The Sanctor Turbo Beta Class has Graduated — Demo Day Recap
On December 14, eight projects graduated as part of Sanctor Turbo’s Beta Class and gave spectacular presentations at the second Demo Day hosted by Sanctor Capital!
Over the past two months, KnownOrigin, Rainicorn, Blast, Sandstorm, Brink, BlockVision, zCloak and Sumer worked with a group of fourteen mentors as they were preparing their products. We are so proud of all that these teams have accomplished, and are incredibly grateful for all of the support our mentors have provided.
With our first Alpha Class more focused on DeFi, the hand selected projects that made up the Beta Class alums demonstrated the immense growth and potential of Web3 and the Metaverse.
The boundless potential of NFTs
Four of the eight projects in the cohort hail from the art, gaming and collectibles sector, and work closely with NFT technology.
KnownOrigin, one of the oldest brands in the crypto creator space, presented its composable NFT feature. It enables creators to embed other tokens within their NFT, making their art richer (no pun intended).
Rainicorn unveiled the demo of its much anticipated game, The Lords of Light. The visually stunning trailer has already started to make rounds on crypto twitter. The first release of the trading card packs sold out some time ago, and now gamers are anticipating the next mint. This is a game we are looking forward to in 2022.
Blast, a tournament platform for games, gave users a glimpse into the exciting future of PvP gaming. P2E has catalyzed crypto gaming, but the unhealthy tilt towards PvE farming has us worried. Blast, with a multitude of tournament options, including one-on-one formats, aims to reinvigorate PvP gaming. This is an incredibly powerful tool for P2E games.
The audience then got a tour of Sandstorm, a platform for events happening inside virtual worlds. The platform enables not just event hosting, but also NFT item purchases. It is one of the first active venues inside The Sandbox, and has welcomed over 10K visitors to date.
Strengthening the infrastructure backbone
Automation is critical to the growth of decentralized ecosystems. Vital trading functionalities like limit orders and stop-loss require proper RPC support in order to be executed on-chain. Brink demonstrated its solution as it gears up to unlock countless possibilities for DeFi and other sectors.
BlockVision showed off its indexing network. The team has been working on technology for efficiently querying blockchains. While scalability remains at the forefront of industry discussions, most conversations have been focused on writing to the blockchains. As engagement and volume grow communication between dapps and with users, reading will become a more prevalent task.
Hopping between worlds and chains
With the growth of the metaverse, traversing between dapps and virtual worlds will become a basic need. Moreover, as regulation becomes more important KYC/AML will require more attention from the community. Answering the call, zCloak, which is working on DIDs based on zkp and substrate technology, demonstrated its privacy preserving validation solution.
Sumer presented its cross-chain liquidity solution. We are big believers in a multi-chain future. A critical part of that vision is the ability to seamlessly move assets between chains. As blockchains continue to evolve and different ecosystems form, it will be critical to lower barriers for users to go back and forth between them.
The eight demos were followed up by four captivating panels with some of industry’s foremost experts on the pressing topics.
Web3 Infrastructure Triage
The first panel, moderated by Crypto Briefing’s Jacob Oliver, featured Michael Godsey (Infura), Mike Calvanese (Brink), Joseph Butcher (BlockVision) and Brainjar (Composable Finance). The panel discussed the current and future state of infrastructure. Naturally, a key subject was communication:
“If there was a way where crossing communication could get to a point where it wasn’t just sort of focused on token transfers and simple kind of functions like this, but also thinking about what an actual cross chain application would look like, products, the possibilities sort of would kind of be endless.”
-Brainjar, Composable Finance
Watch the panel here
The panelists also discussed the importance of education, among other topics. This was a thought provoking conversation between the builders in the space.
NFTs, Gaming and the Metaverse
NFTs have captured the attention of the crypto community, and this panel gave a great look under the hood. The discussion was moderated by VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi and featured: Sebastian Borget (The Sandbox), David Moore (KnownOrigin), Sam Kim (MetalCore), Mindspheres (Rainicorn) and Lin Dai (OneOf).
