Lootex was a gamer-centric, cross-chain NFT marketplace — "Loot + Exchange" — co-founded by David YC Tseng in 2018 and operated until March 2026. The mission was simple: give digital asset ownership back to the players.
The platform specialized in blockchain gaming assets with interfaces designed for characters, equipment, cards, and in-game items — not generic art-focused NFT browsing. Over two product cycles it processed $10M+ in total trading volume. David led the company as COO & acting CTO — 37 people at peak, including a 14-person product and tech team — and closed partnerships with the National Palace Museum, The Sandbox, Memeland, and AORUS. A late-stage spin-out, TiltPlay, shipped 4 Web3 games on Sony's Soneium L2 via LINE and Telegram.
Key features
- Cross-chain support across Ethereum, Polygon, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Mantle, Base, and Soneium
- 3D asset previews, NFT Launchpad, and Lootpedia analytics explorer
- Smart Accounts powered by ERC-4337 account abstraction
- Custom branded storefronts for game developers
- Infrastructure on Google Kubernetes Engine with zero downtime during extreme traffic spikes — featured as a Google Cloud case study for auto-scaling
Backed by Spartan Capital, Infinity Ventures Crypto, LD Capital, Akatsuki, Polygon Studio, HTC, Huobi Ventures, and angel investors including Kevin Lin (Twitch co-founder), Holly Liu (Kabam co-founder), and Patrick Lee (Rotten Tomatoes co-founder).
The NFT market shifted dramatically. Lootex shut down in March 2026 after 8 years of operation. All on-chain smart contracts continue to function — user assets were never custodied.