The $3 Billion Year: Blockchain Gaming's Record Rounds and What They're Worth Now

In October 2021, a Vietnamese studio with one game raised $152 million at a $3 billion valuation. A month later, a company most players had never heard of raised $725 million in a single round. By the spring of 2022, a cartoon-ape NFT company was worth $4 billion on paper.

For about twelve months, blockchain gaming was the hottest corner of venture capital. This is a guide to the biggest rounds of that period, who paid, and, crucially, what has happened since. Every number below was reported at the time; none of them is a current valuation.

Why the money came

Three things happened at once in 2021. Crypto prices hit records, which made investors who held tokens feel rich. Axie Infinity showed that a blockchain game could earn hundreds of millions of dollars in a few months. And the word "metaverse", turbocharged when Facebook renamed itself Meta, gave investors a story big enough to justify almost any price.

The result was a wave of rounds led by the same handful of names: Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Paradigm, Coatue, Tiger Global, SoftBank, Sequoia and Singapore's Temasek.

The headline rounds

Dapper Labs, September 2021: $250 million at a reported $7.6 billion. Led by Coatue, on the back of NBA Top Shot. The highest valuation for any company in this story (the Dapper story).

Sky Mavis, October 2021: $152 million at about $3 billion. Led by a16z, with Paradigm. The Axie Infinity maker was the defining company of play-to-earn (the founders' story).

Animoca Brands, October 2021: $65 million at $2.2 billion, then a reported $5.9 billion in 2022 and about $6 billion in an August 2022 round led by Temasek and GGV (the Yat Siu story).

Mythical Games, November 2021: $150 million at $1.25 billion. Led by a16z, for a studio whose main game was in early access (the Mythical story).

The Sandbox, November 2021: $93 million. Led by SoftBank, with LG and Samsung's venture arms.

Forte, November 2021: $725 million. Co-led by Sea Capital and Kora Management, six months after a $185 million round at $1 billion. Forte did not disclose its new valuation (the Forte story).

Polygon, February 2022: $450 million. Raised by selling MATIC tokens in a round led by Sequoia Capital India, with Tiger Global and SoftBank (the Polygon founders).

Immutable, March 2022: $200 million at $2.5 billion. Led by Temasek, with Tencent, followed by $21.5 million more in July at the same price (the Ferguson brothers).

Yuga Labs, March 2022: $450 million at about $4 billion. Led by a16z, weeks before its $317 million Otherside land sale (the Otherside story).

Limit Break, August 2022: $200 million across two rounds, raised after the crash had already begun (the Leydon story).

Asian money, big-company money and the price question

Not all of the money came from Silicon Valley. Singapore's state investor Temasek led both Immutable's $200 million round and Animoca's August 2022 round. Tencent joined Immutable's Series C, its first public web3 investment according to Forbes Australia. Korea's two electronics giants both took part through their venture arms, LG Technology Ventures and Samsung Next, in The Sandbox's SoftBank-led round. Ubisoft invested in Animoca. Even Warner Music Group appeared in Forte's cap table.

That mattered because it made the boom feel safer than it was. When a sovereign fund or a giant like Tencent writes a cheque, smaller investors and players read it as a signal that the idea has been checked by grown-ups.

Were the prices crazy? Not entirely, at the moment they were set. Sky Mavis's $3 billion valuation came after the Axie project had taken in about $485 million in just two months of 2021. On that run-rate, $3 billion did not look absurd. The problem was that the run-rate depended on new players buying in, and it fell apart within months. Most of the other valuations had far less revenue behind them, and rested on the idea that blockchain games would soon be as big as mobile games.

The timing problem

Look at the dates and a pattern jumps out. Crypto prices peaked in November 2021, and so did the frenzy: Mythical, The Sandbox and Forte all announced their rounds that month. The 2022 rounds for Polygon, Immutable and Yuga came during the first months of the slide, when investors still believed it was a dip.

By the middle of 2022, the market had turned hard. Immutable's IMX token had fallen from about $11 to around $1, SLP was down more than 99%, and the Ronin hack had wiped out $620 million. Limit Break's August round was one of the last of its kind.

What happened next

Almost every company in this list went through a painful reset:

• Sky Mavis suffered the Ronin hack in March 2022, raised fresh money led by Binance to repay users, and cut 21% of staff in November 2024.
• Dapper Labs went through layoffs and, in June 2024, settled a lawsuit over NBA Top Shot for $4 million.
• Mythical Games raised $37 million in June 2023, a fraction of its 2021 round, and rebuilt around NFL and FIFA licences.
• Forte bought and then closed or cut studios, including the maker of Dauntless, which shut in May 2025.
• The Sandbox lost more than half its staff in August 2025; Animoca was reported to have spent about $300 million on it in eight years.
• Animoca agreed a Nasdaq deal in November 2025 that valued it at about $2.4 billion, well under half its 2022 peak, then suspended it in September 2026.
• Polygon Labs cut 19% of staff in February 2024.
• Immutable faced, then saw closed, an SEC investigation, in March 2025.
• Yuga Labs had still not launched Otherside when it changed CEO in April 2026.

By the numbers

• $7.6 billion: Dapper Labs, September 2021, the highest valuation here
• $725 million: Forte, November 2021, the largest single round
• $450 million: Polygon and Yuga Labs, early 2022
• $3 billion: Sky Mavis, October 2021
• $2.5 billion: Immutable, March 2022
• $1.25 billion: Mythical Games, November 2021
• $2.4 billion: Animoca's 2025 deal price, against about $6 billion in 2022

Who made money, and what to watch

The investors who did best were the earliest ones, who bought tokens or shares cheaply before 2021 and could sell some during the boom. Founders who were able to sell some tokens or shares during the boom also banked real money. The investors who led the biggest rounds at the top, by contrast, were left holding stakes in companies whose later prices, where known, were far lower.

The next round of blockchain-gaming funding will be judged against this list. If any of these companies lists on a stock market, as Animoca still says it wants to, it will put a real public price on one of 2021's valuations for the first time. Until then, the safest way to read these numbers is as what they were: the price of optimism at the top of a cycle.

Token prices are highly volatile. Nothing in this article is investment advice.