Ethereum-based blockchain scaling service provider Polygon on Thursday said it has invested an undisclosed sum in Hike to support its Rush Gaming Universe (RGU).
The company added it will be hosting RGU on its network to help build its Web 3.0 presence.
Web 3.0, also known as Web 3, is the internet’s third generation that interconnects data in a decentralized way to deliver a faster and more personalized user experience.
By bringing RGU on-chain via the network, Polygon’s integration and investment aims to bolster this expansion. This will further allow users to own in-game assets, which will be represented by non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and also enable new play to earn and GameFi elements for users to win more money from the games.
Currently, RGU is a mobile-only platform where players can compete and win in popular Indian games.
Polygon and its layer-2 scaling solutions help in removing the bottleneck that the platform has avoided over its scalability concerns. It also claims to allow completely scalable and cost-effective Web 3 mobile gaming platforms to bring the next 100 million or so non-crypto native users onto the blockchain.
“We're entering a new era of gaming, where players will participate in a new kind of game economy where they're also owners of the networks they help create. Gaming has always been an incredible source of entertainment, a way to bring joy to people’s lives, and now it will also be a means to provide brand new economic opportunities to the world.
With Polygon, we’re going to bring The Rush Gaming Universe on-chain in 2022 on top of the vast & vibrant Ethereum ecosystem to deliver on this vision,” said Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder and CEO of Hike.
In the 12 months since its launch, the platform brings in $50 million ARR (annual recurring revenue), over 100 million gameplays a quarter are played by the RGU community across eight of India's most popular casual games. The company said Rush App is the 1st of 3 pillars of the RGU and in 2022, Hike will double down and BUIDL a decentralized global gaming ecosystem.
Hike after pivoting from instant messaging earlier in 2021 raised new funds as it continues to bet on social, gaming, and crypto. Hike had previously raised $175 million in Series D funding led by internet giant Tencent and manufacturing firm Foxconn. The round had valued the company at $1.4 billion.
Earlier in January 2021, Mittal announced that the company will be shutting its eight-year-old instant messaging app Hike.
Polygon provides Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development platform. It offers products for all major scaling and infrastructure solutions. Its scaling solutions have seen widespread adoption with over 3,000 applications hosted, over 1 billion total transactions processed, 100 million user addresses, and over $5 billion in assets secured.
“Web3 gaming is one of the fastest-growing economic sectors ever and has the potential to be an important onramp for the next 1 billion users to come onto crypto. Hike’s Rush Gaming Universe is a hugely exciting development for the Indian market, with global potential beyond that,” said Sandeep Nailwal, Co-Founder of Polygon.
