Tag: animoca brands

HK-based Animoca Brands Partners with S. Korea's Cube Entertainment for K-pop Metaverse & NFTs

Animoca Brands is partnering with Cube Entertainment to build metaverse and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as K-pop has been taking the world by storm, the executive chairman of the company said.

The joint venture between the Hong Kong-based Animoca Brands and South Korean entertainment company Cube Entertainment, aims to build a music metaverse, and issue NFTs and ecosystem tokens based on the intellectual property rights of Cube Entertainment’s globally popular K-pop music artists and actors, the company said.

In this partnership, the two companies will work together to create NFTs by using resources, including digital sound sources, albums, portraits, and avatars of popular K-pop artists under the management of Cube Entertainment.

Cube Entertainment operates as a record label, talent agency; music production, event management and concert production company, and also a music publishing house.

Cube Ent has 50 talents under management, including K-pop artists Jo Kwon, BTOB, PENTAGON; entertainers Park Mi Sun and Lee Hwee Jae.

Yat Siu, executive chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands, said: “K-pop is taking the world by storm, and here at Animoca Brands we can’t wait to work with Cube Ent and its roster of K-pop artists as we continue our efforts to make the open metaverse a reality.”

Animoca Brands is a digital entertainment, blockchain and gamification company that is driving digital property rights via NFTs and gaming with an aim to build an open metaverse.

NFTs are digital assets and collectables that possess characteristics normally associated with physical items, including authenticity, rarity, scarcity and other properties that are secured on an internet blockchain system.

As reported by Blockchain.News in October, following the social investment platform Kikitrade’s plan to widen its participation in the blockchain gaming (GameFi) and non-fungible token (NFT) market, Animoca Brands has increased its shareholding in the firm to become the second-largest shareholder.

GameFi, also known as play-to-earn (P2E) games, has seen a recent upsurge enough to dominate the blockchain market for the past several quarters.

Animoca Brands to Cover Losses of Recent Scam Victims

Hong Kong-based Animoca Brands released a statement saying that the company will cover the losses of those who fell victim to an online scam on November 19.

Further details about the compensation on covered losses will be announced shortly, Animoca Brands said.

“The exact nature and mechanism of the compensation will be determined after discussions with the Phantom Galaxies community, but it will involve transfers to users to cover the amounts stolen by the hackers or the delivery of equivalent value. More information will be provided in the game’s official channels,” Animoca Brands said.

The Phantom Galaxies game is currently under development by the Animoca Brands subsidiary Blowfish Studios based in Sydney, Australia.

Blowfish Studios will also be helping Animoca Brands to cover the losses of all victims.

Animoca Brands has warned users about such scams in the future and advised them not to trust announcements that play on the fear of missing out (FOMO).

“Never trust stealth drop/mint events; these events seek to take advantage of FOMO and should be automatically treated as suspect. Animoca Brands and its subsidiaries do not and will not provide offers based on stealth drops/mints. Be extremely cautious of ANY sudden events that require you to part with your funds: genuine events are usually announced in advance in order to allow users to prepare,” the company announced on its website.

On November 19, Phantom Galaxies Discord server was hacked by unknown hackers, who posted fraudulent announcements claiming that the game was launching an immediate surprise NFT mining event – a stealth mint. Following which the hackers directed the victims to a fraudulent crypto mining platform that charged users a 0.1 ETH “minting fee” and stole about 265 ETH (approximately US$1.1 million in total, Animoca Brands said.

The company emphasized that there is no evidence that smart contracts were compromised, and no funds were stolen from the game or its developer and publisher.

Animoca Brands-Backed Lympo Protocol Suffers Hack With Over $162M Loss

The year 2022 might have opened with bearish dips for various protocols and tokens in the digital currency ecosystem. Still, it is now proving to be much worse for Lympo Protocol, a Sports Non-Fungible Token (NFT) platform that Animoca Brands power.

According to a statement shared with its community members, the protocol suffered a cyberattack that duly impacted its hot wallets, leading to a loss of approximately 165.2 million LMT tokens ((worth around USD 16.5m before the hack).

The hack fueled the plunge of the LMT tokens by over 99% in the minutes when the hack was made known, a development that places the coin as one of the biggest losers for the day. Lympo identified as many ten unique wallets that were compromised, noting that it has “enacted safeguards to ensure that no additional LMT could be stolen by the hackers.” 

