Former Head of TikTok Gaming Launches New Startup Focused on Blockchain Games

On July 5, Jason Fung, former head of TikTok’s gaming unit, announced that he left TikTok to launch Meta0, a startup focused on blockchain video games.

Fung said he left “his comfortable corporate life” at TikTok to take a “gigantic risk” by launching Meta0. However, as an enterprise tech executive with a background of extensive work for large companies in the gaming industry, he wanted to bring new solutions to video game developers.

According to a PR shared  with Cryptopotato, Jason Fung will have an extensive set of responsibilities, including the expansion of Meta0 as a whole ecosystem of game developers, channel partners, and L1/L2 blockchains running on Meta0 as a Layer-0 protocol —pretty similar to what Polkadot wants to be. He will also direct fund raising campaigns, partnerships, and other strategic decisions.

Meta0: More Interoperability For The Blockchain Gaming Industry

The idea behind Meta0, Fung said, is to provide greater interoperability across the existing blockchain networks, so developers don’t have to be forced to choose only a small group of blockchains to carry out their projects.

“Right now, if you look at any developer when they implement NFTs or blockchain in their games, they have to choose a single blockchain, be it Polygon or Solana or Binance Smart Chain. But imagine a more interoperable option.”

In another interview, Fung said he left TikTok to cover one of the most common problems in the NFT gaming industry: The lack of properly accessible blockchain infrastructure for developers.

“I left TikTok because I saw a clear opportunity to offer a solution to the current segregated nature of infrastructure options available to developers looking to build blockchain games.”

Like many startups in the cryptocurrency world, Meta0 will raise funds by issuing tokens and negotiating with venture capitalists and strategic investors. Binance, Animoca Brands, a16z, Consensus Lab, and Kardia Ventures are some of the names that come to mind when speaking of Web3 developments.

Blockchain Games Still Have Much Growth Potential

Even though interest in blockchain games has dropped quite a bit due to the collapse of the crypto market, the industry still has a very active community eager to find a new project or a rebound in cryptocurrency prices to invest in their favorite video games again.

It should be noted that the broader gaming industry is a behemoth in comparison to the more niche crypto gaming industry; however, NFT and blockchain games exploded in 2021, and this year the crypto gaming industry had already registered over $2.5 billion by Q1, 2022.

Also, play-to-earn games like Axie Infinity, CryptoBlades, Plant vs. Undead, and Mir4 became extremely popular, extremely quick —even turning into the primary source of income for many families in countries like Philipines, Argentina, and Venezuela.

In other words, crypto games not only attracted money from big institutional players but also boosted their adoption by retail users worldwide. Even Metamask, one of the best-known wallets in the ecosystem, had significant peaks in terms of new accounts thanks to the boom in crypto games and decentralized applications.