Yield Guild Games Southeast Asia (YGG SEA), a sub-decentralized autonomous organization (subDAO) of Philippine blockchain gaming startup Yield Guild Games (YGG), has raised US$15 million across two rounds of financing to boost the adoption of play-to-earn gaming in Southeast Asia.
Yield Guild Games founder Beryl Li (left) and Gabby Dizon / Photo credit: Yield Guild Games
In August, the startup raised seed funding in a round led by YGG and Infinity Ventures Crypto.
In November, YGG SEA secured additional funds in a financing round led by Crypto.com Capital, Animoca Brands, MindWorks Ventures, Poloniex, Jump Capital, and Sembrani Kiqani – a fund by BRI Ventures. Bukalapak and United Overseas Bank Venture Management also participated in the fundraise.
YGG explained the company’s structure in a post on Medium. A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is an open-source protocol on the blockchain with rules that are enforced by smart contracts. The primary purpose of a DAO is to provide an automated way to carry out governance decisions, which are voted on by its members. For YGG, its DAO is based on smart contracts built on the Ethereum blockchain.
Meanwhile, a subDAO acts as a subset of the DAO that is focused on a particular activity. These function similarly to specialized economies, with the DAO being the all-inclusive economy overseeing the various subDAOs.
“Each YGG subDAO is customized to focus on the specific activities and assets of a particular game. For example, there will be a subDAO dedicated to players of Axie Infinity, a subDAO dedicated to players of League of Kingdoms, and so on,” wrote YGG in the post.
The company said that subDAOs like YGG SEA will be core to YGG’s expansion strategy across the world as they have the local knowledge and networks.
YGG SEA will initially focus on Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, and Thailand before expanding throughout Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, the latest investment will help the company deliver a targeted offering to the regional gaming community. The guild will also support locally developed play-to-earn games in each country and acquire game assets to build its player base.
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The Southeast Asia-focused DAO is led by CEO and co-founder Evan Spytma, who has over 20 years of experience at game studios such as Unity Technology and Electronic Arts. Joining Spytma as co-founders are Dan Wang, who previously headed operations at Riot Games in China, and Irene Umar, who is a managing partner of Discovery Nusantara Capital, a gaming VC based in Indonesia.
Other investors in YGG SEA’s November funding round include:
- Digital Currency Group
- Hashed
- Polygon
- Arca Funds
- Evernew Capital
- OKEx Blockdream Ventures
- Yolo Ventures
- SevenX Ventures
- LongHash Ventures
- Hashkey Group
- Morningstar Ventures
- Rise Capital
- Dialectic
- SweeperDAO
- PetRock Capital
- DNC Ventures
- FBG Capital
- Emfarsis
Editing by Collin Furtado and Lorenzo Kyle Subido
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