Solana-based gaming platform Arcade2Earn raises $3.2 million: Exclusive

Arcade2Earn, a play-to-earn gaming platform built on the Solana blockchain, has raised $3.2 million in a seed funding round led by Crypto.com Capital.

Other investors included Solana Ventures, Shima Capital, KuCoin Labs and GSR, Arcade announced. The funding was realized via a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT), Arcade co-founder Jaleel Menifee told The Block. The company’s utility token is known as arcade.

Funding across web3 investments has tumbled this year, but gaming projects are still popular with the most venture funding going to NFTs and gaming in the third quarter, according to The Block Research. 

Arcade claims to differ from the plethora of web3 gaming platforms with its unique concept called “mission pools” that allow gamers to make money without owning NFTs.

Users can contribute to a specific mission pool using the xarcade token (the synthetic version of arcade), Menifee said, which is comprised of operators and contributors. Anyone approved by Arcade can be a mission pool operator, including a gaming guild. Operators will be able to play games using NFTs owned by Arcade’s treasury or lent to Arcade, which are then used to generate rewards.

Mission pool contributors, on the other hand, are arcade token holders who get to decide which operators and in-game activities they wish to support by depositing their xarcade tokens in a mission pool. The deposited xarcade token is locked in the mission pool and returned upon completion along with a proportionate share of the rewards.

“Not everyone is good at playing or has time to play games and earn,” Xinlu Yu, head of KuCoin Labs, said in a statement. “This is where Arcade fills the gap by enabling those groups of people to enjoy earning yields through their specific products without directly playing the games themselves.”

The Arcade platform is under development, with its demo scheduled to launch before the end of the year, Menifee said. The public launch of the platform and the token will follow.

There are currently 20 people working for Arcade, including its six co-founders. The firm isn’t looking to immediately add to its headcount.

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