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Sead Fadilpašić
Journalist
Sead Fadilpašić
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CARV, a modular data layer for gaming and AI, announced a $50 million accelerator to incubate projects that they find are capable of driving the mass adoption of its data protocol.
According to the press release, CARV has backing from major blockchain VC funds, including HashKey Capital and Consensys.
HashKey Capital is a global digital asset and blockchain company and one of the largest crypto funds managers. Since its inception, it has managed over $1 billion in client assets. It’s also one of the earliest corporate investors in Ethereum.
Consensys is a major blockchain and web3 software company. Its product suite includes MetaMask, Infura, Linea, Diligence, and the NFT toolkit Phosphor.
The newly launched accelerator, backed by CARV Protocol, aims to enable “a dynamic, decentralized data infrastructure that empowers users to control and monetize their data,” the announcement said.
Per the team, the accelerator will provide support to startups, including funding and investment backed by leading industry funds.
It will also provide a go-to-market, growth support, expert tokenomics advisory, infrastructure, and tooling tech advice, and access to the company’s industry network and community.
CARV says it wants to support innovators, principally those actively contributing to the future of decentralized data.
CARV co-founder Victor Yu added that their goal is to enable a decentralized data ecosystem for broader innovation.
The first project incubated under CARV Labs is BANANA, an idle game built on the TON ecosystem.
The game exceeded 8 million users within 4 weeks. It has over 1 million daily active users, 1.8 million social accounts connected, and 73 million social tasks completed.
BANANA’s fast success “underscores CARV Labs’ effectiveness in fostering innovation and driving user engagement in decentralized applications,” as well as the potential for future projects, the announcement said.
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Numerous Industry Partners and Supporters
In addition to direct funding and investment, CARV Labs will provide marketing and growth support, community-building, and prioritized infrastructure and tooling support both from CARV and its partners.
Therefore, the announcement named industry investors involved in the accelerator’s vertical-specific programs:
- 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;
- Alphastarter, a crowdfunding platform;
- Doublejump.tokyo, the developer behind the Oasys blockchain;
- Xterio, a game publisher;
- Solana, NEAR, and Ronin networks;
- business angels.
Arweave, Litentry, the Linea Ecosystem Investment Alliance (LEIA), and Alibaba Cloud are among the partners promoting the accelerator.
Additionally, later this year, zkEVM L2 Linea will market a Web3 gaming offer that will connect to the accelerator.
Meanwhile, CARV has generated over $5 million in revenue YTD. In April, it raised $10 million in a Series A funding round led by Tribe Capital and IOSG Ventures. This brought its total raised to $50 million.
In July, it announced the launch of its Alphanet, describing it as a milestone that enables CARV to evolve into “a truly decentralized and scalable protocol layer.”
Also, it has more games and projects in the pipeline, the announcement said.
The CARV team commented that they’re 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.”
It has 9.5 million registered players, 1.3 million daily active users, 2.1 million average daily unique active wallets across 40 chains, and 2.8 million unique on-chain CARV ID holders.
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