Morgan Chittum

<div id="highlights-block_62462ac77fea8" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Participants include Andreesen Horowitz, Solana Labs, Animoca and Coinbase</li>
 <li>Fractal currently has roughly 17 full-time employees</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Fractal, a gaming NFT marketplace founded by Twitch co-founder <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/podcast-why-gaming-nfts-will-be-bigger-than-twitch-justin-kan/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Justin Kan</a>, announced a $35 million seed round on Friday. 



The fresh raise, Kan told Blockworks, will go toward staff expansion, specifically building out a partnerships team and making hires that are “engineering and product heavy.”



Kan has not disclosed the startup’s valuation yet. Fractal has roughly 17 full-time employees but does not have an exact headcount plan by year-end.



“Measuring your company by the size of headcount is like measuring your plane by its weight,” Kan said.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“The main priorities are to build great products for the game partners, and then help them with launching their games. We see it as, if we make our partners successful, we’ll be successful.”</blockquote>



Fractal is a Solana-based marketplace for gamers to buy and sell in-game assets or <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/?s=NFTs" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NFTs</a> (non-fungible tokens).&nbsp;



“The thing that’s going to work in NFTs, just off the bat, I thought was gaming because there&#8217;s already a culture of buying digital assets and digital goods, right?” Kan said. “There’s people buying skins and in-game items, worth tens of billions of dollars each year. Putting it on the blockchain as the next evolution was very obvious to me.”



The startup, according to Kan, “helps gaming companies drop these assets and create a market around these assets with their players.”



Last December, a <a href="https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1473363510935449600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1473363510935449600%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.coindesk.com%2Fbusiness%2F2021%2F12%2F30%2Fjustin-kans-gaming-nft-platform-goes-live-rebounding-from-150k-discord-exploit%2F" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">scammer briefly hacked</a> Fractal’s Discord server, stealing $150,000 worth of Solana from users. Kan reimbursed those affected by the incident with his own funds.



Other participants in the financing round include Andreesen Horowitz, Solana Labs, Animoca, Coinbase, Play Ventures, Crossover, Shrug Capital, Position Ventures, Zynga founder <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-pincus/?sh=49a819bb7c8e" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mark Pincus</a>, TerraForm chief executive Do Kwon and podcaster Tim Ferriss.



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Justin Kan’s Gaming NFT Marketplace Fractal Secures $35M Seed Funding

On today&#8217;s episode of &#8220;<a href="https://youtu.be/HSC38HL6N4c" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Empire</a>,&#8221; Jason Yanowitz and Santiago Roel Santos are joined by investor, entrepreneur and Twitch co-founder Justin Kan for a deep dive into NFTs.



Justin shares what it was like leaving Twitch, getting into crypto and launching Fractal, a Solana based marketplace for gaming NFTs (non-fungible tokens).



Justin provides a look behind the curtain into the fast evolving world of Web3 from the the traditional Web2 and gaming perspective, discussing the new possibilities crypto provides for gamers, streamers and online communities.



Plus, hear more on:



<ul class="wp-block-list"><li>human capital coming into crypto</li><li>Fractal&#8217;s 2022 roadmap</li><li>and so much more!</li></ul>



Check out what they had to say in the video below.👇



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Why Gaming NFTs Will Be Bigger Than Twitch | Justin Kan" width="1024" height="576" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HSC38HL6N4c?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">About the show</h3>



&#8220;Empire&#8221; is a twice-a-week show. On Thursdays, Jason interviews crypto industry movers and shakers to talk about their struggles, bold moves and tough decisions. Friday&#8217;s weekly roundup episodes feature <meta charset="utf-8">co-host Santiago Roel Santos and cover the top news from the past week.



For any NPR or Guy Raz fans out there, you can think of &#8220;Empire&#8221; as a &#8220;How I Built This&#8221; for the bitcoin and crypto industry.



