Rario set to reopen with its own blockchain
It has also transitioned from Polygon to its own private blockchain, called the Rario Chain, senior executives said in a live interaction on the Discord messaging platform on Monday.
Rario raised $120 million led by Dream Capital, the corporate venture capital and M&A arm of Dream Sports, in April this year. The strategic investment from Dream Capital gives Rario access to the 140 million user base of Dream Sports.
Singapore-based Rario was founded by Sunny Bhanot and Ankit Wadhwa amid a global boom in NFTs and cryptocurrency. Last year in August, Rario partnered with Polygon to create digital collectibles of cricketers Zaheer Khan, Smriti Mandhana, Shefali Verma, Shakib Al Hassan and Faf du Plessis. These collectibles will move to the Rario Chain and all new NFTs will also be on the company’s private chain, executives said.
In March, Rario closed its marketplace, halting NFT trading. In the following months, the messaging community on Telegram and Discord has been abuzz with concerns from users about the shutdown and lack of clarity about the relaunch.
Rario’s co-founders said the marketplace would go live on August 15.
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“There are a lot of regulatory changes that have happened with taxes coming in and new rules being formed … it was too risky for our users to have a predictable experience, which is why we shut down our marketplace at the time ,” Bhanot said during the Discord session.
“At launch, users will be able to transact via credit and debit cards and bank transfers. Unified Payments Interface (UPI) will be launched shortly,” Wadhwa told ET, adding that the company will only accept fiat payments. “Fiat is the universally accepted mode of payment among cricket fans who are a key audience for us. Rario complies with all regulatory norms across the countries we operate in. So we are building for a fiat (currency only) environment in India,” he said.
UPI’s manager, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), has put informal brakes on member banks from using UPI to buy and sell virtual digital assets like crypto.
Cricket strategy game
Co-founder Bhanot said the company wanted to develop a blockchain that could handle a high volume of transactions per second, was secure against hacks and delivered a smooth user experience.
“Rario Chain is built by leveraging the Polygon Edge framework. Blockchain throughput depends on several factors – number of validator nodes, node size, consensus mechanism and smart contract business logic. We are in the process of optimizing throughput at every stage and improving performance,” said Wadhwa, in response to the ET’s request.
Dream Sports and Rario are working together to launch a cricket strategy game that will use Rario’s non-fungible tokens, Wadhwa said during the Discord session. It is expected to be launched later in August. “We are launching a marketplace in mid-August. The game launch will happen after the marketplace,” said Bhanot.
Rario has been focused on building tools into its NFTs. It has a multi-year exclusive partnership with Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers’ Association to create an Australian cricket metaverse of collectables and games.
