Blockchain-based gaming platform Lysto raises $12 mn in pre-Series A round

Lysto, a platform that seeks to bring gamers and their credentials on-chain, on Wednesday said it has raised $12 million (Rs 95.5 crore) in its pre-Series A funding round from a clutch of investors including Square Peg, Beenext, Hashed, Tiger Global and Better Capital. 

The funding round saw participation from angel investors such as Balaji Srinivasan (ex-chief tech officer, Coinbase), Paul Veradittakit (partner, Pantera Capital), Binny Bansal (founder, Flipkart) and Bobby Ong & TM Lee, (co-founders, CoinGecko), said Lysto in a statement. 

The funding comes at a time when the company is building tools to enable verified on-chain digital credentials from issuer to gamer to boost its global gaming community, it said. 

The statement also said that the company recently launched "Proof of Play Protocol (PoPP)" with an objective to standardize gamer credentials and reputation across the industry. PoPP can be issued by games, tournaments or even auto-generated by gamers as trophies, game and social badges and game-tester token. 

"We envision a world where billions of such on-chain attestations across Games and Tournaments can form the basic building block of Gamers’ profiles. Leveraging this, we are on a mission to build the world’s largest gaming community,” said Sadiq Ahamed, founder and chief executive officer, Lysto. 

Prior to this funding round, Lysto, which was founded in 2021, raised $3 million in seed capital from Beenext, Better Capital, Cloud Capital and other investors in November last year. 

“We are excited by the interplay of gaming and crypto, especially when combined with this team's unique credentials and their passion to bring crypto to the masses,” said Tushar Roy, Partner, Square Peg, an Australia-headquartered company that invests in emerging technology companies. 

Tak Lee, Managing Partner, Hashed Emergent, said in the statement that the venture capital firm is investing in Lysto to help the startup scale across gaming and the web3 ecosystem that it has been building itself over the years. Hashed Emergent is a Seoul and Silicon Valley based investor that seeks to bet on startups that is engaged in unlocking the potential of blockchain technology. 

Startups working at the intersection between gaming and crypto have been attracting investor interest in India in the recent months. 

Earlier in February, OneTo11 Pte Ltd, which runs an eponymous blockchain-based gaming platform, racked up $2.5 million in seed funding from a clutch of investors including Oracles Investment Group, Maximus Capital, GDA Capital, Magnus Capital, NFT Technologies and Dutch Crypto Investors. 

In May, blockchain-based esports fan engagement startup STAN secured seed funding of $2.5 million led by General Catalyst.