Zebedee raised $ 35 million from investors including Square Enix to pay for blockchain games

Zebedee has raised $ 35 million in a new round of funding to further develop its Bitcoin-based gaming payment systems and integrate with new partners.

The Hoboken, New Jersey-based company hopes to transform gaming by adding new revenue streams powered by cryptocurrency, blockchain and other technologies.

Zebedee enables programmable payments and small transactions to power virtual world economies with almost zero fees. This means that it takes the large transaction fees out of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and enables much smaller transaction sizes.

Kingsway Capital led the round. It was joined by the global commercial bank The Raine Group and the video game giant Square Enix. Existing investors including Lakestar and Initial Capital also participated in the round.

Zebedee said they have created a platform that allows any game developer to easily add programmable money to their games. Everything that happens in a game can trigger a payment, which is sent immediately and at almost zero cost.

When a player shoots someone in a competing CS: GO match, they can take a small amount of money (eg a fraction of a cent) from them in real time inside the match itself. When a character in a platform game jumps and picks up a coin – as in Super Mario – that coin can be worth real money, which the player receives immediately and can also use immediately.

To make this work, Zebedee offers both application programming interface (API) -based tools for developers as well as an app for gamers. The APIs are easier to implement, enabling developers to discover the growing range of Zebedee-powered games. And it acts as a wallet for sending and receiving money between games and players.

Bitcoin Lightning Network

To make this work from a technical point of view, Zebedee uses the Bitcoin Lightning Network as a central part of the payment infrastructure. While blockchain gaming has become a persistent buzzword over the past two years, Zebedee said it stands out as a FinTech and payment service provider focused on gaming: Bitcoin is simply the payment rail that enables flexible, programmable transfers of any amount between any game, app or User.

For Zebedee users, it is not about Bitcoin, nor should it be, the company said. It is about a more rewarding experience in games, wrapped in intuitive and simple user experience that does not require any knowledge of crypto.

“We are excited to be in a position where we can safely scale our team and grow our business even as the macroeconomic backdrop becomes increasingly uncertain,” said Simon Cowell (not that Simon Cowell), CEO of Zebedee, in a statement. . “This funding round gives us the opportunity to meet our very ambitious roadmap both in terms of expanding our infrastructure to support the hundreds of millions of users who play the partners’ games, as well as hiring the top-level talent needed to ensure all partners have the best possible experience. working with Zebedeus. “

Zebedee claims that this approach clearly resonates with both players and game producers and has led to it having a unique year, with the number of users increasing by more than 10 times since the startup announced its previous round of funding in September 2021.

“We are pleased to lead Zebedee’s latest round of funding and support their continued mission to become the preferred Bitcoin opportunity for their partners,” said Afonso Campos, CEO of Kingsway Capital, in a statement. “Working with Zebedee will allow the entire ecosystem to benefit from higher user retention, lower transaction costs and, in general, a superior payment experience. More importantly, it will also help bring Bitcoin to millions around the world.”

The growth has been driven in part by Zebedee’s rapid work and a growing number of partnerships both with platform-based gaming studios and integrations with notable financial industry players, the company said.

The company said it is in a strong position to expand its best-in-class infrastructure, tools and services tailored specifically for game developers, many of whom are already working with Zebedee.

“In Zebedee, we see a world-class team that has created a really powerful use for cryptocurrency in games,” said Kenny Lee, vice president of Raine Group, in a statement. “We’ve seen new ways of generating revenue disrupt the gaming industry in the past, and we believe integrating Bitcoin directly into games is a new way to expand the connection with players and engage them in ways never before possible. The wide range of uses for Zebedee’s platform provides flexibility for the game designer and allows Zebedee to collaborate with any developer, from triple-A console and PC to hypercasual mobile. “

Square Enix, which recently sold its western game studios to invest more in innovations, did not comment. Zebedee has raised $ 50 million to date and has 53 employees. The company was founded in October 2019.

The company said the average transaction (in what it calls nanopayments) is 8 cents, and the size of the smallest transaction currently supported is $ 0.0002

Competitors include regular payment companies such as Xsolla, PayPal and Tilia.

As for the inspiration to start the company, Zebedee saidone did not really work in digital games and, more generally, virtual worlds. We saw Bitcoin as the technological key to that puzzle and set out to build a solution tailored to the needs of the modern player that also unlocks huge values ​​for game developers..