SEOUL, South Korea, August 4, 2021 – Planetarium announced today that its decentralized RPG Nine Chronicles successfully raised $2.6 million in a round led by Animoca Brands, ahead of the launch of Nine Chronicles’ governance token on Ethereum. The round was also joined by Divergence Ventures, IDEO CoLab, Sfermion, Hypersphere Ventures, SkyVision Capital and others, along with notable angels such as Axie Infinity Co-founder Jeffrey Zirlin and Aave Protocol CEO Stani Kulechov.
The funds will be invested in hiring top talent for content development, scaling the network infrastructure, expanding to mobile, and supporting ecosystem developers.
Nine Chronicles is one of the first blockchain games to be fully open sourced with its own mainnet operated by the player community. After launching its early access in October 2020, more than 500,000 NFTs have been crafted and 80,000 NFTs have been traded on its network. Nine Chronicles enjoyed a 600% increase in monthly active users in the second quarter of 2021, and more than one thousand nodes are mining and powering the Nine Chronicles Network each day.
Yat Siu, co-founder and chairman of Animoca Brands, commented, "Animoca Brands is incredibly happy to support Nine Chronicles on its journey to build the largest decentralized RPG network powered by players. Planetarium’s dedication to open source is truly inspiring, and will pave unique growth opportunities through player-created content and assets. We look forward to future collaborations with our leading portfolio of decentralized games.”
Nine Chronicles is launching Wrapped NCG, the Ethereum compatible version of its governance token in August, and it plans to make the thousands of NFT assets in the Nine Chronicles network available on Ethereum in the future.
“We are thrilled to invite amazing partners and advisors to expand the Nine Chronicles ecosystem. The new round of funding allows us to offer Nine Chronicles on multiple platforms and gear up for our next phase of growth,” said JC Kim and Kijun Seo, co-founders and CEOs of Planetarium. “The future of RPGs is moving in a direction where the players and the community collaborate on a shared vision, and we look forward to building a such foundation for Nine Chronicles with new governance programs. As one of the very few teams taking this commitment head-on we are uniquely positioned to lead a revolution in disruptive gaming experiences powered by the community.”
About Planetarium
Planetarium is a blockchain company pioneering the ecosystem for community-powered online games. Planetarium’s technology equips developers with powerful tools to create fully decentralized, cross-platform blockchain games that can live perpetually on networks powered by the players. Planetarium was previously selected by the Ubisoft Entrepreneurs Lab, a global startup program fostered by Ubisoft focusing on innovations in the entertainment industry. The team is developing Nine Chronicles, an open source, decentralized role-playing game that launched its early access in October 2020.
Planetarium contact: contact@planetariumhq.com
About Animoca Brands
Animoca Brands, ranked in the Financial Times list of High Growth Companies Asia-Pacific 2021, is a leader in digital entertainment, blockchain, and gamification. Animoca Brands develops and publishes a broad portfolio of products including the REVV token and SAND token; original games including The Sandbox, Crazy Kings, and Crazy Defense Heroes; and products utilizing popular intellectual properties including Formula 1®, Marvel, WWE, Power Rangers, MotoGP™, and Doraemon. Animoca Brands’ portfolio of blockchain investments and partnerships includes Sky Mavis (Axie Infinity), Dapper Labs (CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot), OpenSea, Harmony, Bitski, and Alien Worlds. Its subsidiaries include The Sandbox, Blowfish Studios, Quidd, Gamee, nWay, Pixowl, and Lympo. For more information visit www.animocabrands.com or get updates by following Animoca Brands on Facebook or Twitter.
Animoca Brands contact: press@animocabrands.com