Skullzee at Avalanche Build Games: A Grant to Keep Exploring
A few months ago, we submitted Skullzee to Avalanche Build Games, the Avalanche Foundation's flagship online builder competition.
Today, we are happy to share that Skullzee made it through the program, and that we are receiving a grant from Avalanche to keep building, exploring and iterating on what Skullzee can become.
What Build Games Actually Is
Despite the name, Build Games is not just about video games.
It is Avalanche's flagship six-week builder competition, intentionally open-ended: no predefined tracks, no forced themes. DeFi, infrastructure, tooling, consumer products, experiments, on-chain primitives, and yes, gaming — anything that pushes the ecosystem forward is welcome.
"What matters more than the category is the intent. We are looking for projects that solve real problems, explore new onchain behaviors, or push the Avalanche ecosystem forward in some way."
— Avalanche Foundation
The framing is sharper than your average hackathon: "We're looking for builders, not bounty hunters." The whole program is built around shipping something real, with mentorship from the Ava Labs team and partners like Chainlink, Kite AI, Tether and Agora, and ongoing grants and ecosystem support for the projects that go the distance.
For us, this was the right context to push Skullzee forward.
The Journey
Build Games is structured around four stages over six weeks. Each one forced us to sharpen a different angle of the project:
- Idea — what kind of experience are we actually building, and for whom.
- MVP — proving that the core loop works on Avalanche, fast, cheap and frictionless.
- GTM Vision — how Skullzee fits into the broader gaming and Web3 landscape.
- Finals — putting it all together: product, narrative, traction, ambition.
Going through these stages was not just an exercise to win a grant. It pushed us to be honest about what Skullzee is, what it isn't yet, and where we want to take it.
The most useful part of the program was not the framework. It was the obligation to defend our intuitions out loud, in front of people who have seen a lot of products come and go.
What Skullzee Is
Skullzee is a casual gaming platform built on Avalanche, where the Web3 layer runs invisibly.
You sign in with Google. You play. You win. You cash out.
No wallet to install. No seed phrase to lose. No crypto jargon.
Under the hood, every action is on-chain: provably fair games, instant settlements, transparent rewards. Above the surface, it just feels like the arcade you grew up with — but reinvented for an internet that finally has the rails to support it.
We started with three games: Scratchez, Shifumiz, and Wheelz. Three different formats, one shared philosophy: keep it fast, keep it fair, keep it fun.
Why This Grant Matters
We did not apply to Build Games to chase a specific feature or a marketing budget. We applied because we wanted room to keep exploring.
Skullzee is still young. There are decisions ahead of us that we want to take with the right amount of breathing space:
- How casual can we go without losing the on-chain edge?
- How invisible can Web3 become before it disappears entirely from the player's experience?
- How do we onboard the next thousand players without asking them to learn a new vocabulary?
- How do we make the platform a place where new game formats can be added quickly and tested in the open?
The Avalanche grant gives us exactly that: time, support and the freedom to experiment, without rushing to a single answer.
What's Next
The plan for the coming weeks and months is straightforward:
- Keep shipping. New game formats, sharper onboarding, smoother payments.
- Open the doors. A fiat on-ramp so anyone can play with their credit card, no crypto required.
- Grow with the community. MadSkullz holders, Discord members, Avalanche players — Skullzee is built for them first.
- Stay close to Avalanche. The ecosystem is moving fast, on gaming and well beyond, and we want to be one of the projects shaping that conversation.
We will keep building in the open, sharing what works, what doesn't, and what we learn along the way. That is how Skullzee got here, and that is how it will keep moving forward.
A huge thank you to the Avalanche Foundation and the Build Games team for the trust, the feedback and the support.
Now, back to building.
Stay tuned, Skullz. 💀
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