A New Rule for Data Value Distribution: How CARV Is Unlocking Millions of Users?
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A New Rule for Data Value Distribution: How CARV Is Unlocking Millions of Users?
Step into CARV and explore the operational logic and driving factors behind its impressive achievements.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: TechFlow
In this somewhat unique bull market cycle, what kind of market are users facing?
Clearly: too much infrastructure, too few applications.
Infrastructure is like building a shopping mall. No matter how complete the hardware, if tenant recruitment (applications) fails to capture user interest, the place will remain deserted.
The summer's surge in TON ecosystem mini-games seems to be a user backlash against "grand narratives": No matter how cycles evolve, better participation and more tangible rewards remain users’ core demands.
Yet in today’s age of fragmented attention, being seen by more people is itself a rare capability. The simplicity of TON mini-games doesn’t mean their operational logic is simple—with TON-based casual game BANANA surpassing 10 million total users and DAU (daily active users) exceeding 110,000, we’ve noticed a key contributor behind its success:CARV.
According to reports, BANANA successfully attracted a large number of seed users through precise ad placements and KOL promotions on the CARV platform, then achieved organic growth via referral mechanisms and UGC/share campaigns. Over 90% of its current users come from organic channels, with over 1.3 million accounts linked to CARV ID.
This conversion and growth model is undeniably attractive, compelling more people to learn about CARV:
As a modular identity data layer dedicated to gaming and AI services, CARV empowers users by returning data sovereignty, protecting data privacy, enabling data tokenization and value release—boosting user engagement. Simultaneously, it acts as a data bridge, efficiently matching users with games and AI products, delivering data-driven rewards to users while promoting innovation and development in gaming and AI.
In fact, by distributing real cash rewards directly to users, CARV has sparked broad participation through revolutionizing data value distribution, with success stories like BANANA continuing to emerge: currently, CARV has over 900 ecosystem partnerships, and more than one million users have earned substantial rewards by sharing data, participating in social activities, game livestreams, AMAs, beta testing, etc., while partner projects receive high-quality data and sustainable traffic growth.
How exactly is this achieved? Is this model sustainable? With the project’s TGE approaching, is now a good time to participate in CARV? And how can one get involved?
This article aims to dive into CARV and explore the operational logic and driving forces behind its impressive achievements.
Impressive Pedigree: $50 Million in Funding, 900+ Ecosystem Partnerships, Nearly 10 Million Users
Let’s first examine CARV’s fundamentals.
First, funding performance. Both in amount and investor lineup, CARV’s fundraising stands out.
According to disclosed information,CARV has completed multiple funding rounds,raising over $50 million cumulatively, an amount considered substantial across any Web3 sector.
Beyond the amount, CARV’s investor roster carries even greater weight: supported not only by top crypto VCs such as Tribe Capital, IOSG, ConsenSys (MetaMask), and HashKey Capital, but also by Web2 giants like Alibaba. Notably, several major gaming companies have also invested, including doublejump.tokyo (developer of Japan’s leading chain Oasys), Animoca Brands, MarbleX (Netmarble), IntellaX, and The Sandbox—further underscoring CARV’s recognition within the gaming industry.
Worth noting, CARV also secured lead investment from Vertex Ventures, the venture arm of Temasek. As a Singaporean investment company fully owned by the Ministry of Finance, Temasek’s backing signals a degree of governmental interest in the project.
Overall, CARV’s narrative and future outlook have gained institutional validation, and its robust financial and resource backing provides a solid foundation for sustained growth.
Beyond institutions, another critical metric lies in ecosystem adoption. Here too, CARV demonstrates remarkable penetration in Web3 gaming and AI sectors.
Official statistics show that CARV currently partners with over 900 gaming and AI projects, surpassing many popular new public chains in quantity (SolanaProject data shows Solana has 405 projects) and matching top-tier Web2/Web3 enterprises in quality.
In gaming, CARV has deep collaborations with hundreds of global top game studios, including MarbleX (Netmarble’s blockchain subsidiary), IntellaX (Korean Web3 mobile developer), and blockchain games Illuvium, Apeiron, Splinterlands, Genopets, Delysium, Drawshop Kingdom, Big Time, Ultiverse, among others.
In AI, beyond its own generative AI assistant Cara, CARV’s AI ecosystem features notable names: Google AI, and native crypto projects such as Aethir, Inferium AI, UneMeta, and Coinbase’s crypto AI SDK. As a data identity middleware, CARV will co-develop a new era of data value with its AI partners.
At a time when Web3 struggles to attract new users, gaming and AI—being inherently user-friendly—are naturally appealing. Combined with its vast ecosystem, CARV rivals the scale of traditional Web2 internet platforms in competitiveness.
