In case you haven’t noticed, Justin Kan, co-founder of streaming platform Twitch, has been thoroughly invested in blockchain gaming. In fact, he is one of the people I refer to when I discuss how the builders of Web2 and rushing to build Web3. That is, many of the creators of the biggest sites in Web2 — Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, and so on — are now working with blockchain. This, for me, is one of the most encouraging signs for the future of blockchain gaming.
The first mention of Kan in the blockchain space was related to a game he has invested in. Syn City is a Play to Earn (P2E), mafia-themed title that has attracted investment from heavy-hitters inside and outside of crypto. But, that isn’t the most interesting project Kan is involved in. Fractal is.
What Is Fractal?
Fractal is a “marketplace for gaming NFTs”, but it is far bigger than that. My first impressions are that this is an all-encompassing platform with UI design that has unapologetically taken inspiration from Twitch.
“Players will be able to discover, buy and sell gaming NFTs on Fractal, through both a primary market (initial drops by gaming companies) and a secondary market (p2p trading). Eventually, we see ourselves creating infrastructure for emergent use cases of NFTs as well, such as the lending / scholarship model in some play-to-earn games. We are starting with the Solana blockchain, as we see the low cost and high speed of transactions as appealing to game creators who want to have a high number of in-game assets.” — Fractal
The scope is broad, albeit clear to see, and there is undoubtedly a gap for this. At present, the platform is using the Solana blockchain, but what interests me about the above quote is that they say they “are starting with the Solana blockchain”, suggesting this will likely be a multi-chain platform. Upon researching further, Fractal had addressed this question by saying, “No, the end goal for Fractal is to be multi-chain/chain-agnostic. We want to support great web3 games irrespective of how they are built.”
I have spoken about blockchain interoperability a lot recently as it’s becoming both more common and more important, and to see that Fractal may already be considering that is encouraging.
It is early days for Fractal, but the demand is clearly already there, with the Discord receiving the equivalent of a small nation’s population in the opening two weeks, sitting north of 110,000 members at the time of writing this. There are no plans for a token at present — which is refreshing — and they are instead “laser-focused on our core product and have no plans for a Fractal token at the moment.”
Closing Thoughts
I am a fan of both Twitch and Justin Kan. With the little time I have spent on Fractal, I am already interested in seeing where it goes and I can see it fitting comfortably in the large gap there is for a blockchain gaming platform that is independent of chains.
What I would like to see next is Fractal pairing with the most populous blockchain games and their respective chains, which would be WAX and BSC. This is a project I will be frequenting regularly.
You can follow Fractal on Twitter, their website, and their Medium, as well as by joining their enormous Discord.
