Quick take:
- The round was led by Woodstock Fund.
- Funds will be used to support developers and entrepreneurs in Web3.
- The NEAR Foundation awarded Mintbase $5 million to act as a pass-through grants program.
Mintbase announced today that it has raised $7.5 million of venture capital in its Series A funding round led by Woodstock Fund. Other backers in the round included Coinbase Ventures, Libertus Capital, Sino Global Capital, Animoca Brands, Fundamental Labs, Figment, TRGC, and others.
Mintbase will use the funding to focus on the developers and entrepreneurs who will build their own NFT redeeming, selling, and distribution tools using the platform’s infrastructure.
At the same time, Mintbase also announced a $5 million grants program focused on funding software development and research efforts related to Mintbase, awarded by NEAR Foundation.
Even though Mintbase Grants is now accepting applications from seasoned teams that want to build Web3 ticketing, music, and gaming platforms using the Mintbase developer infrastructure, funding will only begin this July.
Projects that want to participate in the grants program must fulfil requirements such as being open-source, not encouraging gambling or illicit activity, not having been part of a successful token sale, and must have finished projects that have been awarded a grant before being considered for another.
Mintbase is a global NFT platform built on top of the NEAR protocol, enabling users to create, trade, and exchange NFTs with low transaction fees and rapid transaction rates. Thanks to the protocol, NFT minters can also alter royalty fees as well as set up stores on Mintbase and purchase and sell NFTs.
Proclaiming itself as “the Shopify for the new virtual economy,” the platform currently has more than 1086 stores deployed on-chain. A Mintbase Store is an independent smart contract, where owners can add other minters (DAO, company, person, nonprofit) and up to 50 royalties and single payment splits.
Initially deployed on Ethereum in 2018, Mintbase switched to the NEAR mainnet in May last year. According to Geier, blockchains are on the third evolution cycle and he believes that “the obvious third evolution is all about WebAssembly (WASM) chains like NEAR, Polkadot, and Solana.” The NEAR protocol raised $350 million in its latest funding round on Apr 6.
“Even though we have been building on NEAR for over a year, we are still only using about 10% of the innovative capabilities like connection allowances, private key swapping, and contract function restrictions,” wrote Mintbase CEO Nate Geier in a blog post.
Mintbase wants to incentivise users to use its open-source component library to build their own marketplaces.
“We have a strong belief that the future is about niche NFT utility markets, fired up by companies, entrepreneurs, and no-code users alike. We are here to support the developers and entrepreneurs of tomorrow that will build their own NFT redeeming, selling, and distribution tools off our infrastructure,” Geier added.
Operating out of Lisbon, Mintbase is aiming to double its workforce over the next six months.
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