Interview with Antoine Delannoy, CEO and cofounder at Bloometa

The Pyratz Team

October 3, 2022

Can you introduce yourself and tell us more about you and your background?

I am Antoine Delannoy, CEO and co-founder at Bloometa, the first one-stop shop for Web3 gaming. In terms of background, I have a French-German double degree, a master's degree at ESCP in Big data and business analytics and 4 years of experience between banking and consulting with a specialization in CIO Advisory for banks and insurance companies.

Bloometa is the second project I've created and the second aggregator. I had already tried to launch a subscription aggregator (Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Mobile, Internet, Energy…), the idea was to automate the management with smart contracts, but with my team, we put this project aside to concentrate fully on Bloometa.

Can you explain what Bloometa is?

So I have two definitions to give you, the first one is if I had to explain it to our grandparents or our parents, I would say that we are launching the supermarket of metaverses, that is to say of virtual worlds. And the second one is a bit more technical, or at least for people who know a bit more about it, I would say that we are launching a multi-chain NFT aggregator for Web 3 gaming and Metaverses.

What more can you tell us about Bloometa? What are your values? And then, what are your main features?

I think we have to start from the problem and the observations we made on the market to answer this question. We realized that the NFT trading market is completely fragmented. What I mean by that is that you can find NFTs on a multitude of marketplaces, including generic marketplaces such as OpenSea and all the marketplaces of the Games. And that poses two problems. The first problem is that users are forced to use a multitude of trading platforms, if they want to find a NFT with the best offer and with the attributes that suit them the most. Secondly, game marketplaces suffer from a liquidity problem because the market is fragmented and they can't capture the whole supply and demand.

Bloometa's vision is to create an ecosystem, a hub for Web 3 Gamers, while providing the right tools for GameFi projects to flourish. Web3 Gamers will have a dedicated platform to trade NFTs, discover new games and interact with other gamers. On top of that, Bloometa is completely free for its users.

How does it work? You have different features in your application?

Yes, so if we dive a little deeper into the product, concretely, what happens is that we will aggregate all the NFTs that are listed on multiple Marketplaces. So, a user who comes to bloometa will see all the games that exist on the web 3, he will be able to filter them either by blockchain or by category and when he goes to the page of a game, he will find all the NFTs related to this game but also data, so insights, charts. The idea is to offer tools that can be used to cross-reference data to help them make a purchase decision.

The vision, I would say in the longer term, is also to add this whole community aspect. In the sense that we also want the community to be able to give its opinion, share recommendations, and in a way create the Web 3 feedback that would be integrated into our platform.

How and when did you get the idea to create Bloometa, you were part of the gaming community?

Yes, I was. I was very interested in gaming, so I played on laptops and later on consoles. I have a little brother who is 10 years younger than me, and I realized that at the time I had spent a lot of time on a game and he, 10 years later, was playing the exact same game. The problem was that I couldn't really give him assets or assets that I had earned. I was either forced to give him my entire account or nothing at all, so that was the first frustration that was born. Right away, when I saw that there were a lot of games coming out in web 3 with NFTs, where there is this decentralization, where you are no longer dependent on the game and you can do whatever you want with these digital assets, I thought that this represented an opportunity. On top of that, I talked to Bilal *[Bilal el Alamy, Co-founder of PyratzLabs]. He was launching a play and earn game, he also introduced me to Ben Constanty *[Co-Founder & Chairman of The Blox]* who also had an idea to launch a gaming marketplace. At that time, the 3 of us got together, created a team and launched the project in late December 2021.

Since you launched the project, have you had any more difficult moments, or have you had any particular challenge to overcome?

Yes, since we started, there have been some small changes. We first wanted to launch a marketplace focused on Web 3 Gaming. Then, we realized that there were many Marketplace that were launching multi sector or in Web 3 Gaming. We wondered what would be the value proposition that we could make to our users, to be more competitive. From this reflection, we realized that the best solution would be to create a marketplace aggregator, a hub that really selects all NFTs related to a game.

If you had a victory to remember, or a moment that marked you

One victory, I would say it's the team. Today, we are 5 full time and the founding team is really great. I think we're not many people compared to all the work we have to do, but we still manage to make good progress on the product.

