The bear market chills have had evident impacts in the NFT space – but one NFT organization managed to raise $50M amidst the winter.
PROOF, creators of Proof collective and Moonbirds, recently raised $50 million in a series A fundraise led by big VC names in the space notably a16z, Seven Seven Six, True Ventures, Collab+Currency, Flamingo DAO, SV Angel, and VaynerFund.
“We believe that the next generation of massive mainstream media franchises will be community-owned and governed, and PROOF is one of those companies demonstrating just that,” said Sriram
Krishnan, General Partner at a16z crypto.
Find out more on a16z decision investing in PROOF.
This certainly places PROOF collective in the big leagues of Yuga Labs and Larva Labs, the founders of blue-chip NFTs, BAYC and Cryptopunks respectively.
While the backing of $50M amidst the bear market is no easy feat, PROOF has various plans and products installed for their community, and are aiming for “thoughtful expansion, empowering the creative community, building products with art and artists in mind, and creating valuable tools for web3 as a high-growth tech company.”
At the time of writing, Moonbirds NFT is trading with a floor price of 15.44ETH, down 50% from its all-time high of 31ETH back in July.
Moonbirds DAO
The first product PROOF is in talks about creating is the Moonbirds DAO, which will oversee all licensing of the Moonbird name by granting trademark rights.
This follows the announcement of licensing model called Creative Commons Zero (CC0) earlier in August.
The Moonbirds DAO will also control the soon-to-be-formed treasury, consisting of VC funding and royalties from Moonbirds NFT sales. In addition, PROOF is also “building a dedicated business development team that will focus on creating valuable partnerships for Moonbirds and Oddities.”
On-chain With New Collections
The fundraiser will also bring Mooonbirds on-chain. This would mean the NFT will be the first “blue chip” fully integrated on-chain.
Being fully on-chain has its benefits, one of with is not needing to “rely on off-chain storage, making the NFT collection accessible for future generations.”
In addition, with the original Moonbirds and Oddities holders in mind, the expansion of a new collection, “Moonbird Mythics”, will consist of 20,000 PFP collections to launch in early 2023.
PROOF Token
The icing on the cake was Kevin Rose revealing exciting developments for the project and its community– by creating a PROOF token.
As more details can be expected in 2023, Kevin teased the community with an exciting road ahead, “The world doesn’t need another token for speculation. When we do something, it should be uniquely our own, with real utility, something that will push what’s possible in new and exciting directions.”
The Future PROOF live stream can be viewed on PROOF’s YouTube channel.
[Editor’s Note: This article does not represent financial advice. Please do your research before investing.]
Featured Image Credit: ChainDebrief
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