Before the world became fixated on artificial intelligence, due to generative AI’s advances, cryptocurrency was the darling of many investors. So when some enterprise capital firms began swiftly switching their focus between AI and crypto, the industry’s onlookers scorned their opportunism. Meanwhile, a wave of entrepreneurs emerged as fervent advocates for the convergence of AI and crypto. Vitalik Buterin, the core founding father of the Ethereum blockchain network, posted an article last month musing on the 4 possible applications of “AI + crypto,” sparking enthusiasm amongst his Twitter followers. The use cases have yet to be proven at scale.
A startup based out of Singapore is trying to point out that the mix of AI and crypto isn’t only a fad. Ultiverse, which purports to be an “AI-powered” platform for crypto game production and publishing, has secured support from some reputable investors. It recently raised $4 million in a strategic funding round led by IDG Capital, a enterprise capital firm known for its investment in Chinese tech titans Tencent, Baidu and Xiaomi, in addition to crypto upstarts Coinbase and Circle, amongst others.
Other investors that participated within the round include Animoca Brands, Polygon Ventures, MorningStar Ventures, Taiko, ZetaChain, Manta Network, DWF Enterprise and Jacob KO. The fresh investment boosted Ultiverse’s valuation to $150 million.
Exactly how is Ultiverse using AI in its crypto-verse? In an interview with TechCrunch, the corporate’s co-founder Jimmy Liu, who previously ran his family’s private equity firm, suggested that AI will be used to “speed up production and user adoption.”
Relatively than constructing AI models from scratch, Ultiverse is using existing large language models, akin to GPT-4, Llama and Stable Diffusion, to coach its in-game non-player characters so each player can have a special experience depending on their interaction with the NPCs. Players can even create their very own AI agents to act on their behalf.
“This type of production process up to now may take days and even weeks. We wanted a couple of person committed to doing that. But now, with AI integration, we now have reduced the time and value to provide the identical amount of content as before,” said Liu.
Adapting AI in the sport design process will not be the startup’s ultimate competitive advantage. In any case, other studios can handily make use of LLMs the identical way it does. There are ample examples of how gaming firms have been embracing generative AI in making art assets, constructing level segments and even devising game models for other developers.
Then there’s the perennial debate surrounding crypto games, which revolves across the query of whether they really generate tangible value for the industry by enabling user ownership and liquidity of assets, or in the event that they primarily exist to cash in on players like a jackpot. Overall, the industry’s repute has been marred by “play-to-earn” titles like Axie Infinity which have been in comparison with pyramid schemes.
To this point, Ultiverse has published three games, including a mobile cricket game with 200,000 unique energetic wallet addresses, most of that are from India and Pakistan where the game is immensely popular. The startup has 7.3 million registered users across all its games as of December, with monthly energetic users averaging 830,000.
Using an increasingly common crypto wallet feature called “account abstraction,” which removes much of the technical intricacies of self-custodial wallets, the cricket game managed to draw mostly non-crypto users who didn’t previously own a wallet, in line with Liu.
“It’s just about seamless until they should withdraw the reward after a certain time after they notice that, okay, this isn’t only a game,” said the founder. “That approach helps us grow and convert those, what we call web2 gamers who never experimented with web3 in any respect before, to be a part of our ecosystem.”
“Ultiverse stands as an AI-powered, one-stop solution for web3 gaming production and publishing, poised to revolutionize the industry,” said an IDG Capital spokesperson in a rosy statement. The firm has also invested in other major crypto projects including Ripple, ImToken and KuCoin. “This investment signifies our belief of their potential to not only lead but additionally transform the best way games are developed and experienced globally.”
