Spaceport, a Web3 licensing protocol that allows monetization of intellectual property, has announced $3.6 million in pre-seed funding led by Arca, Decasonic and CRIT Ventures, the venture capital arm of publicly traded game developer Com2uS.  Other participants included Cozomo De Medici, Diaspora Ventures, Infinity Ventures Crypto, FBG Capital, Nextview Ventures, Republic Asia and Valhalla Ventures. 

Founded by serial tech entrepreneurs Le Zhang and Lida Tang, Spaceport was built to help creators, brands and agencies monetize their IP with greater velocity and to provide exposure to the metaverse vertical. The team combines traditional licensing know-how with seasoned Web3 expertise to grow the existing $300 billion licensing market into a multi-trillion-dollar market. 

"We built Spaceport to give creators and brands the ability to monetize their IP faster and more easily than ever before," says Le Zhang, co-founder and chief executive officer, Spaceport. "We're thrilled to have the support of such an incredible lineup of investors and partners and look forward to working together to expand the licensing market and open the door to a new programmatic approach to monetizing IP.” 

Spaceport says that licensing has traditionally been a pen-and-paper industry where deals can take months to transact, with smaller creators locked out of the market due to the overhead involved. Spaceport’s protocol and first application, Spaceport Core, aims to solve these inefficiencies by providing a streamlined, one-stop-shop approach to monetizing IP for creators, brands and agencies. 

“Spaceport unblocks a key challenge for creators to adopt Web3 by aligning value creation with their IP,” says Paul Hsu, founder and chief executive officer, Decasonic, a Web3 native venture fund focused on mainstream adoption of blockchain. “Their licensing infrastructure is accessible, easy to use and drives accretive revenues. I see large potential today for smart contracts to improve the licensing process and contracts.” 

“Com2uS is fully committed to supporting the future of Web3 and its evolution into the mainstream,” says Kyu Lee, chief executive officer, Com2uS USA and partner, CRIT Ventures. “The licensing infrastructure that Spaceport is building will be fundamental to bringing the world’s favorite brands and games onto the blockchain.”  

Com2uS is the owner and creator of Summoners War, a multi-billion-dollar gaming franchise, as well as the producers of titles including “MLB 9 Innings,” “Ace Fishing: Wild Catch” and “NBA Now.” 

Spaceport has already granted private access to their products through partnerships with media, gaming and consumer goods companies. The team plans to use the funds raised to hire talent, supercharge partnerships with IP holders and build to a public launch of their products.