Solana NFT Marketplace Magic Eden launches Gaming Venture Arm

Magic Eden is the largest NFT marketplace in Solana ecosystem, and recently collected a war chest with funds who valued the young startup as a crypto unicorn.

Now we know how the company spends some of the money: it has launched a game-centric investment arm.

Today, the company unveiled Magic Ventures, a venture investment arm that will focus specifically on Web3 gaming. To pursue that mission, the company has hired Tony Zhao – formerly of Chinese gaming giant Tencent – as its new head of gaming investment.

Zhao told Decrypt that Magic Ventures’ investments will be “purely strategic in nature” and provide support to developers of NFT-powered video games, rather than approaching investments with the expectation of providing a return on funds.

“We do not think about returns – never have and never will,” Zhao said. “It’s just to coordinate our partnership, right? We really want to be the best partners for these developers. “

When Magic Ventures signs game developers, they will enter a Magic Eden ecosystem that offers a start-up platform for primary sales of new NFTs, as well as the secondary marketplace for ongoing sales. The Solana-based marketplace at the moment commands 90% or more of Solana’s entire NFT market share. Zhao said the goal is to help facilitate game developers’ access to the Web3 ecosystem.

“Developers can focus on one thing they know how to do, which is build good games,” he explained. “We want to help them take care of all the Web3 elements and help them aboard the ecosystem.”

Zhao said that Magic Ventures has already made some investments with more on the way, but would not reveal which projects or startups they had invested in.

He added that there is no fixed figure in the form of total dollar amount that will be invested across projects, and that the typical investment size is “quite small” given the strategic nature.

“We are not here to finance the entire development [of games]”Our value added is not capital – it is all these infrastructure solutions and an NFT experience that no one else in the market can offer.”

Game developers meet Web3

Together with the venture arm, the Magic Eden Eden Games division announced that it has reached agreements with the manufacturers of several Solana games – including Aurory, Mini Royale: Nations, and Genopets – to run in-game NFT marketplaces for each. Once launched, players will be able to buy and sell NFTs in each game without having to go to an external marketplace.

It is designed to be a seamless process for gamers, especially for those who do not already know how to handle a crypto wallet and self-deposit items. Zhao said that the infrastructure is provided to developers so that they do not have to build integrations from scratch.

NFTs are blockchain tokens that represent ownership of an object, such as artwork, collectibles, and interactive video game objects. In the game area, NFTs can represent things like unique weapon designs, character avatars, and customizable virtual land plots.

As mentioned, Magic Eden recently became a crypto unicorn with a value of over 1 billion dollars. The company raised $ 130 million last month to a value of $ 1.6 billion, just nine months after the startup was founded.

The NFT marketplace plans to support more blockchain platforms in the future beyond Solana, although no specific chains have been announced.

Magic Eden takes on NFT competition

Magic Eden’s increased focus on Web3 games puts it in direct competition with Fractal, a game-centric Solana NFT marketplace co-founded by Justin Kan, also co-founder of the video game streaming platform Twitch.

Fractal focuses only on interactive gaming devices, while Magic Eden also supports profile pictures and other types of NFT resources.

Zhao said that both Magic Eden and Fractal are focused on expanding the Web3 gaming space, but that he believes that Magic Eden provides the more comprehensive package of solutions to launch and support Solana-based games – and suggested that the results confirm his confidence.

“Both of us want to expand the ecosystem. For game developers, we show them data, right? It’s up to them to decide who to choose,” he said. “The results have informed developers that there is good reason to work with us instead of Fractal. “

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