Coinbase Ventures is among the participants in a $1.75 million pre-seed funding round for Farworld Labs, a gaming and media consortium. The round was co-led by Lemniscap and Variant, with additional participation from Base Ecosystem Fund.
The funding will enable Farworld Labs to expedite the rollout of upcoming Q3 releases, including the launch of the Farcade platform in conjunction with a series of studios and developers. Built on decentralized social media protocols, the Farcade is a platform and suite of tools for developers to build crypto-native games that integrate with on-chain social.
Farworld Labs said the decision by Meta and other legacy Web2 platforms years ago to restrict third-party developers from creating games and applications within their apps has stifled gaming development and hindered its integration with social media. Acknowledging this ‘innovation chasm’, Farworld Labs is enabling gamers to play games directly where they already are, enjoying an ‘embedded gaming’ experience, allowing them to play Farcade games in the Farcade app or within their social feeds on Farcaster.
The Farcade uses Farcaster accounts and smart wallets, simplifying the process of creating and playing onchain games. The Farcade will be mobile optimized and playable on any device without, even with limited hardware, and won’t need to be downloaded from Google Play or the App Store.
Within the first three months after unveiling the Farworld proof of concept, Farworld Labs said it launched the game’s MVP, sold out eight consecutive drops, generated more than $500,000 in revenue, and expanded the community to tens of thousands of gamers. The game can be played entirely on Warpcast, a flagship application in the Farcaster ecosystem, which mirrors the user interface of traditional social networking sites like Twitter. The Farworld game mechanics leverage Farcaster’s social graphs for native marketing and social gameplay.
Farcaster enables users to take control of their data and own their social connections, driving a significant upgrade to conventional social media platforms. Its design allows different social apps to work together smoothly, much like how email systems interact across the Internet.
“The current Web3 gaming landscape is blighted by walled gardens, requiring users to connect their wallets, pay gas fees and link their social media accounts before they even have a chance to engage,” Farworld Labs co-founder and CTO Charlie Blackstock said. “At Farworld Labs, we are driven to make games instantly playable within social media feeds with just a single click, enabling seamless social interactions and simplified onchain experiences. Sincere thanks to our investors for helping us turn this vision into reality.”
“At Lemniscap, we take great pride in identifying emerging verticals well before they gain mainstream traction,” founder and managing partner Roderik van der Graaf said. “Farworld Labs is at the vanguard of innovation at the intersection of decentralized social media and Web3 gaming – verticals that Lemiscap has a rich and storied history with. We’re delighted to co-lead this pre-seed round and support the Farworld Labs mission to empower gamers and developers to build on-chain.”
