Cell Evolution raises 5 million RMB at more than $4.5 million USD valuation Nebulas Follow Jun 23, 2018 · 4 min read

Blockchain gaming app Cell Evolution has raised $750,000 at a $4.5 million valuation. Cell Evolution is the first decentralized strategy and sandbox game application built on the blockchain. It was also the first Monthly Champion, and second Weekly Champion, of the Nebulas Incentive Program. The game’s success demonstrates the potential of gaming apps in the blockchain sector, and the importance of blockchain decentralized app (dapp) platforms to foster a supporting environment for quality developers.

The blockchain gaming space has received a significant show of support. Cell Evolution, a blockchain-based game and the first Monthly Champion of the Nebulas Incentive Program, has raised a 5 million RMB round led by the Nebulas Foundation. Joining the investment were the gaming platform Cocos Blockchain Expedition and Byte Capital, with DappReview serving as a financial advisor during the funding round.

The work of developers, especially game developers, on the Nebulas blockchain has not gone unnoticed. Cell Evolution’s funding round values it 30 million RMB. This reflects the quality of this game, but also the potential of the blockchain space, and in particular blockchain gaming. Moreover, it demonstrates the importance of developer-friendly blockchain ecosystems and their role in incubating quality blockchain dapps like Cell Evolution.

The mind behind Cell Evolution, a young man named Ling, is in his own words an “iron-headed developer,” alluding to a Chinese proverb about one’s fearlessness, stubbornness, and ingenuity the overcome obstacles. It only took Ling 10 days to complete the development of Cell Evolution, a sandbox strategy game based on biological science, on the Nebulas blockchain.

Since first deploying his game on Nebulas, Ling has continued to refine Cell Evolution. The Nebulas Foundation, meanwhile, has continued support Ling’s efforts even after awarding him with 1.1 million RMB because of his performance in the Nebulas Incentive Program.

Ling is young, but has rich game development experience. In elementary and middle school, he wrote RPG games in Lava, a programming language, on Wenquxing e-dictionary software. In university, he continued to pursue his passion and created a game, along with four teammates, that made it into Apple’s Top 100 in the App Store.

More recently, Ling has moved into blockchain amp development. His efforts here began with Cryptopokemon, which he developed on the Ethereum blockchain, but this wasn’t an ideal developer environment for him. Smart contract development costs were too high, and there was a lack of developer support in Solidity and Web3. These problems were especially acute for developers in China.

Ling’s blockchain game development ambitions were jumpstarted after he discovered the Nebulas blockchain. Strong draws were the Nebulas Incentive Program, which rewards developers who built quality dapps on the blockchain, as well as the blockchain’s for smart contracts and dapps written in Javascript, which has fostered a budding blockchain developer community around the world’s most popular programming language.

Unlike traditional online and mobile games, Ling believe blockchain games need to be built around decentralized community, rather than a single centralized gameplay experience. In Cell Evolution, each player is a biological cell, which must balance adaptability, survivability and fertility to grow and survive. The cell’s growth and data is dependent on the surrounding environment, including the evolution of other cells in the game, and is uploaded to the Nebulas blockchain accordingly. The destiny of the entire cell world is determined by the data of all players. If the balance of the cell population is disturbed, the entire ecosystem will be affected and fail to evolve.

Cell Evolution quickly caught the attention of the game and blockchain industries. DappReview commented that the game had “separated itself from the old routines of pet-collectible games by typical in blockchain.” Instead, Cell Evolution is a sandbox-strategy game based on solving puzzles, which allows any player to thrive according to the intelligence, creativity and originality of their ideas.

Blockchain’s potential as the future of gaming becomes increasingly more clear. Encryption and decentralization on blockchain not only makes games more secure, but more importantly opens new possibilities around enabling players to re-use, trade and develop gaming assets and features in ways previously not possible.

Gaming, after financial solutions, is widely seen as the most likely area for blockchain’s killer app. the early signs here are promising. Nebulas is already home to a number of promising blockchain games, including Dinosaur Paradise, the Genesis of Dinosaur Planet, and Hidden World OL. Among these, Hidden World OL has received strong attention from other public blockchains. NEO, QTUM, and EOS, who have expressed their interest in bringing the game’s developers to their platforms, after it won the Weekly Champion award in the fourth week of the Nebulas Incentive Program.