain Gaming to lead the company’s charge into the burgeoning industry.
Zynga has also announced plans to increase the current blockchain gaming team from 15 employees to anywhere up to 100 by the end of this year. The company may also soon fall under the umbrella of video-game colossus Take-Two Interactive, publisher of Grand Theft Auto which publicly announced a $12.7 billion dollar acquisition move set to close in the first quarter of 2023.
Speaking on the firm’s NFT based gaming plans with Axios, Wolf said that forthcoming blockchain-based games will be brand new titles, as it “doesn’t make sense” to start adding NFTs into existing games such as FarmVille straight away.
He said that players can expect the new games to look something like Mafia Wars, a now-discontinued social media game where players assumed the role of gangsters and worked to build up their crime family.
Zynga has been taking more aggressive steps into the sometimes-controversial blockchain-based gaming sector than many other traditional gaming companies. Hesitancy has been the common denominator from gaming studios as cryptocurrency-related features have often provoked a backlash from angry gamers.
Some players who’ve had NFTs added to their gaming experience feel that companies are just looking for new ways to squeeze money out of their customers.
Wolf has made it clear that the company’s game developers will always have the option to opt in or out of any NFT plans, a lesson he seems to have learned from witnessing internal protests against the technology at fellow gaming companies: EA and Ubisoft.
Despite the criticisms, Wolf sees NFTs and blockchain technology as the obvious next step in Zynga’s evolution with tokenized systems creating new and more realistic forms of value, ownership and wealth creation for gamers.
“By creating an integrated experience that enables players to become owners in their gaming journey, our goal is to expand Zynga’s audience reach and drive stronger engagement and retention,” he added.
Speaking to the New York Times, Wolf said that he’s acutely aware of the difficulties that NFT-based games stand to come up against: “It really is all about community… we believe in giving people the opportunity to Play-to-Earn.”
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD acting in the range defined in recent days without significant downside pressure.
Circling $44,000, traders were mostly preoccupied with a potential retracement, this having the potential to wipe out practically all recent progress.
“Now that we are at monthly resistance we may see a pullback. Even if we do, a higher low to 38K–40K would be “healthy” followed by continuation to 50K+ and a reclamation of our monthly resistance after which point, I’ll have my sights set on a new ATH,” Credible Crypto argued on Twitter.
The long-term picture differed considerably, depending on the source and interpretation of macro market phenomena. While some called for a “melt-up” in stocks that would likewise aid BTC, others were far from convinced that 2022 would be an easy ride.
Has #Bitcoin Bottomed? It Looks Unlikely If #StockMarket Hasn’t – Most assets in 2022 face strong deflationary forces from the excesses of 2021, but Bitcoin appears well poised to come out ahead as it matures to the status of global digital collateral and shows divergent strength pic.twitter.com/oI7dhRvq1i
A contrasting theory reasoned that with short sellers shaken out, there would now be less pressure to drive BTC/USD down to take liquidity.
“The biggest question is: How much more pain can we inflict? All the liquidity’s taken from Short Term Holders, there’s no sell pressure. Market’s had a full healthy reset, while maintaining a bullish structure on the large time frames,” Twitter account Crypto5max summarized.
MACD delivers classic bull signal
In a separate development, Feb. 9 saw the return of a classic bullish chart signal, which has got one analyst particularly excited.
Bitcoin’s moving average convergence/ divergence (MACD), a key frontrunner of bullish phases in 2021 and prior, printed a fresh key crossover this week.
For Matthew Hyland, the implications of the event are clear, based on historical patterns.
“I have been waiting and updating this key reversal indicator to cross for nearly a month and it has finally happened,” he commented alongside a chart showing the MACD signal’s previous impact on BTC price action.
BTC/USD annotated chart with MACD. Source: Matthew Hyland/ Twitter
As Cointelegraph reported, Bitcoin’s relative strength index (RSI) likewise flashed green last week, breaking out of a downtrend in place since November’s all-time highs.
