Jacquelyn Melinek

<div id="highlights-block_6216a7ee49b33" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Dubbed Zebec Pay, the product is a tax-compliant, on-chain payroll processor that pays employees via USDC or other stablecoins within seconds</li>
 <li>Within a few months of launching, the protocol has over 250 projects built on the blockchain</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



A Solana crypto payment processor closed a $15 million venture round as demand for the proof-of-stake protocol lingers after its explosive growth last year.



Zebec’s Series A round was led by Distributed Global and Solana Ventures. The company did not disclose its latest valuation.



Other investors include Alameda Research, Circle, Coinbase, GoldenTree Asset Management and Lightspeed Venture Partners.



The platform enables continuous, real-time settlements and can be used to send and receive money for investments, payments and subscriptions. Dubbed Zebec Pay, the product is a tax-compliant, on-chain payroll processor that pays employees via USDC or other stablecoins within seconds.&nbsp;



Support for USDC “onboards a new generation of workers to the digital asset economy,” Circle Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Fox-Green told Blockworks.



&#8220;For crypto-curious employees, providing an option to allocate a portion of their paycheck into crypto is an easy way for them to get started, without having to transfer funds from a traditional banking system,&#8221; Fox-Green said.



<a href="https://zebec.io" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Zebec</a> launched in November 2021 and has raised $21 million in all and plans to raise additional funding “soon,” Founder Sam Thapaliya told Blockworks. “Our goal is growth and to grow fast.”



The protocol now supports more than 250 projects. Zebec additionally plans to launch a debit card that supports fiat-to-crypto conversion — a major force, in Thapaliya’s eyes, when it comes to driving mainstream crypto adoption.



The protocol is focused on scaling partnerships with products focused on a range of crypto products, including fractionalized non-fungible tokens (NFTs), yields and options, he said.&nbsp;



“People are doubling down on this idea of continuous money, and this is just the starting point,” Thapaliya said.



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Solana Payment Processor Raises $15M on Promise of Instant Settlements

Ben Strack

Macauley Peterson

<div id="highlights-block_61e1a7c79358d" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>“We think games can onboard the next 100 million, even 1 billion people into Web3,” Wu told Blockworks </li>
 <li>FTX is a portfolio company of Lightspeed, which has collaborated on FTX commercial initiatives in the past</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



FTX has launched a $2 billion venture capital fund focused on backing teams building within the digital assets ecosystem as the company is focused on advancing blockchain and Web3 adoption. The crypto derivatives exchange also revealed that Amy Wu, most recently a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, joined FTX to lead ventures, gaming, M&amp;A and commercial initiatives. 



The fund, FTX Ventures, will invest broadly across crypto and Web3, Wu said, noting that the unit is particularly excited about the number of talented teams in the Web3 gaming space.



Gaming is huge — a $200 billion annual industry in content alone and growing fast,” she told Blockworks.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“Gamers pioneered the usage of digital assets and now can own them, and we think games can onboard the next 100 million, even 1 billion people into Web3.” </blockquote>



FTX, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Solana Ventures joined forces to create a $100 million Web3 gaming investment initiative, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/ftx-solana-ventures-and-lightspeed-create-100m-web3-gaming-investment/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the companies announced</a> in November. 



FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said during a panel at the <a href="https://www.bloomberglive.com/event/bloomberg-financial-innovation-summit-november-4/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bloomberg Financial Innovation Summit</a> that month that <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/sam-bankman-fried-gaming-nfts-have-mainstream-potential/">gaming NFTs could be a driving force</a> behind bringing crypto to the mainstream.



At Lightspeed Venture Partners, a $10 billion multi-stage venture fund, Wu led crypto and gaming investments, including <a href="https://lsvp.com/portfolio/ftx/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the fund&#8217;s investment in FTX</a>.



“Our investors at FTX have made a deep impact in supporting our growth and development,” Bankman-Fried said in a statement. “We strive to do the same at FTX Ventures and are excited to find the brightest minds and disruptive innovation in tech.”



As part of FTX Ventures, Wu will lead a team of eight people, which includes general partner Ramnik Arora and advisor Armani Ferrante.



Arora has worked as FTX’s head of product since October 2020, according to his LinkedIn profile. Ferrante has been a software engineer at Alameda Research since September 2020, a quantitative cryptocurrency trading firm and liquidity provider founded by FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.



Venture money has poured into the crypto space over the last year. An all-time high of $17 billion <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/crypto-venture-funding-is-at-an-all-time-high-this-is-where-the-money-is-going/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">had been invested</a> into crypto projects in the first half of 2021. 



