Solana Ventures and Solana Foundation have announced to set up $100 Million in funds for the South Korean crypto games development sector and Web3 startups.
Solana’s $100 Million Investment Fund
The crypto industry has been holding up with the volatile market for the past few months, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still set up funds, with Solana being the latest on the fund “set up” topic in the cryptocurrency industry.
The Switzerland-based entity, Solana Ventures and Solana Foundation which promotes the growth of the network, have both set up $100 Million in funds which they will be using to invest in the South Korean Web3 startups. Johnny Lee, general manager of games at Solana Labs said the funds will be used to focus more on the gaming sector, DeFi, NFTs, and GameFi.
Official Quotes
According to Austin Federa, the Head of communications at Solana Labs, the setup fund is supported by the capital from Solana (SOL) community treasury in addition to the venture arm’s pool of capital.
General manager of games at Solana Foundation, Johnny B. Lee said that Korea is already deep into the Web3 gaming sector and at Solana, they have been working to invest more in the developers in Korea so as to help bring their ideas to reality. He continued: “We have been working with Korean developers and actively investing in the ecosystem for some time now, which helped us build a deeper understanding of the Korean market. Korea is at the forefront of Web3 game design and development and we are focused on helping even more builders in Korea bring their ideas to reality.”
Johnny B. Lee also said SOL blockchain will be launching more “high quality and fun games” in the second half of this year, 2022. According to him, the games will have the ability to alter the stereotype that P2E (play-to-earn) games are boring, Lee said: “We’re confident that is about to change.”
Long-term wise, Lee believes Web3 games adoption will be just as regular free-to-play games on mobile devices are now. He said: “There was a lot of pushback from gamers and developers on Web3, but given the prolific growth of the Web3 industry, the timelines are significantly reduced.”
He also added: “Free-to-play adoption probably took eight years, so if we say it’ll take four years for Web3 games to be the dominant revenue model, I’m pretty comfortable with that.”
Conclusion
This funding has now put Solana in competition with other networks such as Polygon, Avalanche, and others who are also striving to help the orphaned crypto developers in Korea.
Also, this funding setup is the first fund launched with a distinct focus. It came just a few weeks after the historical crash of Terra – blockchain and UST – stablecoin which made a lot of investors of Terra lose millions in Korea. Even the founder Do Kwon is currently facing prosecution in South Korea. It can be hard to predict if the developers of Terra will even return to the ecosystem after this crash.
Looking at all of these, The Solana Ventures and Foundation believe in Web3 startups in Korea including the developers, so they will continue to render any help they can to developers in Korea.
