Solana Ventures and Solana Foundation announced today a dedicated $100 million investment and grant fund in Korea to accelerate development and activity across all web3 verticals but with a particular focus on game studios, gamefi, NFTs, and DeFi.
“The future of web3 is being built right now,” said Matthew Beck, Head of Solana Ventures. “Korea-based entrepreneurs building on Solana are helping lead the way forward and today’s announcement further solidifies our commitment to the region and its founders as they create high quality, fun and dynamic on-chain experiences.”
Korea has always been at the forefront of the games industry from pioneering mobile games, free-to-play games and esports, as well as establishing a dynamic web3 ecosystem, all of which has paved the way for this dedicated fund, the first geographic-focused fund from Solana Ventures, the strategic venture investment arm of Solana Labs, and Solana Foundation.
“We have been working with Korean developers and actively investing in the ecosystem for some time now, which has helped us build a deeper understanding of the Korean market,” said Johnny B. Lee, General Manager of Games, Solana Foundation. “Korea is at the forefront of web3 game design and development and we are focused on helping even more builders in Korea bring their ideas to reality.”
The Solana blockchain is designed for high performance use cases like payments, gaming, social networking, and finance. Solana is energy efficient – a single transaction consumes about the same amount of energy as three Google searches – and transacts at the same speeds as the internet, while still being highly decentralized and accessible for both new users and new developers.
“Solana’s speed, efficiency, and low costs are helping it become the first choice for developers around the world,” said Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana. “Developers are the ones who will bring aboard billions of people to blockchain through great experiences and innovative approaches that show off the power of decentralization on Solana.”
Korea will be a critical hub for the Solana ecosystem in this regard. Support in Korea from Solana Ventures and Solana Foundation, along with key Korea-based advisors, will entail capital and localized product and engineering support for developers, teams and companies building on Solana.
“Korea has passionate, excited builders looking to build in a big way in web3 and currently seeking the best blockchain to build on for the long term,” said Solana Foundation Executive Director Dan Albert. “We want to help them see the opportunity on Solana and grow the Solana ecosystem.”
Beyond the new fund, the inaugural Solana x Jump Hacker House in Seoul will take place from Aug. 3 - 7 at S Factory. The hacker house will give builders a place to work, find collaborators, demo projects, and learn from established builders on Solana. More details to come.
About Solana Ventures
Solana Ventures is the strategic venture investment arm of Solana Labs. The Solana Ventures mission is to provide capital and resources to the most promising teams building on Solana and the broader digital asset and blockchain ecosystem. For additional information, please visit https://solana.ventures/.
About Solana Foundation
The Solana Foundation has a mission to help support and grow the Solana network and its community while driving mass adoption for blockchain. Based in Switzerland, the Solana Foundation is working to realize a world where individuals own their data, use permissionless networks, and transfer information freely around the world. To get involved, please visit https://solana.org/.
About Solana
Solana is a global state machine, and the world’s most performant blockchain. It gives developers the confidence to build for the long term by delivering predictable scaling without compromising security or composability. Solana’s performance is driven by a single global state, which is capable of processing tens of thousands of smart contracts at once, and by Proof of History, a distributed clock that unlocks low-latency, sub-second finality across the global state. To learn more, please visit https://solana.com.
