Web3 video games, built on bitcoin.
The announcement in this story is probably the most boring part of the story.
So let's get it out of the way:
Web3 gaming startup, Zebedee, just raised a $35M Series B round of funding.
Okay, now that's over with, let’s discuss the really interesting stuff (that was almost mentioned in passing).
Where most crypto games have been built on Ethereum or Solana, Zebedee has been a huge advocate for using the grandfather of crypto in its games - Bitcoin (BTC).
They’ve created a product that allows game developers to make it easy for players to make BTC micropayments, in-game.
“Up-bup-bup - but BTC transactions are so slow and expensive, how could you allow thousands of $0.08 transactions per day” we hear you ask.
Firstly, great guess on the average BTC transaction size in Zebedee games. You got it, it’s $0.08.
Secondly, Zebedee uses the Lightning Network which is a layer-2 payments protocol built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain.
In normal human speak, you can think of the Lightning Network as a place where tons of transactions happen between 2 parties, a balance sheet is kept between the parties, and the actual transaction only happens on the Bitcoin blockchain when the parties decide to settle.
So the only time you need to use the slow and expensive Bitcoin blockchain is once when the payment channel is opened, and a second time when both parties agree to close it.
Point is, it's fast and cheap.
Here’s why this is cool:
For one, we like companies that do innovative, different stuff.
Second, because people have the greatest trust in BTC long term, there’s a chance that games offering the option to pay for things (like NFTs) in-app with BTC, will come out on top of those built on ETH or SOL.
Oh, and did we mention that one of the major backers in this round of funding was the company behind Final Fantasy?
Smart move. Let’s see what happens.
