Magic Eden Dives Into Web3 Gaming with New Venture Investment Arm

Blockchain startup Magic Eden is planning to launch an investment arm centered on gaming. The firm is currently the top NFT marketplace on Solana, and it recently hit unicorn status. Magic Ventures, its venture investment arm, will be focusing solely on Web3 gaming. To further solidify its move, Magic Eden hired Tony Zhao as the company’s head of gaming investments. Zhao was previously part of the Chinese multinational tech and gaming giant Tencent.

According to Zhao, Magic Ventures aims to support the entry of game developers into NFTs and Web3. “We’re not thinking about returns—never have and never will,” he explained, noting that the arm is “purely strategic in nature.” Zhao added that “it’s just to align our partnership together, right? We truly want to be the go-to partners for these developers.”

Game developers who sign with Magic Ventures will be included in the Magic Eden ecosystem. This will offer them an accessible platform for primary sales of new NFTs and a secondary marketplace for ongoing sales. “Developers can focus on one thing that they know how to do, which is to build great games. We’ll help them to take care of all the Web3 elements and to help them onboard into the ecosystem,” Zhao furthered.

The Magic Eden executive also elaborated that Magic Ventures has already invested in a couple of projects and startups, which he chose not to disclose. Zhao noted that the typical investment size is “pretty small” and that no particularly fixed amount will be invested across projects. “We’re not here to fund the entire development [of games],” he added. “Our value-add is not capital—it’s all of these infrastructure solutions and an NFT experience that no one else in the market can provide.”

Over the past month, Magic Eden secured $130 million in a Series B funding round. This raised the company’s valuation to $1.6 billion, turning it into a crypto unicorn. With its recent move, the firm will be competing with Fractal — another gaming-centric NFT marketplace on Solana. However, Zhao remains confident that Magic Eden will be able to provide more comprehensive solutions. “Both of us want to expand the ecosystem. For game developers, we show them data, right? It’s up to them to decide who to ultimately pick. The results have informed developers that there’s a good reason to partner with us instead of Fractal.”

Source: Decrypt