Justin?s latest venture, Fractal.is, combines a Steam-esque game launcher with an NFT marketplace – but will it enjoy the same rampant success as his streaming service?
Can the Co-Founder of Twitch replicate his success in Web3?
Justin Kan, co-founder of leading livestream platform Twitch, has launched a new NFT marketplace and gaming hub, Fractal.is.
Securing a $35 million seed round earlier this year from investors including Animoca, Solana Labs and Coinbase, Fractal aims to create a one-stop shop for NFT games, allowing users to both buy, sell and trade NFTs, and explore the latest titles.
Within ten days of its announcement last year, Fractal?s Discord server grew to over 100,000 members, making it one of the fastest-growing communities in Web3.
It hasn?t all been plain-sailing however. Case in point, in late December 2021, Fractal suffered a major security breach when a scammer was able to hack the announcement bot in the Fractal Discord, using it to send a fraudulent link to the platform?s more than 100,000+ users, urging them to pay up for a new NFT.
According to Fractal’s Medium blog post, approximately 373 of its community members fell victim to the exploit. The hacker made out with ~800 SOL (~$150,000 at the time) – which was personally reimbursed by Kan himself.
Fractal supports over 85+ games on Solana
At present, the marketplace solely supports Solana NFTs, and has acquired a catalogue of 85 games thus far. Since their very first NFT release, Fractal have sold out of every NFT collection they’ve dropped ? raising over $2 million from the sale of Tiny Colony alone. At peak traffic, they?ve seen over 33,000 buyers for a single NFT release.
In an interview with Bloomberg Technology, Kan shared that he chose Solana over Ethereum due to the former?s low-cost transaction fees which made much more sense for gaming. Kan, however, clarified that Fractal wants to be wherever games studios want to be, and the long-term goal is to support multiple blockchains.
In another interview, Kan shared how NFTs in gaming remind him of the early days of the free-to-play (F2P) era, when there had been similar pushback from gamers. After, more and more studios began to adopt it, the F2P model grew into a multi-billion dollar segment of the games industry.
Fractal NFT is a collection of 100,000 snowlflakes on Solana
Kan considers blockchain technology and NFTs to be the next big business model for gaming – but rather than a transformation of gaming as we know it, player-owned assets will be an evolution and addition to the systems that we?re all familiar with.
In addition to the marketplace, Kan also dropped Fractal NFTs – which was by far the largest airdrop in Solana history. These 100,000 snowflake NFTs have a variety of power levels, and will deliver future utility and benefits within the Fractal ecosystem. ? We’ve seen a slew of game studios and companies moving into the blockchain this year, and the trend shows no sign of stopping. Fractal aims to both support and move in lockstep with them. ?
In the words of Kan:
“We’re just scratching the surface, but I think that every game in the future is going to launch with some sort of blockchain component and programmable NFTs, and I can’t wait to see that become a reality.”
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Blockchain evangelist. Content creator & graphic design hobbyist. Loves gaming!