Souq G-Commerce announced it raised a $3.3 million pre-seed funding round as well as the beta test availability of its portfolio manager for Web3 game assets.
The funding will be used to further expand Souq’s flagship product for managing and tracking blockchain game assets, supporting players and games across all major blockchains.
The round includes participation from Kickstart, IVC, Operate, Moon Holdings, Ellipti Ventures, Perpetual Value Partners, Himanshu Sahay & Partners, Sterling VC, Evernew Capital, BBQ Capital, Mike del Balso, Chris Chang, BlockØ, Aleph One, Gautam Shah, and Miko Matsumura.
Today, managing and tracking game assets is challenging, as assets exist across a variety of games, wallets, and blockchains. Structured information about asset value and game economy/community health is non-existent. Souq onboards players in less than 30 seconds, and allows them to track and manage their portfolio across any blockchain or wallet, the company said.
“We exist to help players become owners of the games they love and share in the upside of these new virtual economies,” said Souq CEO JonPaul Vega, in a statement. “We are at the start of a paradigm shift in the largest global category of entertainment: gaming. Players will be treated as stakeholders of the games they play, enabled by property rights enforced through blockchain technology. ”
Souq is creating the technology to discover and monitor a portfolio of Web3 game assets. The roadmap includes building out the financial market focused on game economies, which will power yield generating opportunities for the player community.
“These new economies require that players have more information rights than Web2 games. We are positioning Souq to be the one-stop shop for information about holdings and game economies,” said Ken Berkowitz, head of product, in a statement.
Souq was founded in 2021 to provide consumer asset management software in the Web3 gaming space. The focus is on building the first financial market for game economies, enabling players to participate and share in the upside of these virtual worlds.
Souq said it believes we are seeing gaming bring in a whole new profile of users into the blockchain ecosystem. These players demand a very polished UX, and that is driving advancements to simplify wallets, onboarding, and on-chain interactions. The entire ecosystem will benefit from these innovations that reduce friction.
“We personally see games as a more intuitive way for users to explore and engage in DeFi,” the company said. “Games represent a new vector for generating yield through a more familiar paradigm using their economies and gameplay.”
It noted that players face three problems with Web3 games. Assets can exist across various games, wallets, blockchains, and marketplaces. This makes it difficult to track what you own.
Monitoring the value of what you own and how it changes over time is much harder than fungible tokens. Each asset is unique and requires the equivalent of a digital appraisal. No objective information source or tools aid in understanding the health of game economies in which a player holds assets.
Souq estimates people playing Web3 games have somewhere between four million and eight million wallets with more than $3 billion in crypto assets.
At the highest level, Souq organizes game assets and structures market information. The company released the first portfolio manager for Web3 game assets.
“Players connect wallets across any blockchain, and in less than 30 seconds, we help them understand what they own, what it’s worth, and the health of the game’s economies that they participate in. Think Robinhood for video games,” Vega said.
Vega added, “Our mental model for these games is virtual economies; we see them as the equities markets of the future. We are building the first financial market focused on these economies. Our end goal is to jumpstart the evolution of ‘gaming plus’ where players can play and own pieces of games. This is what drives and excites us.”
Vega said the company will focus only on games with open economies. It has two criteria to meet this qualification: Its currencies (whether monetary or utility tokens) exist as cryptocurrencies, and players can easily convert in or out at any time. The second criteria is purchases of content (e.g., items) exist as entries on the blockchain and are housed in a player’s wallet ( custodial or non-custodial).
Souq supports ETH/Poly game assets across both ERC-721 and 1155 formats; it is expanding to Solana with additional Layer 2 and alternate Layer 1 solutions will follow. By Q3, the company expects to cover 95% of all NFT games.