Swedish blockchain gaming startup GOALS today announced a $15 million seed funding round led by Northzone, a venture capital fund. With the new financing, the company plans to onboard another 30 game developers, coinciding with a form of public release by the end of 2022.
GOALS is developing an eponymous online multiplayer game that has a play-to-own mechanism for in-game collectibles such as players, skins, and clubs. Following the footsteps of fantasy soccer platform Sorare, the in-game assets will be stored on a blockchain network as NFTs.
Founder Andreas Thorstensson explained that with FIFA gamers only own the skins for a limited period of time and can not control or sell them. He stated the blockchain is the perfect solution to this.
Being free-to-play, the game will rely on taking a cut on every NFT marketplace sale alongside monetizing via add-ons that don’t depend on a user volunteering to sell their assets.
Every user of GOALS owns fifteen players – each of which is minted as NFTs and stored. Such that users can collect a large number of NFTs. According to Thorstensson, it’s important that the supporting network is cost-efficient as well as a low-emission network.
The company has been continuously exploring which blockchain network would be suitable for it. Proof-of-stake networks like polygon, Solana and Starkware are currently at the top of the food chain.
Thorstensson further said that GOALS is focused to make sure that the chain is very decentralized and that there are sufficient nodes and validators to ensure majority control.