Faraway

Faraway is a web3 game developer and publisher founded in 2021 and headquartered in Miami, building an interoperable gaming ecosystem that integrates open player economies into games without requiring studios to manage blockchain infrastructure from scratch. The company was founded by veterans of mobile gaming companies Glu Mobile and Scopely -- CEO Alex Paley, co-founder Dennis Zdonov, and CTO Duc Nguyen -- who together shipped titles including Disney's Sorcerer's Arena, WWE Champions, and The Walking Dead: Road to Survival.

Origins and Solana Roots

Faraway's first major product was Mini Royale: Nations, a browser-based first-person shooter that became one of the first live multiplayer games to launch on the Solana blockchain. The game requires no client download or installation, making it playable across hardware configurations directly in a web browser. Mini Royale: Nations established Faraway's core design thesis: that blockchain economies should be embedded in genuinely fun, accessible games rather than treated as a standalone draw.

The Solana foundation was strategic. Faraway chose the network for its low transaction costs and throughput, which allowed in-game economies -- item trading, NFT ownership, secondary markets -- to function without the friction that made similar systems on slower networks impractical for real gameplay.

Games Portfolio

Faraway has since expanded into a portfolio of nine titles spanning multiple genres and platforms. In addition to Mini Royale: Nations, the lineup includes:

• Serum City: A Mutant-themed city builder with player-owned assets.
• Dookey Dash: Unclogged: Released in partnership with Yuga Labs in September 2024, an arcade-style action game built around the Bored Ape Yacht Club universe.
• Rebel Skies: A mobile action RTS with deck-building elements, published by Faraway in partnership with Yuga Labs, now available on iOS and Android.
• Villains: Robot Battle Royale: A mobile battle royale game with web3 asset integration.
• Shatterline: A PC arena first-person shooter incorporating HV-MTL NFT content from Yuga Labs.
• HV-MTL and Legends of the Mara: NFT-based game experiences acquired from Yuga Labs in April 2024.

Yuga Labs Acquisition

In April 2024, Faraway acquired the HV-MTL and Legends of the Mara intellectual properties from Yuga Labs, including their associated NFT collections. The move allowed Yuga to refocus on its Otherside metaverse project while Faraway integrated those IP and communities into its existing publishing infrastructure. Spencer Tucker, who had been Yuga's Chief Gaming Officer, joined Faraway as Chief Product Officer as part of the transition.

The acquisition deepened Faraway's relationship with a major NFT community and gave it two established player bases to bring into its interoperable ecosystem -- holders of HV-MTL and Legends of the Mara NFTs gained paths to use those assets across Faraway's game portfolio.

Platform Infrastructure

Beyond individual games, Faraway operates a developer-facing platform designed to let studios add open economies without building blockchain tooling themselves. The platform provides:

Faraway ID: A federated identity layer with verified email support, giving players a unified account across all Faraway-published titles without requiring wallet seed phrases as a first step.

Embedded Multi-Chain Wallets: Self-custodial wallets built into the Faraway experience, supporting both EVM-compatible chains (Ethereum, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Polygon, BASE, Apecoin) and Solana. Players can hold and trade assets across chains from a single wallet interface.

Creator Suite: Tools that let players and independent creators build user-generated content, list it on the Faraway Shop, and monetize it through primary sales and secondary royalties.

Faraway Shop and Secondary Marketplace: An in-ecosystem commerce layer where studios can run game web shops and players can buy, sell, and trade assets. The Shop supports both crypto and fiat payment methods, reducing the onboarding barrier for non-crypto-native players.

Developer Portal: An organization management dashboard for studios integrating with the Faraway platform, handling authentication, commerce configuration, and asset management.

FChain: A Dedicated Gaming Layer 1

In 2025, Faraway announced FChain, a purpose-built Layer 1 blockchain built on Avalanche infrastructure using the Avalanche9000 upgrade. FChain is governed by the F Foundation, an independent body responsible for the development, stewardship, and decentralization of the protocols powering the chain.

Unlike L2 or L3 architectures that inherit constraints from their base layer, FChain operates as an independent chain with full control over staking economics, gas token design, validator set composition, and transaction fee structures. This design gives the Faraway ecosystem flexibility to optimize for gaming workloads -- low latency, high throughput, and predictable costs -- without being subject to congestion or fee spikes on shared networks.

FChain is set to serve as the settlement layer for Faraway's game portfolio, including Shatterline, Villains: Robot Battle Royale, Rebel Skies, Serum City, HV-MTL, and Legends of the Mara. Mini Royale: Nations' Solana-based assets remain part of the ecosystem alongside FChain integration, reflecting the multi-chain architecture Faraway has maintained from the start.

Funding and Investors

Faraway has raised approximately 30 million dollars across two rounds. An 8 million dollar seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners was followed in November 2021 by a 21 million dollar Series A, also led by Lightspeed, with participation from a16z, Sequoia Capital, Pantera Capital, Jump Capital, and Solana Ventures. The Series A was announced alongside the launch of Mini Royale: Nations and Faraway's initial Solana integration.

Ecosystem Position

Faraway sits at an intersection in the Solana ecosystem as both a game studio and a publishing platform for other developers. Its early commitment to Solana for Mini Royale: Nations placed it among the first studios to ship a functioning multiplayer blockchain game on the network. As the platform has grown to support multiple chains and its own dedicated L1, the Solana connection has been maintained rather than replaced -- the multi-chain approach treats Solana as one of several supported networks rather than a legacy choice.

The Creator Suite and Shop infrastructure position Faraway closer to a publishing and distribution layer than a single-game studio, with ambitions that have been compared to a decentralized Roblox -- an open platform where independent creators build and monetize content inside established game worlds. The Yuga Labs acquisitions expanded the addressable player community substantially, bringing two high-profile NFT collections with existing holders who had financial stakes in the game outcomes.

Partners across the Faraway ecosystem include Magic Eden, Adidas, and Ready Player Me, extending the interoperability promise across NFT marketplaces, brand activations, and avatar infrastructure.