They are a team of technologists, researchers and investors who buy assets of, who build for, and who participate in open crypto networks. At its core, Framework is a technology company, building products and services to support the open blockchain networks that they invest in. Framework was started in 2019.

Framework Ventures

IOSG Ventures is a pioneering crypto fund founded in 2017 that invests in the future of Web3. As a thesis-driven firm, we assist founders in developing community-driven protocols that are primed to transform the crypto landscape. Our portfolio comprises a wide range of innovative and high-potential investments, including ZKRU (Scroll, StarkWare, Arbitrum, zkSync), Security Auditing(Runtime Verification, Hexens), MEV (Flashbots, Blocknative), DeFi/NFT-Fi (1inch, MetaMask), FOG (Big Time, Illuvium), and a number of industry leaders including Arweave, Cosmos, Celestia, EigenLayer, Scroll, zkSync, Nil Foundation, and Mina, etc. We are passionate about investing in crypto-native paradigms that have the potential to transform the future of the industry, whether you’re building infra, middleware, security, gaming, or social platforms.

IOSG Ventures

Blocksync Ventures is a venture capital firm focusing exclusively on decentralized ledger technology.

Blocksync Ventures

Animoca Brands is a metaverse and gaming venture capital firm that focuses on driving digital property rights to gamers and internet users through NFTs. It utilizes gamification and blockchain to develop and market a portfolio of mobile applications, games, and additional products oriented to educational learning to ensure transparency, security, and new business models.

Animoca Brands

King River Capital invests in high-growth software and AI-driven technology businesses that are solving critical problems. The firm aims to cultivate a diverse, energized ecosystem of entrepreneurs, operators, and partners that will build the world’s iconic companies and create a better future. It invests typically in the Series A through Series C rounds.  King River Capital (KRC) was founded in 2019 as a venture capital fund dedicated to investing in exceptional teams that are building innovative companies in Australia and the US. It is headquartered in Surry Hills, Australia.

King River Capital

Spartan is a blockchain advisory and asset management firm that specializes in hedge funds, venture capital, and fundraising.

The Spartan Group

Arrington Capital is a thesis-driven firm invests in digital assets.

Arrington Capital

GoldenTree is an employee-owned, global asset management firm that specializes in opportunities across the credit universe in sectors such as high yield bonds, leveraged loans, private credit, distressed debt, structured products, emerging markets, private equity and credit-themed equities. GoldenTree was founded in 2000 and is one of the largest independent asset managers focused on credit. GoldenTree manages over $48 billion for institutional investors including leading public and corporate pensions, endowments, foundations, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds. GoldenTree is headquartered in New York and has offices in West Palm Beach, FL, Charlotte, NC, London, Dublin, Sidney, Singapore, Tokyo, and Dubai.

GoldenTree Asset Management

Yield Guild Games (YGG) is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for investing in non fungible tokens (NFTs) used in virtual worlds and blockchain-based games. The organization’s mission is to create the biggest virtual world economy, optimizing its community-owned assets for maximum utility, and sharing its profits with its token holders.

Yield Guild Games

Selini Capital is a multi-strategy trading firm and liquidity provider specializing in crypto assets.

Selini Capital

Polygon Ventures is an investment firm that focuses on early-stage Web3 startups.

Polygon Ventures

Laser Digital early-stage investor in companies building innovative institutional products and services in the digital asset ecosystem focused on Defi, CeFi, Web3, and infrastructure.

Laser Digital

32-Bit Ventures supports blockchain game development through early stage investment.

32bit Ventures

Arca Finance

n8 | Capital

Illuvium

Planet Sandbox is the third-person NFT sandbox game that powers players with limitless building tools to customize their own worlds and design game modes. It allows players to build and own arenas to fight other players in different game modes using their own NFT weapons and accessories.

Splinterlands is a decentralized, digital collectible trading card game built on blockchain technology. It was founded in 2018 and is based in Media, Pennsylvania.

