Blockchain gaming startup EON Foundation has raised $5 million in seed funding from Cherubic Ventures, Wei Guo and Feng Li to build out its decentralized gaming platform.

With offices in Palo Alto, California, and Singapore, the EON Foundation is developing the EON Protocol, a platform designed to assist developers reach more players at less cost.

Described as a publicly accessible system of smart contracts that can be used to exchange traffic among developers and gamers, the platform is designed to allow developers to launch their games on different blockchains such as Ethereum and EOS.

“Our goal is to be the number one blockchain game publisher in the world,” said Aron Lyu, EON Foundation’s chief executive officer and co-founder, said in a statement. “Common publishing considerations like maximizing profit or finding an audience are totally different on blockchain … We want to help other developers thrive in this emerging market.”

The platform is set to launch publicly in 2019, but EON has published a proof of concept game called “Crypto Alpaca,” a decentralized pet-raising simulator, along with the EON token that can be used in the game itself and future games utilizing the EON Protocol.

“While existing crypto games are largely driven by community-assigned value based on personal aesthetic choices, Crypto Alpaca has a fiber-collection mechanic where you earn rewards based on your participation in the game,” the company said. “Unlike other pet simulation games, you can foster your ‘pet’ alpaca to increase its real-world value.”

EON isn’t the first company attempting to build a blockchain-based gaming platform. Typhon Ltd. announced the sale of Chymera tokens to develop a similar blockchain-focused gaming platform in March and CryptoKitties raised $12 million the same month.

There is also a push on to design standards for blockchain-based games. Both the Gaming Standards Association and Gaming Standards Association of Europe announcing in February the creation of a new technical committee dedicated to creating standards for the use of blockchain distributed ledgers in the gaming industry.

Image: EON Foundation