Solana Ventures, the investment arm of Solana Labs, recently announced a new $150 million fund to back blockchain gaming startups.
The fund was launched in partnership with Forte, a blockchain gaming startup that recently closed a $725 million Series B round, and Griffin Gaming Partners, a venture capital firm focused on the gaming industry and a global gaming marketplace venture capital firm. The new fund will invest in equity as well as token rounds in startups and is expected to be fully deployed over the next 18 months.
According to Solana Labs’ principals, the fund is denominated in U.S. dollars, rather than Solana token SOL. The fund plans to invest in gaming startups built on the Solana chain, and the Solana network’s ability to reach a throughput of 65,000 transactions at an average cost of $0.00025 per transaction makes it an ideal blockchain for gaming applications.
Forte’s platform allows game publishers to easily integrate these blockchain technologies into their games with products such as seamless, embeddable token wallets, NFT minting and selling, payment tracks, and other services built specifically for the blockchain token economy and digital and virtual asset management. forte CEO Josh Williams believes Solana further pushes the future of blockchain gaming forward, as its ultra-fast and low-cost solution ensures scalability, even at tens of thousands of transactions per second, ensuring that building games on Forte with Solana is viable and cost-effective for developers and players alike.
Griffin has invested more than $400 million in gaming and Web 3.0 game-related companies over the past two years, including Forte, Discord and others, and Griffin co-founder Nick Tuosto said the company will continue to work with Forte and Solana to help drive the blockchain gaming ecosystem forward.
Notably, this is the second fund announced by Solana Ventures to focus on blockchain gaming. Previously, Solana Ventures joined with Lightspeed Venture Partners and FTX to launch a $100 million fund-GameFi-and invested in Faraway Games.
