Update, Aug. 9, 8:00 a.m. UTC: The original text in this article was removed, corrected and republished in accordance with on new information received by Cointelegraph.
Blockchain gaming firm Animoca has partnered with the blockchain network Harmony to jointly acquire Sequoia-funded digital collectible startup Quidd.
Blockchain won’t strain network like CryptoKitties on Ethereum, says Harmony
Within a new joint initiative, Animoca and Harmony collaborate on the development of a new ecosystem for crypto collectibles on Quidd platform, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Aug. 6.
While Animoca is planning to onboard its games and brands to the Quidd platform after the acquisition is complete, the companies primarily aim to solve the scalability problem, which is a major issue in the crypto collectibles space.
Specifically, the crypto collectibles application CryptoKitties — which Animoca was involved in — at one point peaked at 14,000 users, which strained the Ethereum network that only supports 14 transactions per second (TPS). This is where the acquisition of Quidd comes in, which claims to have over 200,000 users.
In order to achieve this, the companies will be relying on the capabilities of Harmony’s blockchain, which can reportedly support 10,000 TPS. This capacity is capable of supporting Quidd’s current user base and can even scale up as necessary to accommodate a growing number of users via sharding.
Quidd secured $13 million in funding led by Sequoia Capital
Based in New York, Quidd raised $13 million in a funding round led by major venture capital firm Sequoia Capital in 2017.
According to the press release, Quidd has issued and sold more than 2.1 billion individually-serialized digital collectibles and has 325 brand licenses to date, including popular names in entertainment such as Marvel, Game of Thrones and Rick and Morty, among others. The total amount of generated gross revenues from Quidd’s digital collectors is estimated to be over $10 million, the press release notes.
Expensive collectibles
As noted in the press release, Animoca auctioned off a crypto collectibles car, the “1-1-1,” for $106,428. An anonymous user made this purchase as part of a promotional sale conducted prior to the release of Animoca’s blockchain-based game F1 Delta Time.
Near the end of 2017, CryptoKitties also saw some crypto collectibles being traded in the six-figure range. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, five of the rarest CryptoKitties sold for over $100,000 each. The most expensive collectible kitten reported at the time was sold for approximately $120,000.