Announcing SuperLayer’s $5 Million Investment by Forte Blockchain Platform
- The investment will be part of SuperLayer’s $25 million fund led by Polygon
- SuperLayer managing partners Kevin Chou and Mahesh Vellanki were two of the co-founders of Forte, a gaming infrastructure unicorn
- Forte has selected SuperLayer to extend its blockchain platform to spearhead growth beyond gaming into other areas of Web3 such as social and commerce
San Francisco / December 14, 2022 — Superlayer, the leading Web3 venture studio, today announced a $5 million investment by Forte, the blockchain gaming unicorn. The investment is part of a strategic partnership and will count toward SuperLayer’s new $25 million fund focused on creating transformative Web3 experiences for large scale consumer adoption. SuperLayer will apply the investment toward its new projects developed in the studio — and built on Polygon — with social, commerce and gaming as areas of focus.
Kevin Chou and Mahesh Vellanki were part of the original founding team behind Forte before moving on to co-found other projects including SuperLayer, where they are managing partners. Chou was previously the CEO of Kabam, a pioneer in social and mobile gaming that was acquired for nearly $1 billion. Forte is led by cofounder and CEO Josh Williams, and its platform allows game publishers to easily integrate blockchain technologies into their titles, enabling features such as embeddable token wallets, non-fungible token (NFT) transactions and other services built specifically for the management of digital and virtual assets.
The strategic partnership between SuperLayer and Forte means that Forte becomes SuperLayer’s preferred provider of crypto payment and liquidity services for projects. Forte has been focused on gaming, which is one of the most promising areas for onboarding large numbers of users into crypto. Now, Forte has selected SuperLayer to extend its blockchain platform to spearhead growth beyond gaming into other areas of Web3 such as social and commerce.
“Forte and SuperLayer have always shared the mission of building Web3 experiences that are accessible to mainstream users. SuperLayer already has a network of over 2 million users across its projects, and Forte is serving millions of players through the game publishers utilizing their blockchain platform,” said Vellanki. “Like all markets, crypto is cyclical and we believe that the next bull run will be driven by partnerships like this one where talented teams are able to combine the best consumer products with next-gen infrastructure.”
One of SuperLayer’s most successful joint ventures to date is Joyride, a Web3 game development platform. Joyride has launched two games that have become some of the top 10 decentralized apps overall according to DappRadar, making it one of the fastest-growing Web3 game companies in the space. Another SuperLayer incubation, Taki, is a tokenized social network boasting over half a million users.
“Web3 represents a new way for consumers and creators to interact on the internet and create digital property and economic organizations as a community. We believe the ecosystem will be driven by projects that can successfully onboard millions of new users into crypto with innovative experiences backed by sustainable economics,” said Williams. “The SuperLayer team has a proven track record of building and scaling products for mainstream audiences; they have years of experience in the blockchain technology space and are thinking deeply about token economics in an exciting way.”
The combined capabilities of Forte and SuperLayer will provide the necessary components for creating the next breakout consumer Web3 experiences that can onboard millions of people.
About SuperLayer
SuperLayer is a Web3 venture studio that builds and supports new multi-chain, tokenized consumer products and applications powered by the RLY Protocol. Led by managing partners Kevin Chou and Mahesh Vellanki — who have more than $1 billion in exits between their combined venture and founding experience — SuperLayer works with partners and teams to facilitate the launch, development, hiring, go-to-market, compliance and fundraising for Web3 projects. The Web3 venture studio’s mission is to attract and support the next 100 million people using crypto.
For more information on SuperLayer, visit superlayer.io.
About Forte
Forte is building economic technology for games. Its end-to-end platform enables the emergence of community economics, a system where the interests of game developers and players are aligned, leading to healthier, sustainable game communities. The team is composed of longtime industry members (Unity, ngmoco, Riot Games, Electronic Arts, Sony, and Rockstar Games, among others), and is currently working with over 40+ acclaimed game developers from across the industry to reimagine the economics of games. Learn more at www.forte.io.
