Published on: 06/09/2022
Metaverse Magna Raises $3.2 million to Expand African Gaming DAO
Nestcoin has raised $3.2 million in a seed sale token round to expand its blockchain gaming platform, Metaverse Magna, and become one of Africa’s largest gaming decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO).
Various companies such as WeMade, Tess Ventures, LD Capital, Taureon, gumi Cryptos Capital, HashKey Group, AFF Group, Polygon Studios and IndiGG participated in the round. The expansion was made in partnership with blockchain investment fund Old Fashion Research.
Metaverse Magna was first launched in 2021 to create a blockchain gaming community for Africa. The platform offered play-to-earn scholarships to users who play crypto games such as Axie Infinity. As of now, the platform has over 100,000 members within its community.
Africa’s gaming and Web3 ecosystem
A game analytics company by the name of Newzoo reported that the gaming community in Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced rapid, substantial growth over the last few years. The community grew from 77 million members in 2015 to 186 million in 2021 and 95% of them play games on mobile phones.
The chief executive officer and co-founder of Nestcoin, Yele Bademosi said that Metaverse Magna was the result of him seeing an opportunity due to the growth of the gaming population in Africa. While he has made investments in various African Web3 companies such as Buycoins, Yellow Card and Bitsika, Bademosi thinks that mass crypto adoption in Africa will be determined by more casual, everyday applications.
“The evolution of crypto utility adoption in Africa is going to be driven by these applications that the everyday person can use,” said Bademosi, as per TechCabal.
When asked about his opinion on Metaverse Magna, the CEO of WeMade, Henry Chang said that the partnership with Metaverse Magna would be key to expanding the WEMIX ecosystem. He predicted that gaming communities will be important to game tokenomics.
“Gaming guilds will be one of the mainstream DAOs and play a pivotal role in game tokenomics, and our partnership with MVM is an opportunity to expand the ecosystem of WEMIX in Africa, a continent with a rapidly growing market and a young population,” said Chang.
Due to the timing of Metaverse Magna’s expansion with investors less likely to deploy funds due to the crypto winter, Bademosi said that the platform was optimizing for value rather than valuations.
“I have never been one to optimise for valuations. Having the right mix of investors and partners on board is more important than achieving sky-high valuations..,” Bademosi said.
“For the MVM raise, the valuation I had in mind was what we eventually raised. We may have been able to push for a higher valuation, but that’s not my mentality, and this is something I always try to tell entrepreneurs.”
Metaverse Magna’s future plans
Though Africa currently has a 24 percent internet penetration rate, Bademosi predicted that crypto-driven products will be able to grow exponentially as more of the population gets internet access. This expansion will allow Metaverse Magna to position itself as a pioneer and mainstay in the African gaming community for years to come.
“By next year, we would love to see MVM leading the social gaming conversation in Africa, unlocking opportunities not just for gamers, but also for game developers. And in a decade, I would love for us to have the kind of impact that Tencent has had on the gaming industry in Asia. If we can do up to 2% of that, it will be incredible,” said Bademosi.
