Laser Digital, Nomura Group lead $5 million funding round for gaming firm Tevaera

The zkSync gaming development firm Tevaera raised $5 million in fresh seed and private financing.

Laser Digital and Nomura Group co-led the round, which had additional support from Hashkey Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Matter Labs, Draper Dragon, Crypto.com Capital, Cogitent Ventures, Faculty Group, DWF Labs, Morningstar Ventures, DCF God, Momentum, GBV, Selini, Mapleblock, Coinswitch, GD10 Capital, Aquanow and others.

Tevaera intends to use the funds to grow its team and to launch a Layer 3 gaming chain on zkSync, with the ultimate goal of onboarding 2 million players and 12 game developers on Tevaera by the end of the year, the firm's co-founder Gav Negi told The Block.

"It's been a wild ride bootstrapping the project initially and then being cash flow positive through the bear market," Negi added. "This funding is a major milestone for us to accelerate our roadmap to build a ZK Stack powered, one-stop gaming ecosystem on zkSync."

Tevaera offers web3 games such as a fantasy strategy game "Guardian Islands" and a multiplayer racing game "Teva Run", as well as an NFT marketplace and decentralized exchange. Tevaera has over 850,000 gamers and nearly 2.5 million utility NFTs, according to the firm's website.

Tevaera launched its mainnet zkSync Era , a Layer 2 protocol that batches and records transactions on Ethereum using zero-knowledge proofs. zkSync Era is also a zkEVM, or a protocol using zero-knowledge proofs that's compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, a software framework that enables myriad applications on Ethereum. zkSync Era is one tool in the ZK Stack, which is a blockchain-focused tech stack using zero-knowledge proofs.

"With the launch of zkSync Era, the first zkEVM, we envisioned a comprehensive gaming ecosystem to effortlessly build, launch and play web3 games, providing a player-first experience," Tevaera wrote in a Wednesday social media post.

Laser Digital is a digital asset firm under Nomura Group , a Tokyo-based financial services and banking company.