Blockchain-based non-fungible token (NFT) protocol Upshot on closed a $22 million Series A2 fundraising round that it will use for additional research and development of its NFT pricing models and to add more employees, according to a company press release on Tuesday (March 22).
Upshot will also use the fresh capital to fund its decentralized finance (DeFi) x NFT offering and to create new developer tools to allow others to build their own DeFi x NFT systems.
Polychain Capital led Upshot’s latest funding round, joining previous investors Framework Ventures, CoinFund, Blockchain Capital, Slow Ventures, Mechanism Capital and Delphi Digital among others.
“This past year has been one of explosive growth for NFTs, but the inefficient pricing mechanisms for these new assets has significantly limited their potential,” said Upshot Co-founder and CEO Nick Emmons in the company press release. “During that time period, we’ve been working tirelessly to build the best pricing models in the NFT space.”
“We’re incredibly excited to partner with Polychain, one of the premiere crypto funds, as we embark on this next wave of development. With this fundraising round, we’ll be aggressively expanding our team, continuing to improve our industry-leading pricing models, and building out a suite of novel, exotic new primitives at the intersection of DeFi and NFTs,” he said.
Related: Ukraine Building an NFT Museum, Seeking a Permanent Crypto Vault for Its War Story
Earlier this month, Ukraine deputy minister of digital transformation Alex Bornyakov told The Guardian that he wants the country’s forthcoming NFT collection to be “like a museum of the Russian-Ukrainian war,” per the news outlet’s March 13 report. “We want to tell the world in NFT format,” he said.
Ukraine has received more than $100 million in cryptocurrency donations since Russia began its attacks on the nation last month, with NFTs playing the most prominent role. UkraineDAO raised $6 million with an NFT of the country’s blue-and-yellow flag that was bought by a group that fractionalized ownership of it via cryptocurrency tokens.
An NFT sale by aid organization RELI3F raised more than $1 million on the top NFT marketplace OpenSea. Vogue Singapore and Vogue Ukraine are collaborating on an NFT fundraising sale.
Ukraine passed legislation on March 16 that legalizes and regulates crypto under the National Securities and Stock Market Commission.
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