The stock price of popular video game store chain GameStop (GME) surged roughly 13% in one day amid rumors circulating online regarding a partnership with Microsoft to work on NFT gaming.
At the time of writing, GME sits at $115.60 as of market close on Feb. 8 and has also held around that level in after-hours trading according to data from TradingView.
GME started February at around the $100 region and has been pumping this month on the back of GameStop’s partnership with NFT focused Layer-2 Ethereum scaling solution Immutable X to develop its upcoming NFT marketplace. As part of the deal, GameStop is also rolling out a $100 million grant program denominated in IMX tokens for NFT content creators and tech developers.
The latest rumors circulating via channels such as Reddit and Twitter suggest that GameStop may team up with Microsoft to launch NFT integrations into existing games, along with creating new NFT focused games.
Microsoft partnering with GameStop for #NFT and #Metaverse ?? big companies behind the curve will scoop up the existing industry leaders that have been building the space already.
Twitter user “P_MackD” shared a photo earlier today that contained compiled screenshots of tweets from Immutable X and Microsoft execs cryptically posting the “probably nothing” meme regarding the major partnership with GameStop.
Yorke Rhodes III in particular, the director of Microsoft’s blockchain department tagged Xbox, Microsoft and GameStop in his tweet, potentially hinting that the tech giant may have a role to play in the Immutable X and GameStop partnership behind the scenes.
While it is unclear what the exact connection between the three parties is, a Feb. 6 post on the r/Superstonk Reddit community outlined a notable hypothesis of what the partnership could entail.
Commenting on Microsoft’s major $69 billion acquisition of gaming giant Activision Blizzard, bamfcoco1 pointed to the firm’s turn-based player vs player collectible card game Hearthstone as something ripe for NFT integrations via Immutable X and GameStop.
The Redditor argued that Hearthstone’s declining user base from a peak of roughly 23.5 million to 3.5 million was partly due to the hefty costs of card collecting and lack of true ownership over the user’s assets, something which could be solved via NFT integrations:
“With the ability to freely mint and trade NFTs on Immutable X’s platform, it’s a no brainer. GameStop could launch Hearthstone on their brand new Web3 platform by simply making an NFT for every card and then distributing them accordingly to users’ existing card collections. It’s about as easy as it would get.”
It appears that Web3 and NFT related announcements have a strong impact on the price of GameStops shares. Cointelegraph reported in early January that the price of GME gained a whopping 26% in after hours trading after the unveiling of the firm’s new NFT division.
The Meter Passport token bridge platform has incurred $4.4 million in losses due to a smart contract hack which also caused Hundred Finance to lose $3.3 million through under-collateralized loans.
Meter.io’s Meter Passport (MTRG) is a token bridge that is compatible with Ethereum and its sidechains. This attack affected the Moonriver side of the bridge.
Moonriver is a smart contract platform based on Polkadot’s Kusama network. Hundred Finance is a crypto lending platform based on the code for Compound Finance.
Starting at 2pm UTC on Feb. 5 and over the course of several transactions, about $4.4 million in Binance Coin (BNB) and wETH were minted through a “wrong trust assumption” in the code, according to a Feb. 6 statement from the Meter team. In this case, an arbitrary amount of ETH was deposited to Meter which the hacker used to mint tokens using the vulnerability.
1. Around 6am Pacific time we identified someone was able to leverage a vulnerability of the bridge to mint a large amount of BNB and WETH tokens and depleted the bridge reserve for BNB on WETH.
The attack caused a cascade effect across the Kusama-based Moonriver ecosystem. After draining Meter of its BNB and wETH reserves, the attacker sold the BNB on SushiSwap, a popular decentralized exchange. This led to a 77% crash in the price of BNB on Moonriver at the time.
A number of opportunists then took advantage of the price dip by buying cheap BNB. They used the tokens as collateral on Hundred Finance in order to take out FRAX and MIM stablecoin loans. Due to the discrepancy in BNB price, however, their loans were worth more than the collateral they had provided, causing a supply crisis.
