Solana Ventures leads $1.9m round of NFT gaming platform

Southeast Asian blockchain company Chillchat has raised US$1.9 million in a seed round led by Solana Ventures, with participation from FTX Ventures, Animoca Brands, and Yield Guild Games Southeast Asia. The deal pushes the startup’s valuation to US$10 million.

Image credit: Chillchat

Founded in 2019, Chillchat is a gaming platform that allows users to create their own pixel art characters and mint them as NFTs. Users can then put them in a scripted world to make a fully-functioning game.

The company said its platform is similar to Roblox, with the addition of pixel art and NFTs. It is run on the Solana blockchain network, with the final games being playable on a mobile device or a browser.

“We’re aiming to build a casual social-gaming metaverse. So, we chose Solana as we believe it is the best consumer blockchain with low fees and high speed,” said Chillchat CEO James Au. He established the firm with Jessica Manighetti and Patchara Brient. Most of the company’s team is based in Thailand.

See also: Meet Singapore’s pioneering NFT creators

The firm plans to use the fresh funding for hiring and development purposes.

In January, Chillchat sold 1,000 limited character NFTs. Within four weeks, the price of those NFTs has surged from 2 Solana tokens to a floor price of 37.5 Solana tokens. That translates to an increase from US$240 to US$4,000.

The company is set to auction another 350 NFTs in the next 35 weeks.

Other investors in the funding round include:

• Griffin Gaming Partners
• A&T Capital
• Infinity Ventures Crypto
• Diamond Hands Ventures
• Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin
• Crunchyroll co-founder Kun Gao
• Kabam co-founder Holly Liu
• Rotten Tomatoes co-founder Patrick Lee
• FanDuel co-founder Nigel Eccles