Cartridge announces major milestone for open-source developer platform, Dojo, plus web3 creator initiatives to support rapidly-growing ecosystems with scalable development tools that radically simplify the process of building and deploying onchain games

NEW YORK – August 5, 2024 – We’re proud today to announce the completion of a $7.5M Series A funding round, led by global gaming and web3 investment firm BITKRAFT Ventures with additional participation from Fabric, Dune, StarkWare, Primitive, and Ergodic. This funding will support Cartridge’s continued growth and commitment to building new, positive-sum ecosystems for game developers.

Alongside the funding, we’re also announcing Dojo 1.0, an open-source framework and toolset for building complex, provable games, autonomous worlds, and applications that inherit the unique characteristics of blockchains: trustlessness, decentralization, and permanence. 

In support of this milestone, we’re facilitating the release of a host of onchain games this summer, all built with Dojo. Titles include procedural dungeon crawler Loot Survivor, strategic tile placement game Paved, and Dope Wars, an onchain adaptation of the original 1999 TI-83 game, Drug Wars.

Onchain games fulfill the potential of blockchains to be fully decentralized computing platforms. Rather than simply integrating ownership of digital assets, fully onchain games enable game developers to build, incubate, and monetize novel ecosystems free from the platform risks and constraints of the AAA space. By inheriting the unique properties of decentralized computing, onchain games become endlessly composable and extensible, inherently trustworthy, and community owned. 

“The future of gaming is onchain, and Cartridge’s Dojo engine is at the forefront of this revolution,” said Nicolas Vereecke, Investor at BITKRAFT Ventures. “By providing developers with the necessary tools and a supportive ecosystem, Cartridge is enabling the creation of decentralized, community-owned games that are not only innovative, but also scalable. We are excited to support Cartridge in their mission to transform the gaming landscape.”

The Dojo engine simplifies the development and deployment of onchain worlds. With the specialized tools of the Dojo engine, developers can evolve from an initial concept to a fully-realized game in days, rather than weeks. Cartridge further augments these capabilities with Slot, the first rollup-as-a-service designed specifically for onchain games, and Controller, a gaming-specific smart contract wallet that enables seamless player onboarding and game interactions. 

“Building on Starknet with Cairo and Dojo has been a huge enabler and accelerator for our work,” said Rob Morris, founder of onchain games studio Underware. “Dojo is a fantastic framework that takes the heavy lifting out of some of the most complex aspects of our work, and the Cartridge team have been wonderful to work with.”

To support this burgeoning cohort of onchain game developers and emerging studios within the Dojo ecosystem, Cartridge is offering several education and funding initiatives this summer for both experienced and new developers alike. The first is the Dojo Sensei Residency Program, an eight-week intensive where 30 builders take to New York City to push the frontiers of fully onchain games. Additional Dojo programs include the fifth Dojo Game Jam, the Starknet Seed Grant Program, designed to provide teams in the Starknet ecosystem with up to $25,000 USDC in non-dilutive funding, and the Starknet Propulsion Program, a new initiative aimed at supporting Starknet development teams in the game-making process.

“This Series A funding round marks a significant milestone for Cartridge as we continue to accelerate the development of onchain games and experiences,” said CEO and co-founder Tarrence van As. “With the launch of Dojo 1.0 and our robust support programs, we are empowering developers to create truly decentralized, community-owned games that push the boundaries of what’s possible in interactive entertainment. We are excited by the many games and studios already springing up within the Dojo ecosystem and we’re eager to see how talented creators will utilize our tools to bring their innovative visions to life.”

“Dojo is bringing some of the most exciting advances to onchain gaming seen so far, and that is why we are backing them,” said Eli Ben-Sasson, CEO and co-founder of StarkWare. “We’ve seen crypto-native builders lead the growing wave of enthusiasm around fully onchain games with Dojo. Now, traditional game developers are beginning to explore the potential for this new type of game to innovate around new incentive structures.

Within a year or two we’ll see non-web3 gaming studios lining up to go onchain, and Dojo is one of the major platforms that will be generating this demand and showing incumbent studios – both big and small – that it’s possible.” 

BITKRAFT Ventures is the global early-stage investment platform for gaming, Web3, and immersive technology, with assets under management totaling $1 billion. With a focus on Seed, Series A, and Series B investments across the spectrum of interactive media, BITKRAFT is at the forefront of the Synthetic Reality™ tech revolution, where physical and digital worlds converge. In April 2024, BITKRAFT closed its third fund at $275m. For a full list of investments made to date, view BITKRAFT’s portfolio here.  

For more information on Dojo 1.0, the newly announced Dojo and Starknet games, and the programs launching this summer, visit https://cartridge.gg/, join the Dojo Discord, follow Cartridge and Dojo on X, or download the media kit here. 

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About Cartridge and Dojo
Cartridge Gaming Company is the leading developer of provable games and the tooling and infrastructure that powers them. Cartridge leads the development of Dojo, an open-source protocol and toolchain for building fully onchain games, autonomous worlds and applications which are natively provable, extensible, and composable. Learn more about Cartridge’s games and products at cartridge.gg.

For more information regarding BITKRAFT Ventures, visit https://www.bitkraft.vc/. 

CONTACT
TriplePoint for BITKRAFT Ventures
bitkraft@triplepointpr.com