We are temporarily removing LMT from various liquidity pools in order to minimize disruption to token prices following the hack,” the protocol revealed in a statement, adding, “The attack is still being investigated, but we assure all LMT token holders that we are working hard to resume normal operations as soon as possible. We are preparing a comprehensive plan on how the effects of this attack will be remediated and will share it with our community as soon as it’s available.”

The platform, however, noted “that the majority of the LMT reserve sits in cold wallet storage, and has remained secure and uncompromised throughout the incident.”

Despite the impressive growth outlook of DeFi in the past year, the incidence of hacking remained one of the major talking points and downsides of the growing world of decentralized finance in 2021. From the breach of Poly Network to the hack of Cream Finance and Solana, amongst others, the industry suffered many protocol breaches that made critics cast doubts on the capability of the ecosystem’s security infrastructure to sustain the mass mobility of new users into the space.

The crypto world has many obligations this year, with the most daring being the prevention of hacks and cyberattacks across the board.

Animoca Brands Receives $358M Boost, the Gaming Firm Goes on Acquisition Rampage

Money flow from investors into blockchain-based companies is undoubtedly a trend we would not see its end this year, as one of the most prominent gaming firms, Animoca Brands, has raised $358.88 million from investors led by Liberty City Ventures. 

With the firm now valued at $5 billion, the startup has notably doubled its value from October when it was worth $2.2 billion atop a $65 million funding. Participants in this latest funding round include 10T Holdings, C Ventures, Delta Fund, Gemini Frontier Fund, Gobi Partners Greater Bay Area, Kingsway and other companies.

Animoca Brands is more than a gaming studio; it is also a venture capital firm with a diverse portfolio in various gaming protocols and blockchain-focused startups as a whole. While some of its product brands range from The Sandbox to the upcoming Phantom Galaxies AAA, it has sizable stakes in such platforms as OpenSea, Axie Infinity, and Thetan Arena.

While banking on the new funding, Animoca Brands says it will continue to partner with and fund strategic acquisitions and investments, product development, and licenses for popular intellectual properties. 

“We have set ourselves the ambitious goals of building an open Web3 and facilitating an open metaverse that expands financial inclusion. In 2021 we saw tremendous growth in this space, and Animoca Brands has been one of the forefront leaders in the development of this industry,” said Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands.

With Animoca Brands’ latest funding, the journey to surmount last year’s venture capital funding in the crypto ecosystem has gotten one more major boost.

Sandbox Launches Metaverse Accelerator Program, Offering $50M for 100 Startups

Virtual Metaverse gaming platform Sandbox has launched the Metaverse accelerator program, which will provide 100 startups with $50 million in start-up capital to promote the development of the Metaverse field.

Sandbox, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, said the plan would invest in about 30 to 40 blockchain startups each year. It will launch in the second quarter of 2022.

Investments will be up to $250,000 per startup. And will give top-performing businesses up to $150,000 in grants from SAND and LAND, digital real estate in the virtual world of The Sandbox, as well as follow-on investments.

The Sandbox Metaverse Accelerator Program, a mid-2021 collaboration between leading global venture capital accelerators Brinc and Animoca Brands, is incorporated into a dedicated track within Launchpad Luna.

The project aims to support startups, helping them to build unique experiences and creating new content to expand the sandbox ecosystem.

The co-founder of The Sandbox and chairman of the Blockchain Gamer Alliance, Sebastien Borget, said:

 “The Sandbox’s Metaverse Accelerator is a major expansion of our ongoing commitment to support the next generation of metaverse entrepreneurs. With imagination, ideas and hard work, startups from all over the world can realize their visions and drive social impact by creating more opportunities for everyone.”

Blockchain.News reported on January 19, Animoca Brands, has raised $358.88 million from investors led by Liberty City Ventures.

Animoca Brands to Halt Trading Services to Russian Users

Animoca Brands, a leading blockchain company and venture capital firm based in Hong Kong, announced on Wednesday that it would stop its trading services to Russian users in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

Animoca further mentioned that besides blocking the accounts linked to Russian users, it would also halt selling shares to Russian investors.

Yat Siu, the co-founder and Chairman of Animoca Brands, talked about the development and said: “the legal advice we’ve been receiving is we now have to impose some restrictions. It’s a sanctioned country on par with North Korea. The moment we end up doing business in those areas, we might ourselves become financially excluded from the financial system.”

Siu also stated that the decision would apply to the company’s subsidiaries, such as Gamee and Lympo. However, the executive said that the decision would not have any material impact on the company’s performance because the firm doesn’t have many Russian users.

