Huobi Ventures recently announced its launch of a US$10million “GameFi” fund to invest in its early-stage projects that integrate blockchain gaming and Decentralized Finance (DeFi). This announcement follows its previous $100milĺion fund, which the Group invested in May and last year. This investment fund was raised towards growing its Venture’s investment portfolio and also towards supporting different blockchain projects. It further shows the Group’s commitment in its interest in NFTs and the metaverse. The fund is tagged Huobi Ventures Blockchain Funds.

Huobi Ventures announced the launch of a US$10 million “GameFi” fund. (forkast). https://t.co/8pIv6WgZBo

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) September 14, 2021

The new venture arm by the cryptocurrency exchange operator placed $100 million into early-stage blockchain and DeFi projects dedicated for the next three years. The Huobi Ventures Blockchain fund was used to make strategic acquisitions to diversify and expand Huobi’s DeFi Investment portfolio as previously stated and establish a dedicated $10 million non-fungible token (NFT) fund.

According to Huobi Ventures, projects incubated under the Huobi Ventures Blockchain fund will be able to access marketing and PR support, financial and legal advice, technical support for deployment on the Huobi Eco Chain (HECO) as well as assistance with token listings.

“This $10 million fund aligns with Huobi Ventures’ goal to grow the blockchain ecosystem for a digital economy, and to support and promote developers who work on cutting-edge GameFi projects,” Unica Yin, Director of strategic investments at Huobi Ventures, said in a statement. “We will provide support and resources to help these projects scale and take advantage of Huobi Group’s ecosystem.” She also added that the gaming industry’s play-to-earn model had seen astronomical growth:

     “We think that in the future, blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionise gaming business models and will play a core role in the next generation of games.”

Huobi Ventures has launched three separate funds to date dedicated to blockchain technology, HECO Ecology, and non-fungible tokens (NFT). Yin hopes that Huobi’s investment fund will help build impactful GameFi projects. This goes further to show that the GameFi concept has the potential to transform gaming business models entirely. 

GameFi stands for “Game+DeFi”, which refers to blockchain gaming integrated with DeFi mechanisms. GameFi business models enable players to obtain a share of the dividends reaped from game development, with their most common feature being “Play to Earn”. The open nature of blockchain can make the virtual economies of such games more dynamic. Data on the blockchain is open and accessible, meaning that developers can use it to explore new business models based on digital assets, such as the trading of in-app purchases and equipment.

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Developers continue to find new ways to combine digital assets and gaming, and investors are taking notice. 

Founded in 2013, Huobi Group is a blockchain technology company operating in public blockchains, digital assets trading, wallets, mining pools, proprietary investments, incubation, digital asset research, and more.