NFT Marketplace Rarible Raises $14 Million In Series A Funding Round

NFT marketplace Rarible announces it has raised $14.2 million in a Series A funding round.

The company, founded just last year, plans to use the funding for advancing their goal of making NFTs more mainstream.

Behind the Series A funding round were names like Coinfund, Venrock, and 01 Advisors.

Rarible is an NFT marketplace that uses a decentralized governance system where users holding the $RARI token can vote on things like platform upgrades.

Despite the company being relatively young, the platform has already processed $150 million in NFT sales. It has thus established itself as one of the most popular marketplaces.

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Alexei Falin, the CEO and co-founder of Rarible, says:

Just as we have always been at the forefront of the NFT movement, Rarible is determined to pioneer the next wave.

With this company milestone, we are thankful for the support of Venrock, 01 Advisors, and Coinfund and look forward to going beyond the current enclosed crypto environment and taking NFTs into mainstream consciousness.

Rarible To Launch On Flow Blockchain

Along with the $14.2 million Series A funding, Rarible also announced that the company is planning to launch their marketplace on the Flow blockchain.

The Flow blockchain is a project started by Dapper Labs. They are the creators of Cryptokitties, one of the first NFT games to exist.

Some well-known organizations have worked with Dapper Labs to mint NFTs for their brands. The best example would be their partnership with NBA on NBA Top Shots. Others include UFC, Warner Music Group and Ubisoft.

Currently, Rarible is based on the Ethereum blockchain. The reasoning behind the transition to Flow is that it’s more energy efficient, and transactions are also cheaper.

The NFT Market Crash And Bitcoin Price

The NFT market crashed 90% in the past month, and there are ongoing speculations as to whether it will make a comeback or not.

While the crash was pretty major, many still believe NFTs have a great future, and are keen on making investments.

Fox, for instance, recently announced they are investing $100 million in their NFT business.

Also, the CEO of one of the backers of the Rarible Series A funding, Coinfund, expects:

Major growth in the NFT space as more individual creators, musicians, brands, digital artists and influencers realize the value of digital collectibles and peer-to-peer transactions on platforms such as Rarible become more popular.

The NFT market crash happened in tandem with the cryptocurrency crash where Bitcoin lost 50% of its value.

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At the time of writing, Bitcoin is going for just under $34k, and it’s down 12% in the past 7 days. Here is a chart showing the trend in its price:

BTC seems to be recovering a bit after the most recent crash | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView

Featured image from Rarible.medium.com