Mintbase, the platform giving users the ability to create their own NFTs, regardless of technical ability has just announced a $7.5M capital infusion. The Series A was supported by backers including Coinbase Ventures, Libertus Capital, Sino Global Capital, Animoca Brands, Woodstock Fund and Fundamental Labs, among others.
This offering follows a seed round of $1M in late 2020, supported by its partners Sino Global, D1 Ventures, Block Oracle Capital and Arweave.
Mintbase grants & scaling
Mintbase will utilise the funding to hand out grants to NFT projects and scale its operations. Moreover, the startup’s non-profit the NEAR Foundation, which is responsible for contracting protocol maintainers (miners) and funding ecosystem development on the NEAR protocol, will award up to $5M to aid Mintbase’s new pass-through grants programme. The programme, titled Mintbase Grants, will look for seasoned teams that aspire to build the next evolution of Web3 ticketing, music, and gaming platforms using the Mintbase developer infrastructure. A new and improved UI will not only make the experience of minting and trading smoother but also assist those looking to build on Mintbase’s tools.
The global NFT creation and minting market
Recent reports are showing that the total value of all NFT transactions worldwide jumped 21,350% to more than $17B in 2021, from $82.5M in 2020. The widespread boom in the NFT market brought millions in profits to individual sellers. NFT traders earned over $5.4B in total profit through buying and selling NFTs. 473 of the roughly 2M active wallets engaged in buying NFTs over the last year generated at least $1M in profits.
Collectibles and gaming were the top two categories leading the surge in NFT transactions last year. Collectibles alone generated more than $8.4B in sales, with popular NFT projects, such as the Bored Ape Yacht Club, counting among its owners celebrities such as Justin Bieber and Jimmy Fallon. While last year’s increase in the NFT market was its biggest ever, the technology remains fairly new, benefitting from publicity. The biggest barrier to utilising NFTs has been that they are challenging to create and require significant technical expertise.
What is Mintbase?
Mintbase is a global platform allowing users on its platform to create NFTs without worrying about technical complexities. Artists can utilise the Mintbase platform to mint NFTs to sell digital art, for instance. Additionally, musicians can use them for music whereas event organizers can use them to sell tickets for their next event.
Mintbase can be thought of as the “Shopify for NFTs”. People are creating and selling music, art, memberships, photography and so much more, basically allowing the tokenisation of anything other than money.
Female co-founded by Carolin Wend and her partner Nate Geier in 2019, the Lisbon-based NFT protocol is building the infrastructure and tools to empower niche NFT marketplaces. Importantly, Mintbase launched on NEAR protocol when NFT minting on the Ethereum blockchain became too expensive. The NEAR protocol is climate-neutral, enabling creators to experience purposeful NFTs.
“At Mintbase, we believe that we are moving away from massive single NFT marketplaces towards more individual and community-owned ones. Sharded WASM chains are the future as they operate with other more desired programming languages like Rust and AssemblyScript. That is why we picked NEAR,” explained Mintbase’s founder Nate Geier.
