The new fund will enable NFT, gaming, and DeFi projects on Solana to grow, and it will also help former Terra developers get back on their feet after Terra’s fall.
Solana Ventures and the Solana Foundation have established a $100 million fund to aid in the development of nonfungible token (NFT), blockchain gaming, and decentralized finance (DeFi) projects in South Korea.
In addition to Solana (SOL)-based projects, the fund will assist in keeping some Terra-based projects afloat following the collapse of that ecosystem last month.
The Solana Foundation believes Terra’s developers should not be held accountable for what occurred on the blockchain network. In an interview published on June 8 by Bloomberg, Johnny B. Lee, general manager for games at the Solana Foundation, stated:
“The developers did nothing wrong, but they’re left in the lurch.”
The new fund contributes to Solana’s goal of becoming the ideal blockchain for gaming. Last November, Solana Ventures, FTX, and Lightspeed Ventures launched a similar $100 million gaming fund. It also has a $150 million fund with Forte and Griffin Gaming Partners, two game-focused firms.
With the government pledging $187 million to build its metaverse ecosystem, South Korea is expected to become a hotbed of NFT and Metaverse development this decade. The Korean metaverse will be primarily concerned with the expansion of digital content and digital corporations within the country.
The Solana Foundation expects interest in gaming finance (GameFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi) to grow in the country as companies compete for grant funding.
Competition to build the best platforms quickly is heating up, with several South Korean platforms, such as the Klaytn layer-1 blockchain and Upbit exchange, already offering NFTs or access to DeFi.
According to DeFi ecosystem tracker DeFi Llama, Klaytn’s largest DeFi platform is KlaySwap, which has $274 million in total value locked (TVL). The country’s largest exchange, Upbit, has its own NFT marketplace.
However, domestic companies may find it difficult to launch blockchain-based games in South Korea.
The law currently prohibits games from awarding monetary prizes, including cryptocurrency. Last December, Korean officials demanded that Apple and Google remove play-to-earn (P2E) games from their Korean stores in response to this law.
In recent months, NFT trading and DeFi activity on Solana have increased. According to decentralized app (Dapp) tracker DappRadar, Solana’s top NFT marketplace Magic Eden is the second largest in the world, with 35,526 daily traders and $7.31 million in daily volume, trailing only OpenSea.
Solana may be able to address the infrequent network instability that has halted network operations since last year by providing funding for ecosystem growth.
SOL is currently trading at $39.05, down 0.5 percent in the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data.
