25/06/2021 NFT marketplace startup Rarible closes $14.2 million Series A

You’ve likely seen the headlines surrounding the pretty major decline in NFT sales from the market’s recent peak, with some reports indicating as much as a 90 percent decline in recent weeks. And while plenty of crypto speculators are on the losing end of that rapid decline, others see a future where digital collectible and digital goods take over the internet.

NFT marketplace Rarible announced Wednesday that they’ve closed a $14.2 million Series A from v Capital, CoinFund and 01 Advisors. The startup allows users to buy and auction off digital art. The firm also has its own Rarible governance token which allows users to make and vote on proposals around the platform’s features and fees.

The startup says it has reached $150 million in sales on the platform since launching 18 months ago.

NFT startups have raised major sums in recent months as investors coalesced around backing early players in the digital collectibles space. OpenSea, one of the most popular NFT hubs, raised a $23 million funding round in early spring from Andreessen Horowitz and Naval Ravikant. In March, invite-only NFT marketplace SuperRare raised a $9 million Series A. Last month, Bitski raised $19 million in bid to become the “Shopify of NFTs.”

Alongside the funding announcement, Rarible shared that they’ve officially partnered with NBA Top Shot maker Dapper Labs to bring their NFT marketplace to Dapper’s Flow blockchain. Dapper Labs has begun building out a wider coalition of NFT platforms on its proprietary blockchain which is more energy efficient and less costly than transactions on the Ethereum network, though it is also much more centralized. Rarible says they will make this transition in the “next couple of months.”

The startup has broad goals for making the NFT space more approachable to everyday web users, saying in a a blog post that they hope to use this funding to explore more user-friendly developments like accepting credit card payments. “We need a world where an indie creator can effortlessly create an NFT and sell it for $5 to his community of supporters, as well as where a pop icon can use NFTs to establish close contact with her multi-million audience in a sustainable way,” the post reads.
Arts

https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/23/nft-marketplace-startup-rarible-closes-14-2-million-series-a/?

Interesting NFTs
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The Switch
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Banksta
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A figure, Alex, stands mostly naked in the midst of a physical and psychological maelstrom. He is clad only in nostalgic 80’s era socks, on a tenuous island between active waters and a variety of shark denizens. Sharks on the right side of the image are all beached, including a shark with a quartz crystal snout, an orange shark wrapped in a life buoy, and a shark further in the distance wearing an 80’s style shirt with the number “88”. On the left side is the largest shark, wearing bright glossy red lipstick and brandishing prominent teeth with braces. She is cordoned off from the figure by a roped float divider, and within her thought bubble is a warning symbol. Behind the figure, hovering in the air, are Grey aliens emerging from the distance, out of a series of elliptical UFO shaped interdimensional membranes. The Greys take on the visual form of spermazoa ostensibly impregnating the interdimensional thresholds. As is typical, these Greys inhabit a zone just behind the unconscious topology of Alex’s dissociative mind. Though Alex’s bottom half is representative, his top half mutates into a psychological cornucopia. In a manner akin to “Auto-Erotic Sphinx”, a predecessor work, the figure has self suctioned—an act of sensual infatuation, enjoyment, and exploration. Upward exists the figure’s primary conscious eye, adorned with a revolutionary beret emblazoned with a Bitcoin badge. The figure’s summit features the nose of a fighter jet facing off against video game Bullet Bills, one of whom is marked by a communist North Korean star. A cropped section of a UFO observes the contest. Alex’s mind branches both left and right. To the left is more singular embodied consciousness, manifesting two eyes and a Ganesh trunk grasping crayons. The right branch dissociates upward diagonally, emerging into an array of eyes, faces, teeth, tail, a unicorn horn, and much more—all of which participate in expressing his unconscious being; a democracy of psychic factions representing thought impressions and associations. All illumination and darkness– fernal, infernal, high consciousness and corporeal underbelly–reside in this realm. In the distance are relatively languid, light clouds, and against the firmament hovers a colossal distant eye peering over the scene and far beyond. This painting possesses underlying genetic traits with previous works such as “Auto-Erotic Sphinx with Toys”, “Dionysus”, and “Fuku-Shiva”. The work serves also as a nod to an earlier period of art inspiration during late teens and early twenties— born out of the nakedness, vulnerability, curiosity, and wonder inherent to coming of age and all subsequent psychedelic revelation.