[PRESS RELEASE – Santa Clara, CA, September 12th, 2024]
CARV is launching a $50 million accelerator to incubate projects capable of driving the mass adoption of its eponymous data protocol.
With backing from top blockchain VC funds, including HashKey Capital and Consensys, the modular data layer for gaming and AI has pledged to support innovators, particularly those actively building the future of decentralized data.
Backed by CARV Protocol, the accelerator’s mission is to enable a dynamic, decentralized data infrastructure that empowers users to control and monetize their data. It will provide comprehensive support to startups, including funding and investment backed by leading industry funds, go-to-market and growth support, expert tokenomics advisory, infrastructure and tooling tech advice, and access to the company’s industry network and community.
“Our goal is to enable a decentralized data ecosystem for broader innovation,” said CARV Co-Founder Victor Yu. “Building sustainable data infrastructure hinges on creating a dynamic data flywheel, which requires modular infrastructure and a critical mass of high-quality applications post-PMF. To push for the next hockey stick, we want to further encourage building by more players.”
As well as direct funding and investment, CARV Labs will supply marketing and growth support, plus tokenomics advisory services, community-building, and prioritized infrastructure and tooling support from CARV and its network partners.
Current industry investors set to play a role in the accelerator’s vertical-specific programs include MARBLEX, the web3 arm of South Korean mobile game developer Netmarble; Intella X, the Web3 Publishing arm of South Korea’s Global Game Developer and Publisher NEOWIZ, the crowdfunding platform Alphastarter; Doublejump.tokyo, the developer behind the Oasys blockchain; various business angels; game publisher Xterio; Solana, NEAR and Ronin networks.
Additional partners such as Arweave, Litentry, the Linea Ecosystem Investment Alliance (LEIA), and Alibaba Cloud will also promote the accelerator. Linea, the secure zkEVM L2 that empowers dapps to thrive, will further market a web3 gaming offer later this year that will connect to the accelerator.
The first project incubated under CARV Labs, BANANA, an idle game built on the TON ecosystem, attracted over 8M users within just 4 weeks with more than 1M daily active users, 1.8M social accounts connected, and 73M social tasks completed. The rapid success of BANANA underscores CARV Labs’ effectiveness in fostering innovation and driving user engagement in decentralized applications. This milestone showcases the potential for future projects and positions CARV Labs as a leader in the space.
The groundswell of applications building on the protocol has enabled CARV to generate over $5 million in revenue YTD, with more games and projects in the pipeline. Last month, it announced the launch of its Alphanet, run by the 40K verifier nodes distributed to its community worth $35M. The milestone was considered an important one as CARV evolves into a truly decentralized and scalable protocol layer. Alphanet’s arrival followed April’s Series A funding round, led by Tribe Capital and IOSG Ventures, which attracted $10 million.
Gaming, AI, and data infrastructure projects interested in finding out more about the new accelerator are advised to reach out via CARV’s official Discord channel.
About CARV
CARV is building the largest modular Identity and Data Layer (IDL) for gaming, AI, and beyond, integrating over 900 games and AI companies, representing more than 30% of all Web3 games, and serving 9.5M+ registered players with 1.3M+ daily active users and 2.8M unique on-chain CARV ID holders. Ranking among the top three globally with 2.1M+ average daily unique active wallets across 40+ chains, CARV has raised $50M in total funding from top-tier investors like Tribe Capital, Temasek Vertex, HashKey Capital, Animoca Brands, and ConsenSys, along with major gaming studios and ecosystems such as MARBLEX (Netmarble) and the Sandbox. The team comprises industry veterans from Coinbase, Binance, Google, and Electronic Arts, all dedicated to revolutionizing data usage in gaming, AI, and beyond.
About HashKey Capital
HashKey Capital is a global digital asset and blockchain leader helping institutions, founders and talents advance the blockchain industry. As one of the largest crypto fund managers and being the earliest corporate investor in Ethereum, HashKey Capital has managed over US$1 billion in client assets since its inception. Leveraging its unparalleled expertise, HashKey Capital’s venture investments team oversees a diversified portfolio of over 600 pioneering projects across institutional services, infrastructure, data, AI, consumer services/ technology and more.
About Consensys
Consensys is the leading blockchain and web3 software company. Since 2014, Consensys has been at the forefront of innovation, pioneering technological developments within the web3 ecosystem. Through our product suite, including the MetaMask platform, Infura, Linea, Diligence, and our NFT toolkit Phosphor, we have become the trusted collaborator for users, creators, and developers on their path to build and belong in the world they want to see. Whether building a dapp, an NFT collection, a portfolio, or a better future, the instinct to build is universal. Consensys inspires and champions the builder instinct in everyone by making web3 universally easy to use and develop on. To explore our products and solutions, visit https://consensys.io/.
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