On one hand, CARV boasts massive user scale:
Official data indicates CARV serves 10 million registered players. Its opBNB-based multi-chain identity solution, CARV ID, has been minted over 3.1 million times. The CARV protocol has 3.3 million total users, while its flagship product CARV Play has 2.5 million users and 1.3 million app downloads.
On the other hand, CARV’s ecosystem users exhibit exceptional activity:
CARV has processed 240 million on-chain transactions across opBNB, Ronin, Linea, and over 40 other chains—solidifying CARV Play’s position as the largest Web3 gaming distribution and social platform to date.
From the beginning of the year, CARV generated $6 million in revenue from CARV ID minting, .play naming service on opBNB, and earnings from integrated apps like CARV Play, Infinite Play, CARV-powered games, and BANANA mini-games.
In a node public sale earlier this year, CARV sold 38,000 nodes in a very short time, concluding with a total value exceeding $36 million.
Additionally, in a recent airdrop event co-hosted with Binance Web3 Wallet, over 500,000 users joined within 48 hours, ultimately attracting more than 1.4 million participants.
Clearly, CARV has achieved strong results across institutional, application, and user dimensions.
Looking backward from these achievements, let’s now explore the driving forces behind CARV’s success through its market positioning, narrative logic, and implementation strategy.
Harvard-Educated Founders: Focused on Gaming and AI, Revolutionizing Data Value Distribution
Web3 often says: investing is ultimately about people.
This holds true for CARV. Behind its stellar fundraising is a powerful team.
Victor Y., CARV’s co-founder and COO, studied at Harvard Business School, previously worked at McKinsey, and is a serial entrepreneur whose prior company was acquired by a Fortune 500 firm within two years. He brings extensive experience in venture capital, AI, consumer tech, hard tech, and crypto.
CARV’s CTO has deep crypto expertise—he built LINO, a blockchain livestreaming product acquired by TRON in 2017, contributed to Cosmos development, then joined Coinbase working on private key systems and deeply involved in L2 Base’s R&D.
CARV’s CGO leads growth and operations, bringing rich experience and connections from top gaming firms like Tencent Games, Garena Games, and Electronic Arts. The games he managed—including AAA titles and mini-games—surpassed one billion downloads.
The genesis of CARV stems from the data explosion era, where data ownership and value are missing.
According to IDC forecasts, global data volume will reach 175 ZB by 2025. As the internet permeates more aspects of life, human behavior is recorded as data, with nearly 90% of data generated by individuals.
In this data flood, users create data—and should rightfully own and benefit from it. Yet, as the internet embeds deeper into daily life, centralized corporations hoard vast user data and profit immensely, while actual data creators suffer privacy breaches and gain nothing from their own data.
In 2021, Victor was studying at Harvard Business School when he identified this pain point and began developing a solution: return data sovereignty to users and empower them to say “no” to surveillance and exploitation—enabling privacy-preserving data sharing and capturing value from data circulation.
This vision quickly resonated with early team members including the CTO and CGO, giving rise to CARV’s initial form.
During their exploration of data value, CARV further recognized the immense demand from gaming and AI.
On one hand, data is the lifeline for rapid advancement in gaming and AI. In gaming, player behavior analytics significantly improve game quality and user experience. In AI, data is fundamental for training and optimizing models.
On the other hand, gaming and AI’s high data demand amplifies data’s value. As both fields mature, their data needs grow continuously, making data an increasingly valuable asset under this data-driven model.
Recognizing the symbiotic relationship between data, gaming, and AI, CARV’s mission to restore data sovereignty and revolutionize data value distribution became clear:
CARV, as an innovative data layer solution, aims to build an efficient matchmaking platform between gaming/AI applications and users:
For users: CARV grants full control over personal data, allowing them to decide how their data is used and shared under privacy protection, and earn economic returns from data sharing and trading. User data transforms from passive resources into actively managed assets that yield tangible rewards.
For gaming and AI applications: CARV provides access to high-quality data. Developers gain insights from user-authorized real data, helping them better understand user needs, achieve precise market targeting, and drive healthy, sustainable application growth.
Thus, a secure, transparent, and efficient data ecosystem begins to unfold.
Now that the vision is set, how does CARV turn ideals into reality?
CARV: A Universal Modular Identity & Data Layer for Gaming and AI
Specifically, CARV is building a universal modular identity and data layer for gaming, AI, and beyond. To enable mass user data self-sovereignty and empower game and AI developers with data intelligence, CARV relies on three main pillars to drive a virtuous cycle of users and data.
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CARV Protocol: Modular identity and data layer
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CARV Applications: Flagship ecosystem products built on CARV Protocol
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CARV Labs: Incentive programs to foster ecosystem prosperity and accelerate the user-data growth loop
As a modular Identity and Data Layer (IDL), CARV Protocol uses a modular design comprising five layers—identity, storage, computation & training, execution, and verification—to handle data validation, identity authentication, storage, processing, model training, and value distribution, providing foundational support for the entire CARV ecosystem.
