crypto.news 2025-04-25 05:38:27

MagicBlock raises $7.5M to power on-chain games on Solana

MagicBlock has secured $7.5 million in a seed funding round to support the development of real-time, fully on-chain applications on Solana. The company’s Apr. 25 fundraising announcement named Lightspeed Faction as the lead investor, with participation from Delphi Digital, Robot Ventures, Maven11, Mechanism Capital, and Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko. The round brings MagicBlock’s total funding to $10.5 million, following a $3 million pre-seed round led by a16z CSX in late 2024. The company said the new capital will be used to grow its engineering team and expand infrastructure for developers. MagicBlock is developing a technology called Ephemeral Rollups, which gives apps fast speeds and flexibility without leaving Solana ( SOL ). These rollups allow apps to process actions quickly while still staying connected to Solana’s core features, such as its liquidity and tools. This means developers don’t need to use layer-2 chains or bridges, which often split up user data and make apps harder to use together. “Every developer wants to build on the fastest chain with the deepest liquidity – that’s Solana. But they also want the customizability and real-time performance of a Web2 server. With MagicBlock, they don’t have to choose.” — Andrea Fortugno, MagicBlock co-founder You might also like: Crypto wagers generated over $81b in gaming revenue in 2024 alone despite legal barriers: report The startup is already working with projects like Flash Trade, Supersize, dTelecom, and Jito ( JTO ) to enable real-time trading, gaming, and communication directly on Solana. Instead of splitting states across chains, MagicBlock’s approach allows apps to remain composable while deploying app-specific plugins such as pricing streams and custom sequencing. The raise comes during a slow period for blockchain gaming. According to DappRadar’s Q1 2025 report , web3 gaming raised $91 million, a 71% decrease from Q4 2024. Projects building gaming infrastructure received the majority of the funding. The number of deals increased by 35% despite the decline in overall funding, indicating that investors are still supporting base-layer technologies even as they exercise more caution. MagicBlock’s raise shows there is still a strong appetite for infrastructure that can deliver scalable, on-chain gaming experiences without trade-offs. Read more: ZKcandy announces new Web3 gaming-focused mainnet launch