FTX, Lightspeed and Solana are betting big on Web3 Gaming

FTX, Lightspeed and Solana ventures are setting up a $100M Web3 gaming development initiative. This investment is one of the largest capital investments in this space. The funding will go to gaming studious and technology startups that integrate the Solana blockchain into video games accessible on mobile and desktop.

Play to earn games such as Axie Infinity and metaverse games like Decentraland and Sandbox have ignited the popularity of web3 gaming.

The crypto community strongly believes that gaming will lead to wider crypto adoption of cryptocurrencies among people. Gaming is one of the fastest-growing industries. The global gaming market is said to generate well over $100 billion in annual revenue. The intersection of blockchain technology, cryptocurrency and gaming is creating a new reality for gamers, referred to as GameFi, a broad term that describes the financialization of gaming through DeFi and nonfungible tokens.

Lightspeed has previously invested $300 million in “early-stage gaming and crypto companies”, including Epic Games, 1047 Games, Tripledot Studios, Off-chain Labs, Alchemy and Wintermute.

“Gaming has a massive opportunity to bring the next billion users to Web 3...High-performance blockchains like Solana are now capable of delivering the kind of Web 2 experiences gamers expect while providing the advantages of decentralized Web 3 systems.” says Amy Wu, partner at Lightspeed.