2/4. Accounts were able to purchase BNB.bsc at a reduced price and use these tokens as collateral at the global Chainlink price to borrow uncompromised assets on our platform. Of these, MIM and FRAX are currently impacted.
Amazingly, two of the loans were repaid, leaving an outstanding $3.3 million in losses to the Hundred protocol. The Hundred team has attempted to reach out to the parties involved to ask that they return the BNB tokens used as collateral to Meter.
The Meter team has committed to reimbursing its community and Hundred Finance for losses incurred due to the hack. The team stated on Feb. 6 that it had set aside $4.4 million in MTRG tokens to cover initial losses.
“Vfat”, the pseudonymous founder of Hundred Finance, said in a statement to Rekt News on Feb. 6 that:
“Meter have of course accepted responsibility for this hack and are intending to use their native token for reimbursement to the extent that they can, currently we are in the gathering addresses and amounts stage.”
The blockchain security firm PeckShield estimated that in total, 1,391 ETH and 2.74 wBTC were taken by the attacker and have since been sent to Ethereum where the tokens have gone through Tornado Cash, an ETH transactions privacy tool.
The Hundred Finance team has not yet responded to a request for comment.
The initial details of the exploit of Meter’s code resemble the Wormhole hack on Feb. 3 in which 120,000 wETH ($321 million) were maliciously minted and extracted from Wormhole’s platform. In that incident, the hacker exploited a smart contract bug to mint wETH at will and sent the tokens to Ethereum, where they were washed via Tornado Cash.
Zero-knowledge applications platform Aleo has raised $200 million in a solid investment round, pushing the company forward and supporting its goals to develop products and services that encourage and assist developers in building applications on top of its decentralized network.
The Series B investment round was led by Kora Management LP and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, which invest in fintech projects within emerging digital economies. Samsung Next also participated in the raise along with Tiger Global, Sea Capital, Slow Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
Aleo is building a network that integrates zero-knowledge proofs, a cryptography technique that lets the platform become scalable, private and interoperable.
Aaron Wong, an investor at SoftBank Investment Advisers says that Aleo is creating a foundation that ensures that Web3 is scalable, safe and secure. Wong added that this will enhance financial transactions and gaming applications as well.
“As the blockchain industry continues to evolve, it is proving its potential to support a digital ecosystem defined by accessibility, efficiency, and interoperability.
Daniel Jacobs, Founder at Kora Management LP says that the biggest challenges in the industry are privacy and scalability. According to Jacobs, Aleo “will have profound impacts on a large and growing number of applications in the blockchain space and beyond.”
Jacobs explained that the project could protect user and application identity without giving up on performance that’s required to support many users. He also further noted that Aleo will become a catalyst that spurs the next generation of gaming, decentralized finance, and other use cases within the blockchain industry.
As Cointelegraph reported in April, Aleo secured $28 million in a private investment round to bring its platform for zero-knowledge applications to a wider audience. Venture capital firm a16z led the effort followed by investments from Coinbase Ventures, Galaxy Digital, and others.
A Phoenix couple tied the knot with their digital identities this weekend in the first marriage to take place in the Metaverse.
The wedding ceremony took place in Decentraland, complete with witnesses, Supreme Court Justice officiant Clint Bolick, and a virtual crowd of 2,000 guests on Feb. 5.
The bride and groom, Ryan and Candice Hurley hired Rose Law Group to legally formalize the marriage. The group’s Founder and President Jordan Rose claims it was the first-ever wedding hosted on any blockchain-based Metaverse.
“Because the metaverse is still in its infancy, we have developed the legal paradigm for a legally recognized marriage,” she told Cointelegraph.
The wedding ceremony was held on Rose Law Group’s estate on Decentraland. The law group developed a “meta-marriage framework,” by incorporating a “Virtual Premarital Agreement,” which identified the couple’s virtual identities and digital assets as recorded on the blockchain.
