Valhalla and her team may have bitten off more than they can chew. The ambitious goals of the NFT project include creating a platform that can rival Twitch. However, despite the enormity of this task, the project has already shown promise.
It had a successful mintage that quickly sold out, and the project has had over 23,000ETH in total sales volume. If that doesn’t sound promising enough, the project was created by Stacked Studios, a Los Angeles-based startup with the stated goal of building web3 products to become one of the largest crypto companies in the world. So far, the company has ensured $15 million in funding.
Obviously, this is much more than just a PFP project, but can the team succeed in their grand vision? We delve into the history, team, achievements, and plans of the project to challenge Twitch’s dominance to find out.
What are Valhalla NFTs?
Valhalla is an anime collection that aims to bring together players from all over the world to build a community. In a twitter threadthe founder described the Valhalla NFT project as “a native crypto brand for gamers.”
The collection consists of five main character types, each with their own unique personality.
- Human: 8510 NFT. “The primary type that populates Valhalla. They are relaxing to play, team players, and always willing to fill in.”
- Toxic: 645 NFT. “Toxic players are in charge of keeping you in ELO hell. They’re the ones who installed Jett. They are the ones who will feed the first blood, endlessly run you halfway, and spam FF15.”
- Mech: 647 NFT. “It points to the bot by default. Trained with advanced neural networks to calculate the most efficient path to domination. They probably drew themselves using Stable Diffusion.
- Eternal God: 99 NFT. “You can profitably trade on a crypto desk while playing League of Legends at a Challenger level.”
- Devil: 99 NFT. “Born in a PC explosion. Only games between 10pm and 5am. Play like they’re on PED, but their performance is 100% organic, grass-fed. Their bluish skin is derived from the minimal light they receive from their computer screen.
The art for the project was created by Hisham Habchia concept artist who has worked with some of the biggest brands in gaming and comics, including Marvel, DC Comics, and Blizzard.
Valhalla caused a sensation in the summer of 2022 with a 3D Billboard in Times Square, which was launched months before the official minting. The project quickly gained attention for its innovative minting process, in which prospective holders could only enter the community by obtaining referral codes from existing members. This approach sparked a wave of interest and resulted in tens of thousands of membership applications.
He presale sold out in 1 minute. And over the next four days, the team had 33 times as many signups and had received more than 16,300 paid deposits.
Who is the Valhalla leadership team?
As mentioned, Valhalla is a product of stacked studieswhich is headed by CEO Alex Lin.
Prior to Valhalla, Lin was a consumer tech entrepreneur who was part of two Y Combinator-backed startups and appeared on Forbes 30 Under 30 List. The fully doxxed team is made up of members with experience in a large number of well-known companies. Most notably, ding zhang is the lead software engineer at Stacked. Before joining the team, he was a founding engineer on Uber’s membership team.
The financing round was led by Pantera Capital, and the company also participated in the mint. However, it is unclear exactly how many NFTs they claimed.
Valhalla’s progress so far
The ultimate goal of Stacked Studios is to create a streaming platform owned and operated by content creators, much like Twitch for Web3.
The idea is to “empower creators to build powerful communities through NFTs” like Valhalla, according to lin. The platform would use governance tokens to make streaming video creators shareholders of the platform. In Lin’s view, users would not need to be crypto experts to use the service.
It is difficult to know how far they are from this vision. But in the meantime, the Valhalla team has done a lot for their starters.
In Q4 2022, Valhalla hosted a successful tournament for Fall Guys, a popular massively multiplayer battle royale game. The event was so Well received that various other web3 projects contributed to hosting another one in the future. Valhalla also offers its holders NFT skins to celebrate special occasions, such as Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year. The team also organized a repeat eventwhere holders could burn a special “reroll” token to gain new traits in their NFTs.
In keeping with its dedication to the gaming community, Valhalla has established partnerships with various esports teams, including 3x League of Legends world champions. T1 and the Sentinels, a team that specializes in Halo and Valorant. Additionally, Stacked Studios released a trailer in November for an unreleased and unspecified game.
Lin and the team at Stacked Studios believe that NFT projects should own their distribution, similar to fashion retailers like Nike. As such, Valhalla launched its own marketplace in February 2023, perfectly timed and in line with what the team promised when they initially announced the marketplace.
They’ve also planned multiple community events, including an invitational Fortnite tournament with over $10,000 in prizes, a community headline event at a Hollywood Hills mansion in March, and a headline event at NFT NYC in April.
That being said, the project was controversial from the start. CEO Alex Lin was speculated to be the same person as Hoshiboy, the founder of the much-maligned NFT Azuki collection, which has a Valhalla-like anime art style. However, many in the Valhalla community came out in defense of the project, saying the allegations were unfounded. The Twitter user who made the claims he quickly discredited his own research noting that the two are instead close business partners.
Since then, the team has been flying high, with a strong community. feeling and tall stake.
What’s in the future for Valhalla and Stacked Studios?
Looking ahead, the success of Valhalla and Stacked Studios will largely depend on their ability to create and establish the streaming platform they envision (and promised).
With no concrete signs of the game they’ve created a trailer for, and no significant public announcements on the streaming platform’s progress, the project has a lot to prove. In short, while their activities and events have generated excitement in their community, it remains to be seen if they can fulfill their grand vision of becoming the Twitch for web3.
Create a platform that can compete with Twitch, which gets more 55 million hours of viewing time every day, it’s a massive company. So even if they deliver the promised product, it’s going to be exceptionally difficult for them to secure those kinds of numbers.
Is the Valhalla Collection a necessary means to achieve Stacked Studios’ vision or a distraction from the ultimate goal? For now, we must wait and see. But either way, they’ve caught the attention of the Web3 gaming community, and they have the funding and community to establish themselves as a major player in the space.
