36Kr learned that the game asset trading platform "ZBT Community" completed nearly 10 million yuan in Series A financing, and the investor was Daosheng Capital. Previously, the company had received Pre-A round financing with the participation of investor Xu Hanjie in February 2019, and in 2018 received angel round and seed round financing with the participation of Qingrui Venture Capital and Basic Particles. This round of financing will be mainly used for the research and development of trading platform standards and global market development.
The founding team of ZBT community comes from Hangzhou Xingchao Network Co., Ltd. Hangzhou Xingchao Network launched a game equipment trading platform in October 2016 to provide online game equipment trading services to domestic game players. 36Kr has reported on this. As of now, the number of registered users has reached 6 million, the monthly active users are 1 million, and the annual transaction scale of the platform has reached 4 billion yuan.
ZBT Community is a newly established project by the team in early 2019. It is a gaming equipment trading platform that mainly serves overseas gamers. Since its launch, the number of players on the platform has reached 1 million, mainly in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe.
. In fact,. Before the emergence of specialized game equipment trading platforms, players often made transactions privately based on various social tools. Not only did there exist credit risks, but players from different countries and regions also faced payment and settlement problems.
It provides domestic users with globally popular Steam game equipment trading services such as DOTA2, CS:GO, H1Z1, etc. The platform guarantees the transaction, and users can complete transaction settlement through Alipay. In response to the problems of inconsistent currency in overseas trading markets and difficulty in cross-border settlement, the ZBT community uses blockchain technology in transactions. The company has specially developed the digital token ZBT for overseas trading platforms for equipment transactions and corresponding community incentives. Specifically, the buyer purchases by recharging legal currency or ZBT, and the seller obtains the equivalent ZBT withdrawal.
ZBT community
According to statistics, the size of the overseas gaming equipment trading market is about 20 times that of the domestic one. Xie Liyang, co-founder of the company, said that overseas gamers pay attention to equipment trading, and equipment trading itself is the core gameplay of many overseas games. As a platform product that the company will focus on expanding in the future, the ZBT community currently covers game players in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe, and will continue to explore the North American and Western European markets. Technically, the company will continue to extend the application of blockchain to realize point-to-point transactions between buyers and sellers, and realize the value locking of limited edition equipment products by developing the main transaction chain.
In terms of game equipment resources, the company initially used the Steam platform as its main source of equipment. Now it has directly cooperated with domestic and foreign game manufacturers and is the exclusive agent for their equipment trading business.
Regarding the competition barriers in the game equipment trading market, co-founder Xie Liyang said that transactions are realized through the Internet, and the barriers to the trading platform are mainly reflected in the ecological construction. and ZBT community are both first-mover platforms in their respective target markets and have accumulated a considerable number of user resources. In addition, compared with the game equipment platform "NetEase BUFF" affiliated to NetEase Games, its neutral third-party platform identity is more acceptable to major game manufacturers; compared with the old American game peripheral trading platform, the ZBT community is more focused on For equipment transactions, its digital currency system is also positioned as a wider range of global cross-border payment tools.
In addition, the company has begun to build a game community where players can share gameplay, experiences and other related updates. In the future, based on the global game player user base, the company also plans to expand business lines such as domestic and foreign game distribution and e-sports events.
Company business planning
The company's team comes from multiple fields such as gaming, e-commerce and blockchain. Founder Zang Guoping has many years of experience in the e-sports industry. Co-founder Xie Liyang was the co-founder of the Choutu Xiuxiu team under Sinovation Ventures. Other team members have experience in companies such as NetEase Games, Taobao Games e-commerce platforms, and Qulian Technology. work experience.
Co-founder Xie Liyang said that the company's current capital investment direction is mainly technology research and development and marketing. Technically, the team is developing the platform’s own trading standards and hopes to standardize the equipment sales interface. At the same time, companies also need to invest large-scale marketing expenses to develop overseas markets.
Daosheng Capital, an investor in this round, said: Gamers’ consumption of virtual items is increasing, and the circulation and security of virtual items will become increasingly important. Using game props trading as an entry point with the ZBT community is a bonus for entering this market.
The company has started its next round of financing, and the team is actively contacting investment institutions.