Illuvium makes a game that rewards players with the opportunity to explore and capture NFT creatures, known as Illuvials, in combat.

<div>Illuvium is an Australia-based decentralized studio that claims to have developed the world's first interoperable blockchain game (IBG) universe on the Ethereum blockchain. Through its graphically rich sci-fi adventure, Illuvium offers players an immersive experience across multiple interconnected games, including an open-world exploration game, an industrial city builder, and an autobattler. Players can discover, hunt, and capture over 150 Illuvials, powerful creatures that inhabit the alien landscapes, and train them to create ascended forms. Leveraging blockchain technology, Illuvium enables true ownership of in-game assets, allowing players to store and trade assets in their Ethereum wallet and participate in peer-to-peer trading on the IlluviDEX marketplace with zero gas fees through integration with layer-2 blockchain ImmutableX. Additionally, Illuvium operates as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) with a global network of contributors and token holders, such as Gamers Outreach, Quantstamp, and Chainlink.&nbsp;</div>

Giving creators the power of content monetization and audience engagement.

Creator Economy

Can Australian gaming startup Illuvium overcome the online community’s war on crypto?

Samsung Electronics

To transform Samsung TVs into Web3-enabled digital hubs, appealing to younger, tech-savvy audiences.

To expand Illuvium's reach globally, collaborating with Samsung Electronics aims to integrate Illuvium into households worldwide using advanced technology.

Planet Sandbox

Icetea.io

Exnetwork Capital

NGC Ventures

AU21 Capital

Moonwhale Ventures

ZBS CAPITAL

Kyros Ventures

Vendetta Capital

X21 Digital

Momentum 6

MoonBoots Capital

Magnus Capital

Dutch Crypto Investors

Basics Capital

Everse Capital

Good Games Guild

TK Ventures

VBC Ventures

DEC.Ventures

LuaVentures

Newave Capital

OneMax Capital

EMO Capital

KTS Capital

Splinterlands

Enjin

AppWorks

Black Dragon Capital

Panda Capital

Centrality

Youbi Capital

QCP Capital

Blockchain Founders Fund

Mask Network

Digital Asset Capital Management

Gate.io

3Commas

Polygon

Phoenix Fund

G1 Ventures

MarketAcross

Alpha Transform Holdings

Plutus VC

Side Door Ventures

Pluto Digital

Sheesha Finance

Shima Capital

MVST:MG

SMO Capital

TechMeetsTrader

AGE Crypto Asset Investment Fund

Faculty Group

Baselayer Capital

Banter Capital

Tribe Global Ventures

NewTribe Capital

BonFire Union

<div>
 
 Illuvium is an Australia-based decentralized studio that claims to have developed the world's first interoperable blockchain game (IBG) universe on the Ethereum blockchain. Through its graphically rich sci-fi adventure, Illuvium offers players an immersive experience across multiple interconnected games, including an open-world exploration game, an industrial city builder, and an autobattler. Players can discover, hunt, and capture over 150 Illuvials, powerful creatures that inhabit the alien landscapes, and train them to create ascended forms. Leveraging blockchain technology, Illuvium enables true ownership of in-game assets, allowing players to store and trade assets in their Ethereum wallet and participate in peer-to-peer trading on the IlluviDEX marketplace with zero gas fees through integration with layer-2 blockchain ImmutableX. Additionally, Illuvium operates as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) with a global network of contributors and token holders, such as Gamers Outreach, Quantstamp, and Chainlink.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In February 2024, the company partnered with Illuvidata, an analytics platform, to innovate blockchain gaming analytics by providing advanced tools and analytics to enhance the player experience within the Illuvium gaming ecosystem.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In March 2024, the company raised 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28038">
 USD 12 million in a Series A
 </a>
 funding round led by a consortium of top-tier capital firms, including King River Capital, Arrington Capital, and Spartan Capital. It was to use the funds to launch Illuvium's first series of connected games in Q2 2024.&nbsp; 
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Patreon provides a platform for creators to offer numerous types of content (videos, text, podcasts, images, etc.) for which fans can subscribe to a monthly membership without any ads or algorithms. Patrons (Patreon subscribers) can pay monthly or per post for content access, in addition to the pay-what-you-want option. Creators are paid monthly or for every new post uploaded. They can offer rewards for different tiers, including meeting patrons or custom work upon the patron&rsquo;s request. Creators are offered three packages: Lite, Pro, and Premium. Lite offers basic creator tools for a membership business with no tiers for fans; Pro offers additional tools and perks (e.g., workshops) with unlimited membership tiers; Premium caters to established companies with a large following, earning a monthly income of USD 5,000 or more, offering Pro services in addition to advanced features and Dedicated Partner Manager services. Creators can start for free and are charged a monthly commission based on their plan when they start earning: 5% (Lite), 8% (Pro), and 12% (Premium), as well as payment processing fees. 
 
