Animoca Brands’ subsidiary TinyTap raises US$8.5 million to disrupt education with Web3

25 April 2023 – TinyTap, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands and the leading edtech platform for user-generated educational games, today announced that it has raised US$8.5 million from investors including Sequoia China, Liberty City Ventures, Kingsway Capital, Shima Capital, Polygon, GameFi Ventures, and others. The funding will be used to support TinyTap’s business expansion and accelerate development in the edtech space.

The investment will enable TinyTap to continue to expand its successful Web2 platform, which already serves over 9.2 million registered members, into an alternative Web3 education system that better values teachers by improving the earning opportunities available to them, and enables parents and communities to support and promote their preferred educational materials. 

TinyTap launched its Web3 strategy in 2022 with two successful auctions of Publisher NFTs, which generated 243 ETH (approximately US$352,000 at times of auction). Publisher NFTs are a new concept introduced by TinyTap to better empower, reward, and incentivize educational content creators and publishers.  

Each Publisher NFT represents co-publishing rights to one TinyTap Course, which is a curated bundle of educational games made on the TinyTap platform by one teacher in one specific subject. When these NFTs are sold, the proceeds are shared with the Course creators, and the NFT buyers assume the role of co-publishers. In return for promoting and marketing the associated Courses, the buyers share in the benefits generated from co-publishing efforts.

Since the TinyTap Publisher NFTs were auctioned in Q4 2022, the average income to NFT buyers resulting from their co-publishing efforts amounted to approximately 8.2% (or 19.7% annualized) of the purchase price of the Publisher NFTs*.

The Publisher NFT model is therefore able to simultaneously benefit the creators of educational content, the buyers of the Publisher NFTs, and TinyTap. This frees the creators to focus their efforts on generation of quality content, while TinyTap and the buyers of Publisher NFTs distribute and promote the content.

Misa Matsuzaki owns two Publisher NFTs and earned about $7,823 from November 2022 to March 2024 by co-publishing the associated courses. She commented: “TinyTap helps teachers to actualize great ideas into educational content that can be accessed regardless of location – for example, one of the courses I bought was adapted for Japan. I did the first translation and voice over myself with the help of the TinyTap  team. I look forward to seeing how Japan will welcome these exciting new possibilities in education! I would like to see more use cases like TinyTap Publisher NFTs, which are so much more interesting than just having NFTs sitting in our wallet!“

Yogev Shelly, CEO of TinyTap, commented: “Our Publisher NFTs genesis auctions demonstrated that the Web3 community is well suited and willing to support educators and educational content via this new powerful and equitable incentive system. By pairing educational content creators with interested promoters, we are able to benefit all parties fairly and take a significant step in our goal to put the power of learning back in the hands of educators, students, and the community.” 

Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, commented: “Teachers and educators are among the most important content creators and contributors in  society, and yet their wages typically do not reflect their critical importance. This is why we’re incredibly excited at the Web3 opportunities that TinyTap is exploring in the field of education. Having already succeeded in building a Web2 education platform, TinyTap is now supercharging its efforts using NFTs, making it possible for educators to better generate equity from their work and link up with co-publishers who can handle the promotion of their courses, all while offering students enhanced learning materials.”

Follow TinyTap on Twitter to keep updated on future developments or visit the Web3 landing page to learn more.

* Based on the courses’ earnings from the time the associated NFTs were purchased; does not take into consideration seasonal variations in the courses’ performance. Calculation represents an average of 5 months income of the co-publishers for 12 courses. For ease of comparison, earnings for courses that were purchased in December 2022 have been normalized to 5 months. 

About TinyTap

TinyTap, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, was founded in 2012 and is the world’s largest educational games library with more than 250,000 activities made by educators and publishers including Sesame Street and Oxford University Press. Games are created using TinyTap’s code-free authoring platform and can be accessed by parents as part of TinyTap’s subscription or sold directly to families as bundles. A portion of subscription revenue is shared with content creators based on the user engagement generated by their content. TinyTap is among the top 10 grossing kids apps worldwide, delivering educational content to families in the US, Canada, Europe, and the Arab world with a focus on young learners (Pre-K to Grade 6), serving 9.2 million registered family members with content created by over 100,000 creators. Learn more at https://www.tinytap.com. 

About Animoca Brands

Animoca Brands, a Deloitte Tech Fast winner, a Fortune Crypto 40 company, and one of the Financial Times’ High Growth Companies Asia-Pacific 2023, is a leader in digital entertainment, blockchain, and gamification that is working to advance digital property rights and contribute to the establishment of the open metaverse. The company develops and publishes a broad portfolio of products including original games such as The Sandbox, Phantom Galaxies, Life Beyond, Crazy Kings, and Crazy Defense Heroes, and products utilizing popular intellectual properties including Disney, WWE, Snoop Dogg, The Walking Dead, Power Rangers, MotoGP™, and Formula E. It has multiple subsidiaries, including The Sandbox, Blowfish Studios, Quidd, GAMEE, nWay, Pixowl, Forj, Lympo, Animoca Brands Japan, Grease Monkey Games, Eden Games, Life Beyond Studios, Notre Game, TinyTap, Be Media, PIXELYNX, and WePlay Media. Animoca Brands has a growing portfolio of more than 380 Web3 investments, including Colossal, Axie Infinity, OpenSea, Dapper Labs (NBA Top Shot), Yield Guild Games, Harmony, Alien Worlds, Star Atlas, and others. For more information visit www.animocabrands.com or follow on Twitter or Facebook.

Contact: press@animocabrands.com