Metaverse Magna is a new product of Nestcoin launched in November 2021 with a mission of becoming Africa’s first and largest crypto-gaming DAO empowering a new wave of gamers to play, earn and grow wealth.

Through the platform, gamers can compete and earn in crypto, as well as build a network of like-minded individuals. 

Incubated in partnership with Old Fashion Research (OFR), a multi-strategy blockchain investment firm, Metaverse Magna raised its seed round from investors such as Wemade, Tess Ventures, LD Capital, Taureon, Gumi Cryptos Capital, HashKey, AFF, Polygon Studios, Casper Johansen (Spartan), and IndiGG.

A little after launch, Metaverse Magna offered play-to-earn scholarships to over 1,000 gamers to play crypto games like Axie Infinity and Pegaxy. The startup has grown to over 100,000 members across its products and community, with earning opportunities added for competitive and casual gamers, allowing them earn from free-to-play web2 games they already love.

The platform plans to launch a social gaming app called Hyper, which would facilitate its goal achievement.

Yele Bademosi, CEO of Nestcoin, said: “Africa has the highest youth population globally, but over 60% of the continent’s youth are unemployed. Gaming presents a unique opportunity to help young Africans earn and lift themselves and their families out of poverty. MVM’s seed sale token ensures opportunities for millions of gamers in these emerging markets.”

“Our goal is to build Africa’s largest gaming community while providing the tools across the ecosystem for gamers, investors, game developers, and guild operators. We believe this investment is a huge leap in creating value for all our stakeholders and facilitating the expansion of MVM’s operations to provide opportunities for casual gamers through Hyper, our social gaming app with an embedded virtual wallet,” noted Yemi Johnson, MVM’s General Manager.

Xin, Partner at Old Fashion Research, also highlighted that: “Co-building MVM is a strategic milestone for Old Fashion Research’s Global South investment strategy. MVM offers a gateway to onboard massive African youth populations to the Web 3 and neo-finance ecosystem via gaming. We are happy to build together with Nestcoin to formulate the MVM initiatives from scratch and will continue to support the MVM’s future expansion in terms of global partnership development.”

“Gaming guilds will be one of the mainstream DAOs and play a pivotal role in game tokenomics. Partnership with MVM is an opportunity to expand the ecosystem of WEMIX in Africa, the continent with a rapidly growing market and a young population,” added Henry Chang, CEO of Wemade.

The post Nestcoin Incubated Metaverse Magna Raises $3.2 Million to Scale Crypto Gaming Wealth-Builder appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

Microtraction, focused on African tech entrepreneurs at the pre-seed stage, was founded by Yele Bademosi and Kwamena Afful in 2017.

The VC’s backers include PAVE Investments, Michael Seibel, Andy Volk, as well as Chris Shultz, and has invested in 36 companies comprising 83 founders across two funds in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Rwanda. 

These companies, which cut across the fintech, health-tech, SaaS, edtech, crypto, gaming, and mobility sectors, have raised over $100 million in follow-on funding, with current combined valuation of more than $760 million and have created 900+ jobs. 

Companies such as 54gene, Cowrywise, Helicarrier, Lemonade Finance, Bitsika, and Raise are among the VC’s portfolio companies backed from pre-seed stage.

Kwamena Afful, Founding Partner at Microtraction, said: “This year marks the 5th anniversary of Microtraction and over the past few years, we’ve been fortunate enough to witness and contribute to the growth of the African tech ecosystem. We are grateful to have partnered with some of the most innovative, mission-driven founders solving some of the continent’s most pressing challenges.”

Microtraction has a goal to be the most accessible and preferred source of pre-seed funding for African tech entrepreneurs. 

Its strategy include having an open application format that allows anyone to apply for funding, clear investment criteria that helps identify the best early-stage growth-driven technology businesses, a seamless investment process, a hands-on working relationship that supports and guides the founders on their journey, and access to a broader network that provides specific service needs to the startups.

Yele Bademosi, Founding Partner at Microtraction, said: “As a group, we are never shy of experimenting and creating a blueprint others can build upon. We believe that the African start-up ecosystem is still in its infancy and it’s going to take a community of connected, aligned, and incentivized members to contribute, grow and accelerate its development. As a fund & community, we look forward to continuing to innovate on Africa’s innovation infrastructure alongside our members.”

The new fund, called Microtraction Community Limited, will write first checks of $100,000 for 7% into early-stage African companies across different sectors and regions in Africa with an option for a quick top-up of up to $350,000.

Through this second fund, Microtraction intends to make a minimum of ~60 first check investments into African startups, and up to ~20% of those investments will get the quick top-up in their next round. So far, 20 investments have been made through this community fund.

Microtraction is also delving into the Web3 space to create an engaging experience within the community. The VC wants to do this by setting up a community vehicle (akin to a DAO) as the first African fund with community tokens for its members, where social tokens will be used to incentivise and gamify the experience of members who will provide value-add and support to the fund and founders. 

For now, the DAO will operate on an invite-only basis and will be launching with various perks such as exclusive access to events, investment opportunities, industry deep dives, and more.

The post Microtraction Reaches $15 Million First Close of 2nd Fund, Ventures into Web3 Space appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

Nestcoin will leverage the fund to expand its global operations and invest in more products to accelerate crypto adoption and financial freedom for people in frontier markets.

Yele Bademosi, who previously founded Microtraction, Binance and Bundle, alongside Taiwo Orilogbon, co-founded Nestcoin with the goal to democratise access to economic opportunities presented by crypto and web3, making it simple and accessible to everyday people.

Last year, the company launched Breach, its media arm created to advance crypto education globally, and Metaverse Magna (MVM), a crypto gaming guild that helps users earn up to $1,000 per month. Nestcoin also has several other products in the pipeline, designed to provide compelling use cases for crypto.

MVM has had over 2,000 applications since its launch. However, only 400 gamers are currently live on the platform, a number the company is looking to increase to 1,000 before next quarter – for context, some of the largest guilds have a player size of around 2,000 to 3,000.

The $6.45 million in funding comes from a global group of investors, including Distributed Global, Alter Global, Serena Ventures, Alameda Research, A&T Capital, MSA Capital, 4DX Ventures, Raba Capital, Goat.vc, Social Capital, Old Fashion Research, CMT Digital, Electric Capital, Social Capital, CoinFund, gumi Cryptos Capital, and DeFi Alliance, among others.

“We are excited that our investors are backing this ambitious plan to create a future where billions of people in frontier markets have access to the opportunities that crypto brings. With this financing, we will continue to grow our diverse team, which already spans nine countries, expand our product offerings, and invest in more ventures aligned with our vision,” Bademosi said.

Nestcoin also hopes to introduce its DeFi projects by Q2 this year. In addition to that, the company will be exploring ways in which content creators on the platform can earn crypto while educating its 6,000 subscribers with structured learning paths.

The company’s pre-seed round is the second-largest in Africa and largest in Nigeria as well as sub-Saharan Africa right now and will be used to develop more products and improve existing ones.

The post Nigerian Crypto Startup, Nestcoin, Raises $6.45m Pre-Seed Funding Round appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.