The NFT project promises to create Web3’s version of Twitch

Valhalla and their team may have bitten off more than they can chew. The NFT project’s ambitious goals include creating a platform that can compete with Twitch. But despite the scope of this task, the project has already shown promise.

It had a successful mint that quickly sold out, and the project has had more than 23,000 ETH in total sales volume. If that doesn’t sound promising enough, the project was created by Stacked Studios, an LA-based startup with a stated goal of building web3 products to become one of the largest crypto companies in the world. So far, the company has secured itself $15 million in funding.

Of course, this is far more than just a PFP project, but can the team succeed in their grand vision? We delve into the project’s history, team, achievements and plans to challenge Twitch’s dominance to find out.

What are Valhalla NFTs?

Valhalla is an anime gathering that aims to bring players from all over the world together to build a community. IN a Twitter threadfounder Valhalla described the NFT project as “a cryptonative brand for gamers.”

The collection consists of five core character types, each with their own unique personality.

• Human: 8510 NFTs. “The primal type that populates Valhalla. They are calm to play with, team players, and always down to play.”
• Poisonous: 645 NFTs. “Toxic players are responsible for keeping you in ELO hell. They are the ones who install Jett. They are the ones who give the first blood, it runs endlessly down the middle and spams FF15.”
• Mech: 647 NFTs. “Aim bot by default. Trained with advanced neural networks to calculate the most efficient path to dominance. Probably drew itself using stable diffusion.”
• God/Eternal: 99 NFTs. “Can trade profitably at a crypto desk while playing Challenger level League of Legends.”
• Demon: 99 NFTs. “Born in a PC explosion. Only play between 10pm and 5am. Plays like they are on PEDs but their performance is 100% organic grass fed. Their bluish skin comes from the minimal light they receive from the computer screen.”

The art for the project is made by Hicham Habchia concept artist who has worked with some of the biggest brands in gaming and comics – including Marvel, DC Comics and Blizzard.

Valhalla hit the summer of 2022 with a 3D billboard in Times Square, which went live months before the official mint. The project quickly gained attention for its innovative minting process, where potential holders could only gain access to the community by obtaining referral codes from existing members. This approach sparked a wave of interest and resulted in tens of thousands of applications for membership.

The pre-sale sold out in 1 minute. And over the next four days, the team was 33 times oversubscribed and had received more than 16,300 paid deposits.

Who is the Valhalla management team?

As mentioned, Valhalla is a product of Stacked Studios, which is led by CEO Alex Lin.

Prior to Valhalla, Lin was a consumer technology entrepreneur who was part of two Y Combinator-backed startups and was featured in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list. The fully equipped team consists of members with experience from a number of well-known companies. Ding Zhang is a lead software engineer at Stacked. Before joining the team, he was a founding engineer on Uber’s membership team.

The financing round was led by Pantera Capital, who also participated in the mint. However, it is unclear exactly how many NFTs they claimed.

Valhalla’s progress so far

Stacked Studios’ ultimate goal is to create a streaming platform owned and operated by content creators, much like Twitch for Web3.

The idea is to “empower creators to build powerful communities through NFTs” like Valhalla, according to Lin. The platform will use governance tokens to make video streaming creators shareholders in the platform. In Lin’s vision, users don’t need to be crypto-savvy to use the service.

It is difficult to say how far they are from this vision. But in the meantime, Valhalla’s teams have done a lot for their holders.

In Q4 2022, Valhalla hosted a successful tournament for Fall Guys, a popular Massive multiplayer battle royale game. The arrangement was like this well received that several other web3 projects helped host another one in the future. Valhalla also offers its holders NFT skins to celebrate special occasions, such as Valentine’s Day and chinese new year. The team also organized a re-roll eventwhere holders could burn a special token to “re-roll” for new properties on their NFTs.

In keeping with their dedication to the gaming community, Valhalla has established partnerships with several esports teams, including the 3x League of Legends World Champions T1 and the Sentinels, a team specializing in Halo and Valorant. Additionally, Stacked Studios released a trailer in November for an unreleased, unspecified game.

Lin and the Stacked Studios team believe NFT projects should own their distribution, similar to fashion retailers like Nike. As such, Valhalla launched its own marketplace in February 2023, which was perfectly on schedule and in line with what the team promised when they first announced the marketplace.

They also have several community events planned, including a Fortnite invitational tournament with over $10,000 in prizes, a community holder event at a Hollywood Hills mansion in March, and a holder event at NFT NYC in April.

That said, the project was hit with controversy early on. There was speculation that CEO Alex Lin was the same person as Hoshiboy, the founder of the much maligned NFT collection Azuki, which has a similar anime art style to Valhalla. However, many in the Valhalla community came to the project’s defense, saying the accusations were unfounded, and the Twitter user who made the allegations quickly debunked its own investigation and noted that the two are instead close business partners.

Since then, the team has flown high, with a solid community sentiment and high participation.

What’s in the future for Valhalla and Stacked Studios?

Looking forward, the success of Valhalla and Stacked Studios will largely depend on their ability to create and establish the streaming platform they envision (and have promised).

With no concrete signs of the game they’ve made a trailer for, and no significant public announcements about the streaming platform’s progress, the project has a lot to prove. So in short, while their activities and events have generated excitement in their community, it remains to be seen if they can deliver on their grand vision of becoming the Twitch for web3.

Creating a platform that can compete with Twitch, which collects over 55 million hours of viewing time each day, is one gigantic task. So even if they deliver the promised product, it will be extraordinarily difficult for them to secure such numbers.

Is the Valhalla Collection a necessary means to reach Stacked Studios’ vision or a distraction from the ultimate goal? For now, we’ll have to wait and see. But regardless, they’ve captured the attention of the Web3 gaming community, and they have the funding and community to establish themselves as a major player in the space.