Hillrise Ventures Announces Investment in DEFY Labs
By Daniel Dal Bello, Director.
August 22, 2022–3 min read.
Hillrise Ventures today announces an investment into DEFY Labs — the developer of the immersive augmented reality play-to-earn mobile game DEFY. Hillrise Ventures is the private investment arm of Hillrise Group.
DEFY is an upcoming play-to-earn location-based mobile game bringing together both the physical and virtual worlds. The gameplay and lore involves players taking on the role of an ‘Operative’, by joining the revolutionary DEFY movement. Their goal is to take down the antagonist, Future Systems — an evil tech oligarchy, in efforts to keep the metaverse open.
Within Future Systems is a mole known as Kha0s who leads the revolution. Players use NFT Virtual Private Masks to obscure their identity and hack into the Future Systems network via an exploited mobile app. These masks are either free ‘Generic’ (coming soon) or purchasable ‘Premium’ NFT masks — giving the game both a free-to-play and premium pathway.
Players complete research tasks to generate exploits which are required to hack into the Future Systems network towers. These towers emit FCOIN which Operatives can collect and use within the game.
The gameplay is built around a dual-currency model with the second $DEFY ERC-20 cryptographic token being used for governance and reward within the DEFY ecosystem.
The app has both at-home and in-real-life game modes — building upon successful albeit restrictive apps that have only real-life gameplay. At-home gameplay takes place entirely within the mobile app and the real-life experience exists as an augmented reality metaverse overlay which encourages physical movement at real-world locations.
The team behind DEFY are experienced in location-based mobile applications having previously launching the highly successful District Race app among other white label fitness apps in partnership with brands like Apple, Adidas, Red Bull, and Mastercard.
Hillrise Ventures joins a group of industry leading partners including Animoca Brands, OliveX, Spartan Group, GameFi Ventures, Play It Forward DAO, Unanimous Capital, PathDAO, and Bixin Ventures.
“We get excited about startups that bring new users into the world of Web3. The DEFY Labs team have an extensive background in fitness-based apps and have designed a sophisticated gameplay loop which can achieve just that. Their at-home and in-real-life game design can tap into a new audience of users and bring a wave of DEFY Operatives into the Web3 ecosystem.”
Daniel Dal Bello, Director of Hillrise Group
“DEFY’s biggest picture vision is to revolutionize move-to-earn gaming by bridging the virtual and physical worlds. We are delighted to partner with strong investors such as Hillrise Ventures and the invaluable experience they bring in helping us achieve our goals.”
Tom Threlfall, Cofounder of DEFY Labs
Hillrise Group is a blockchain-native venture capital and consulting firm supporting emerging Web3 startups.
