Azarus Inc., a distributed ledger blockchain service that runs video game challenges, today said it has raised $1.8 million from investors today.

The company runs a “Smart Challenge” platform that enables new relationships between streamers and gamers by setting up victory conditions in games and then paying out to players and watchers when those challenges are met.

The money for this funding came from Galaxy Digital via its Galaxy EOS VC Fund, Kleiner Perkins, and SVK Crypto and others, reported VentureBeat.

As part of Azarus’s pilot program, a select number of streamers who play Tom Clancy’s “Rainbow Six Siege” — an online tactical competitive shooter game from Ubisoft Entertainment SA — will be able to pose questions and have viewers answer them. Correct answers would be rewarded with tokens that can be redeemed for merchandise.

This is only one angle that the platform could take, by using the EOS blockchain, players and streamers alike can set up smart contracts that pay out tokens when particular conditions are met.

To work, these conditions are derived from the gaming platform in question, in this case it could be Rainbow Six, where certain statistics would be available via the interface such as number of kills, number of deaths, aim accuracy, time spent in game and so on.

In its current iteration, the platform pulls this data from the game and then uses that to create questions for users watching a stream. The result is real-time questions related to gameplay, for example viewers might get asked, “What was the last enemy the streamer killed?” or “Which character did the streamer play in the last match?”

For standard creator streams, Azarus presents questions about the most recently completed match. And, for Rainbow Six Siege Pro players, the company has developed predictive questions for upcoming matches.

Using a blockchain is expected to provide a sense of transparency and fairness. The challenge and the tokens associated would be public, as would the win conditions and the closure of the challenge. Due to the nature of blockchains, the smart contract and the transactions are all secured using cryptography and a tamper-proof protocol design.

“We aim to vastly improve the connection between players, creators, and publishers through the deployment of what we call Smart Challenges,” Casassovici, chief executive of Azarus, said in a statement. “By letting anyone set their own rules, stakes, and rewards, against their friends or audience, on the games they already play, we’ll unlock a new dimension to amplify the industry as a whole.”

Blockchain technology in the gaming industry has been a strange fit over the years. Most blockchain services within gaming have leaned towards economies, such as a microtransaction platform in the U.K. from Hashcash Consultants LLC, gaming assets platforms such as from gaming engine maker Unity Technologies SF to partner with GameCredits Inc. to secure virtual items and virtual item trading platforms for games such as DMarket and Gamania Group’s virtual item blockchain.

By implementing Azarus’s system for Rainbow Six, publisher Ubisoft discovered that there was an increase in viewership and engagement by watchers for streamers. At the same time, the publisher discovered that players played the game more frequently due to the increased engagement.

Jean Guerin, director of community engagement at Ubisoft EMEA, said that he looks forward “to see what opportunities blockchain can bring to players and us, world creators.”

The nature and use of blockchains in the gaming industry to trade virtual currency, create assets, track player activity and issue challenges, he believes, could change how players interact with games and gaming communities.

“This is the reason why we got interested in the technology in the first place,” Guerin added, “and our collaboration with Azarus shows we are headed in the right direction to offer new engaging interactions and entertainment experiences.”

Image: Azarus