• by Colin Kirkland , October 4, 2022

Horizon Blockchain Games -- best known for its popular NFT trading card game Skyweaver -- announced on Tuesday that it has raised $40 million in a Series A funding round led by Brevan Howard Digital and Morgan Creek Digital. 

The company plans to use the money to expand its Sequence developer platform by attracting more builders via marketing and partnership initiatives. Horizon also plans to expand Skyweaver’s community features and reach, and to introduce Niftyswap, a semi-fungible token (SFT) marketplace. 

“At Horizon, we have a long-term vision for the future of web3, and are carefully building complementary products to support the ecosystem,” says Peter Kieltyka, Horizon co-founder and CEO. 

Alongside Brevan Howard and Morgan Creek, Horizon received funding from game publishers, tech-focused venture capital firms, and pioneering web3 companies including Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., Polygon, Ubisoft, Xsolla and more.

Individual investors also participated, such as Shopify’s CEO Tobias Lütk, The Sandbox’s co-founder Sebastien Borget, Sky Mavis and Axie Infinity co-founder Aleks Larsen, Lolli’s co-founder Alex Adelman, and leading Ethereum educator and The Daily Gwei’s founder Anthony Sassano.

With 40 projects integrating Sequence tools, Horizon said it hopes Sequence becomes the go-to platform for any company or project building a consumer-facing web3 product, due to the ease at which the platform makes building web3 games and apps. Sequence Wallet currently has over 675,000 users and is integrated into sports entertainment platform DAZN’s new boxing NFT marketplace on the Polygon blockchain.

Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal said in a recent statement that Horizon and Polygon have been collaborating since 2019, driving adoption of the Ethereum ecosystem. 

“Horizon has been building the iceberg beneath the surface for web3 games,” said Colleen Sullivan, co-head of ventures at Brevan Howard Digital. Sullivan believes that Sequence has the potential to open up web3 games and applications to the mainstream.

The company said it has a product roadmap to introduce new tradable items to its Skyweaver game, along with spectator mode, guilds, and Skyweaver economy 2.0, to make the title more engaging.

The company’s newest business venture, Niftyswap, will be a decentralized marketplace for web3 collectible, and provide front-end access to the marketplace, allowing users to instantly buy and sell tradeable item while liquidity providers earn fees. 

Horizon wants Niftyswap to become the premiere destination for trading SFTs, web3 and metaverse goods, including video game items, digital fashion, metaverse collectibles, and more. Niftyswap has been released to a group of external testers from the web3 community in preparation for a public release this fall.