Ancient8 secures $4M in seed to democratize social and financial access in the metaverse

techcrunch.com:

Ancient8, Vietnam’s blockchain gaming guild, develops a community and software platform to enable everyone to play P2E (play-to-earn) games and build the metaverse while earning rewards.

“We lend our P2E game assets to the scholars, or guild players, so they can play P2E games and enable them to earn rewards. Vietnam has a monthly average income of $250, which is not particularly privileged compared to approximately $5,800 for the United States and about $1,000 for the Philippines. We are demonstrable able to improve the financial income and life of our scholars by offering them this opportunity,” co-founder of Ancient8 Howard Xu told TechCrunch.

Ancient8 partners with P2E games to produce educational content for local communities in Vietnam and educate people about both blockchain and P2E games, Xu said. It helps more than 10,000 blockchain game players by providing scholarship and educational opportunities, community, blockchain and software products.

Vietnam is the third-largest country in Southeast Asia with a population of 100 million and skews young in demographics, making the country a ripe market for mainstream adoption of GameFi, Xu added.

“Partnering with our community of gaming enthusiasts and game developers, we are democratizing social and financial access for the first native generation of Metaverse citizens,” said Xu. “Innovative play-to-earn games such as Axie Infinity have changed the status quo, empowering gamers to own a piece of the games that they play and share social and financial rewards by contributing to the community, all while having fun. We are excited to build the infrastructure layer for the future of blockchain gaming and the Metaverse.”

Ancient8 was founded in July 2021 by Xu, Nathan L and