Here’s the latest in metaverse and NFT news for the week

Welcome to This week in the Metaverse, where Fortune rounds up the week’s most interesting stories about NFTs, culture, Web3-based gaming, and, well, the metaverse. Email [email protected] with tips.

For our first edition, let’s start by taking a closer look at Horizon’s ambition for blockchain gaming.

It’s a tough time for crypto markets as even well-known bullish VCs are pulling back, with global funding of venture capital-backed crypto startups falling 50% from the second quarter to the third. But one bright spot is Horizon Blockchain Gamethe Toronto-based Web3 products and infrastructure company that this week raised $40 million in a round led by Letter Howard Digital and Morgan Creek Digital.

CEO Peter Kieltyka declined to disclose Horizon’s valuation after the funding, but he told me the money will be used to expand his 60-member team, particularly in the marketing and business development departments.

“To be taken seriously, you need the funds so you can hire the best, so you can do the job,” Kieltyka said.

The company will need extra hands to expand its plans SequenceThe Web3 developer platform that is the foundation of the main product, the trading card blockchain game Skyweaver.

“It’s really an engine to allow a new set of digital-good primitives and allow them to be easily integrated into your video game,” added Kieltyka.

The Sequence platform also includes Sequence Wallet, a non-custodial wallet built for Web3 games that has a social login—think Google or Apple or Facebook—to help newbies onboard crypto. Using smart contracts, the wallet also allows users to easily transact across chains using a stablecoin that USDC.

One of Horizon’s leading investors, Brevin Howard, believes Horizon has the potential to make an outsize impact on the blockchain gaming space. It called Horizon “web3 Epic Games + Google” and Kieltyka “Tim Sweeney of Web3” in a blog post this week, drawing a parallel between Horizon’s Sequence platform and Epic’s Unreal Engine, which Sweeney, the Epic Games chief, says underlies the technology for almost half of all upcoming console games.

The story continues

1/ We’re thrilled to announce we’ve raised $40m in our Series A to make #web3 easy, fun, and powerful for users and builders 💜https://t.co/vPtN1rclc7

— Horizon (@0xHorizon) October 4, 2022

Kieltyka himself didn’t exactly dismiss the comparison — “I’ve got another 15 years before I’m there,” he told me — though he said he wants Sequence’s platform to remain open source on some level. Still, he said he envisions launching a Sequence Pro model for companies that could act as a software-as-a-service system.

Are NFT sales ready to pick up again?

Monthly NFT sales jumped over $947 million, Decrypt reported, in a rare sign of life for a market that has cratered. But things may not be as bad as they seem. DappRadar’s Head of Research Pedro Herrera told me that while, yes, volumes have dropped, the number of transactions and the number of trades remained consistent at around 2 million from the second to the third quarter.

Elsewhere

Cool Cats Group received an undisclosed investment from Animoca brands, which builds on its gaming partnership. The company said the investment “will drive Cool Cats’ mission to become the largest global NFT brand and a robust media and content company, including through the expansion of its gaming offering.”

Steve Youngthe former NFL quarterback who won the Super Bowl in 1995 plans to take his metaverse-related company public, Moving, via a SPAC. The company specializes in sensors, software and analytics that enable the digitization of movements, according to a regulatory filing.

Unlikelythe British virtual world tech creator who worked on Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Otherside metaverse is closing in on another $100 million round from blockchain technology company Elrond which will value the company at 3 billion dollars, according to Financial Times. Although the company raised $500 million in the largest funding round ever for a UK startup at the time, in 2017 it has burned through almost all of the money it raised since launching in 2012.

Three times as many NFT trademarks have been filed this year compared to 2021, according to US Patent and Trademark Office data compiled by Trademark Attorney Mike Kondoudis. This means that more companies are securing their intellectual property for possible Web3 products, although that does not necessarily mean they will launch them.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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