This February, Africa and emerging market-focused Nestcoin raised a pre-seed round to build, operate and invest in its web3 applications, including crypto content platform Breach Club and gaming guild Metaverse Magna (MVM). Nine months after its launch last December, the latter has completed a seed sale token round of $3.2 million at a $30 million fully diluted valuation.

MVM, incubated in partnership with a multistrategy blockchain investment fund, Old Fashion Research (OFR), welcomed participation from investors including South Korean video game developer Wemade, Japan-based blockchain-focused venture capital firm Gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC), HashKey, Tess Ventures, LD Capital, Taureon, AFF, Polygon Studios, Casper Johansen (Spartan) and IndiGG. In a statement, MVM said the funding will expand its efforts to build “Africa’s largest gaming DAO and provide gamers with access to world-class opportunities.”

There are over 3 billion gamers who spend $200 billion+ yearly on consoles and in-app purchases such as NFTs. Emerging markets, including Africa, account for 30% of this number; platforms like MVM see games as one way to introduce these millions of users to web3.

The gaming DAO publishes mobile games in frontier markets and creates developer tools for game creators to utilize emerging business models in web3 gaming. It operates as an independent organization as part of the broader Nestcoin ecosystem, said Nestcoin CEO Yele Bademosi in an email interview when quizzed on why MVM had to raise money after the African web3 upstart closed a $6.45 million round this year.

“Africa has the highest youth population globally, but over 60% of the continent’s youth are unemployed,” said Bademosi in a statement. “Gaming presents a unique opportunity to help young Africans earn and lift themselves and their families out of poverty. MVM’s seed sale token ensures opportunities for millions of gamers in these emerging markets.”

What started as a gaming guild offering play-to-earn scholarships to over 1,000 gamers to earn (up to $1,000 monthly, according to the platform’s pitch to users) from free-to-play Web 2.0 games and crypto games like Axie Infinity and Pegaxy has grown to a 100,000-member-strong community across an ecosystem including 2,000+ gamers, 10,000 Telegram and 20,000 Discord members.