Subscribe to &#8220;Empire&#8221; today on&nbsp;<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/empire/id1554930038" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Apple</a>&nbsp;or&nbsp;<a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/4UTePv1CR3APdKOiosR3Iq" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Spotify</a>. Watch episodes on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvER9nHSRN3wPkrDGTT5_8VC4Hjcq0f9U" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">YouTube</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



Get the day’s top crypto news and insights delivered to your inbox every evening.&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://cms.blockworks.co/newsletter/?source=end" rel="noreferrer noopener">Subscribe to Blockworks’ free newsletter</a>&nbsp;now.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>

Podcast: Why Gaming NFTs Will Be Bigger Than Twitch | Justin Kan

<div id="highlights-block_622a7d366e37d" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>MetaMask, Trust Wallet and Math Wallet are the most commonly used wallets</li>
 <li>16% of respondents said their accounts on NFT platforms had been previously hacked</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



From multi-million dollar rugpulls to user exploits on marketplaces, investing in NFTs can be fraught with risk.&nbsp;



New York gallery owner Todd Kramer, for example, had <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3v3ny/all-my-apes-gone-nft-theft-victims-beg-for-centralized-saviors" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$2.2 million</a> of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) <a href="https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/todd-kramer-nft-theft-1234614874/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">stolen</a> in January through a phishing scam.



Half of NFT owners have lost access to at least one of their digital collectibles before, according to a March 8 <a href="https://privacyhq.com/news/nft-and-wallet-security/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report by research firm PrivacyHQ</a>.



The study, which polled over one thousand collectors, showed two out of three NFT investors “panic sold” one of their blockchain-based collectibles last year.&nbsp;



Justin Kan, co-founder of NFT gaming marketplace Fractal and streaming platform Twitch, told Blockworks users should follow precautions to safeguard their assets.



“There [are] a high level of rugpulls and scams [in NFTs],” Kan said. “[But] hopefully as the space matures, companies will be able to provide protocols that will be able to [offer] this kind of security for their users.”&nbsp;



“You should have a burner wallet when you&#8217;re minting, have a cold wallet for storage of your NFTs, and you should be aware of phishing attacks.”



Per the survey, 16% of respondents said their NFT platforms had been hacked, but roughly 90% said they were able to recoup losses in some capacity. 



MetaMask, Trust Wallet and MathWallet are the most popular NFT wallets — with MetaMask believed to be the safest.



“Don&#8217;t [click on] links,” Kan said. “We [recommend] typing out Fractal.is in your browser. Now, people in Web2 are going to [say], ‘That&#8217;s insane that you have to do all these protections.’ But I think it&#8217;s the cost of having true ownership of [something.] You kind of have to rebuild the space from the ground up.”



Security concerns, however, didn’t seem to slow the exponential growth of the industry last year. NFT sales reached $17.7 billion in 2021, up from $82.5 million in 2020, according to a <a href="https://nonfungible.com/reports/2021/yearly-nft-market-report-pro" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Thursday report</a> from NonFungible.



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Report: 50% of NFT Holders Have Lost Access to Their NFTs

<div id="highlights-block_61df3688d6891" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Kan announced the launch of his gaming NFT marketplace, Fractal, on Dec. 30, 2021</li>
 <li>Kan previously co-founded Twitch, a live-streaming service that was acquired by Amazon for $970 million</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Justin Kan — like most people — had never heard of a non-fungible token in 2017 when a friend convinced him to back his NFT startup. That investment, little did he know, would go down as the first step toward becoming a major player in the nascent asset class.



Before that, Kan co-founded the popular live-streaming service Twitch, which was acquired by Amazon for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rIL5vHoF34" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$970 million</a> — one of the company’s largest acquisitions at the time. He has since invested in a number of projects via his incubator fund <a href="https://goat.vc/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Goat Capital.</a>



Although his friend’s NFT-related project did not pan out, Kan has since ventured back into blockchain-based digital collectibles. Kan’s new project, dubbed Fractal, specializes in <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/the-investors-guide-to-gaming-nfts/">gaming NFTs</a>. It offers in-game NFTs with partner blockchain game companies and also operates a resale marketplace. 



