Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT) Sale Nets $8.86 Million for Ethereum Scaling

Multicoin Leads $10 Million SAFT Sale for Ethereum Scaling Startup Skale

From Coindesk.com by Nikhilesh De Oct. 4, 2018

Blockchain startup Skale Labs raised nearly $10 million in an effort to develop a blockchain scalability infrastructure for ethereum, the company announced Thursday.

The startup says in a press statement that it raised $8.86 million in a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT) sale led by Multicoin Capital, on top of $785,000 raised earlier this year.

Galaxy Digital, Aspect Ventures, Blockchange Ventures, Boost.VC, Canaan Venture Partners, Floodgate Fund, Hack.VC, Neo Global Capital and Signia Venture Partners also participated in the sale.

The company intends to launch an open-source permissionless blockchain targeted toward providing ethereum-based decentralized application (dapp) developers a new base platform to build upon.

In particular, Skale intends to launch the first implementation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine on a Plasma chain – a move it says would help dapp developers by giving them a layer-2 platform on which to execute smart contracts.

Using Skale's network will enable dapps to conduct "millions of transactions per second at a fraction of the cost of what's possible today," the release claims.

Jack O'Holleran, co-founder and CEO of Skale Labs, said in a statement that "helping Ethereum dapp developers scale applications is the center of what we do."

He added:

"We are sharply focused on making Layer 2 easy, fast, secure and cost-effective for anyone who wants to run smart contracts on Ethereum ... We are looking forward to bringing this network to market in a fully open-source, [peer-to-peer] manner."

The startup plans to set its testnet live by the end of 2018 and activate its mainnet in the upcoming year. A foundation will also be launched to support the network, similar to the Ethereum Foundation and its work supporting the Ethereum mainnet, the firm says.

"Skale is uniquely positioned to dominate Layer 2 on Ethereum," said Multicoin Capital managing partner Kyle Samani, adding that the project is "Ethereum's best shot at fending off competition from other smart contract platforms."

Source:

Blockchain Startup Gamedex Raises $800,000

Seed Round to Build Platform for Digital Collectible Card Games like Pokemon

SINGAPORE, July 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Gamedex just raised $800,000 in a seed round led by Invictus Capital in order to build a Steam-like platform for blockchain-powered digital collectible cards and digital collectible card games like Pokemon, Hearthstone, Magic: The Gathering, and FIFA Ultimate Team. The global gaming market was worth 110 billion USD in 2017 and is projected to continue growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 6.2%.

In one of the first token seed rounds ever completed, investors purchased Gamedex tokens ("GDX tokens") instead of equity. Invictus Capital led the round, investing via their Hyperion fund. The Hyperion fund is a tokenized venture capital fund which prides itself on investing in the most talented entrepreneurs and visionaries in the blockchain industry.

Gamedex will not be selling any more GDX tokens until at least August.

Daniel Schwartzkopff, CEO of Cayman-based Invictus Capital, explained their rationale: "Digital Assets were a $35 billion market in 2017 and the cryptocurrency market has -- at times -- neared $1 trillion. The fact is, for all that blockchain is in the news, its biggest consumer use case is still untapped. I expect the nascent non-currency crypto-collectibles market to reach $100 billion by 2022."

This vision appears to be shared in Silicon Valley. With their investment into Gamedex, Invictus Capital joins the likes of Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, who have both invested heavily in the crypto-collectibles space.

Individual angel investors who have made large investments in the crypto-collectible space include Fred Ehrsam, Co-founder of Coinbase, Naval Ravikant, Co-founder of AngelList, and Mark Pincus, Co-founder of Zynga.

Gamedex Co-founder and CEO Cameron Garvie added, "I believe that ecosystems which rely on a community to function should belong to the community they are built on, and we aim to do just that. We chose to bring Daniel and his team over at Invictus into our seed round due to their deep expertise and wealth of connections in the industry."

Gamedex is planning a public GDX token sale for late 2018.

https://gamedex.co/