Decentralized gaming platform banks $2 million seed capital

Led by Fundamental Labs, an Asian investment and venture capital firm specializing in the blockchain sector, Ajuna Network also received funding from OKEx Blockdream Ventures, the investment arm of the globally prominent cryptocurrency exchange, and Signum Capital, a Singapore-based blockchain investment fund. In addition, the support was accompanied by an equity investment by blockchain game publisher Animoca Brands in Ajuna’s parent company BloGa Tech AG. Ajuna Network will use the funding to expand the functionality of its platform and further grow its team to showcase how gaming can be enriched using blockchain technology and NFTs.

Existing blockchain games tend to be relatively slow and technically unsophisticated due to the limitations of smart contracts on decentralized networks. Co-founders of Ajuna Cédric Decoster and André Schneider aim to solve this issue by enabling developers to create decentralized games using industry-leading platforms like Unity and Unreal. Built on Substrate, Ajuna leverages the full potential of the Polkadot ecosystem to provide developers with a modular toolbox to build on-chain features into their games. Ajuna’s ultimate goal is to create real value for gamers and developers by providing a fully interoperable decentralized ecosystem for games and virtual goods.

Discussing the rationale behind the financing, Fundamental Labs Investment Director Eric Yang said: “By creating a service layer for the Unity and Unreal software development kits (SDKs) that is compatible with play-to-earn gaming and combining it with an API suite to communicate with blockchain networks, Ajuna eliminates barriers to onboarding for both traditional gamers and game developers. It’s game-changing infrastructure in the field of game finance (GameFi)”.

The project has also received praise from Polkadot founder Gavin Wood, who commented in his annual roundup of 2021 that “highlights from this year include Ajuna Network introducing fully-featured SDKs for using Unity and Unreal with Substrate”.

The Zurich based startup is currently participating in Luna Launchpad, an accelerator program to incubate blockchain startups established by venture capital firm Brinc in partnership with Animoca Brands. During the launchpad’s Demo Day in March, Ajuna will showcase its solution.

(Press release/RAN)