The Arena – a next generation SocialFi app redefining how creators connect, engage, and monetize their content – is pleased to announce the close of a $2M pre-seed round. The round consisted predominantly of strategic angel investors and partners who the team believes will allow them to scale the app to the next level. 

Investors include Blizzard (the Avalanche Ecosystem Fund), members of the Ava Labs and Avalanche leadership team, Balaji Srinivasan, Abstract Ventures, D1 Ventures, Saron Funds, Alpha Crypto Capital and other angels with backgrounds from Galaxy Digital, Fenbushi, Republic, Espresso Systems, Efficient Frontier and Dao5. A social hub built on Avalanche, The Arena also welcomed participation from select partners across the ecosystem, including the teams of Trader Joe and Benqi.

Formerly known as Stars Arena, the app was acquired in November of 2023 after serious setbacks left the platform on the verge of collapse. In one of the more memorable comeback stories in crypto history, under new leadership and an entirely new team, led by CEO Jason Desimone and COO Phillip Liu Jr, The Arena rebranded and built back its momentum to rise to one of the top SocialFi apps in the entire industry.

To date, The Arena has over 200,000+ registered users and is growing rapidly. With its positioning as a platform that enables creators to monetize more effectively compared to existing Web2 social media apps, The Arena has stayed true to its mission with over $6M+ in AVAX (calculated using current AVAX prices on October 15th, 2024) paid out to content creators on the platform in under a year of being live. This number is only expected to rise with Arena’s upcoming feature releases, which include Arena Stages – a social audio tool with built-in monetization capabilities for hosts; Arena Groups – allowing communities to crowdfund and launch their own memecoins; a native mini app store; and upgrades to creator “tickets” to become social tokens. 

With a strong, organic community that’s growing by the day, The Arena has established itself as a top SocialFi app within the Avalanche ecosystem and beyond. Through a multichain approach to target other blockchain ecosystems, the team has managed to onboard key communities from Solana and Ethereum to match the Avalanche-native culture of the app. However, The Arena team has their eyes set on more than just the crypto market. 

With goals to be the first social crypto app to truly break out, The Arena is targeting more traditional content creators and a larger mainstream audience that may not have any prior crypto experience with its next phase of growth. This growth phase is marked by strategic onboarding campaigns alongside a product that removes the friction inherent in most crypto apps today. With a seamless onboarding process of just two clicks, users can log into The Arena without needing to hold any crypto and have a digital wallet automatically created for them. To then provide a frictionless payment experience, The Arena is leveraging their partnership with Stripe to enable crypto purchases with credit cards. Lastly, to reach as large a market of creators as possible, The Arena is planning to expand its login options beyond X to include Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit.

The Arena has also announced its plans to roll out a mobile app to address a significantly larger retail market than what is currently possible with the mobile web app.