 
 The company revealed in November 2021 that it is building a video hosting platform with a native player to eliminate the reliance of third-party video hosting platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo for creators to share video content with their patrons.
 
 
 Memberful, a Patreon-owned membership software platform for independent creators, launched a newsletter feature in October 2021, allowing creators to send news emails to their subscribers. In the future, creators will be able to make posts publicly viewable and schedule and send targeted emails to specific groups of subscribers. Notably, Memberful&rsquo;s paid plans (charged monthly) retain 4.9% of creator revenue, while competitor Substack retains 10%.
 
 
 Patreon acquired tech recruiting firm, Clear Talent, in August 2021 to scale up talent and build its engineering, product, and design team. The company seeks to accelerate the introduction of new features and platform capabilities and double the total monthly revenue its creators earn to around USD 200 million. In October 2023, the firm 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22877">
 acquired Moment,
 </a>
 a digital events platform, to strengthen event management solutions for creators.
 
 
 Key 
 customers
 and partnerships
 
 
 As of August 2022, Patreon had more than 250,000 creators, over 8.5 million active subscribers, and had paid out more than USD 3.5 billion to creators. 
 
 
 In June 2021, Patreon partnered with shesaid.so, an international community of women and gender minorities, to co-present the Alternative Power 100 Music List 2021 (#AltList) with the theme &ldquo;The New Creative Economy.&rdquo; Patreon and shesaid.so aim to make the music industry more inclusive and will co-host a series of virtual and physical events (including panel discussions and creator networking). The company has also partnered with third-party services, including Vimeo (to host videos) and Discord (for community chats).
 
 
 Funding
 
 and
 financials
 
 
 The company&rsquo;s most recent funding round was a Series F round worth USD 155 million in April 2021, led by new investor Tiger Global Management. This round triples Patreon&rsquo;s valuation to USD 4 billion. The funds are to be used to further develop its platform for mobile and desktop, increase content consumption tools, and accelerate its international footprint.
 
 
 The total cumulative payouts to creators via the platform surpassed USD 2 billion as of September 2020, and the company expects annual payouts to pass USD 1 billion in 2021. 
 
</div>

Patreon

<div>
 
 Substack offers a publishing platform that encompasses design, analytics, and payment infrastructure to assist newsletter subscriptions. The platform enables writers to focus on content creation and monetization via subscriptions. Writers can build their own paid newsletter subscription businesses and may choose to start with free newsletters for lead generation. Newsletters can be published to the web in addition to individual email addresses and its mobile app.&nbsp; The platform has a dedicated discovery section ranking the top newsletters, which are then promoted based on &ldquo;internet points&rdquo;. The platform supports podcasting by allowing writers to embed MP3s into their newsletters.
 