The identity layer is the starting point of CARV Protocol, responsible for user identity verification and authentication.
By supporting Web2 social logins and automatic AA wallet creation, CARV lowers entry barriers and delivers a seamless onboarding experience.
After joining the CARV ecosystem, users are guided to create a on-chain identity—CARV ID. Notably, CARV ID follows the ERC-7231 standard, proposed by the CARV team and approved by the Ethereum Foundation. Key advantages include verifiability, multi-source aggregation, and composability. It supports over 40 Web3 networks and multiple Web2 platforms, allowing users' ownership, roles, social relationships, and experiences to be authorized, verified, and embedded into digital identities and credentials. This design enables aggregation of Web2 and Web3 multi-chain data, letting users seamlessly switch platforms and enhancing data liquidity and utility.
The storage layer aggregates and stores user data. After identity verification, data is aggregated and remains visible only to the user. CARV supports various storage solutions to ensure cost efficiency, security, and accessibility.
The computation and training layer ensures secure data processing using privacy-enhancing technologies. In CARV, decentralized TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) node clusters process data, publishing results to the blockchain with TEE proofs, timestamps, and random numbers to prevent double-spending attacks.
The verification layer validates outcomes,leveraging over 40,000 on-chain decentralized community nodes, ensuring data operates in a decentralized, user-aligned, and privacy-preserving manner.
The execution layer ensures all data transactions are securely recorded and verifiable on-chain, enabling decentralized and transparent reward sharing among participants.
CARV Protocol aims to facilitate data exchange and value distribution in gaming and AI.Post-TGE, CARV will continue building its Identity and Data Layer (IDL), including a new consensus and storage layer, using on-chain decentralized nodes as decentralized sequencers and storage validators to enable cross-chain verification and secure data processing.
Built on CARV Protocol, CARV will launch multiple flagship products, demonstrating practical scenarios for efficient data-demand matching, showing how data empowers product development, generates real monetary rewards, and distributes them transparently to users.
CARV Play, the first flagship app, exemplifies this: as a gamer profiling and game distribution platform, CARV Play currently hosts over 900 games and serves 2.5 million players. Every day, vast numbers of users explore diverse game offerings and exclusive events, earning rewards, physical gifts, or ecosystem benefits while enjoying gameplay. Game developers, in turn, gain insights into player behavior, conduct effective showcases, distribute information, and build communities.
Moreover, the recent viral success of the TON ecosystem mini-game BANANA owes much to CARV: leveraging the strengths of CARV Play, CARV Protocol, and CARV’s mobile app (with over 3 million registered users), BANANA rapidly reached its target audience and achieved viral expansion through referral and UGC/share campaigns—reaching 10 million monthly active users within four weeks.
Beyond gaming, CARV has launched AI-focused products: Cara, a generative AI assistant built on CARV Protocol, allows user data to train AI models under full privacy protection. Users earn rewards for sharing data and participating in AI training, while receiving personalized AI services tailored to their preferences.
Furthermore, developer ecosystem competition hinges on effective incentives—structured programs around developers are essential to spark innovation and drive ecosystem growth.
To this end,CARV Labs recently launched a $50 million ecosystem accelerator program, offering resources and funding to high-potential projects to further boost user and data growth. The initiative is backed by top blockchain VCs including HashKey Capital and ConsenSys.
CARV Labs’ latest investment is in leading game studio Telgather. Telgather aims to reinvent gaming through innovations like Pay&Play-to-Earn and Social-to-Earn, aligning perfectly with CARV’s vision of a decentralized, player-centric gaming future. By integrating CARV ID and a personalized ad SDK, Telgather will deliver true ownership of gaming achievements, seamless cross-game experiences, and opportunities to monetize gameplay data.
This collaboration is another prime example of CARV’s modular identity-data layer empowering game development, and together they aim to pioneer a new era of Telegram gaming and build a vibrant ecosystem.
Additionally, CARV Labs will guide developers toward business model innovation, most notably the upcoming TG ad network: designed to connect advertisers and publishers, this product will use CARV Protocol to offer cash incentives to users who share on- and off-chain data (under full privacy protection), enabling highly accurate user acquisition and targeting for advertisers.
In the foreseeable future, CARV will attract numerous developers exploring diverse possibilities based on the CARV Protocol, injecting continuous momentum into ecosystem growth.
Multiple Milestones Achieved, Token TGE Imminent
Of course, beyond reviewing past achievements, the community cares more about future prospects.
What is CARV’s potential for continued growth?
We can glean some insights from its updated roadmap on the official website.
