LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–DNABLOCK, a company developing tools for creator communities in the new decentralized medium of Web3, announced today that it has closed its second seed round of $7 Million led by blockchain gaming, NFT, and metaverse champions Sfermion, Solana Ventures, Animoca Brands, and Non-Fungible Labs, with participation from a diverse group of investors in Web3 including SoftBank Group’s SB Opportunity Fund, LD Capital, Haobo Zhao, CMT Digital, Gaingels, RareBreed, Alumni Ventures, Diverse Angels, Fenwick and West, Figure 8 Investments and Bill Silva. Previous seed round investors include Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, Mike Shinoda, and Spacecadet Ventures.
The company will use these funds to further scale and deploy REPLIKANT, its flagship technology offering, empowering key partners and creator communities to bring their characters to life. The end-to-end 3D virtual production tool empowers a new class of creators – distributed, pseudo anonymous teams of musicians, artists, writers, producers and directors – to build, perform and publish at the speed of Web3. Additionally, DNABLOCK will establish an LA-based creator studio to launch new NFT talent and add several key leadership roles.
“We want people to feel something when they see their characters and NFTs come to life through REPLIKANT,” said DNABLOCK co-founder and CEO, Anthony Kelani. “The next great franchise isn’t going to come from the top-down, fully formed and with fixed narratives. It’s going to come from the bottom-up with stories that NFT communities write for themselves. I’m particularly excited that this will surface a new generation of stars from a much more diverse roster of creatives than we’ve seen from legacy media.”
REPLIKANT provides completely customizable AAA quality 3D avatars, creator friendly real-time animation tools that require no prior knowledge of 3D programming, and an expanding library of partner templates for music videos, cinematics and interactive experiences.
“When people began writing essays about the Metaverse two years ago, we were already building the tools to make it happen.” said DNABLOCK co-founder and CTO, Luc Shurgers. “It was clear from the start that procedurally generated avatars and animation were the future, so we assembled a team of game engine veterans with several AAA-titles under their belts and got busy. Now we have REPLIKANT, which delivers solutions today, while others play catch-up.”
With this round, Scott Broock, who was previously Global VR Evangelist for YouTube and EVP of Digital Strategy and Innovation at Illumination, joins Kelani and Schurgers, as Chief Strategy Officer. “The world is experiencing a fundamental shift in mediums from legacy film, TV and Web 2.0 to decentralized, community owned IP in Web3, which is backed by blockchain technology,” said Broock. “With REPLIKANT, Luc and Anthony have built an amazing tool that unlocks massively collaborative creativity, and it’s the future of entertainment.”
Everything in REPLIKANT is composable and interoperable, meaning that the code, or DNA of a character can jump from one REPLIKANT powered world to another, enabling a decentralized network of interactive entertainment experiences where NFTs are the stars.
REPLIKANT is production-ready and has been battle tested by some of the world’s top creative teams.
How It Works: Massively Collaborative Creativity
With REPLIKANT, Web3 communities can now quickly create the characters and stories that they want, no matter how weird, wild and bespoke. At its heart, REPLIKANT is a procedural avatar and animation tool that harnesses the power of Epic’s Unreal Engine for a new generation of decentralized creators. The versatility of REPLIKANT and procedural animation allows entire scenes to be shared, remixed and remastered in real-time by distributed teams of musicians, artists, writers, producers, editors and directors. Partner NFT communities get access to REPLIKANT for free and gain access to an ever expanding marketplace for wardrobe, props, stages, scenes, camera moves, and interactive experiences.
Most Recent Work
To demonstrate the speed with which REPLIKANT can create content at the speed of Web3, DNABLOCK released an original real-time death metal music video this past December that mashed up Bored Ape Yacht Club member Indigo Herz, Punk Gmoney, and Punk Courtney, all clad in Adidas Originals NFT sportswear that had been dropped to the public just a few days before. Most recently, DNABLOCK used REPLIKANT to create “The Catalyst,” an all-female supergroup of NFTs from the world of Treasure, one of the fastest growing metaverses on the Arbitrum blockchain. Artists, producers, and performers around the world worked in real-time to create a music video called “Welcome to Bridgeworld” that celebrated official lore released to the Treasure community three days before the video’s debut. New videos featuring some of the most exciting NFT characters and communities in Web3 are already in the works and will be released in the coming weeks.
