The funding will go toward expanding Burnt Finance’s headcount and tapping new partnerships with artists and other Solana-based projects.

Burnt Finance, a protocol built on Solana, has raised $8 million in a funding round led by Animoca Brands. The protocol also launched its non-fungible token (NFT) platform.

The capital will go toward adding staff and exploring partnerships with artists and other Solana-based projects.

Burnt Finance, known for burning a piece of artwork from street artist Banksy before selling a digitized version as an NFT, also said it has launched its NFT marketplace, which will feature auctions and allows users to mint and sell digital assets.

Other investors in the round included Alameda Research, Multicoin Capital, Valor Capital, Figment, Spartan Capital, HashKey, Terra, Fantom and others.
 
Alameda and Multicoin led the protocol’s $3M fundraising round in May. 

“We are now looking to expand onto other chains such as Terra and Fantom while building out new functionalities that bridge the worlds of DeFi [decentralized finance] with NFTs,” the Burnt Finance team, which insists on anonymity, said in an emailed statement.

The team sees demand for NFTs continuing to surge. Data from ​​DappRadar shows the NFT market reached $22 billion in 2021. 

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Animoca Brands Leads $8M Fundraising Round for NFT Platform Built on Solana

The decentralized NFT auction protocol built on Solana’s blockchain aims to scale its team with the latest capital raise, the founder of Burnt Finance told Blockworks.

Decentralized NFT auction protocol Burnt Finance has raised $8 million in a Series A to scale its team as it deploys and integrates new chains and product features, the founder of Burnt Finance, who goes under the alias Burnt Banksy, told Blockworks. 

“Over time, we will become an all encompassing multichain hub for NFTs by integrating DeFi functionality which include NFT lending, liquidity mining with staking incentives, fractionalization, and GameFi,” he said. 

The round was led by Animoca Brands and include investments also from Multicoin Capital, Alameda Research, DeFiance, Valor Capital Group, Figment, Spartan Capital, Tribe Capital, Play Ventures, HashKey, Mechanism Capital, DeFi Alliance, Terra and Fantom, among others. 

“We are excited to have Animoca Brands lead our Series A, which will help tremendously as we look to partner with the hundreds of games and guilds within their umbrella,” Banksy said. “A number of prominent guilds and gaming focused VCs also participated in the round, which helps us gain first-hand access to a number of gaming projects,” he added. 

The company began through its “Burnt Banksy” campaign, when Injective Protocol, the Cosmos SDK-based decentralized exchange protocol — which incubated Burnt Finance — bought an original Banksy piece for $95,000 to burn it and broadcast it live on Twitter in March 2021. From there, it created an NFT of the piece and sold it for about 229 ether, or $400,000, at the time on NFT marketplace OpenSea. 

“Despite the successful sale, a number of challenges were faced while holding the auction, from expensive Ethereum gas fees to bad actors manipulating the bidding process,” the protocol said in a statement. “After this experience, it became clear that a fully-decentralized marketplace was needed,” it added. 

The protocol was founded shortly after the stunt in April 2021 and accumulated over 200,000 users on its waitlist to date and launched its non-fungible token auction protocol mainnet on Monday, Burnt Banksy shared.

Burnt Finance’s protocol will allow users to completely control their auctions by enabling the minting and trading of NFTs in a permissionless ecosystem, it said. The platform will support NFTs, digital assets, among other items and can transact quickly with minimal fees due to its creation on Solana’s architecture.

The protocol plans to expand its product offerings into initiatives like lending or GameFi in the coming months. “We already have a few collaborations in the works with major GameFi platforms which will go live in the next month or so,” Burnt Banksy said. However, he could not disclose additional details about those product plans. 

Burnt Finance raised $3 million in a seed round in May 2021, led by Multicoin Capital and Alameda Research. There is no valuation disclosed at this time due to non-disclosure agreements, Burnt Banksy said. 

“The Burnt team and product vision have both grown significantly since the close of the seed round,” Banksy noted.

“We are now looking to expand onto other chains such as Terra and Fantom while building out new functionalities that bridge the worlds of DeFi with NFTs,” he added.  

Burnt Finance has deployed testnet contracts into layer-1 protocols like Cardano, but plans to be fully functional on “multiple chains” before the end of 2022, Burnt Banksy said.

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Animoca Brands Led $8M Series A for Burnt Finance

Burnt Finance is a crypto startup which, as a stunt, burnt a Banksy artwork and but then the NFT they’d minted for it for $400,000, double what it cost on the ‘normal’ open art market.

Based on the idea that auctions for NFTs could be improved, it went on to raise $3 million for a decentralized auction protocol built on the Solana blockchain. That round was led by led by Multicoin and Alameda Research and was incubated by Injective Labs, the core contributors to the multi-chain network Injective Protocol. 

It’s now getting more serious.

Burnt Finance has now raised an $8M Series A round led by Animoca Brands, which develops and publishes a broad portfolio of blockchain games, traditional games, and other products.

Also participating was Multicoin Capital, Alameda Research, DeFiance, Valor Capital Group, Figment, Spartan Capital, Tribe Capital, Play Ventures, HashKey, Mechanism Capital, DeFi Alliance, Terra, and others.
 
Of those investors, Multicoin is perhaps among the best known, as it’s been investing in the blockchain space since 2017, and has invested in Solana, NEAR, MobileCoin (used for P2P payments in Signal), and several other significant projects.

Burnt Finance will now launch its own NFT marketplace, which will feature English, Dutch, and Buy Now auctions, aiming to be a hub for NFTs by integrating DeFi functionality, such a NFT lending, liquidity mining with staking incentives, fractionalization, and GameFi.

This will provide permissionless access to NFTs and claims to have low fees and fast speeds, with “160,000 users” on its waitlist. It also claims to have processed over $100 million of trading volume in 7 days on its Spark testnet.

It also plans to expand to additional blockchains including Terra and other EVM compatible layer one protocols. 

Yat Siu, the executive chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands, commented: “Minting and trading assets in a permissionless ecosystem is crucially important to the economic groundwork of the open metaverse.”

The global market for non-fungible tokens hit around $22B in 2021 according to DappRadar. Traditional auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s have also expanded into the NFT space.

Burnt Finance is pushing at an open door. NFT sales topped $4b in December 2021 alone. 

Competitors include, at various levels of course, OpenSea, SuperRare, Rarible and NiftyGateway. However, although Burnt is clearly still very early, it’s attempting to outpace larger players by using Solana and going for the DeFi space.

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Burnt Finance raises $8M led by Animoca Brands, launches DeFi-oriented NFT marketplace

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Animoca Brands Leads $8M Fundraising Round for NFT Platform Built on Solana

Animoca Brands Led $8M Series A for Burnt Finance

Burnt Finance raises $8M led by Animoca Brands, launches DeFi-oriented NFT marketplace

Animoca Brands Leads $8M Fundraising Round for NFT Platform Built on Solana

Animoca Brands Led $8M Series A for Burnt Finance

Burnt Finance raises $8M led by Animoca Brands, launches DeFi-oriented NFT marketplace

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The Decentralized Future forWeb3 Assets

A Firestorm of Decentralized Applications

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Animoca Brands Leads $8M Fundraising Round for NFT Platform Built on Solana

Animoca Brands Led $8M Series A for Burnt Finance

Burnt Finance raises $8M led by Animoca Brands, launches DeFi-oriented NFT marketplace

Animoca Brands Leads $8M Fundraising Round for NFT Platform Built on Solana

Animoca Brands Led $8M Series A for Burnt Finance

Burnt Finance raises $8M led by Animoca Brands, launches DeFi-oriented NFT marketplace

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