Technically: in Q3 2024, CARV Protocol’s beta version will launch, featuring open SDK/API access, multi-chain interoperability, and ZKP integration. In Q4 2024, the team will focus on building a dedicated modular blockchain supporting storage and execution layers.
On the ecosystem front, beyond actively expanding gaming and AI partnerships,CARV’s next major milestone is its token TGE, scheduled for late 2024.
For any project, token TGE is a pivotal moment determining long-term viability, and community reward distribution is central to this event.
So, with TGE approaching, should one actively participate?
The community’s enthusiastic response already answers that.
Reasons fall into three categories:
First, CARV tokens have genuine utility value.
As the native token of the CARV ecosystem, CARV has a total supply of 1 billion. It serves as the platform’s medium of exchange—key for incentivizing users, paying multi-chain gas fees and purchasing in-game assets, or staking to convert into veCARV for participating in governance and ecosystem activities.
Second, CARV has consistently shown respect and generosity toward its community.
Half of the total token supply is equally allocated to the community and node operators. Additionally, during its initial node sale, CARV introduced a 100% treasury buyback program for six months. Eligible active node operators could apply after six months to receive either 80% ETH or 100% CARV tokens—a clear demonstration of the project’s commitment to community interests.
More importantly, in this transparent airdrop, CARV encourages users to bind accounts for data aggregation and guarantees rewards go to real users. Binding more accounts yields higher scores and potentially larger airdrop rewards.
Additionally, CARV implements multiple fairness measures: first,CARV introduced a “Sybil self-reporting” mechanism, encouraging multi-account users to voluntarily disclose their behavior and receive 15% of their originally allocated tokens; those failing to report lose all allocation rights. Second,CARV partnered with Gitcoin to analyze on-chain Sybil behavior, ensuring tokens go to those genuinely contributing to network development and sustainability.
With strong expected returns and low entry barriers, actively accumulating airdrop points has become a common choice among community members.
So, how can users best participate?
Currently on the CARV airdrop page, users can switch between four chains (Ronin, opBNB, zkSync Era, Linea) and earn SOUL rewards by checking in, minting CARV ID, linking accounts, inviting friends, and completing game tasks. SOUL can later be exchanged for CARV tokens—so the more SOUL accumulated now, the higher the future payout.
But with snapshots approaching, time to complete tasks and accumulate SOUL is limited. Community focus for maximizing CARV token gains has shifted toward nodes.
Anyone can become an independent node operator by participating in node sales.Verifier Nodes are crucial to the CARV ecosystem, validating TEE proofs to prevent manipulation and ensure fair data value distribution, creating a secure decentralized data environment for high-quality games and apps.
Meanwhile, 25% of the total CARV token supply will go to node rewards—with 50% released in Year 1 (12.5% of total supply). Tokens unlock in 150 days, compared to 6 months for investors and 9 months for the team. Node rewards unlocking earlier than investors and the team reflects CARV’s sincere commitment to sharing gains with users via its node model.
Beyond TGE, CARV offers diverse reward programs to encourage user engagement. Infinite Play is a prime example: users earn Stake-to-Earn rewards through staking—with longer durations yielding higher returns; Vote-to-Earn rewards via governance voting; and Play-to-Earn rewards by completing game tasks and gaining experience—truly experiencing data sovereignty and decentralized community governance while enjoying games.
Notably, CARV previously partnered with top ecosystem projects like Revolving Games, InfiniGods & Valhalla Foundation, XPLA, OVERTAKE, and Aethir for Ecodrop Part 1, distributing $2 million in rewards—widely praised by the community.
Currently, according to the official blog,CARV Ecodrop Part 2 is coming soon. This round teams up with six premium game projects—Space Mavericks, Lazy Games, Super Champs, Goat Gaming, Terminal, and BeraSig. Participants engaging in game interactions and completing tasks can share $500,000 in additional rewards. Beyond TGE, joining CARV Ecodrop Part 2 is another excellent way to explore the ecosystem and earn more.
In summary, in today’s global digital wave, data is an eternal business. Amid growing tensions over Web2 privacy breaches and monopoly by tech giants, Web3 solutions that return data ownership to users, protect privacy, and promote fairer data value distribution are bound to stand out.
From a project standpoint, CARV has a solid foundation: a strong team and investor lineup, a strategic focus on gaming and AI that aligns well with its modular identity-data layer, and a compelling narrative driven by tangible rewards through revolutionary data value redistribution—drawing significant user attention and participation.
Currently, CARV has already built substantial community momentum, laying a strong foundation for future growth. Especially propelled by BANANA’s success, CARV Protocol is gaining wider attention. With TGE approaching and key milestones rolling out, CARV may soon enter a flywheel effect, accelerating rapid development across products, ecosystem, and users.
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