League of Kingdoms Arena (LOKA) Raises $3 Million in seed funding for the metaverse expansion!
League of Kingdoms Arena (LOKA) is proud to announce a $3M token round led by crypto venture capital (VC) firm Hashed. The round, which was to fuel the expansion of the League of Kingdoms game franchise with the adoption of the League of Kingdoms Arena (LOKA) token, was joined by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z Crypto), Binance Labs, Sequoia Capital India, BlockTower Capital, and strategic investors like Sky Vision Capital, Yield Guild Games (YGG), and Korean blockchain ecosystem builder, DeSpread.
Aside from the investors, we would also like to thank many of our good friends who have been supportive throughout the journey to date and onward, including Amy of Lightspeed VP, Gabby of YGG, Coin 98, Aleks & Jiho of Sky Mavis, Sebastien of The Sandbox Games, Jin & Edward from Hashed, Nathan of UNOPND, Daniel of NFTBank.io, Yohan of The Sandbox Games Korea, and many others.
The funding will be used to build out the foundational infrastructures for the player-owned governance and enhanced Play-to-earn economy in the League of Kingdoms universe while accelerating the growth of our global community with over 200,000+ active gamers.
Our partners bring with them best-in-class, multifaceted experience in, but not limited to, DeFi, gaming, exchanges, community, a law which provides the perfect combination for the League of Kingdoms Arena as we embarked on this journey with our long-standing vision to bring attractive blockchain games to the masses.
Now with a powerful squad of partners who staked their trust and resources in us, we are fully ready to propel toward our quest to build a web3 game metaverse around the League of Kingdoms where gamers and communities can own and thrive.
Investor highlights
Hashed
Onboarding Hashed, one of the most well-versed and influential investors in the web 3 space, will add tremendous value to the League of Kingdom Arena. Hashed is an early believer and investor of blockchain gaming pioneers like Axie Infinity, The SandBox, and many others.
Additionally, Hashed’s new venture into NFT and Metaverse through its startup studio, UNOPND will be an ultimate tailwind for League of Kingdoms Arena, as we strive to build out the decentralized gaming metaverse, spanning through fun gaming experiences, play-to-earn economy, communities, and NFTs.
Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) backs bold entrepreneurs who move fast, think big, and are committed to building the next major franchises in technology. Founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, the firm provides entrepreneurs with access to expertise and insights in innovation, executive and technical talent, market intelligence, business development, and marketing and brand-building.
a16z Crypto has more than $3B under management across three funds, investing in web3 companies and protocols from early seed-stage projects to fully-developed networks. Its crypto-native team helps founders and projects navigate the complexities of web3 across a range of specialties, including policy, regulatory affairs, recruiting, and marketing.
Binance Labs
Binance Labs identifies, invests, and empowers viable blockchain entrepreneurs, startups, and communities, providing financing to industry projects that help grow the larger blockchain ecosystem. Binance Labs is committed to supporting fast-executing teams who positively impact the crypto space.
Binance Labs will bring League of Kingdoms Arena, a gamut of valuable infrastructures and supports to proliferate the decentralized gaming vision.
BlockTower Capital
BlockTower Capital is one of the world’s largest digital asset investment firms. The US-based fund will leverage its extensive network across verticals ranging from traditional finance to DeFi to NFTs to provide the League of Kingdoms Arena, robust advice, and rich insights into the capital and digital asset market.
Sequoia Capital India
Sequoia helps daring founders build legendary companies, from ideas to IPO and beyond. Sequoia Capital India operates in Southeast Asia and India actively partnering with founders from a wide range of companies, across categories, including BYJUs, Carousell, Druva, Gojek, OYO Rooms, Tokopedia, Truecaller, Zilingo, Zomato, and more.
Partnering with Sequoia and becoming a part of their leading community of founders and companies, as well as getting access to their 49 years of tribal knowledge, will greatly augment League of Kingdom Arena’s expansion into the world’s fastest-growing markets and making meaningful differences.
Sky Vision Capital
Sky Vision Capital is a venture capital fund founded with the mission of promoting innovative decentralized technology. The SVC team is an early stage investor and strategic advisor of League of Kingdoms Arena as we aim to revolutionize and fundamentally enhance P2E gaming models. We look forward to collaborating together with SVC as they have provided us with strong legal advice and strategic partnerships to accelerate the LOKA project.
Yield Guild Games
Yield Guild Games (YGG) is a pioneering decentralized gaming guild focused on play-to-earn games, and a strategic partner of League of Kingdoms (LOK). With YGG owning a number of Land parcels within their guild, YGG operates as an active scholarship network with a specific YGGLOK subDAO, a dedicated DAO for LOK players who holds governance of YGG’s LOK game assets.
YGG will continue to be actively involved in League of Kingdoms Arena, driving new users, exchanging valuable feedback, and collaborating on exciting future initiatives as a key partner and stakeholder.
DeSpread
DeSpread is a leading blockchain ecosystem accelerator for the South Korean market, which is estimated to be the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency market and the fourth in gaming. With deep expertise and a strong network in the market, DeSpread will provide invaluable resources to League of Kingdoms Arena across the entire spectrum of go-to-market strategy.
What’s Next
Take up where we left off
In 2020, we launched League of Kingdoms as the world’s first blockchain MMO strategy game. Our unwavering commitment is to build “all-weather” blockchain games that are attractive for all, “first”. Then, we promised ourselves to adopt blockchain-based tokens when we achieve mass adoption of the game. At such a nascent time when Crypto Kitties was the only precedent, it felt like a pipe dream.
Balancing a hard-core MMO strategy game with NFT features is a wickedly difficult task, a rabbit hole of endless grinding, refinement, and balancing. And to make it worse, the crypto winter and COVID 19 brutally hit us hard. While we kept on BUIDLING, many of our good friends like Axie Infinity and The SandBox also carried on through the winter.
When the spring came, the Play-to-Earn revolution took off. In the second half of 2021, League of Kingdoms’ daily active users grew 10 folds from 5K to 50K. Tens of thousands came for fun and stayed for crypto. Increasing crypto-literate gamers and acceleration of growth convinced us that the time has ripe to take up where we left off.
With this financing round, League of Kingdoms will be evolving into a game metaverse that offers entertaining game experiences, including the launch of PvP arena, Guild war, expansion of P2E through the Drago x $DST economy, commerce platforms (ex. NFT bazaar), GameFi tools (ex. Staking portal, GameFi dashboard), Governance infrastructure (ie. governance agora), token rewards for in-game competitions like CvC, Social media features, e-sports tools, interoperable assets, and many other exciting updates that will enrich the players’ experience inside and out of the League of Kingdoms.
To achieve this mission, League of Kingdoms Arena looks to build a strong network of guilds and communities globally to attract the varied groups of players while offering them engaging game experiences, attractive in-game assets, exciting campaigns, and many more to ensure sustainable, and healthy growth of the game platform.
Community is the king!
Today, increasingly less are done under the watch of game studios and more outside of them. The most fascinating initiatives in GameFi today are owned and built by the communities.
In the next generation of gaming, we envision that this trend will only accelerate. The more authority and values games give back to the communities, the more successful the games will be.
With this vision in mind, we are significantly ramping up our investment in the community, which involves community-driven initiatives like Play-to-Earn Guilds.
Big thanks to our 200,000+ global gamers and active contributors in our community channels. Without your continued supports, this would not have been possible.
*The LOKA token is made available through collaboration with TPA Metaverse Foundation.