Circle <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/circle-launches-venture-fund/">revealed plans in November</a> to launch a venture fund to invest in early-stage blockchain projects and companies.&nbsp;



Last month, Silvergate Capital and EJF Capital <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/silvergate-and-ejf-launch-joint-venture-fund-to-invest-in-early-stage-companies/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">teamed up</a> to launch a venture fund, and Kraken Ventures <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/kraken-ventures-raises-65m-for-fund-focused-on-crypto-fintech/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced its first fund</a> after raising $65 million to invest across crypto and fintech.



FTX has participated in the funding rounds of a variety of crypto startups in recent months, including crypto infrastructure provider <a href="https://medium.com/toruslabs/web3auth-raises-13m-series-a-to-drive-mass-adoption-on-web3-applications-and-wallets-via-simple-948b6008cdb5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Web3Auth</a> and <a href="https://www.drivewealth.com/news-page/drivewealth-raises-450m-series-d-valuing-the-company-at-2-85b" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DriveWealth Holdings</a>. 



“Some existing investments from FTX will be folded into the new Venture fund,” Wu said. “At FTX Ventures we’re excited to co-invest with our close partners and investors, so it’ll be a natural way to continue partnering with Lightspeed as well.”



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FTX Launches $2B Venture Fund

<div id="highlights-block_618539c807fa8" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>The first investment has already been deployed to Faraway Games, a Web3 gaming studio focused on “social games with player-driven and decentralized economies”</li>
 <li>Play-to-earn games like Axie Infinity have been able to provide players with rewards that were up to several times their monthly salaries, creating a “blockchain-based” living wage, the Solana representative said </li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



FTX, Lightspeed Venture Partners and <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/sol-flips-usdt-in-market-cap-axie-infinity-ronin-dex-goes-live-markets-wrap/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Solana</a> Ventures have joined forces to create a $100 million Web3 gaming investment initiative, the companies said on Friday.&nbsp;



The investment will focus on gaming studios, technology and projects that focus on the overlap between blockchains and <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/coinfund-partner-thinks-nfts-are-the-future-of-gaming/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">gaming</a>.&nbsp;



Lightspeed has invested over $300 million in a range of early to late-stage gaming and crypto companies, including Epic Games, 1047 Games, TripleDot Studios, Faraway Games, FTX, Offchain Labs, Alchemy, Wintermute and others.



The initiative will help advance and develop new decentralized models for gaming as well as the tools developers need to build, according to a spokesperson for Solana Ventures. The first investment has already been deployed to Faraway Games, a Web3 gaming studio focused on “social games with player-driven and decentralized economies,” the release stated.&nbsp;



“In many ways, it could be argued that blockchain’s application to gaming is a no-brainer because gamers are already accustomed to tokenization and purchasing in-game items,” the spokesperson noted.&nbsp;



Some of the earliest games that exist have featured elements of virtual currency and brought in significant revenue for game studios and app stores, the spokesperson said. But as gaming evolved, in-game tokens and items have brought physical monetary value from the digital world, they added.&nbsp;



The Solana blockchain has over 2.2 million non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and over 125 NFT collections, with over a dozen of blockchain-based games. “In the last few months, we&#8217;ve seen talented game builders leave their jobs at Riot, EA, Scopely, and other established gaming firms to build Web3 games on Solana,” Anatoly Yakovenko, CEO of Solana Labs, said in a statement.&nbsp;



In 2020, the global gaming market was valued at $173.7 billion and is expected to jump 81% to $314.4 billion by 2026, according to a <a href="https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/global-gaming-market#faqs" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a>. In general, there has been an increasing amount of interest in the Web3 gaming industry over the past year with game builders and developers moving from traditional gaming industries to build on Web3, said the Solana Ventures spokesperson.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“With the shift in focus to in-game assets, blockchain has the ability to solve a number of problems including eliminating fraudulent items, creating scarcity, and incentivizing more purchases by making items transferable across games,” they said, adding, “Play2Earn opportunities will also continue to monetize the industry, something that has historically been a major draw for gamers.”</blockquote>



Additionally, play-to-earn games like Axie Infinity have been able to provide players with rewards that were up to several times their monthly salaries, creating a “blockchain-based” living wage, said the Solana Ventures spokesperson. Axie users can trade, breed and battle non-fungible token (NFT) characters in the digital world. The gaming company passed<a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/axie-infinity-developer-scores-152m-in-series-b-funding-nearing-3b-valuation/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> $2 billion in all-time trading volume </a>in September, according to DappRadar.



“We believe this new technology stands to cultivate the next phase of gaming innovation including the development of new decentralized models for gaming and while also bringing new builders into the space,” they added.



Earlier this week, Mythical Games closed a $150 million Series C round led by <a target="_blank" href="https://cms.blockworks.co/a16z-launches-400m-seed-fund-to-expand-into-new-technology/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Andreessen Horowitz</a>, a16z, Blockworks reported. The next-generation gaming technology studio’s valuation is now $1.25 billion, meaning it has reached unicorn status in under three years after being founded in 2018.