Millions in Investment Bolsters Solana Gaming Ecosystem

A Solana-based gaming platform, Arcade2Earn, recently raised more than $3 million in funding, first reported by The Block.

Crypto.com Capital led the seed funding round with additional investment coming from Solana Ventures, Shima Capital, KuCoin Labs, and GSR. The simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT) agreement will provide Arcade2Earn's utility token, known as arcade, to all investors at a later date.

This offers a surprising boost to the Solana gaming ecosystem after months of relative inaction from venture capital firms and angel investors. But Arcade2Earn is unique in that it uses "mission pools" as incentive for playing its games without the use of NFTs. Instead, operators can play games using NFTs owned by Arcade's treasury.

Users don't even have to play the games to earn rewards. They can deposit and lock xarcade tokens into mission pools and let others do the work for them for a share of the earnings.

"Not everyone is good at playing or has time to play games and earn," head of KuCoin Labs Xinlu Yu said about Arcade2Earn. "This is where Arcade fills the gap by enabling those groups of people to enjoy earning yields through their specific products without directly playing the games themselves."

Due to wild price fluctuations over the last two years, NFTs are on shaky ground with the public. In September 2022, Maru Entertainment and Technology ran a survey that found nearly 70 to 85 percent of people thought of NFTs as "expensive digital images," "confusing," and "a fad that will fade away."

As NFTs deal with the reprocussions of its casino-style market shifts, it will be interesting to see how web3 gaming platforms promote, integrate, disguise, or avoid NFTs in their games moving forward.