SolChicks, the flagship game of blockchain games publisher Catheon Gaming (www.solchicks.io, catheongaming.com) is now being referred to as a ‘unicorn’.
Having amassed a community of over 700,000 across 20 countries in a short four months it is now the fastest growing gaming company of its kind on the Solana blockchain platform – the fastest operating blockchain in the world.
Significantly, the company has raised AUD$77 million from a group of venture capital and institutional investment funds and more than 35 launchpad partners. It has also grown to employ over 100 staff, most of whom are based in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore.
SolChicks is the brainchild of two Australian finance graduates, William Wu and Lewis Grafton, who founded the company in September 2021.
CEO William Wu said SolChicks has been designed as a disrupter to the crypto gaming space. “The team at SolChicks firmly believe that the games of tomorrow will be managed in a decentralized fashion, free from corporate censorship and ridiculous play-to-win models. Our parent company, Catheon Gaming, aims to bring this model to other games – both blockchain based and traditional titles. We hope to create something which will disrupt the gaming industry as we currently know it and are proud to be at the forefront of pushing the boundaries of what is possible.”
COO Lewis Grafton said it goes without saying that the crypto gaming sector is growing faster than anyone could have imagined. SolChicks is an example of the immense appetite for this fluid, fun and interactive way to invest in the metaverse.“We are firm believers that Solana will become the leading blockchain given ethereum’s issues regarding scaling capability and network congestion,” he said.
SolChicks is a fantasy RPG game – similar in tone and theme to traditional gaming titles such as Darkest Dungeon, or Diablo, except that the cute chicken characters are NFT’s (Non-Fungible Tokens) which can be bought or traded, giving in game “treasure” real world value. The game also has a “token” ($CHICKS – a digital instrument similar to Bitcoin or Ethereum) that is supported by the Solana blockchain. At launch of the token, the sale was so massively oversubscribed that it took the entire Solana blockchain offline for a period of time. SolChicks was listed on the MEXC, Gate.io and Raydium cryptocurrency trading platforms in December.
Timing for the creation of the company coincided with unprecedented global interest in gaming using NFTs on a crypto / blockchain secure platform. More than 60,000 ‘gamers’ signed up within seconds of their launch to take part in a record breaking Initial Digital Offer (IDO).
To date, SolChicks has had two releases of its unique tokens with a third coming in soon. The company will release a “flash/mini game” in the next 2 months with the Alpha of the full game due late April. The full game’s official release will take place in September this year.
The NFT ‘Play-to-Earn’ space has grown significantly in recent years with a number of companies in the space building huge reputations and gaming companies such as Axie Infinity and Animoca Brands raising huge sums on the influx of new interest.
