On July 5th, Jason Fung, who was in charge of TikTok’s gaming division, announced he was leaving to start Meta0. A company that creates blockchain video games.
According to Fung, he had to leave “his comfortable corporate life” at TikTok to launch Meta0. But as an enterprise tech executive who had worked for many years for big game companies. He wanted to give video game developers new ways to solve problems.
According to a press release, Jason Fung will have a lot of responsibilities. One of them is to grow Meta0 as a whole ecosystem of game developers, channel partners, and L1/L2 blockchains running on Meta0 as a Layer-0 protocol, much like Polkadot. In addition, he oversees partnerships, fundraising campaigns, and other critical strategic decisions.
Meta0 will require more interoperability.
According to Fung, the goal of Meta0 is to make it easier for blockchain networks to connect. This way, developers don’t have to choose only a tiny number of blockchains to use for their projects.
“Right now, if you look at any game developer who uses NFTs or blockchain in their games, they have to choose a single blockchain, like Polygon, Solana, or Binance Smart Chain. But think about a more compatible option.”
Fung said in another interview that he left TikTok to fix one of the most common problems in the NFT gaming industry. Which is the fact that developers don’t have easy access to blockchain infrastructure.
“I left TikTok because I saw a clear chance to solve the fact that there’s a huge gap in infrastructure options for developers who want to build blockchain games.”
Meta0 will raise money like many cryptocurrency startups do: by selling tokens and partnering with venture capitalists and strategic investors.
These include big names like Binance, Animoca Brands, a16z, Consensus Lab, and Kardia Ventures.
There is still room for growth in the blockchain gaming industry.
It’s important to note that the gaming industry is much bigger than the crypto gaming industry, which is more of a niche. However, NFT and blockchain games exploded in 2021, and by the first quarter of 2022, the crypto gaming industry had already made over $2.5 billion.
Also, play-to-earn games like Axie Infinity, CryptoBlades, Plant vs. Undead, and Mir4 became rapidly popular. For many fans in places like the Philippines, Argentina, and Venezuela, they became their primary source of income.
In other words, crypto games got endorsements from prominent institutions, making it easier for regular people worldwide to use them. Even Metamask, one of the ecosystem’s most well-known wallets, saw a significant spike in new accounts when crypto games and decentralized apps became popular.