Forte and Ripple's Xpring seek to accelerate blockchain adoption in games, set up $100M fund

Forte, a provider of blockchain technology platforms for the games industry, and Xpring, Ripple's developer ecosystem initiative, have established a $100 million fund to support game developers.

Gaming industry stands to significantly benefit from blockchain technology, which can improve game designs and enable better and more successful game economies. However, many developers find it difficult to develop and deploy the technology.

Headquartered in San Francisco, Forte provides platforms and products to make it easy for developers to apply blockchain technology to their games, increasing engagement and monetization with their players. It is backed by an ecosystem of investors, advisors, and partners including a16z crypto, Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Canaan Partners, Coinbase Ventures, and others.

The inaugural fund will be managed by Forte and operate alongside its platform technologies. It will include open-source solutions, designed in collaboration with Ripple, which will help accelerate the mainstream adoption of blockchain technology in gaming.

In an online post, Forte said that it has collaborated with the Xpring team on architectural designs for trustlessly hosting software services in a decentralized ecosystem using Codius and facilitating cross-chain transactions using Interledger Protocol (ILP) for interoperability and XRP for inter-asset liquidity, all open source projects.

“By focusing on cross-chain interoperability out of the gate, Forte is setting the foundation for long-term, sustained consumer adoption of blockchain technology. Forte's platform components blend this supporting technology behind easy to integrate components for game developers,” it said.

According to the official release, the fund is primarily targeting game developers operating live game economies with over 50,000 daily active users and an interest in using blockchain to unlock support for new game designs and drive business results.

"Both Forte and Ripple have a shared belief that blockchain technology will have a massive impact on games, and that providing tools that are easy-to-use, chain agnostic and interoperable is a necessary step in driving scale consumer adoption," said Ethan Beard, Senior Vice President of Ripple's Xpring.