Meanwhile, a “Meta-Marriage License” identified, recorded, and tokenized the couple’s virtual identities and place of marriage on the blockchain as an NFT. Rose explained:
“There currently is no legal framework for marriage in the Metaverse, so whether or not it will be legally binding is more a question of contract.”
“Unlike the real world, the metaverse isn’t limited by physical constraints that restrict your perfect wedding. Only in the Metaverse can your wildest, most imaginative dream wedding be a reality,” stated the event description on Decentraland. Rose added:
“We see the future of the metaverse as being truly decentralized and existing almost completely on the blockchain, so the future of marriage in the metaverse will not need to have a record of their marriage in the real world.”
Although the couple seemingly envisioned a wedding of the future, they were met with some rather archaic technical issues. Decentraland struggled to handle the number of guests in attendance, and the NFT gifts for attendees were quickly claimed only about twenty minutes into the event.
Even more, Ryan’s avatar was left at the aisle as Candice’s failed to make a digital appearance — but only for some guests. Depending on which server attendees had been split into, the bride was wearing a dress, a hoodie, or wasn’t there at all.
After struggling to make the ceremony work on Decentraland, one attendee instructed the guests to head to Rose Law Group’s Instagram, where the real-world couple was sealing their vows via a livestream.
Despite Rose’s assurances about the legality of the wedding, it appears that many legal experts remain unconvinced. According to the American Marriage Ministries, people must appear as their real-life selves during a legal wedding ceremony, not as their digital counterparts.
Furthermore, most states in the U.S. don’t even allow a couple to be wed by an officiant remotely via a video conference, or if the couple is in separate locations at the time of the ceremony.
The Hurleys married in the “real world” 14 years ago after meeting on the dating portal Match.com.
Although the wedding is a first of its kind in many ways, it’s certainly not the only instance of a couple wanting to immortalize their marriage on the blockchain.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed a mercifully non-volatile weekend for BTC/USD, which continued to test $42,000 resistance while retaining $40,000 as support.
Friday’s unexpected gap upward initially resulted in misgivings over a price “fakeout,” but at the time of writing, no significant retracement had entered.
“I do not believe this Bitcoin impulse is done,” popular trader and analyst TechDev announced.
Other comments focused on what could be a more sustainable price transformation, William Clemente eyeing $41,000 as a support-resistance flip to secure an attack on levels closer to $50,000 next.
“Pretty straightforward price action-wise for BTC,” he tweeted in fresh analysis on the day.
“Bidding green box(es); would like to see a higher low set for continuation. Flip the 40-41k area as support and can start eyeing 47K which is PoB in confluence with yearly open and STH realized price. Final major area is 58k.”
BTC/USD annotated chart. Source: William Clemente/ Twitter
“Constructive” market needed for altcoin gains
Fellow trader Pentoshi meanwhile said that the time could soon be right to take a position in altcoins.
These suffered heavily in recent months and are now primed for a turnaround should Bitcoin’s own strength persist.
A few requirements
Must have Bullish MS on both USD/BTC pairs or no interest
Must be above 1hr + 4hr ema’s
— Pentoshi Forbes worst trader 40 years running (@Pentosh1) February 5, 2022
While flat on the day, many of the top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap produced significant gains through the week, among them Ether (ETH), up nearly 16% and above $3,000 for the first time since Jan. 20.
On Jan. 26, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission proposed amendments to Rule 3b-16 under the Exchange Act that lacks any mention of digital assets or decentralized finance, which could adversely affect platforms that facilitate crypto transactions. Some cryptocurrency advocates — including SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce — believe that the commission’s extended definition of an exchange could thrust an entire class of crypto entities under the regulator’s jurisdiction, subjecting them to additional registration and reporting burdens. How real is the threat?
