Rarible’s journey started a year ago with the launch of a simple tool to democratize access to minting and buying NFTs. In 2021, it turned into a robust marketplace that hit 29 thousand unique buyers and sellers with over $29 million in trading volume. You can follow Rarible’s journey in the recently published 2020 Year in Review.
The openness and inclusivity of Rarible has really resonated with its community and has proven to be a powerful approach. Now, well-known influencers and aspiring creators alike are using Rarible to try NFT markets, including Mark Cuban, Sean Ono-Lennon, and others.
In the summer, Rarible took the first step towards decentralization and launched the $RARI governance token. Since then, the team has been dedicated towards gradual decentralization of the marketplace.
Today, we take another big step in that direction by welcoming the backing of leading Web 3.0 investors who share our vision of digital ownership. We are excited to work with top investors in the space, who will support Rarible on the way to building the first decentralized NFT marketplace.
The round
We are excited to announce that Rarible has raised a $1.75 million seed round. The round is led by 1kx, who is joined by ParaFi Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Rarible’s pre-seed investor CoinFund, MetaCartel Ventures, and Bollinger Investment Group. The group of angels in the round include Loi Luu, Michael Dunworth, Donna Redel (NY Angels) among them. The round marks one of the first major seed rounds in the NFT space backed by top crypto investors.
Rarible is community-based, and the vision expands to our investors. They bring in invaluable knowledge and support, essential on our journey to a fully decentralized NFT marketplace and a protocol.
Jake Brukhman, CEO & Founder of CoinFund noted:
“What we’re seeing in 2021 is early product market fit with artists, creators, and collectors of digital nonfungible assets. We are extremely excited to support Rarible from the pre-seed round to the present round in building a platform for this new asset class for the modern digital world.”
Anjan Vinod, Investment Analyst at ParaFi Capital
“We believe all types of assets across gaming, art, music, and finance will become tokenized. Rarible has emerged as a leading marketplace and community for NFTs with impressive growth in users and liquidity over the past year. The Rarible team has built one of the best user experiences for creating, trading, and interacting with NFTs. We are excited to support Rarible on their journey to bring NFTs to the masses.”
Branson Bollinger, Managing Director at Bollinger Investment group:
“Art is both a personal and a social experience, and we are really excited about a platform that is designed to value creator, collector, and community ownership from day one.”
Donna Redel, New York Angels:
“NFTs are only just beginning to realize their potential in the art market. I look forward to them entering museum collections and traditional photographers like Cindy Sherman and Stephen Shore exploring the medium.”
Investors in Rarible’s seed round
1kx
1kx is an early stage token fund built upon the thesis of decentralized token economies transforming the world. Run by two former technology founders Lasse Clausen and Christopher Heymann, its mission is to be the most founder friendly and helpful source of early stage capital for tokenized projects.
ParaFi Capital
A true pioneer, ParaFi Capital is an fundamental, research-driven alternative investment firm focused on blockchain and decentralized finance markets. ParaFi serves as both an investor and power user of DeFi. They are early-stage investors in many of the leading DeFi projects and also one of the largest liquidity providers across the ecosystem.
ParaFi’s approach perfectly reflects Rarible’s vision of merging NFTs and DeFi, which the team is determined to facilitate further.
CoinFund
CoinFund pre-seeded Rarible in September and published an NFT-based thesis around the project, viewing NFTs as liquid intellectual property for digital content. Broadly, CoinFund is actively shaping the global transition to digital assets and decentralization technology. Operating under a slogan of “disruptive technology requires disruptive investors”, CoinFund has been called one of the most active funds in the blockchain space in 2020, and a great supporter of Rarible from early stages.
Funding goals
As Rarible is creating an organization of an entirely new type, having forward-thinking industry professionals participating in the DAO is crucial for success. This group of investors is the right company to build a DAO with.
We believe this funding and partnership will be beneficial to the project and will accelerate the development on all fronts.