Gamee stated on Twitter that: “Ukraine, we stand with you,” and said that it is shutting down its services to Russians. Likewise, Lympo also mentioned in a Medium blog post that it would stop onboarding new Russian athletes, halt publishing Russian athlete NFTs, and stop negotiations for new partnerships with all Russian athletes.

In doing so, Animoca has joined other major crypto firms, which have also stopped providing services to Russian users amid the security crisis.

Building Metaverse Reality

Headquartered in Hong Kong and launched in 2014, Animoca Brands serves as a major investor in NFT games and metaverse startups.

In January, Animoca raised almost $359 million, an investment that has given a valuation of more than $5 billion. The funding round was led by Liberty City Ventures. Other companies such as Winklevoss Capital, billionaire investor George Soros’ Soros Fund Management, Sequoia China, Gemini Frontier Fund, and 10T Holdings also participated in the seed funding.

Animoca has invested in over 100 startups, including some of the major builders in the NFT landscape. Among its investments are Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis (valued near $3 billion), NBA Top Shotmaker Dapper Labs (valued at $7.6 billion), and the leading NFT marketplace OpenSea (valued at $13.3 billion).

Apart from investments, Animoca also publishes its NFT-driven games. The company is best known for The Sandbox, an upcoming Ethereum-based metaverse game, which has formed partnerships with Atari, Adidas, Snoop Dogg, and other brands and celebrities. Animoca also publishes licensed racing game F1 Delta Time, among other crypto game projects.

Animoca mainly invests in projects that aim to develop an open, interoperable metaverse, in which NFT assets can be used across various immersive platforms. 

Image source: Animoca Brands

Polygon NFT Gaming Firm Cross the Ages Secures $12m in Seed Round, Backed by Ubisoft, Animoca

Blockchain game “Cross the Ages”  (CTA) has received a $12 million in seed round from gaming crypto investment firm Animoca Brands, video game developer Ubisoft, and Sebastian Borget, co-founder and COO of The Sandbox.

The funds raised will be used for development programs, expansion of the current team of more than 140 people and go-to-market activities. Across Ages plans to release a beta version of the game at the end of May, with digital and physical cards to be released in June.

Subsequently, the developer plans to implant non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol suites such as yield farms into the game to earn rewards and plans to launch into the metaverse in 2023.

CTA co-founder and CEO Sami Chlagou said that:

“The CTA DeFi product will be accessible via the main user interface, but it will operate as its own standalone platform. We want to keep the gaming experience somewhat separate to ensure that the more commercial aspects of the CTA experiences do not distract from what will be a dynamic and unique metaverse gaming experience.”

“Cross the Ages” (CTA) is a dystopian free-to-play digital card game built on the Polygon blockchain, Ethereum’s sidechain scaling solution, where players can also choose to convert these digital cards into physical trading cards.

Likewise, one of the most prominent gaming firms, Animoca Brands, has raised $358.88 million from investors led by Liberty City Ventures in January.

As reported by Blockchain.News on December 8, Ubisoft, a video game developer and publisher launched a platform called “Digits” on its own Ubisoft Quartz NFT platform, stepping into the field of encrypted NFT.

Hong Kong’s Animoca Brands Fully Acquires Lyon-Based Eden Games

Animoca Brands, a Hong Kong-based game software company and venture capital company, announced on Monday that it has 100% acquired Eden Games. This French Lyon-based video game developer majorly focuses on developing racing video games.

Animoca Brands will leverage the capabilities and expertise of Eden Games to work on existing and new titles in the REVV Motorsport ecosystem and to bring to market a variety of new blockchain-based racing games. The new games will offer additional use of the NFT Race Passes and the other assets obtained by swapping assets from Animoca Brands’ F1® Delta Time, which stopped operations in March 2022.

Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, talked about the development and said: “With its quarter of a century of expertise in building high-quality motorsport video games, Eden Games will enhance and accelerate the development of the REVV Motorsport ecosystem and add powerful value to the REVV community and the racing metaverse.”

Meanwhile, David Nadal, co-founder and head of the studio of Eden Games, also commented about the new collaboration and stated: “We are excited to start the next chapter of Eden Games by joining Animoca Brands. We look forward to producing new experiences that challenge the status quo within the motorsport genre and venture into new frontiers such as Web3 alongside a leader in the space.”

