Justin Kan’s Fractal raises $35M for game-focused NFT marketplace
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Twitch cofounder Justin Kan’s Fractal has raised $35 million to build out its marketplace for gaming non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
San Francisco-based Fractal has opened a marketplace for video game players to discover, buy, and sell gaming NFTs. Fractal recently released Fractal Launchpad, a new product that helps game companies sell their initial NFT collections to the public.
Paradigm and Multicoin Capital led the round with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Solana Labs, Animoca, Coinbase, Play Ventures, Position Ventures, Zynga founder Mark Pincus, Crossover, Shrug Capital, TerraForm CEO Do Kwon, and Tim Ferriss.
Paradigm’s Matt Huang will be joining the company’s board. This financing round comes two months after launching Fractal to the public on December 30, 2021. The new funds will be used to hire more engineers, recruit and support game developers, and grow a vibrant ecosystem of GameFi participants.
Fractal vets web 3 games for quality, accepting only 5% of applications to Fractal Launchpad, Kan said. Games that have launched on the Fractal launchpad include real-time strategy games (House of Sparta), multi-mode games (Tiny Colony), racing games (Yaku), and massively multiplayer online role-playing games (Cinder and Nekoverse).
“I wanted to partner with the coolest games out there,” said Kan. “We’re building great experiences.”
One of the reasons for being selective is that NFTs have run into a buzzsaw of resistance with some hardcore gamers and game developers. Ubisoft discovered this when fans reacted poorly in December to its NFTs for Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, and others such as Troy Baker,
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