- Ajuna makes the world’s leading development engines, Unreal and Unity, fully integrated with blockchain and NFTs
- Funding led by Fundamental Labs and supported by OKEx Blockdream Ventures and Signum Capital
- Platform named as 2021 “highlight” by Polkadot founder Gavin Wood
Ajuna, a Swiss-based decentralized gaming platform, announced today that it has secured $2 million in seed funding. The funding is led by Fundamental Labs, an Asian investment and venture capital firm specialized in the blockchain sector.
Financing was also provided by OKEx Blockdream Ventures, the investment arm of the globally prominent cryptocurrency exchange, and Signum Capital, a Singapore-based blockchain investment fund. In addition, the support was accompanied by an equity investment by blockchain game publisher Animoca Brands in Ajuna’s parent company BloGa Tech AG.
Ajuna will use its funding to expand the functionality of its platform and further grow its team, in order to showcase how gaming can be enriched using blockchain technology and NFTs.
Discussing the rationale behind the financing, Fundamental Labs Investment Director Eric Yang said: “By creating a service layer for the Unity and Unreal software development kits (SDKs) that is compatible with play-to-earn gaming, and combining it with an API suite to communicate with blockchain networks, Ajuna eliminates barriers to onboarding for both traditional gamers and game developers. It’s game-changing infrastructure in the field of game finance (GameFi)”.
Existing blockchain games tend to be relatively slow and technically unsophisticated due to the limitations of smart contracts on decentralized networks. Ajuna is set to solve this issue by enabling developers to create decentralized games using industry-leading platforms like Unity and Unreal, while massively reducing latency by running game engines in powerful, off-chain trusted execution environments (TEEs) linked to the Polkadot network.
Dora Yue, Founder of OKEx Blockdream Ventures commented that “GameFi has created new experiences for gamers and introduced a unique sense of belonging and ownership. It has seen a surge in active users, booming from 1.1 million a week in 2017 to 9.21 million in 2021. Infrastructure for blockchain games will play a pivotal role in bridging the gap between players and vendors. That’s why we partnered with Ajuna.”
The project has also received praise from Polkadot founder Gavin Wood, who commented in his annual roundup of 2021 that “highlights from this year include Ajuna Network introducing fully featured SDKs for using Unity and Unreal with Substrate”.
Ajuna is currently participating in Luna Launchpad, an accelerator program to incubate blockchain startups established by venture capital firm Brinc in partnership with Animoca Brands. During the launchpad’s Demo Day in March, Ajuna will showcase its solution.
About Ajuna
Ajuna is a Swiss-based decentralized gaming platform. The platform is bringing blockchain gaming into the mainstream by integrating it with the world’s leading development engines, Unreal and Unity. Built on Substrate, Ajuna leverages the full potential of the Polkadot ecosystem to provide developers with a modular toolbox to build on-chain features into their games. Ajuna’s ultimate goal is to create real value for both gamers and developers by providing a fully interoperable decentralized ecosystem for games and virtual goods. Based in the greater area of Zurich, the firm’s growing team is led by co-founders Cédric Decoster and André Schneider.
