• Midnight

  Participated · Seed · Nov 2022

  Midnight is a gaming company that emerged from stealth to build a studio and platform focused on creating never-ending stories across free-to-play and premium titles. It is developing a novel web3-based 'forging' system intended to create true interoperability and a robust player-driven economy while ensuring games are enjoyable without the NFT layer. The company was founded in late 2021 and is based in Los Angeles. Midnight now has more than 60 people working on four titles — including Legion (a 4X MMO), Next Protectors (a 2D pixel brawler), and At Your Service (a couch co-op) — and is scaling rapidly. The team is led by industry veterans including CEO Steve Wade and CTO Steven Spagnolo, with Chris Heatherly, Geoffrey Hunt and Bill Roper in senior creative and product roles. The company plans to build a vibrant slate of first- and third-party games across platforms and genres, and will release more information on its titles and platform in coming months.

• Carv

  Participated · Seed · Nov 2022

  Carv is a US-based decentralized identity authentication service provider focused on gamers. Its core product aggregates player data from both Web2 and Web3 into a single unified user ID. The company offers white-label data services to game operators, enabling operators to query new users' cross-platform data. Carv announced on X that it completed a new strategic funding round. Japanese Web3 game company double jump.tokyo Inc participated in the round; the amount and valuation were not disclosed. The article includes no operating metrics or additional financial details. Carv provides a modular data layer and toolset that enables users to control, authenticate and monetize their data for web3 gaming and AI use cases. Its core offerings include CARV Protocol (a cross-chain data layer and web2-to-web3 identity bridge), CARV Play (a cross-platform credentialing and game distribution system) and CARA, a personalized AI gaming assistant integrated with web3 wallets. The company promotes user-owned data and revenue-sharing, and has created a unified user ID standard (ERC-7231) to enable data portability. Carv has been profitable since December 2023 and reports more than $1 million in monthly recurring revenue, with significant month-over-month growth. It has 2.5 million registered users and over 350 integrated gaming and AI company partners. With new funding, Carv plans to scale its CARV Portal design and launch CARV Link for on-chain identity/authentication and CARV Database to manage varied user data types. CARV builds an intent-centric, composable SSI oracle and incentivized data-sharing protocol alongside an AI-powered gaming superapp called CARV Play. The protocol launched in Q3 2023 and combines confidential computation, decentralized incentive layers, an ID NFT (ERC7231) standard and an account-abstraction wallet to lower adoption barriers. CARV positions users to capture value via passive income from historical data and active income from brand interactions, and it enables brands to access first- and zero-party data using TEE and zero-knowledge proofs. The company reports more than 1.2M users and 600+ gaming studios interacting with the protocol through its application layer. CARV is expanding the protocol into a decentralized, general-purpose, multi-application ecosystem and is accelerating growth of its gaming application globally. The company held an ID NFT minting event and early onboarding in December 2023 to onboard initial users and partners. Carv provides an engine that aggregates gamer data from web2 and web3 and ties that information to unique user IDs, with a white-label data service for game operators to query cross-platform user data such as reputation and achievements. The DID is compatible with more than 20 Layer 1 networks, including Ethereum and Solana, which the company says will allow it to cover roughly 95% of blockchain games. Six months after launching its beta, Carv has partnered with over 90 games and exceeded 300,000 registered users, about 160,000 of whom are active monthly and spend an average of nine minutes per session. Carv is already generating revenue from its white-label data service and by taking a cut of NFT sales launched by games on its platform. The company plans to expand beyond games into other user scenarios over time and to enable customized user experiences such as tipping, which it would fee as a microtransaction. Its focus on lowering onboarding friction for web2 users aims to make DID more user-friendly than wallet-based flows like MetaMask.

• Theia Studios

  Participated · Equity · Nov 2022

  Theia Studios is an Oakland, CA-based independent game studio focused on a web3 creator platform for turn-based strategy games. Its toolkit includes a map editor, asset pipeline, scripting framework, economy builder, and other creator tools that enable building and monetizing strategy games. The studio will also develop the first games in the Theia ecosystem, beginning with Icons of Theia, whose closed beta is scheduled to start on November 10th. Led by CEO Dylan Sena, CTO Kaustubh Garimella, and CRO Guilherme Arten-Meyer, the team said it will use fresh capital to accelerate growth and expand operations. The company raised $2.4M in funding from a syndicate of investors.

• Chillchat

  Participated · Seed · Jun 2022

  Chillchat is a casual social metaverse powered by a Pixel Editor, World Builder and the Solana blockchain that lets players create and mint Worlds, Characters, Items and Pets. The platform emphasizes user-generated content and a "Create2Earn" model that enables creators to monetize assets as NFTs. Chillchat plans to launch a web platform later in the year to allow players to create new Characters, Worlds and experiences, followed by an IDO on Raydium and an IEO on a to-be-confirmed exchange. Additional roadmap features include real-time NFT trading in‑metaverse, multiplayer adventures with Pets, custom Tilesets, NFT stores/museums, and tools to turn Worlds into playable games. The company has generated secondary-market activity for its Origins NFTs (1,000 of 1,500 minted in a public sale), with a current floor price at 22 SOL (~US$880), a top secondary sale at 120 SOL (~US$4,800) and total Origins sales volume of 42,856 SOL (~US$1.7M). Chillchat continues weekly Origins auctions and ongoing feature development to scale creator onboarding and tokenomics.

• Ascenders

  Participated · Equity · Mar 2022

  Ascenders is an upcoming AAA action role-playing game being developed by Legendary Foundry Games that combines traditional high-end game design with blockchain mechanics. Set in a sci-fantasy open world, the title lets players choose among multiple economic “lanes” (Explorer, Fighter, Builder), own their in-game assets as NFTs, and participate in a self-sustaining, player-run economy. The development team includes veterans from Activision, Rockstar North, Ubisoft, and Electronic Arts who have shipped blockbuster franchises such as Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and Marvel’s Avengers. The company plans to use Avalanche’s Subnet technology to deliver richer on-chain gameplay features and frictionless user experiences. Fresh capital will be deployed to expand the studio’s roster of world-class developers and accelerate production toward launch, while community-building events are slated for the coming months. To date, Ascenders has raised US$6.4 million, giving it financial runway to scale game development and marketing efforts ahead of its Web3 release.

No current team members are available.