 
 The company launched multiple product improvements over the years, including video creation and editing features (
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24569">
 November 2023,
 </a>
 the capacity to publish video podcasts, create interactive AI-generated transcripts, and customize shareable video clips
 ), AI-powered audio transcription tools (
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21412">
 August 2023,
 </a>
 featuring transcript generation and audiogram creation capabilities), Private Substacks (
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15987">
 January 2023,
 </a>
 where readers can request to subscribe to read users posts) Substack Grow (
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4243">
 August 2021
 </a>
 , to help writers add paying subscribers in), Substack Local (
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/3163">
 April 2021
 </a>
 , an initiative to support the local news ecosystem), Substack Pro (to offer advance payments for certain writers), Substack Defender (July 2020, to offer legal support to writers in).&nbsp;&nbsp;
 
 
 Writers have to bring in their own readers, and once they start earning (at a minimum of USD 3 per month), a commission of 10% (plus the Stripe payment processing fee) will be charged on the writer&rsquo;s income. Additionally, Substack stated that it has no plans to include advertisements as an additional revenue stream within the platform. By July 2021, the company reported its top 10 publishers bring in more than USD 20 million per year in combined subscription revenue. Moreover, the company has attracted famous journalists such as Andrew Sullivan, Casey Newton, and Edith Zimmerman. Substack had more than 500,000 paid subscribers as of March 2021.&nbsp;
 
 
 Other notable events include the acquisition of subscription-based social networking app Cocoon in 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/5113">
 August 2021
 </a>
 , the acquisition of Australian public correspondence startup Letter in 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4601">
 July 2021
 </a>
 and the funding of podcast network Booksmart Studio&rsquo;s launch in 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4390">
 July 2021
 </a>
 .
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 The company&rsquo;s most recent funding round was Series B funding worth USD 65 million in 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/3156">
 March 2021
 </a>
 . The round was led by return investor Andreessen Horowitz, valuing Substack at approximately USD 650 million. The funds are to be utilized to rapidly expand the Substack Pro program alongside the implementation of other features.&nbsp;
 
 
 Substack reported a net loss of USD 22.9 million in 2021, having grown from a net loss of USD 2.3 million in 2020.
 
</div>

Substack

<div>
 
 Cameo offers a platform where creators, such as influencers, celebrities, athletes, artists, and musicians, can provide personalized videos and shout-outs to fans as per their request, charging for each video from USD 5 to as high as USD 2,500. Creators who have a minimum of 20,000 Instagram followers are automatically admitted onto the platform, where they set their own price and can choose to accept a fan request or not within seven days. The creator must fulfill the request within a week, which the fan can download and share. Additionally, Cameo provides a messaging option for less expensive creator/fan interactions. Cameo takes a 25% commission on each transaction on the platform.
 
 
 As of September 2020, Cameo had more than 30,000 creators across multiple industries. Cameo reported that it generated around USD 100 million in video transactions in 2020, with more than 2 million video messages being shared on its platform since launch, of which 80% were gifts for others. Furthermore, the company reported its creators and fans are based in 138 and 178 countries, respectively, with almost 20% of Cameos being purchased from outside of the US as of March 2021. For example, Cameo entered into a commercial partnership (
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8576">
 February 2022
 </a>
 ) with Softbank, an existing investor of Cameo, to add more Japanese creators and expand its platform in Japan as a culturally fluent localized version.
 
 
 Cameo acquired marketing and merch company Represent (October 2021) whose clients include Jennifer Lopez, Ed Sheeran, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Matthew McConaughey, among others. The acquiring company will onboard the Represent team as well as Represent&rsquo;s existing client relationships. In the near term, Cameo plans to allow fans to purchase &ldquo;gift bundles&rdquo; that pair a Cameo video with related merchandise from the creator. The company hopes to introduce new forms of creator-fan engagement, establish new creator revenue opportunities, and offer non-profit organizations a new way to raise funds.
 
