Venly (formerly Arkane Network), a blockchain wallet solution, has secured over €21 million in Series A funding. The investment round was led by Courtside Ventures alongside participation from Transcend Fund, Coinbase Ventures, Tioga Capital, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Fortino, Plug and Play, Leadblock Partners, Imec Istart, and Alpaca VC.
The startup will use the funds to develop products centred around new benefits to web3 users, with a close focus on gaming as well as e-commerce. In the coming months, Venly will focus on hiring top talent to continue spearheading innovation, and striking new partnerships with industry players.
“The problem today is that most developers and end-users have difficulty interacting with Web3 technology. It needs to be more aligned with Web2 usability, which is exactly what the Venly platform provides. Our APIs and services allow a Web2 company to seamlessly integrate with Web3,” said Tim Dierckxsens, CEO of Venly. “Moreover, we want to focus on our marketplace for the mainstream users. The Venly NFT marketplace is easier to use than any other platform out there.”
“The Venly platform provides game developers the ability to easily launch Web3 experiences,” said Kai Bond, Partner at Courtside Ventures. We fundamentally believe that the next huge area of growth in the NFT ecosystem will come from mainstream users interacting with their favorite IP.”
What does Venly do?
Venly was founded in 2018 by Tim Dierckxsens, Quinten De Swaef, Karel Striegel and Gerbert Vandenberghe in Belgium.
The Belgian startup offers users of blockchain projects digital wallets to store assets with a native solution that also works on mobile devices. Recently, it launched the Venly Market, a holistic user-friendly solution to help blockchain projects scale faster and more securely. It is touted to be the first-ever peer-to-peer NFT marketplace on Polygon.
Users can then trade NFTs in a fully compliant environment with Venly Wallet, Market and NFT-tools, blockchain games, projects, and decentralised applications.
The blockchain tech provider creates powerful tools and products empowering Web2 businesses to leverage Web3 technology and integrate it seamlessly into their own business processes without sacrificing user experience or security.
Its intuitive API platform delivers groundbreaking innovation to prominent companies in the blockchain gaming space, including The Sandbox, Aavegotchi, Bondly, Shopify, and others.
What holds for the future of Venly?
The startup will focus on deeper platform integrations within the gaming industry, so that game studios and publishers can leverage web3 through a fully compliant no-code solution. E-commerce will be the next priority, representing a strong fit for Venly that has already launched a powerful Shopify integration.
Furthermore, Venly will launch an accelerator track for game studios and web3 startups to support the entire blockchain ecosystem. Startups can use Venly licenses at a discounted rate while getting guidance and investments from the Venly Accelerator team and ecosystem of partners. The third focus point will be to grow and develop the Venly marketplace to make it the most user-friendly and widely-used option on the market.
It will also incorporate robust gaming SDKs (Software Development Kits), making gaming its most immediate focus due to fast scaling opportunities. The company will be further developing its marketplace for next-level user experience.
Besides these, the blockchain technology provider will launch VENS Token, an internal token to drive loyalty and engagement of the Venly Market users. It will continue to work hard to keep meeting global compliance requirements.
