Dapper Labs (founded in February 2018) is a company with a mission to make the world more open and trustworthy by introducing consumers to the value of blockchain technology through fun and games. Dapper Labs is the team behind CryptoKitties, one of the first and most successful blockchain videogames.

Formed in February 2018, Dapper Labs was spun out of Axiom Zen to bring the benefits of decentralization to the first billion consumers through the power of play, fairness, and true ownership.^[8]

In September 2019, Dapper Labs announced $11 million in funding and the development of Flow, a new blockchain built to enable decentralized applications at scale.

The largest investor in the round was Andreessen Horowitz's crypto fund, with participation from new investors Accomplice, AppWorks, Autonomous Partners, Fenbushi Digital, and Warner Music Group, as well as existing investors Union Square Ventures, Venrock, Digital Currency Group, Animoca Brands, SV Angel, VersionOne, and CoinFund, among others. Angel investors who participated in this round included William Mougayar, James and Glenn Hutchins, Don Mattrick, and Nanon de Gaspe Beaubien-Mattrick.^[7]

In July 2020, Dapper Labs announced a deal with Dr. Seuss Enterprises to launch tokenized collectibles depicting the firm's iconic characters, including The Cat in the Hat, The Lorax, and Thing One and Thing Two.^[13]

CryptoKitties is a game that enables users to collect and breed virtual cats on the blockchain. CryptoKitties was founded in 2017. On March 21, 2018, the company closed its Series A fundraising round, which was led by venture capital firm Union Square Ventures and Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz. The company raised $12 million.^[2]

NBA Top Shot features a social experience built around limited-edition digital collectibles, as well as a variety of games and experiences anchored around the collectibles designed to create a fun, authentic, and accessible fan engagement on blockchain technology.^[4]

In May 2020, Dapper Labs launched a beta version of the NBA TopShot app.

The company was building it since it began discussions with the league and National Basketball Players Association back in 2018.^[3]

Cheeze Wizards is a social, crypto-native product where players summon Wizards to compete in a global tournament for the title and prize of Big Cheeze.

Every Wizard is a cryptocollectible, or non-fungible token (NFT).^[5]

In Cheeze Wizards, players use Ethereum to summon Wizards to compete in a series of duels that make up the Cheeze Wizard Tournament. Every Wizard summoned increases the size of the Big Cheeze, the title and grand prize awarded to the Wizard who wins the tournament. ^[5]

The Cheeze Wizard tournament is a global, multi-week event.

During the tournament, Wizards duel one another on a daily basis, gaining power proportional to the size of their victory.

During the final phases of the tournament, blue mold begins to appear, devouring any Wizards below a particular power.

If a Wizard loses all their power or falls below the blue mold threshold, they're out of the tournament.

^[5]

At the end of the tournament, the last and most powerful Wizard becomes the Big Cheeze, gaining the honor and ether that comes with the title.^[5]

Flow is a fast, decentralized, and developer-friendly blockchain created by Dapper Labs. With Flow, Dapper Labs hopes to build blockchain-based games, verify authentic digital collectibles, and run fan tokens for music artists and sports personalities.^[10]

Dapper also devised a new proprietary smart contract-oriented programming language designed for smart contracts for Flow called Cadence - which is currently being explored by Libra as part of a tech sharing deal between the two entities.^[11]

In April 2020, Dapper Labs revealed a partnership with Libra to share technology between the two projects. Dapper's Flow blockchain adopted Libra's Move as its virtual machine (VM), while Libra could utilize Dapper's smart contract programming language Cadence in a technology-sharing partnership.^[11]

In May 2020, Dapper Labs launched NBA Top Shot, a blockchain-based collectibles game, in closed beta.^[14]

In July 2020, Dapper Labs announced a deal with Dr. Seuss Enterprises to launch tokenized collectibles depicting the firm's iconic characters, including The Cat in the Hat, The Lorax, and Thing One and Thing Two. Dapper will sell digital packs of the cryptocollectibles, allowing fans to assemble and curate NFT collections. Fans who assemble specific 'sets' of tokens will unlock exclusive content, and be able to access unique experiences beyond those offered by the purchasable packs.^[13]

Around early August 2020, Dapper Labs announced that it had acquired $12 million throughout their latest investment round for their own blockchain, Flow.^[18] The investors this round included Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Cultural Leadership Fund, who previously funded earlier projects from the company.

One of the firms new investors for this round was Coinbase Ventures.^[19]

In September 2020, Dapper Labs partnered with Binance. The partnership will allow developers building on Flow to permissionlessly integrate BUSD into their decentralized applications (DApps).^[21]

On September 22, 2020, blockchain gaming firm Animoca Brands announced that its MotoGP and Star Girl games will launch on the Flow blockchain early next year. Animoca is an investor in Dapper Labs. Dapper Labs' chief business officer, Mik Naayem, welcomed Animoca’s titles onto Flow, stating:

In February 2021, Dapper Labs announced that they were seeking to raise $250 million at a $2 billion valuation after they saw almost $100 million in NFT sales.

The round was led by Coatue Management, an asset managwement firm with $25 billion in assets under management, which is led by billionaire investor Philippe Laffont. Laffont previously invested in Airtable, Instacart, Spotify, Bitmain Technologies Limited, and other well-known technology companies.^[22][23]

In 2020, Dapper Labs had acquired $13.4 million in a tranched bridge financing round from Coinbase Ventures, Distributed Global, Valor Capital Group, A.Capital, BlockTower Capital, Blockchange Ventures, EONXI Ventures, Reed, Greenfield One, North Island Ventures, Republic Labs, L1 Digital AG, Pirata Capital, and Samsung NEXT. Other round participants in August 2020 included Andreessen Horowitz’s Cultural Leadership Fund, Union Square Ventures, Venrock, Accomplice, Animoca Brands, AppWorks, NBA athletes Andre Iguodala from Miami Heat, Spencer Dinwiddie, Garrett Temple from the Brooklyn Nets, JaVale McGee from the Los Angeles Lakers, and Aaron Gordon from Orlando Magic.^[24]