 
 Funding and financials 
 
 
 The company&rsquo;s most recent funding round was Series C funding worth USD 100 million in March 2021, which valued the company at over USD 1 billion, achieving unicorn status. The funds are to be utilized to enhance the Core Cameo experience and capabilities, create new creator-fan engagement products (including Fan Clubs and Cameo Calls), and develop Cameo's B2B business. The company also plans to continue its international expansion.
 
</div>

Cameo

<div>
 
 Buttondown offers a publishing platform for writers to create and distribute newsletters on a subscription basis (price set by the writer) or for free. The platform does not charge writers until they reach 1,000 subscribers, after which they are charged a monthly fee of USD 5 per thousand subscribers. Buttondown also offers advanced features for professionals at a monthly fee of USD 29. Writers can send multiple separate newsletters from the same account, catering to different audiences by maintaining separate mailing lists.
 
 
 The platform also provides writers with user-specific analytics and insights, including features such as side-by-side comparisons of multiple emails. Buttondown has integrated with numerous third-party providers, Ghost and Medium (blogging platforms), Squarespace and Weebly (website building and hosting service providers), and web application integrator, Zapier.  As of December 2020, the company is run entirely by the CEO and founder, Justin Duke, and reported to have a monthly cost base of around USD 1,100. Furthermore, the CEO has made a commitment to donate at least 10% of profits to the software that enables it.
 
</div>

Buttondown

<div>
 
 Disciple Media, headquartered in the UK, offers bespoke community media apps for creators to privately share and own their content while having control, especially regarding monetization. Creators can use the platform to promote their brand, increase reach and engagement with fans, and monetize by charging fans a monthly subscription for access in addition to in-app purchases, sponsorship, and advertising. The company claims that the app-creating process had been reduced to 10 minutes since 2017.
 
 
 The company reported 200% revenue growth and recurring revenue growth of 160% in 2020. As of July 2021, the platform has reached over 500 global communities (up from 200 in May 2020) with 2 million members using the platform. The company claims that the growth of recurring revenue by more than 850% in 2019 was driven by monthly growth of 15% in new communities and 20% in members.
 
 
 Disciple Media raised USD 6 million in a Series A funding round in July 2021, led by previous investors including Nick Mason (Pink Floyd drummer) and Rob Pierre (founder and CEO of Jellyfish), among others. In addition to the company&rsquo;s fundraising, Eirik Svendsen&mdash;an expert in online marketplaces, SaaS, and the publishing and media industry&mdash;has come on as Chairman of the Board.
 
</div>

Disciple Media

Platforms that allow creators to share several types of content. Some platforms also offer fan engagement/ interactions with the creative artist via videos/ live streams.

Platforms that offer exclusive content to signed up members.

Platforms that allow creators to share their written works and blogs.

Platforms that provide tools to discover relevant analytics, produce content, engage with the audience, and help with the overall process.

Platforms that allow creators to share one of either videography, live streams, photos, music or audio podcasts with fan engagement capabilities.

Blockchain-based Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) allow creators to transfer ownership of their content via platforms that share proceeds with buyers, sellers, creators, and platforms via smart contracts.

Web3 enables creator monetization by providing decentralized platforms for creators to engage with their audience

NFT platforms segment uses metaverse concepts

<div>
 Illuvium, a gaming platform using NFTs, secured USD 12 million in a Series A funding round. King River Capital, Arrington Capital, Spartan Capital, and Animoca Capital led the consortium of capital firms. This brings total funding for Illuvium to USD 60 million.
 The funds raised will be used for the launch of Illuvium's introductory series of interconnected games, set to release in Q2 2024. These games will offer players the feature to use shared NFTs across different games, aiming to deliver a unique gaming experience.
 Illuvium's objective is to revolutionize the gaming industry by creating a universe where the same NFT can be used in different game titles. This approach will enhance continuity and immersion for the players. With over a million registered users, Illuvium is said to have a one-of-a-kind revenue-sharing model. It offers investors who stake the platform's native token, $ILV, 100% of the in-game revenue. 
</div>

Illuvium

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