The panelists went over a number of topics including the rise and adoption of crypto gaming and P2E:
“I think it’s important that we have all kinds of types of players. We have what we call the earners, people who are engaging the game in order to earn tokens and sell them and maybe pay the bills, which is often what we see in the Philippines. And then you also have the traditional gamers kind of the free to play guys who, you know, if you think of the free to play almost, I think of it more as a funnel where you have it funnels in a large player base.”
-Sam Kim, MetalCore
Watch the panel here
The speakers discussed other subjects including the utility of NFTs and what sectors they feel will lead the adoption effort forward. This was an engaging conversation from some of the industry leaders and up-and-comers.
Decentralized Gaming Infrastructure
If virtual worlds are to be seen as the new frontier to be developed and settled, then who is bringing the picks and shovels? That was the topic of conversation moderated by Jon Jordan from PocketGamer, that featured: John Chen (UMB Network), Or Perelman (Chromia Protocol), Steve McGarry (Sandstorm) and Viken Boyadjian (Blast).
Watch the panel here
This was an exciting panel that touched on a number of interesting topics including adoption. One of the subject brought up was the need for the stack to continue to mature in order to be able to support game activity on-chain:
“With Solana, which is, you know, I guess known as one of the more faster transaction throughput chains, it’s still really unable to handle the high computational requirements that are necessary for things like, blockchain based gaming, even a simplistic game, like an Angry Birds, for example, today can’t be fully run on the chain.”
-John Chen, UMB Network
This was a great panel for anyone building or looking to get into crypto gaming.
Privacy and Interoperability
Privacy and interoperability have remained key topics in the industry. The panel on the matter was moderated by Viktor Bunin from Coinbase and featured: Jacob Cantele (Metamask), Lisa Cuesta (Aztec Network), Tor Bair (Secret Network), Xiao Zhang (zCloak Network), and Xiaohan Zhu (Sumer).
With data ownership continuously popping up as a contentious subject between web2 and web3 companies, and the need for user mobility both in terms of identity and capital rising, this was a great conversation to follow:
“We have less privacy in Web3 right now than we do in Web2. And I just don’t think that’s going to stick, particularly as you’re thinking about mainstream adoption and new, you use cases that aren’t currently possible without privacy.”
-Lisa Cuesta (Aztec)
Watch the panel here
This is an important conversation that is ongoing in different corners of our ecosystem, and it was great to be able to bring attention to it as part of this Demo Day.
We want to thank all of the speakers for taking the time to share their thoughts with the community.
This was an exhilarating event, with fantastic demos and thought provoking discussions. We are proud of the work this cohort has put in and all that the teams have accomplished. We are also grateful for the wonderful mentors that helped make all of this possible.
We will soon start the process of forming the Gama Class cohort, so if you are a founder with an exciting idea, we encourage you to reach out to us at info@sanctor.com.
Disclaimer: This commentary is not investment advice. It does not purport to include any recommendation as to any particular investment, transaction or investment strategy, or any recommendation to buy or sell any investment. It does not reflect any attempt to effect any transactions or render any investment advice.
This post is solely for informational and entertainment purposes. It is inherently limited and does not purport to be a complete discussion of the issues presented or the risks involved. Readers should seek their own independent legal, tax, accounting, and investment advice from professional advisors. The views reflected in this commentary are subject to change at any time without notice.
The authors or their affiliates have ownership or other economic interests or intend to have interests in several of the organizations and crypto assets discussed, including ThorSwap, Synchrony Finance, Consensys Software, Infura, Metamask, Composable Finance, MetalCore, OneOf, KnownOrigin, Rainicorn, Blast, Sandstorm, BlockVision, Brink, Sumer and zCloak, as well as other crypto assets not referenced.
