Magic Square, which is a community-driven multi-chain crypto app store, is aiming to raise $4.4 million in its next funding round with a valuation of $120 million, the startup’s CEO Andrey Nayman revealed to TechCrunch.
It has onboarded Crypto.com Capital, the venture arm of a popular crypto exchange, as a strategic investor. The partnership will allow Magic Square to leverage the projects listed on Crypto.com for onboarding developers.
"Adding Crypto.com Capital to our list of top-tier investors is a testament to the progress we are making bringing web3 apps to the masses," Nayman said.
The crypto startup has already raised $3 million earlier this year in a seed funding round co-led by Binance Labs and Republic Capital. Other backers of the company are KuCoin Labs, GSR, IQ Protocol, Gravity Ventures, Alpha Grep, DAOMaker and angel investors.
The startup was valued at $30 million at the seed round. However, the valuation jumped to $75 million following consecutive funding of $1 million.
A Decentralized App Store
Magic Square is developing an app store by integrating community-vetted crypto apps, NFTs and DeFi solutions into Magic Store apps and GameFi. It will provide a Magic Framework for the development of crypto apps and widgets, and a community will curate the apps to be listed on Magic Store.
“There are currently around 10,000 dApps out there, but if I talk about production-ready applications, it’s like 2,150 apps,” Nayman told the startup-specific publication.
“If you are a crypto-savvy user, you know where to look. You know to check the white paper , the audit reports, the LinkedIn of the founders — the nuances that need to be checked in order to decide whether this is a project that you want to be involved or not with. But, if you are not, you have no idea where to start.”
The company was founded last year and is now preparing for a beta launch. The startup already gained huge traction with around 250,000 signups for the upcoming beta launch.
