Strategic Investments Secured in $33M Round

The 2023 investor names are in.

At 1Kin Labs, we’re working on solutions that unite the industry as a whole in its mission to bring more power to players, studios and publishers within web3 gaming. This is a space of builders — nimble, agile teams who never stop grinding. We’re proud to be one of them.

Some serious alpha drops today — alpha we’ve been holding close to the chest since last year.

In 2023, 1Kin Labs closed strategic investments to the tune of $3.3M USD, giving 1Kin Labs a valuation of $33M as of last year. Major participants included investment funds, chains, and angels — each doing their part to drive the adoption of web3 gaming forward. These participants are some of the biggest players in the space, and we can’t wait to finally reveal who they are.

Strategic Investor Clues Challenge… Complete!

We challenged our community to guess the strategic investors using clues about each one. Participants in the challenge submitted their guesses via Discord. With the challenge complete, let’s reveal the names!

Investment Funds, Firms & Advisories

We’re providing one clue per participant, which means you’ll need to think up a unique guess for each clue:

1. This fund takes a totally supercool and chilled approach to web3 investing, and so far it has backed over four dozen projects including Polkdot, Solana, and STEPN. This fund is serious about support, and even has a self-contained jobs board on their website where invested projects can post open positions.
   Who is it? Zee Prime Capital
2. This fund has a habit of outperforming the market through sound strategic decisions over the past 5+ years. Not even multiple multi-year crypto winters could stop them from returning a median annualized percentage gain of 131%. The Gibraltar-based fund cites integrity, performance, and transparency among its values.
   Who is it? Sigil Fund
3. This hybrid fund functions as both a web3 venture studio and investment outfit, and its core projects include major endeavors such as YGG and BreederDAO. Having invested in others such as Big Time, Gam3s.gg, Lava Labs, Sky Mavis, and Splinterlands, this fund is no stranger to propelling web3 gaming forward.
   Who is it? ED3N Ventures
4. This Los Angeles-based digital asset management firm was founded by a team of crypto natives and financial services professionals in 2018. That year is burned in the memories of many as particularly FUDdy for the sector, so this firm’s 2018 founding year shows its dedication to the long-term vision of Web3. During last year’s market rebound, the firm appeared as a web3 thought leader on CNBC. This firm offers services like Treasury, Wealth, and Protocol Inventory management.
   Who is it? Wave Digital Assets
5. This New York-based advisory partners with investment managers globally to access U.S. institutional capital. Thus far, its raised over $4 billion from institutional investors. The advisory has a pedigree spanning two decades and maintains a proprietary database which includes U.S. endowments, foundations, corporate and public pension funds, as well as other institutional investors.
   Who is it? Centenium Advisors
6. This investment club maintains the most extensive portfolio of early-stage Harvard tech startups. Founded by Harvard community members, the club calls for at least one co-founder of each startup they invest in to be within the Harvard community. So far, this club has a portfolio including 150+ early-stage companies with Harvard founders.
   Who is it? Phoenix Investment Club
7. This merchant bank specializes in private investments in alternative assets. Hailing from Canada, they put their money where their mouth is as they invest alongside investors to demonstrate their confidence in the quality of their investments. A core tenet of this family of funds is to help private wealth capture the full benefit of private investments in alternative assets.
   Who is it? Pr%f Capital

Foundations & Protocols

Various blockchain-affiliated funds and foundations have shown their support in our strategic investment round:

1. While founded in Mumbai, this protocol quickly gained popularity throughout the world for solving the scalability and fees problem plaguing one of the web3 ecosystem’s most adopted blockchains. Through its deployment of sidechains, bridges, and various rollups solutions, this protocol sends web3 gaming adoption into overdrive through low fees.
   What is it? Polygon
2. This $200M venture capital fund has invested in 100+ endeavors including Elixir, LayerZero Labs, Particle, and Shrapnel. Guessing both the fund name and blockchain it supports will garner you a correct answer here.
   What is it? Blizzard Fund (of Avalanche)
3. This interoperability-focused network runs not on a traditional blockchain, but a feeless Directed Acyclic Graph, or DAG. Its growing ecosystem includes Helium, the US Air Force, and Uphold. It even boasts a traffic mining hardware device allowing users to get paid real crypto for providing honest IRL foot traffic data.
   What is it? Constellation Network
4. This foundation is the beating heart for one of the most talked-about decentralized networks in the world. The chain it supports specializes in high volume transaction throughput. Based in Zug, Switzerland, this foundation has funded 500+ projects with over $100M in funding across six continents.
   What is it? Solana Foundation
5. This Layer 1 blockchain is engineered to evolve. With nearly half a billion confirmed transactions under its belt and over two million monthly active users, this chain relies on unrivaled speed, unprecedented trust, and an unstoppable community. Its foundation acts like a steadfast teammate to the chain, empowering teams and individuals with grants and championing decentralization via partnerships with node validators.
   What is it? Aptos Network
6. This protocol is sweeping the web3 gaming landscape with a rumbling force that can’t be ignored, sporting personalized gaming blockchains. Operating as a ‘chain of chains,’ scalability is no sweat and fees are a thing of the past (if chain operators so desire). Over 100 games are building on this chain that has over 1,700 validators and 25 million unique wallets used.
   What is it? Avalanche
7. This chain finalizes transactions in under one second for less than a penny each. With 250+ dapps that rival the speed of traditional web2 applications, it’s no surprise that this chain’s causing major buzz in the overall web3 space. Its energy footprint is microscopic compared to Bitcoin, with this chain’s foundation reporting that it is 3,897,260,273,972 times more energy efficient than Bitcoin.
   What is it? Fantom

Angel Investors

Angel investors have shown their support for 1Kin Labs, rounding out the strategic investment round:

1. This angel investor is currently CEO of The ODP Corporation, the former COO of Lenovo Group Limited, as well as a former executive of Dell. Having joined Lenovo in 2006, he led the group to the top position in world-wide PC sales as the COO of the Personal Computing and Enterprise Business Groups.
   Who is it? Gerry P Smith
2. This angel investor is Co-Founder, CEO, and Chair at Delphi Digital, an industry-leading crypto research and analysis outfit. Delphi Digital empowers researchers with tools built for the forward-thinking investor. This angel investor also previously worked at notable financial businesses such as Deutsche Bank and Bloomberg LP.
   Who is it? Anil Lulla

More Alpha on the Way

Keep your eyes peeled for more info on the products and programs we’re launching this year. Until next time, Kinfolk!

About 1Kin Labs
1Kin is building the next generation platform to connect gamers with the world’s best community-driven games. Discover games from a catalog of top tier titles, access in-development games, claim rewards, and take your digital assets with you wherever you go — all with a single sign-on.
Sign up for the Beta today.

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