Japanese Web3 developer HashPort Group raises $8.5M in funding round

Japanese blockchain developer HashPort has raised 1.2 cardinal Japanese yen ($8.5 million) successful a Series C backing circular led by Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners and Japanese billionaire entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa. The caller circular brings HashPort’s full backing to 2 cardinal yen ($14.2 million). 

According to the July 28 announcement, the funds volition let HashPort to consolidate concern and unafraid a compliance absorption strategy and related unit to navigate the blase planetary regulatory situation for its expansion. The HashPort ecosystem includes its namesake blockchain-related consulting and strategy solution successful Japan and HashPalette, a nationalist concatenation specializing successful nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The institution is besides scheduled to motorboat a metaverse crippled dubbed The Land Elf Crossing successful the 4th quarter.

In July 2021, HashPort’s Palette Chain partnered with cryptocurrency speech Coincheck to motorboat Japan’s archetypal first speech offering (IEO), oregon an archetypal coin offering facilitated by an exchange. The IEO raised a full of 22.45 cardinal yen ($160 million) successful Palette (PLT) token commitments. The institution claims that since then, PLT Place, the authoritative NFT marketplace of Palette Chain, has accumulated implicit 370,000 users.

HashPort Group president Seihaku Yoshida said the institution plans to cooperate with Expo 2025, an upcoming expo to beryllium held successful Osaka, Japan, to physique integer wallets and integer passports linked to soulbound tokens (SBTs). “Expo 2025 is expected to pull much than 28 cardinal visitors. If much than 10 cardinal radical acquisition Web3 for the archetypal time, we judge this volition beryllium a historical event," Yoshida wrote.

In December 2022, Cointelegraph reported that Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, present an capitalist successful the company, partnered with HashPort to contented SBTs. The companies program to probe SBTs to research applicable uses for communities, jobs, knowledge-sharing services and decentralized autonomous organizations.

SBTs were antecedently projected by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin arsenic impervious of the characteristics oregon estimation of a person, entity oregon "soul." The sanction derives from soulbound items linked to a quality successful the MMORPG World of Warcraft.

HashPort's projected integration with Expo 2025. Source: HashPort

Magazine: Crypto City: Guide to Tokyo