The proposed change
The amendments proposed by the regulator dramatically expand the definition of what an exchange is while eliminating the exemption for systems that merely bring together buyers and sellers of securities while not providing facilities for order execution, which are currently not obliged to register as an Alternative Trading System — a class of trading platform within the SEC’s purview. Furthermore, the proposed rule includes “communication protocol systems” within the scope of the term “exchange.”
What it means in practice is that the SEC is claiming regulatory turf over a broad range of platforms that were previously operating outside of its jurisdiction. A particularly worrying point is that decentralized finance protocols could well fit into the definition of communication protocol systems that bring together “buyers and sellers of securities using trading interest.” The commission, as is well known by now, is keen on characterizing most digital assets as securities.
In a statement that followed the publication of the proposed amendments, SEC chairman Gary Gensler specifically emphasized his support for “the element of this proposal that modernizes the rules related to the definition of an exchange to cover platforms for all kinds of asset classes that bring together buyers and sellers.”
The agency’s rationale for introducing the amendments is that the definition of “exchange” must be updated in light of recent technological developments, most notably digitization of securities marketplaces. The proposal states that the new definition is supposed to be “flexible enough to accommodate the evolving technology.”
The SEC also wants to ensure that new digital players remaining unregulated do not enjoy an unfair competitive advantage over established exchanges that carry the compliance burden.
What does it mean for crypto?
Pro-crypto SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce was among the first opinion leaders to ring the alarm over the proposal. She offered a dissenting statement in which she called the document “too wide-ranging.” In follow-up remarks, she expressed her concern that, given the securities regulator’s recent eagerness to regulate all things crypto, the amendments could potentially reach DeFi protocols.
If the new rules are adopted and DeFi systems end up being treated as exchanges, a host of hard questions would arise, including whether it is even possible for decentralized protocols to comply.
Patrick Daugherty, partner at law firm Foley and Lardner and the leader of its blockchain taskforce, calls the SEC’s initiative a “stealth rulemaking proposal,” agreeing with Commissioner Peirce on its potential to be used in targeting crypto industry players. Daugherty commented to Cointelegraph:
It’s a ‘stealth’ proposal because the words ‘crypto’ and ‘digital’ do not appear in the SEC’s 654-page release, but the SEC is plainly aiming at systems (both centralized and decentralized) whose protocols aggregate indications of interest for buying and selling crypto assets, which its chair and its Division of Enforcement (not necessarily federal judges or juries) are eager to classify as ‘securities’ exchanges.
Daugherty further added that, as an alternative to registering as an exchange, a communication protocol system could theoretically register as a “slightly-less-regulated” Alternative Trading System and also register as a broker-dealer. Recalling his own experience of facilitating such a registration for a digital asset platform, Daugherty said that it is “less arduous than full ‘exchange’ registration, but it is labor-intensive nonetheless and entails on-going compliance burdens and expense.”
As a silver lining, what the proposed regulations do not cover are mere speech or mere securities issuance. Entities that only issue securities or act as information conduits, such as software developers that enable price displays, will not fall under the extended definition of an exchange.
Short comment period: Targeting crypto specifically?
The rule change, at least formally, is not a matter of course: The released document calls for public comment on the proposed amendments. However, what makes most crypto advocates uneasy is the egregiously short comment period, which Daugherty called “undue haste.” Thirty days is simply not enough time to formulate a thoughtful response to a wide-ranging, 654-page proposal. Some observers were quick to ascribe the procedural rush to the SEC’s drive to bend the digital asset space within its purview as soon as possible.
While it might be a cold comfort for the crypto folk, the commission’s strategy of cutting the public comment period down is not exclusive to rule changes related to digital assets. A recent study by libertarian think tank Cato Institute found that Gensler’s SEC consistently designates comment periods shorter than the standard 60 days. Furthermore, these periods overlapped with major public holidays on most occasions. This trend stands in stark contrast with the agency’s modus operandi under the previous chairman, Jay Clayton.
