Horizon Blockchain Games (Horizon), a video game studio and blockchain infrastructure company on a mission to create great games for the new era enabled by blockchain technology, today announced it has raised $3.75 million in a seed round, led by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s venture fund, Initialized, with participation from Golden Ventures, Polychain, Coinbase, Digital Currency Group, and Inovia Capital.
The company has already built an online game, SkyWeaver, now in private testing, to bring truth to its vision and demonstrate the power of its new platform. SkyWeaver innovates on the incredibly popular trading card genre by blending accessible yet deep game design with the freedom for players to truly own their digital cards and securely trade them on the Ethereum blockchain network.
Blockchain technology has given rise to the next generation of the Web: the Internet of value. This new Web marks the transition from applications as networks to applications as economies that share and exchange value with their users and co-creators, providing revenue sharing at a protocol level. At Horizon, we’re passionate about giving games blockchain super-powers by offering our players the freedom to own and trade their digital items across an open Internet.”
– Peter Kieltyka, co-founder and CEO of Horizon Blockchain Games
SkyWeaver blends the best aspects of online and physical trading card games and is tailored to both casual and competitive players. In a first for the trading card game genre, the free-to-play SkyWeaver allows players to win cards by competing and ascending the ranks of its worldwide leaderboard. Players can then play with, trade, give away, or sell their cards on the Ethereum network, for real-world value. SkyWeaver will allow cross-platform play and will launch with more than 300 cards and offer players, unique playstyle classes, to choose from called Prisms.
Horizon has also created a blockchain video game network named Arcadeum, the Crypto Arcade. Arcadeum is built on the Ethereum network and will provide players with secure wallets to store their SkyWeaver assets in addition to assets from other blockchain games. Arcadeum also serves as a browser for players to enter the new Web and discover all Ethereum-based applications, ranging from video games to marketplaces. Through its open-source platform, Arcadeum will offer third-party developers the opportunity to bring their own blockchain games to the new Web.
“Peter and the Horizon team have impressed me as a company with great passion to make blockchain meaningful for games. We are proud to have invested because not only do they have a long term future vision with a desire to make a positive impact on society, they are a far-seeing video games company, making engaging experiences that will give players all the benefits of digital and physical worlds colliding.”
– Initialized Capital managing partner & Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian