Filipino Tech Leaders Raise $2 Million to Launch First NFT Rental Marketplace
Filipino tech leaders have united to raise $2 million (P105 million) in seed funding to launch the first-ever NFT rental marketplace called Playdex. The online play-to-earn (P2E) rental marketplace caters to gamers seeking to rent gaming assets from NFT owners. Playdex will allocate its fresh funds to accelerate product development, community building, and integration of more games into the platform.
Participating investors in Playdex’s seed round include PDAX, OrangeDAO, iSeed Ventures, Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, Magic co-founder Aaron Kemmer, CSVE Ventures Managing Partner Nina Teng, Yaw Yeo of XA Network, Lazada Philippines chairman Ray Alimurung, and Buko Ventures.
Playdex is led by the Philippine startup ecosystem’s top thought leaders in crypto and fintech. Its startup veteran team of cofounders includes Daniel Laborada, Xendit senior software engineer and P2E guild founder; Ron Hose, founder and former CEO of Coins.ph; Thea Santos, Coins.ph’s head of operations and marketing; Eduard Iskandarov, Coins.ph’s engineering lead; Bernadette Misa, a Yield Guild Games manager and P2E guild founder; Luis Sia, co-founder of PayMongo; and Wesley Dela Cruz of the PayMongo Growth team. The team is advised by Colin Goltra, Yield Guild Games COO and former Binance director for Southeast Asia.
“On Playdex, gamers can play-and-earn immediately without having to buy expensive NFTs. Guilds (organized player groups) can now focus on training and scaling their communities no longer burdened by the hefty financial costs of gaming assets. While NFT owners can simply earn from their assets passively,” said Hose, co-founder of Playdex and Coins.ph.
P2E gaming is a booming space, particularly in the Philippines where Filipinos account for 40 percent of players on Axie Infinity, a global pioneer in P2E. Games like Axie Infinity provided alternate livelihood opportunities for students and unemployed Filipinos during the pandemic.
“By creating a digital platform where NFT owners can upload their assets for guilds and gamers to rent, we unify previously fragmented and informal transactions and make them streamlined and seamless,” said Daniel Laborada, CEO of Playdex. “Playdex empowers more people to have easy access to NFT games and reap the economic benefits of blockchain gaming.”
According to a recent survey conducted by Finder, the Philippines is one of the top NFT gaming communities in the world, outranking Singapore, Malaysia, the U.S., and more.
“The NFT ecosystem here in the Philippines will only continue to grow, and we look forward to supporting the Playdex team in making cryptocurrencies more accessible to Filipinos,” said Nichel Gaba, CEO of PDAX, a leading cryptocurrency exchange in the Philippines.
According to Playdex, one million Filipinos are daily active users of blockchain games, which is expected to grow into a $50 billion industry by 2050.
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