Death Metal Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCNCmIKCvIo
Welcome to Bridgeworld Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gizZ2H2CPpE
Venture Testimonial
Sfermion
“The power and simplicity of REPLIKANT’s tools are about to level-up an industry of Web3 creators,” said Dan Patterson, general partner at Sfermion. “No-code Unreal animation, near limitless libraries, and AI-enabled content generation make REPLIKANT the ideal platform to bring NFT and Metaverse-native content to life.”
Solana Ventures
“DNABLOCK’s technology will catalyze the next wave of immersive social experiences and entertainment through high-quality 3D tooling,” said Matthew Beck, partner at Solana Ventures. “We are excited for the many applications that will now be unlocked for creators and users on Solana.”
SoftBank
“As Web3’s future is built, it’s important that all creators have access to best-in-class tools,” said Shu Nyatta, Managing Partner, SoftBank Group International. “DNABLOCK is uniquely positioned to be a driving force. We are excited to invest in the platform they are building and to support their mission.”
Animoca Brands
“DNABLOCK’s powerful new tool REPLIKANT enables massively collaborative creativity on a global scale and paves the way for democratized and decentralized Web3 entertainment,” said Robby Yung, CEO of Animoca Brands. “We strongly believe in the vision of an open metaverse that allows the users themselves to power rich narratives and deep immersion.”
Non-Fungible Labs
“We are excited to be investing in the DNABLOCK team,” said Aaron McDonald, co-founder of Non-Fungible Labs. “Their vision for rich, dynamic, open metaverse content is very close to our hearts. We aren’t just investing; we are also creating with their tools which will allow us to move faster and stay at the forefront of metaverse innovation. We are already developing some exciting and novel concepts together which will be game changers in the metaverse so stay tuned for more!”
Gaingels
“Gaingels is proud to participate in DNABLOCK’s latest seed round and their vision for an open, representative Metaverse,” said Lorenzo Thione, managing director at Gaingels.
About DNABLOCK
DNABLOCK enables the world’s greatest creative minds and storytellers to bring their narratives to life through REPLIKANT, a massively collaborative creativity tool for Web3. REPLIKANT allows distributed teams to create bespoke, high-quality, digital 3D avatars, videos, games and even cinema-quality productions in the fraction of the time and cost of traditional animation and visual effect studios.
This pipeline, combined with advanced machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, and sentiment analysis, is our recipe for engaging, real-time, interactive, digital beings and the future of immersive entertainment. To learn more, follow DNABLOCK at:
Website: https://dnablock.com
IG: @dnablock.ai
Twitter: @dnablock
About Sfermion
Sfermion is an investment firm focused on the non-fungible token (NFT) ecosystem. Our goal is to accelerate the emergence of the metaverse by investing in the founders, companies, and entities creating the infrastructure and environments that will form the foundations of our digital future. For more information visit https://www.sfermion.io
About Solana Ventures
Solana Ventures’ mission is to accelerate the growth of the Solana blockchain and adjacent ecosystems by providing capital to the most promising teams building in the crypto ecosystem. For more information visit https://solana.ventures/
About Non-Fungible Labs
Non-Fungible Labs is a venture studio developing a wide range of real-world applications for non-fungible tokens with a team including some of the world’s leading blockchain investors, strategists, and smart contract developers. For more information visit https://www.nonfungiblelabs.xyz
About Animoca Brands
Animoca Brands is working to build the open metaverse by bringing digital property rights to online users through the use of blockchain and NFTs. These technologies enable the true digital ownership of users’ virtual assets and data, asset interoperability, and an open framework that leads to greater equity for all participants. For more information visit www.animocabrands.com.