Where are you today? Are you going to release a first version of Bloometa soon?

That's it. The ambition is to be a multichain platform (on several blockchains). We will start with Tezos, Ethereum and Polygon. Then, we will ask our community to vote on which blockchain we will use, it could be for example Binance Smart Chain, Solana etc. We're going to release the beta on Tezos in early October, it will be a closed beta to start with. In fact, we already have more than 100 people registered. The public beta will be launched in early November. And finally, for the end of 2022, we will be launched on the 3 blockchains, namely Tezos, Ethereum and Polygon. **

How to get into the closed beta?

To access the closed beta, you have to follow us on Twitter, and join our discord where we make announcements. Finally, the access to join the beta, will be through a reaction to a message on our discord but I do not say more! Join us and you'll see!

What are your short, medium and long term goals ?

Our model is to aggregate all NFTs related to games. When we start, it will be with Tezos games, so our short term goal is to create as many partnerships as possible with the games, to aggregate their own marketplace. The goal is to have as many games onboard as possible. Another indicator that we're going to follow, starting in December, will obviously be the volume, the number of users, i.e. the number of unique active wallets.

Why did you choose to be helped by PyratzLabs?

For several reasons, I would say first of all, I know Bilal well so I could trust him but maybe that's not the main reason. In fact, I had already set up a first company where my mindset was "I can adapt and do everything by myself", which in itself is possible, but it made me lose a lot of time. In the case of Bloometa, I quickly realized that for this second experience, I needed to surround myself with advisors and an incubator.

The incubator brings me a lot of things on the technical aspect because PyratzLabs is able to bring us skills of smart contract developers and they also accompany us on all the administrative, legal and financial aspects. This saves us a lot of time because they already have the necessary experience. Finally, I would say that thanks to PyratzLabs we are really at the heart of the ecosystem. They work and collaborate with many other web 3 and gaming companies. This allows for collaboration and partnership opportunities.

Today, you are looking to raise funds?

Yes, absolutely, we are about to launch a fundraising phase with the launch of our beta, the idea is to go to investors with a product that runs. It will be for the beginning of October and we will try to raise 750 000 euros in equity. These funds will be used to expand the technical team. The idea is to invest as much as possible in tech to improve our product, to launch on new blockchains. Then, we will look to expand the marketing team.

Do you already have partners?

So yes, we already have partners, about ten in all signed or with an agreement. I can't list them all for confidentiality reasons, but there are some that I can already announce. There is Tezotopia and Gift.games for example, which launches several games on tezos. There is also blog born or Human divergence.

Could you give us your vision of gaming, Web 3 and how you see the combination of these 2 domains?

Web 2 gaming is a field that is still developing enormously. I don't have the exact figures anymore but I think that over the next 8 years the market size is supposed to double, so even if it's a mature market, there is still a strong growth. Web 3, for me, is the whole new wave of technology that is brought by blockchain, decentralization and also NFTs. So, NFTs and gaming, for me it's the perfect combo. Because in fact, people invest a lot of time, a lot of energy, sometimes also money in video games and the fact of having these in game assets in the form of NFTs, it gives them a real value, a real control on these in game assets. The web 3, have the perfect technological tools for these games.

Do you think that gaming can help web 3 to become more democratic ?

Yes, absolutely. Gamers, often, have the tech fiber, they are more easily interested, I would say in innovation such as blockchain, NFTs etc.. They have a certain facility, they are perhaps the first to be able to be educated more easily and to put into practice these new tools. There is also a whole part of the gamer community that is a bit resistant to the monetization, digitalization, tokenization of all assets, so it goes both ways. But clearly gaming is the future of decentralized applications for me.

Thank you very much for these answers, do you want to say a final word?

You have to come, observe, test all the web 3 games. I know we are still at the very beginning. After that, there are some cool games that are already being launched. And the cool thing about Web 3 is that you can get involved in a game even before it's out. For example, by owning an NFT, by participating in discussions to co-construct games. There is already a lot going on, even if the market is still very young.

‍