Microsoft has officially invested into the blockchain. Their recent venture comes in the form of the new up and coming Korean blockchain company, Wemade.
Wemade recently acquired a massive $46 million in funding. Microsoft’s contribution to this sum was $14.8 million making this a sizable contribution from the tech giant.
The other 2 companies that jumped on the funding were Shinhan Asset Management and Kiwoom Securities.
“This is a meaningful investment by reputable financial and strategic investors with proven track records. Wemade and Wemix will continue to exert efforts to attract more capital and actively invest to build the global digital economy platform.” – Wemade CEO Henry Chang
Image Credit | Wemade
Who are Wemade?
Founded all the way back in 2000 as we saw the Internet bubble of the time explode, Wemade have specialised in making PC and mobile games for over a decade now.
Some of Wemades titles include:
- Digimon Battle Online
- MIR4
- Riders of Icarus
Wemade made themselves known back in 2018 with their MIR4 title, some would consider them an early participator in blockchain gaming. MIR4 is a MMORPG game played by millions around the world.
Despite gaining the funding, Wemade have managed to create their own blockchain gaming ‘Mainnet’ called Wemix where players are able to auction off and bid on NFT collectibles usable within the Wemade ecosystem of gaming titles.
Furthermore, players can verify and obtain information on transactions made on the blockchain. This gives full transparency to those using Wemade’s products and services.
Wemix have talks of releasing their own token economy, and have also released their own Stablecoin, ‘Wemix’. The stablecoin is backed by USDC and allows the maintenance of the Wemix token whilst demand and trading volumes may be low.
A change in tone from Microsoft?
Previously names within the Microsoft camp were very vocal about their opinions on NFTs, crypto and blockchain technology alike.
Mojang, the company behind Minecraft and apart of the Microsoft Studios conglomerate of game developers, spoke out about their stance on NFTs on Minecraft.
“We made some comments in Minecraft about how we view NFTs in this space, because we saw people doing things that we thought were exploitative in our product – we said we don’t want that,” – Mojang
With the many horror stories that have come from the NFT space, it comes as no surprise a name like Mojang took this stance. Their main user base is generally young children which makes them highly vulnerable to tech related scams. Without a higher authority over the NFT space makes it hard for people to get justice if they fall victim to an NFT/Crypto scam. Decentralised concepts can work both ways.
It will be cool to see how this new relationship between Microsoft and Wemade pans out. The emergence of web2 companies into the blockchain is a great sign for all types of gaming as they add themselves to an ever growing list of contributors. Their initial stance on blockchain technology may have changed with this recent venture, however keep your eyes out to see how this partnership pans out in the longrun!
