Avocado Guild, a play-to-earn (P2E) blockchain gaming guild raised USD 18 million in a Series A funding round, bringing the company’s valuation to USD 200 million, the firm said on Wednesday. This investment was led by Animoca Brands and QCP Soteria Node, with participation from Three Arrows Capital, Solana Ventures, Polygon Studios, Binance Smart Chain, and the executives of GoldenTree Asset Management.
The company will use the fresh capital to scale its tech capabilities and transition to become AvocadoDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization. “Avocado Guild emerged from an opportunity identified by the founders, where blockchain-based games had the ability to improve the lives of communities all over the world. Through P2E, the unbanked population now have the ability to make changes to their lives based on their actions in the virtual world,” co-founder and CEO Brendan Wong told KrASIA.
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Avocado Guild serves as an umbrella of support for gamers, Wong said. The firm has three philosophies: enrich, educate, and empower the community so they can develop a better understanding of Web 3.0 technology and its benefits. “The transition from Avocado Guild to AvocadoDAO will slowly allow the community to be in control of how the DAO’s investments and activities are run and the future direction of the Avocado metaverse. We envision that AvocadoDAO will eventually be governed by Avocado token holders in a decentralized and permissionless fashion,” said the CEO.
A decentralized autonomous organization is an entity where a project’s community, typically individuals who hold a token issued by a project, is able to vote on governance matters and determine its developmental trajectory.
With the new funding, Avocado Guild will also recruit more team members and extend its scholarship program, which has helped benefit its community by introducing players to a range of P2E games, including Axie Infinity, and providing them with the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) required to participate in the games. Avocado Guild’s scholarship program currently has 7,000 members and it aims to reach 12,000 by the end of this year. The program primarily recruits new members in the Philippines and Indonesia, but the project is looking to expand its reach throughout Southeast Asia. As of October, Avocado Guild has over 30,000 followers on Twitter and over 39,000 community members in its Discord channel.
“During the pandemic-led economic downturn, yield farming and metaverse content creation provided an alternative source of income for many. As our guild continues to grow and expand into future cornerstone games, our scholarship program offerings will broaden to provide both P2E and DeFi opportunities, furthering the goal of enriching our scholars’ lives,” he added.