Jadu launches NFT avatars for upcoming gaming platform

With plans to sell thousands of NFT avatars, augmented reality (AR) startup Jadu is betting that gamers will own and invest in personalized video game characters.

By the end of August, the Los Angeles-based company will sell 11,111 robot avatars, called AVAs, that can be used as playable characters on Jadu’s upcoming mobile app. The NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, will also come with commercial rights, meaning holders could – hypothetically – slap a character’s likeness on a t-shirt and sell it.

The avatar sale is the latest step in Jadu’s quest to build an AR gaming platform that allows players to roam the real world with their NFT avatars. The startup raised a Series A round of $36 million in May to work on the concept.

NFTs are digital assets that can have their ownership and authenticity verified using blockchain technology. The much-hyped technology has been mostly applied to digital art and collectibles, but game companies have also tried to integrate NFTs into their virtual worlds. It has given players unique digital elements to play with, while also giving the game companies a new revenue stream. In the future, avatar accessories could potentially be transferred from one game to another as well.

This idea has received considerable backlash. Some players and developers call in-game NFTs exploitative and unfair, and Microsoft’s “Minecraft” recently announced that it would no longer allow NFTs to integrate with the game. Microsoft subsidiary Mojang described NFTs as “digital ownership based on scarcity and exclusion.”

In an interview with Venture Beat, Jadu founder and CEO Asad J. Malik said he “totally agrees[s] with the player community’s criticism of NFTs.”

“We are not a traditional gaming company,” Malik told the news agency. “We’re fundamentally an AR company, and our mission is always to bring new forms of AR to the people in ways that are very experiential and immersive. We’re about building forms of AR that haven’t existed before.”

Jadu has developed an AR mobile app that connects to players’ Ethereum (ETH) wallets, allowing them to turn 3D animated NFTs into playable avatars. The app can integrate avatars from NFT collections such as CyberKongz and FLUFs.

Jadu has also sold avatar accessories like jetpacks and hoverboards as NFTs. The startup made more than $5 million in initial NFT sales, Malik previously told dot.LA, and collects a 5% commission on the roughly $25 million in secondary sales the NFTs have made to date on platforms like OpenSea .

The company’s own avatars will go on sale on August 30, for 0.222 ETH, or about $365 at press time. All proceeds will go to a “community fund” that aims to expand Jadu’s IP. The treasury, managed by Jadu AVA holders, will fund member events and projects, such as films or music videos featuring their NFT characters.