Dapper

Back in March of this year, I wrote a post on the USV blog announcing our investment in Cryptokitties

A lot has happened since then. The company that made Cryptokitties is now called Dapper and it has raised a couple rounds of financing which will allow it to do a number of things:

  • Continue to invest in Cryptokitties, which remains a vibrant game experience and is the world’s most used consumer blockchain application outside of exchanges, with 3.2-million transactions and tens of millions of dollars transacted on the platform
  • Work with the world’s top entertainment brands to bring compelling brands, communities, and intellectual property to the blockchain. This means more game experiences, often in partnership with existing brands and game developers.
  • Build out the infrastructure to make blockchain games, including cryptogoods (ie NFTs), accessible to a mainstream audience.

It has been exciting to watch a small team that built Cryptokitties at a hackathon turn into a large and growing blockchain gaming company with global ambitions and a number of important launches on the horizon.

As I wrote in the USV post in March, we believe that “digital collectibles and all of the games they enable will be one of the first, if not the first, big consumer use cases for blockchain technologies.”

A lot is happening behind the scenes at Dapper, and at a number of other blockchain gaming companies, and increasingly in the legacy gaming sector, to give me confidence that 2019 will be a breakout year for blockchain gaming and I believe that our portfolio company Dapper will be leading the way.

#Uncategorized

Comments (Archived):

  1. William Mougayar

    Hello KittyVerse, 1M+ Kitties born already!! (and still breeding)(Discl. I’m an investor in both rounds)

    1. jason wright

      why two rounds already?Is this still riding on the Ethereum train chain ?

        1. jason wright

          signed up. thx.that cat is scary.

  2. awaldstein

    Big believer.About to write a wrapup of the Honu the CryptoKitty project which was such a cool twist on philanthropy to participate in.

    1. Donna Brewington White

      Good. Someday you can explain it to me.

      1. Arnold Waldstein

        In la the first part of December.

  3. jason wright

    Dappurr

  4. BillMcNeely

    Noticing a lot more use of blockchain to solve real problems like Bandwagon that help the orginators of sport tickets get a cut of each subsequent sale amongst other things https://www.gimletmedia.com

  5. JamesHRH

    2:45 PM Eastern and a post on the hottest application for consumer blockchain has 5 comments………

    1. jason wright

      i know. it’s purrthetic.

    2. fredwilson

      comment counts are way down at AVC. of the last seven posts (one week of posts), five have less than twenty comments, three have less than ten.it may suggest a loss of interest in AVCor it may suggest a loss of interest in commentingor it could be something else

      1. jason wright

        a good moment to ponder what might possibly reinvigorate it?

      2. olegious

        Is blog traffic still consistent or is it down as well?

        1. Susan Rubinsky

          I want to know too. Data like this is interrelated.

          1. fredwilson

            see my reply above. down slightly. but email is way up. which explains the lower comment counts.

        2. fredwilson

          slight downward trend on web, see attached chart, but the email usage has increased a lot. which does not lead to commenting. they reply to the email instead and i get it in my inbox. https://uploads.disquscdn.c

          1. jason wright

            i wonder if critical mass sometimes regresses to critical miss when collective consciousness fractures in this way?

          2. Lawrence Brass

            I guess that this is how the attention economy works. People’s attention drifts, dilutes, it moves in packs synchronized by social media and the news.Without the complete data set we don’t know, big silos know. Where did the visitor came from? where did she go after? This is the origin of their great power.

      3. Adam Sher

        I had my longest and most productive exchange with a couple of AVC posters in the past week. It can be intimidating to post with the knowledge you may be challenged, refuted, or called an idiot by some of the super commenters.A common technique of these posters, I too am guilty, is to not couch their comments with qualifiers and terms that softer their opinion; however, it is still their opinion. In writing, it comes off more harsh than spoken delivery. Maybe a cumulative effect of that is less written engagement.

        1. Donna Brewington White

          We started an exchange and then I had something urgent come up.Appreciated your insights and I always respect when someone is willing to rethink (although as I recall this was not based on my input).

          1. Adam Sher

            As Fred has said, have strong convictions that are loosely held.

      4. sachmo

        politics fatigue.

        1. jason wright

          possibly. tweeting should be strictly rationed.

      5. Susan Rubinsky

        Personally, I haven’t been visiting/reading/commenting due to being overscheduled. Tonight is the first evening I haven’t been sitting at my desk working for about eight weeks. So what am I doing? Eating dinner at a local bar and catching up on my blog reading.Maybe it’s the election cycle?

      6. Kirsten Lambertsen

        Sounds like an interesting topic for a post ;)I’m really surprised this post doesn’t have more comments. The crypto ones are usually lively.

    3. olegious

      “Hottest” may be overselling it- 378 users in the last 24 hours (according to https://dappradar.com/). We’re so far away from saying “blockchain and consumer” in the same sentence and actually having consumers adapting the [d]app.

      1. JamesHRH

        See second last paragraph.First, biggest = hottest, no?

        1. olegious

          But when “biggest” is 378 users a day and doesn’t show any signs of massive future adoption, it is hard to get excited.I’m actually a believer in the tech, but I think we’re so early in the tech cycle in dapps that “biggest” and “hottest” are meaningless terms.

    4. Donna Brewington White

      I wonder if a lot of us still don’t really know what to make of Cryptokitties…

      1. JamesHRH

        Digital goods in general are beyond me,

  6. lacker

    Is it really the most used consumer crypto application outside exchanges? On Ethereum, it looks like Etheremon had more users yesterday, for example (although at 500 vs 400 it’s quite small numbers). And if you look at EOS all of their top 10 gambling apps have more users than Cryptokitties.sources:https://dappradar.com/dappshttps://dappradar.com/eos-d

  7. Adam Sher

    A friend told me this morning that his cryptokitty was stolen. He uses Coinbase. Weird!

  8. Donna Brewington White

    My initial reaction to Cryptokitties is one of those things I must live down. Along with my initial enthusiasm for Google+. Thankfully no one cares about my opinion but me.Cryptokitties (er… Dapper) recently hired someone I had the enjoyment of interacting with when she worked with a client company. Great hire! Was really glad for both her and the company.

  9. Donna Brewington White

    Does this mean they are branching out from digital felines…say, adding cryptopuppies or cryptoponies?