Regardless of whether the regulator is intentionally seeking to limit the industry’s capacity to weigh in on the matter, it is certain that the controversial proposal will receive significant pushback from crypto stakeholders and advocates.
Scalability is one of the main hindrances within decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and has created huge barriers to entry. Closely linked to this has been the issue of high gas fees, which continues to be a major pain point for newcomers to the Web3 space. When Web3 goes mainstream, these gas costs will become minimal. For the user, the experience will become completely gas-less like how it is on Web 2.0 applications.
As a result of the lack of scalability and network congestion, gas fees have skyrocketed, further preventing users from performing various transactions on the blockchain. According to YCharts report, the average gas price on Ethereum is at a level of around 146 Gwei at the time of writing. The high cost of gas fees has become a financial nightmare for regular users in the Web3 space. This has led to the search for a solution that improves the decentralized finance ecosystem and makes it more usable and accessible.
Solving the scalability problem
So, the question becomes what steps can we take to minimize gas fees? While there are a number of strategies that can be taken to lower and mitigate gas expenses, most of them can be boiled down to either building a different layer 1 blockchain or making Ethereum better. Another area that has been heralded as a way to tackle this problem would be layer-2 scaling solutions.
Layer-2 refers to a network or technology that operates on top of an underlying blockchain protocol to improve its scalability and efficiency. These layer-2’s use math and cryptography to validate transactions securely without sending as much information to the blockchain. It’s like batching together a thousand transactions for the cost of one, without giving up (too much) security. There is a range of layer-2 protocols that enable Ethereum users to cut their fees down to a bare minimum. Some examples include zero-knowledge Rollups, Optimistic Rollups and Plasma, among others. Each of them comes with different tradeoffs. Some are faster than others, some are more ironclad secure than others.
Gas fees will become thing of the past
Once the scalability issues are solved, gas fees become much more negligible. You can see that the gas fees on L2s are considerably cheaper in the figures below.
The next question becomes, why make the user pay for gas at every step? This is where gasless meta-transactions come into play. Meta transactions take things a step forward by allowing different users to transact on the public blockchain with zero transaction fees. The decentralized application (DApp) developer sponsors the negligible gas on the user’s behalf. This builds a more seamless UX since users don’t need to understand the inner workings of various blockchain platforms and gas fee dynamics.
Meta transactions use cryptography where users have to sign the transaction and authenticate it. The major difference here is that a third party relayer removes the complexities by managing the transaction, paying the gas and, finally, completing the transaction by sending it to a receiving address.
Revolutionizing the Web3 space: Solutions to gas problems
There are a number of strategies besides the aforementioned solutions that can be utilized in order to mitigate or at the very least lower gas expenses:
Scheduling transaction times: Ethereum gas prices are known to fluctuate within the day as different on-chain events take place and as different parts of the world wake up. As a result, there are certain times during the day when gas prices are likely to be considerably lower. One way of lowering gas fees would be to take stock of these times and target them when making transactions. Research from Paxful has pinpointed the busiest and most expensive times to be between 8 AM to 1 PM (EST), with most of Europe and the United States being awake and at work during that time frame. Comparatively, midnight to 4 AM (EST) has been found to be a lot less busy and ultimately less expensive.
Using stable off-chain payment networks: Xpal off-chain payment channel is working to develop a payment solution that allows for instant transaction approvals in seconds by lowest fee through its share gas system. This is done by charging a nominal fee proportional to the payment amount.
Relayer infrastructure: The future of Web3 is multichain and gasless. The various chains, layers-twos and scaling solutions will all seamlessly combine to ensure scalability and speed. In an ideal world, the everyday user would be removed from blockchain headaches. They would not need to sort through all the different chains and layers-twos in order to use a DApp. It would simply happen in the background.
A multichain relayer network is the best solution to enable this vision. As explained in the diagram above, the user forwards their request to a relayer node (executor) who then manages the transaction on the user’s behalf. The DApp can then refund this relayer node with the gas fee for the transaction so the user does not have to either pay the gas fee or manage other transaction parameters to make it successful.
