Fractal, a new marketplace for gaming NFTs founded by Justin Kan, the co-founder of Twitch, has raised $35 million in a seed round led by Paradigm and Multicoin Capital, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Solana Labs, Animoca, Coinbase Ventures, Play Ventures, Position Ventures, Zynga founder Mark Pincus, Crossover, Shrug Capital, TerraForm CEO Do Kwon, Tim Ferriss founders of Ramp and were among the investors in the round.
Matt Huang of Paradigm will join the company’s board of directors. The said funding round comes two months after the public launch of Fractal last December 30th of 2021. The additional funds will be used to hire more engineers, recruit and support game developers, and expand the GameFi ecosystem.
According to Kan, Fractal vets web 3 games for quality, accepting only 5% of applications to Fractal Launchpad. Real-time strategy games (House of Sparta), multi-mode games (Tiny Colony), racing games (Yaku), and massively multiplayer online role-playing games (Yaku) have all debuted on the Fractal launchpad (Cinder and Nekoverse).
If NFT gaming on a fledgling blockchain sounds outlandish, Kan is known for turning outlandish ideas into big businesses. He co-founded Y Combinator startup Justin.tv, his self-named live streaming site that later became Twitch, in 2007.
Despite the issues with bridges and other roadblocks, Kan claims that tools like the Phantom wallet have made it easier for consumers to use Solana.
Fractal, which launched in late December and has raised $35 million in seed funding led by Paradigm and Multicoin Capital, vets games before partnering with them to market them to gamers via its Discord (100,000 members), Twitter, podcasts, and giveaways.
On its marketplace, Fractal charges a 2% transaction fee for secondary sales. David Wurtz, the CEO of Fractal, is credited as a co-creator of Google Drive, which Kan knew because they were both early Y Combinator participants.