Beijing blockchain gaming platform receives $40m

Participants in the funding round include 500 Startups and blockchain-focused investment funds Binance Labs and NEO Global Capital. The investment follows the launch of the first Cocos-BCX demo in March 2018 and the opening of offices in Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, and San Francisco. According to a release, the new capital will be used to accelerate development of the company's platform.

Cocos-BCX was established last year by the founders of Cocos2D-x, an open-source game development platform used to build hit games like Angry Birds and Clash of Kings. The team saw the modern gaming environment, in which content is increasingly created, distributed, and used online, as an underappreciated target for distributed computing technologies like blockchain.

The new platform began as a way to use virtual currencies as a means of driving in-game performance and transferring players' digital possessions from one game or network to another. The next stage of development involves calculating key algorithms on blockchain networks, and ultimately the team's goal is to run entire game codes in blockchain environments, independent of individual users' systems.

The most well-known application of blockchain is still cryptocurrencies, but the technology, which allows for the creation of distributed, online databases to store transaction records smoothly, has gained considerable interest for its potential benefits in virtual contracts and identity authentication.

A number of Asian investors have backed companies developing the technology, and several players, including Singapore's Golden Gate Ventures, Korea's SparkLabs, and the government of Shenzhen, have launched investment vehicles with blockchain as a key or sole focus.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• Consumer
• Media
• Early-stage
• China
• 500 Startups
• TMT
• blockchain