Sky Mavis (Axie Infinity) Raises Their $152m Series B
At the end of 2020, we met an amazing team pioneering a new way for gamers to be treated by the games they play. Sky Mavis saw a clear issue in the market: gamers do not own the fruits of their labor. The average gamer plays over 8 hours of video games every week, but they don’t share in any of the upside of the community they help create. Enter Axie Infinity.
When we heard the Sky Mavis team’s vision and saw the community they had cultivated since they initially launched in 2018, we knew the gaming market was approaching a paradigm shift. We made our first investment in Sky Mavis during their Series A earlier this year, and couldn’t be more excited to double down and continue backing this team in their Series B.
Axie Infinity is at the forefront of innovation in games. It combines the fun of gaming with the financial benefits of working to show how Play-to-Earn (P2E) can truly work. Everything — from the characters to the land, to the in-game items — is wholly owned by the players through a decentralized economy. If you think of any major game off the top of your head, the players are at the mercy of the game developer. Ethereum, the blockchain that Axie Infinity is built on, was initially conceptualized because of the issues that come from centralized game services.
“I happily played World of Warcraft during 2007–2010, but one day Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock’s Siphon Life spell. I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring.” — Vitalik Buterin
Axie Infinity has already proven to be one of the most successful games ever made and just two years ago people scoffed at the idea of NFTs and true gamer ownership. Today, Axie Infinity is top two in protocol revenue over the last 30 days behind only Ethereum itself. Before EIP-1559 was launched, Axie Infinity was far and beyond the leader in protocol revenue.
Sky Mavis is not only building the game that has everyone’s attention but it is also building the infrastructure to support others in this space. It migrated the community to its own sidechain, Ronin, and will be launching much more in the coming months. We can’t wait for the community to see it. This funding is about more than expanding gameplay; Sky Mavis wants to help build the foundation of P2E. It will be expanding support for the Ronin sidechain, rolling out free-to-play (F2P) gameplay, releasing its own decentralized exchange (DEX), and building out the processes for external developers to build their own experiences.
Sky Mavis has proven that when you invest in the community, the community will give back through their support and passion. Axie Infinity has changed the game forever, and we could not be happier to support the team in their mission to shake up our industry.
The Konvoy Team