I spoke with the 38-year-old tech entrepreneur about the future of gaming NFTs, his childhood favorite video games and the institutional investment case for alternative crypto assets.&nbsp;



Chittum: Can you give your best 30-second elevator pitch for Fractal?&nbsp;



Kan: I can do it in 15 seconds. The world is moving towards durable gaming assets. The gaming world has flipped so that in-game purchases are the primary business model of games, like people buying different things in games. This could be characters, skins, cosmetics, stuff like that.&nbsp;



Today, this is all centralized. It&#8217;s owned by the company, and it&#8217;s not transferable. You, as the player, don&#8217;t really own it. But the next wave of games is going to be an open economy or two-way economy where players own all of their stuff. They buy it, earn it in the game, but they still own it. And it&#8217;s all stored on the blockchain, which enables people, these economies to be open.&nbsp;



Fractal is a marketplace for people to discover, buy and sell these in-game assets or NFTs. We help gaming companies drop these assets, and create a market around these assets with their players.



Chittum: What NFT trends do you see emerging in the market?&nbsp;



Kan: The next wave is clearly non-fungible tokens that have utility. There&#8217;s already a multi-decade precedent for digital assets that have some sort of utility, and those are things that you have in games, right?&nbsp; It could be Fortnite skins or Counter Strike skins, all the way back to Ultima Online, which was like the first MMO (massively multiplayer online game.) You could get items like gold and build castles. People wanted this stuff badly enough that you&#8217;d want to buy it on eBay. This was like a really small game, I think it had 100,000 players at peak, but there was still this market.&nbsp;



To me, it&#8217;s very obvious now that there&#8217;ll be this wave led by gaming and utility NFTs.&nbsp;



Chittum: What do you think the value proposition is for traditional and institutional investors for NFTs?&nbsp;



Kan: It’s a new market with fairly high variance. If you think that these digital assets are going to be a thing, that&#8217;s a high alpha place to invest because it&#8217;s a new market that&#8217;s being created. It’s kind of like investing in technology stocks 15 years ago, right?&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">If you think like the world is going to look different in 15 years, because it&#8217;s going to be rewritten in some way — it&#8217;s a new way to bet on the edge of software technology.&nbsp;</blockquote>



Chittum: When was the first time you heard the words non-fungible token? Where were you? What was going through your head?



Kan: It’s funny. My friend started a competitor around the same time as OpenSea. He was like, ‘You should invest in my start-up. We&#8217;re doing a non-fungible token marketplace.’ I was like, ‘What the f*ck is that? I don’t get it.’ He’s like, ‘You can just store any data on a blockchain. And then basically you can create a unique token that represents anything you want. It could be an image or a piece of media, or it could be representative of something in the real world.’ And I was just like, ‘I don&#8217;t get it.’ But, I invested because I thought, ‘Well, he’s really smart and he’s my friend.’ So, I have this policy that I&#8217;ll always invest in friends because if they&#8217;re successful, and I don&#8217;t invest, the FOMO might literally kill me.&nbsp;



Chittum: What excites you about NFTs now? What changed your mind?



Kan: People now recognize them as stores of value. That&#8217;s the part that I didn&#8217;t really know would work at the time. I should have seen it coming, given what happened with bitcoin and ethereum. But nobody really knew that it would work then.



In the past year, you have started to see people create digital art and sell digital art. A large number of people now believe that it&#8217;s worth investing in, right? It&#8217;s worth something. If you buy this digital art, and it&#8217;s in an NFT, then it&#8217;s going to retain its value.&nbsp;



Chittum: How do you think gaming companies can ensure players stay interested without the money taking over?



Kan: So the question is, why are these games not just a series of different hyped-up pump and dumps? There has been a wave of play-to-earn games where I do think part of the interest in the game is if the token price is going to rise, but obviously, that doesn&#8217;t last forever.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">I think the next wave of gaming, at least from what I see in the market behind the scenes, is that a ton of people who are from traditional gaming companies like game builders want to be in the space because they see selling a bunch of assets as a better way to raise money for their game.</blockquote>



They&#8217;re focused on gaming and games that are mostly fun to play. There will be an economic component, but it&#8217;s more to create the feeling of durability among the assets.



This interview has been edited for length and clarity.



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