Eden Games is a highly successful and respected racing game studio with products ranging from management racing to open-world and pure racing games. Founded in 1998, Eden Games has substantial experience developing award-winning racing games across console, mobile, and PC platforms. Besides that, Eden Games has developed long-term partnerships with over 30 major brands in the automotive industry, including Pagani, Lotus, BMW, Bugatti, Porsche, and many others.

Appetite for Expansion

Founded in 2014, Animoca Brands, together with its subsidiaries, develops and markets a portfolio of mobile games and apps for smartphones and tablets in Asia and Europe.

Animoca Brands has ambitions to expand further and is always interested in acquisitions. In January, the firm raised almost $360 million in a funding round led by Liberty City Ventures, a funding raise that gave the company a valuation of more than $5 billion.

Animoca Brands not only has invested in more than 150 NFT and metaverse-related companies but also publishes games globally, with over 20 brand partnerships currently in place. The firm approaches such partnerships strategically and selects brands that allow it to get ahead in specific markets or with particular demographics.

Its biggest-spending territories are the U.S., China, Japan, and South Korea, but its geographical player distribution is wide. It is always mindful of emerging markets.

Metaverse Unicorn The Sandbox Targets to Raise $400m Funding at $4b Valuation

The Sandbox metaverse is in negotiations with investors as it looks to raise $400 million in a new funding round.

As reported by Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources close to the transactions, the blockchain startup is seeking a $4 billion valuation. The size of the offering and the market worth may change as deliberations continue.

The Sandbox has plugged itself deep into the Non-Fungible Token (NFT). The broader cryptocurrency ecosystem as its flagship gaming platform and digital collectables marketplace remain amongst the most in-demand nowadays. Animoca Brands, as the majority-owned shareholder of The Sandbox, enrich the Sandbox to be one of the major gateways that a number of global brands are using to get into the metaverse and the emerging Web3.0 ecosystem.

HSBC is one of these brands as it recently partnered with The Sandbox through the acquisition of LAND, a virtual real estate in the metaverse. While The Sandbox’s platform is recording a very large influx of users as evident in its transaction count, through a very robust demand, the bulk of the activities of the protocol is hinged on capacity building for the projected future that the Web3.0 industry will usher in.

Learning from its Backer

The proposed funding being solicited by The Sandbox will follow the $93 million it raised back last November in 2021, led by Softbank’s Vision Fund 2. The growing capital raise complements a similar move from the parent, Animoca Brands, which received as much as $358 million back in January this year to fund its potential acquisition deals.

While Animoca Brands has continued to boost its own reputation in this ecosystem, The Sandbox has followed suit Swiss-based investment fund provider 21Shares has floated a product based on the latter. 

The projected funding round will help The Sandbox make good on its acquisition plans, as Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder Sebastien Borget noted at an event in Lisbon earlier this month.

Animoca Brands to Bring Football to the Blockchain in Partnership With OneFootball

Animoca Brands, one of the biggest names in the gaming and metaverse world, has unveiled its partnership with OneFootball, and Liberty City Ventures to establish OneFootball Labs as a Joint Venture between the trio. 

Per the announcement, OneFootball Labs will work to bring football fans a whole new experience that is powered by blockchain technology. Riding on the broad network of Animoca Brands in the blockchain ecosystem, the new startup will “enable clubs, leagues, federations, and players to release digital assets and fan-centric experiences” on the blockchain.

With the growth in the adoption of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and other metaverse-centric products by members of the footballing and sporting community as a whole, the newly floated OneFootball Labs will help to introduce more thrilling products that can help all stakeholders in this ecosystem generate additional revenue.

“Over the last year, the sporting universe has made progress in harnessing the potential of NFTs and gaming, offering fans new digital experiences based on the important principles of true digital ownership and decentralization,” said Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands. “Animoca Brands is proud to have played a role in nearly every significant milestone in the development of true digital property rights via NFTs. Bringing Web3 to the biggest sport in the world – football – through our participation in the OneFootball Labs joint venture is a match made in heaven.”

The announcement also detailed the raising of $300 million in a Series D funding round by OneFootball. The latest funding was led by Liberty City Ventures with support from Animoca Brands, Dapper Labs, DAH Beteiligungs GmbH, Quiet Capital, RIT Capital Partners, Senator Investment Group, and Alsara Investment Group. 

The funds, similar to the $358 million pulled by Animoca Brands earlier this year, will notably be used to expand the scale of operations of the startup which currently comes off as one of the biggest media platforms in the footballing industry. OneFootball plans to use the new capital to power its global expansion and its current entry into the Web3.0 and metaverse worlds.

Image source: OneFootball

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