With such an infrastructure, users can connect their wallet to any DApp, instantly access their funds on any chain or L2/rollup and then enjoy a gasless experience everywhere.
Conclusion: The future of Web3
Web3 will only succeed in faster adoption or even replacing Web 2.0 completely if users are able to interact freely without the burden of paying high gas fees.
Everything we have seen in DeFi so far has literally just scratched the surface. We’ve caught a glimpse of what the future will hold for us. UX will play a paramount role, allowing us to scale and onboard new people.
We predict a future where transactions simply become free, instantaneous and safe. Take, for example, when you watch a movie on Netflix, you simply pay the subscription fee without having to deal with operation costs or hosting fees. By simplifying the Web3 user experience, the barrier to entry is lowered, ultimately becoming more open to a wider user base.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
Ahmed Al-Balaghi is the CEO and co-founder of Biconomy. Before that, Ahmed worked for Jabbar Internet Group, a Dubai-based venture capital firm. He also founded Encrypted, the largest podcast in MENA dedicated to fintech, blockchain and crypto assets. Prior to that, Ahmed spent time as a blockchain researcher in Shanghai, China. He has also worked for institutions such as Citibank, Dow Jones and Ofgem.
Last year was impressive for blockchain startups, as research from CB Insights found that venture capital funding reached new heights during every quarter of 2021. According to CB Insights’ “State Of Blockchain 2021” report, $25.2 billion worth of venture capital funding went to global blockchain startups last year, demonstrating a 713% increase from $3.1 billion in 2020.
The report also found that the United States led the greatest amount of funding deals in Q4 of last year, generating $6.26 billion for 157 deals. The document notes that global growth was driven by increasing consumer and institutional demand for crypto-related products and services.
VC funding focused on crypto adoption
Chris Bendtsen, a senior analyst at CB Insights, told Cointelegraph that CB Insights’ report contains data aggregated from private marketing funding from over 3,000 blockchain and crypto companies that the firm regularly tracks. Bendtsen further explained that while the title of the report references blockchain, this serves as an overarching category that includes cryptocurrency, nonfungible tokens (NFT), enterprise blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi). Bendtsen pointed out that the majority of VC funding mentioned throughout the report was allocated to crypto-focused startups. The report states:
“Over $100M mega-rounds (worth $100m+) were the driving force behind blockchain’s record funding year. The 59 mega-rounds in 2021 accounted for just 5% of total deals but 60% of total funding. The biggest mega-round deals went to crypto exchanges, brokerages, NFTs, gaming, and payments.”
According to the report, $1 out of every $4 worth of funding went to crypto exchanges and brokerages, which also equates to a quarter of all global blockchain funding in 2021. Bendtsen remarked that while the biggest deals went to major crypto exchanges such as FTX — which ranked as the second-largest equity deal for brokerages and exchanges in Q4 of 2021 — funding for country-specific exchanges has also been on the rise.
For instance, CoinSwitch Kuber, one of the largest crypto trading platforms in India, ranked No. 4 for top equality deals for brokerages and exchanges in Q4 of 2021, generating over $260 million in its recent Series C funding round. “Based on these findings, it’s become evident that we are seeing the globalization of crypto, as more country-specific exchanges are raising impressive rounds,” said Bendtsen.
Bendtsen further pointed out that global VC funding for crypto custody and wallet providers reached $6.3 billion last year. “Toward the beginning of 2021, a lot of funding was going to consumer-driven exchanges, but there was a shift later in the year that saw major funding rounds go to crypto custody providers and custodians,” he remarked.
For example, the New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG) ranked as the top equity deal in Q4 of 2021 under the category of custody and wallet providers. In December 2021, the institution specializing in Bitcoin (BTC) financial services secured a $1-billion equity investment led by WestCap Group. Fireblocks, the digital asset custody platform, ranked directly under NYDIG with its $550-million raise from Sequoia Capital.
