NPC Labs has closed an $18 million funding round led by Pantera Capital, bringing the company's total capital raised to $21 million. The money will go toward building tools for web3 game discovery and helping developers deploy across multiple blockchain networks. NPC Labs CEO Daryl Xu explained the problem they're trying to solve:
"In today's hyper-competitive gaming world, developers are having a difficult time bringing their games to market. After spending years creating a game, developers are beholden to publishers to deem their games worthy of support, marketing, and distribution. And when they do, developers give up 70% of the proceeds with the risk of the publisher pulling the game if it's not generating sufficient revenue."
B3 Cover Banner on X (Twitter)
What the funding is for
The capital will fund NPC Labs' work on B3, a gaming-focused blockchain ecosystem built on Coinbase's Layer 2 network, Base. Other investors in the round include Makers Fund, Hashed, Collab+Currency, Sfermion, Mirana Ventures, Bitscale Capital, and Mantle EcoFund.
NPC Labs was started by three former members of Base's business and ecosystem development team. The company wants to expand gaming on the Base network and push toward Base's stated goal of onboarding a billion users into blockchain. The pitch is more economic freedom for developers and players compared to traditional publishing deals.
NPC Labs Secures $18M Bring Total Funding to $21M
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The publisher problem
Xu's argument is that traditional game publishing leaves developers and players vulnerable. Publishers take the majority of revenue and can pull support if a game underperforms. Players who spend time earning in-game items lose everything if the studio shuts down the servers. NPC Labs positions blockchain as a way to shift that power dynamic:
"On the flip side, players who grind for consumables, cosmetics and badges are at risk of losing it all should publishing studios say they're done. Our mission here is simple. We want to help build fun games for the mom in Nebraska while making it dead simple for developers to benefit from being onchain. In other words, we're placing control back in the hands of game developers and gamers."
NPC Labs Mission
How B3 is supposed to work
COO Viktoriya Hying described B3 as a horizontally scaled gaming ecosystem designed to simplify onboarding for developers and players. The system is built to remove friction: no network switching, no manual bridging between chains, and no juggling multiple wallets.
The B3 ecosystem integrates with over 350 wallet providers and includes data dashboards and other backend tools. The goal is to make blockchain infrastructure invisible to the end user while giving developers flexibility in how they build.
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"We've worked closely with gaming developers and studios to understand where their pain points are. Because of our chain abstraction tech, a user never has to switch networks or bridge to a chain they want to interact with. The setup is unique in that way. And that's for developers, we really want to meet them where they're at. For devs, we want to make sure that they have the flexibility and ability to use any tools they want on B3."
What happens next
The funding will go toward hiring engineers and expanding the platform. NPC Labs says the runway should carry them through market volatility, letting them focus on product development rather than fundraising.
Global Reach
Hying framed the company's approach as collaborative rather than competitive. NPC Labs plans to index and support games from other chains, not just Base. The company is also targeting Southeast Asia for new game development and player growth.
NPC Labs is betting that simplifying the technical side of web3 will make blockchain gaming viable for mainstream audiences. Whether that bet pays off depends on whether developers and players actually want what they're building.
