Solana Backs South Korean Web3 Startups With $100M Fund
Solana Ventures and the Solana Foundation create a $100 million fund to invest in South Korean web3 startups, with a strong focus on gaming and DeFi.
Solana Ventures and the Solana Foundation launch a $100 million investment and grant fund to support South Korean web3 startups. The capital comes from the Solana community treasury and the venture arm's pool, targeting gaming studios, GameFi, NFTs, and DeFi projects. General manager Johnny Lee notes that a significant portion of South Korea's gaming industry transitions into the web3 space.
The fund offers flexible venture-sized checks to accommodate a wide range of project and team sizes. Solana sees the majority of its South Korean activity in gaming and NFTs, making these sectors a natural focus. Lee highlights that recent gaming studios prioritize improving actual gameplay to attract users beyond crypto-native audiences rather than focusing solely on financial rewards.
Lee predicts that high-quality, entertaining games launch on the Solana blockchain soon, changing the negative perception of play-to-earn models. He compares the potential adoption of web3 gaming to the historical rise of free-to-play mobile games, estimating that web3 games become the dominant revenue model in half the time it took for free-to-play to mature.