Michael Shaulov, CEO of Fireblocks, told Cointelegraph that he believes investors are paying more attention to custody and wallet providers because this has been the biggest barrier to entry for institutional participation. “Having a direct custody solution and technologies that can plug and play into the crypto capital markets is a game-changer for businesses and individuals alike,” he said.
“Our investors see us as the picks and shovels of the crypto industry. This includes everything from direct custody wallets and settlement networks to compliance integrations with Chainalysis and Elliptic, along with access to staking providers.”
In regard to the company’s latest funding round, Shaulov said that Fireblocks plans to expand its offerings to include securing high-value transactions around DeFi and NFTs. This is important, especially now as the number of scams and fraudulent activities within the DeFi and NFT sectors has increased.
Although criminal activity within the NFT space has started to quickly unfold, the CB Insights report found that funding allocated to NFT startups grew by a margin of 130 times. In 2020, NFT startups generated $37 million in VC funding, which reached $4.8 billion in 2021. “Gaming, marketplaces, and infrastructure are the top 3 NFT categories driving the funding craze,” the report highlighted.
Animoca Brands, which ranked as the No. 1 investor by company count in Q4 of 2021 according to CB Insights, made at least 49 investments in blockchain projects last year. Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, told Cointelegraph that NFT and blockchain gaming overall were major drivers of the growth in funding last year:
“We have always believed that NFTs, and in particular gaming, are key to the mass adoption of blockchain, and I think what happened in 2021 strongly suggests that this thesis will be realized in 2022. It’s interesting to note that in 2021, many new blockchain users entered the world of crypto not because of cryptocurrencies but because they were seeking to acquire NFTs.”
Traditional VCs take an interest
In addition to where funds are going, Bendtsen noted that the CB Insights report found that more traditional investors started taking interest in blockchain startups last year:
“Over the course of 2021, Andreessen Horowitz jumped out as a smart-money investor. They are one of the biggest VC firms in the world and announced a huge crypto-focused fund in June of last year.”
As Cointelegraph previously reported in June 2021, the Silicon Valley venture firm launched “Crypto Fund III,” a $2.2-billion venture fund co-led by Andreessen Horowitz general partners Chris Dixon and Katie Haun. According to the CB Insights report, Andreessen Horowitz was ranked as the No. 3 blockchain investor in 2021, falling under Coinbase Ventures and China’s AU21. “Our numbers show that Andreessen Horowitz invested in 46 blockchain startups last year, the third-most of any investor out there, including the crypto-focused funds. This shows that we are seeing more traditional firms coming into the crypto space,” remarked Bendtsen.
While this may be, Siu noted that Andreessen Horowitz has had a much longer history with blockchain investments. For instance, the venture firm invested in blockchain-company Dfinity in 2018. As such, Siu remarked that while Andreessen Horowitz isn’t new to the space, the company did ramp up its investments in Web3 startups throughout 2021.
“It is very clear that A16z and other major investors like Sequoia China understand the enormous potential of Web3 and of the value that the application of blockchain can deliver, and they are investing accordingly,” he said. Given this, Siu believes that more well-known venture capitalists and firms will continue to invest in blockchain startups, particularly those innovating with NFTs.
Will crypto price volatility impact funding?
While recent growth for blockchain startups has been impressive, crypto price volatility and unclear regulations may create challenges for companies looking to raise funds in the future. For instance,rising inflation in the United States may further impact the price of Bitcoin. Also, unclear regulations around NFTs could be detrimental for new companies entering the space.
Although these challenges should be carefully considered, Bendtsen explained that none of the data recently generated from CB Insights indicates any type of slowing down for funding. “The fact is that these investors view crypto as a long-term play. I, therefore, don’t think the lower crypto prices today will affect startup funding in the future.” Shaulov added that he believes there will be growing agreement around cryptocurrency regulation around the world, which will ultimately fuel retail and institutional adoption.
