Exclusive: Megapot raises $5 million to create a crypto-powered global lottery
Most lotteries are contained within a country or a state, and much of the time, people have to go to a physical location to buy a ticket. Patrick Lung founded Megapot in order to create a global lottery where people around the world can buy tickets from their phone.
On Thursday, the startup announced that it raised $5 million in a funding round led by Dragonfly, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Bankless Ventures, and the founders behind FanDuel, Betfair, and MyPrize. Lung declined to share the startup’s valuation, in an interview with Fortune.
Lung said he founded Megapot also because he viewed it as a way to bring the masses to blockchain. “I wanted to go build something that can actually bring a billion people on chain, so they can get all the benefits of crypto,” he said.
People can buy Megapot tickets from more than 150 countries, and it costs one dollar to buy a ticket for the daily lottery. Megapot has had 19 jackpot winners, with one person taking home about $200,000, according to Lung. The platform is not available in about 30 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and France.
Crypto is the engine behind his startup, Lung said. Its permissionless protocols run on Base, a network built on Ethereum, meaning that anyone can access it, interact with it, and developers can build on top of it. Megapot also uses stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency often pegged to the U.S. dollar, to pay out users around the world.
Lung founded Megapot in January 2024 after working for about eight years at tech and crypto companies like Microsoft, Lyft, and Uniswap. His company currently has seven employees.
Megapot launched the latest version of its lottery on Tuesday, and it earns revenue by charging fees on tickets sold through its site. With the new capital from the raise, the startup plans to expand to more countries. Lung said that traditional lotteries are his company’s main competition, and that Megapot can offer larger jackpots and better odds than this incumbent system.
Lung cited his mom as the inspiration behind Megapot, “I want to build a product that’s actually built for my mom. [She] has actually bought a lottery ticket for two decades now every weekend,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to build …something that I can share with any person and they instantly understand why it should exist.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com