Dapper Labs

Startup behind a couple of blockchain games, most notably Flow and Cryptokitties.

Basics

• Have developed a smart contract based wallet specifically to interact with blockchain games. The wallet is built to be "gas-free" and with features like account recoverability and fiat on-ramps. The trade-off is it requires email address and phone number for verification purposes. 

Compliance

• From CoinDesk (8-10-2022):

"Dapper Labs has cut off payment services for non-fungible token owners with links to Russia, citing European Union sanctions in a Thursday blog post. Impacted users can still look at their NFTs, but they cannot move funds, gift tokens, sell NFTs or buy new ones, Dapper said in the post, citing its payment processor."

Cheese Wizards

• Created Cheese Wizzards, but had a bug (found by Sam Sun) in the first day of mainnet 17-10-2019; 

"Within 24 hours of letting our player community know about Cheeze Wizards hitting Ethereum mainnet, one of our community members alerted our security auditors to a bug in the smart contract. The Cheeze Wizards smart contacts were carefully designed so that we have no ability to withdraw the prize pool (or otherwise alter any of the Tournament state) once they are published. As a result, the only way we can fix the bug is by deploying a new contract. The good news is that the bug isn’t a complete deal-breaker. We can still let the vulnerable tournament run, it’ll just be one where fighting dirty is allowed. We call it Cheeze Wizards: Unpasteurized."

Cryptokitties

• Is using Infura, according to their website (13-4-2020).
• "Cryptokitties is a blockchain-based virtual game (runs on Ethereum) that allows players to adopt, raise, and trade virtual cats. The game was made by Vancouver based blockchain company Axiom Zen. However, what is truly important to remember is that this is the first known application of DAPP for leisure and recreation.
• Sales of Cryptokitties have been through the roof. People have spent more than twelve million dollars buying these cryptokitties."
• At the launch it became such a hype that the Ethereum blockchain got congested, which led to a scaling question around the chain.
• Will move towards the Flow blockchain.

Flow

• Building (12-9-2019) a blockchain called Flow which is aimed at a specific games use-case. "In a technical primer shared with CoinDesk, Dapper Labs says that Flow is especially designed for “composability” where one developer can use code from one application in a wholly other one. It writes: “Flow empowers developers to safely and easily build on top of each others’ code, creating entirely new products and services at an accelerating pace. This feature of blockchain, known as composability, has the potential to unlock a new approach to software development.”" 

FUSD

• From CoinDesk (10-6-2021):

Dapper Labs has announced a new dollar-backed stablecoin made in partnership with Prime Trust, the financial infrastructure provider. Called FUSD, it will work much like familiar stablecoins Circle’s USDC and Gemini’s GUSD in that it will simply be one-for-one backed by U.S dollars deposited at Prime Trust. Notably, Gharegozlou said FUSD also represents the first ERC-20-like token on Flow, enabled by the Flow Client Library (FCL), a new tool that will enable faster development on the network.

Audits

• Bug bounty program can be found [insert here]. None according to Blockchain Security DB (29-6-2020), which does show 1 audit(5-2019).

Usage

• From CoinDesk (14-2-2021):

"The firm has generated almost $100 million in NFT sales, the report said."

Team, Funding, partnerships, etc.

Team

• Nearly 100 employees (5-3-2020).
• Roham Gharegozlou; CEO
• Dieter Shirley; co-founder & CTO
• Kim Cope; founding member
• David Pakma; board of directors (8-2022)
• Reduced its team size by 22% during the 2022 bear market. The CEO also said (10-2022) that the company grew too fast—from 100 to over 600 employees in less than two years—which prevented Dapper Labs "from being as aligned, nimble and community-driven as we need to be." Another 20% got cut (24-2-2023). And again cut its team by 51 people (7-2023).

Funding

• Dapper Labs grew out of a $12 million venture round in 2018 that allowed it to spin out from its parent, Axiom Zen. Later that year it took in an additional $15 million in VC cash, working with many of the same funds.
• According to a story in Forbes Thursday (12-9-2019), Dapper Labs has garnered $11 million in funding  to create a new blockchain called Flow, including investment from Warner. The round is led by Andreessen Horowitz, with other major venture firms like Union Square Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Venrock and Accomplice also participating.
• Dapper Labs raised $18M in Token Sale for NFT-Centric Flow Blockchain (12-10-2020).
• From CoinDesk (14-2-2021):

"Is raising funds that should net the firm more than $250 million at a valuation of about $2 billion, according to The Block, which cited sources familiar with the deal. The funding round is being led by Coatue Management, which is led by billionaire investor Philippe Laffont, according to the report. Laffont has previously invested in Airtable, Instacart, Spotify, Bitmain and other well-known companies."

• From Decrypt (30-3-2021):

"Raised $305 million in financing from the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Michael Jordan, and more. The company’s post-money valuation is $2.6 billion, according to reports. Other Dapper Labs investors include the NBA players Kevin Durant, Spencer Dinwiddie, Andre Iguodala, Kyle Lowry, Andre Drummond, Klay Thompson, and Nikola Vucevic, along with venture capital operations linked to Will Smith, Ashton Kutcher, 2 Chainz, and Barstool Sports backer The Chernin Group."

• Had funding from Animoca (according to Coindesk, 5-12-2022)

Partners

• Is named as part of the MetaCartel ecosystem (as of 1-2020 on the website).
• Has partnerships (5-3-2020) with sports leagues like the UFC and the NBA. Added NFL to the list (29-9-2021).
• Works together (14-4-2020) with Libra: "Libra will incorporate Cadence into their own language, Move Virtual Machine (MoveVM), to benefit from its “developer-friendly design” and to make both blockchains interoperable."