The startup formerly known as Nebulous has raised a $3 million funding round led by Paradigm with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, A.Capital, Collaborative Fund, Dragonfly Capital Partners, Hack VC, INBlockchain, First Star Ventures and others. 

The startup also rebranded, as Skynet Labs, to focus on promoting the namesake application hosting platform, which uses the token-fueled Sia network.

• Launched in 2014, the Boston-based firm has a staff of 11 and has raised over $9 million to date.
• CEO David Vorick said there are more than 100 applications and 10 web portals already using Skynet as a decentralized storage alternative, including the popular exchange Uniswap. Skynet launched in February 2020.
• “It’s just another means of accessing Uniswap, if Infura goes down people can still access the interface,” Vorick said, referencing Ethereum-friendly infrastructure options. “This offers the ability for anyone to run their own portal and get full trustless access to the network. If we turn off all our infrastructure tomorrow, Skynet still exists.”
• Paradigm partner Dan Robinson said in a press statement he’s keen to see decentralized storage lead to social networking without distinct silos, like YouTube and Twitter, adding, “The project has enabled a growing ecosystem of builders to quickly prototype censorship-resistant applications and interactive websites.”
• In reference to the Skynet app store that popped up following rumors that TikTok might get delisted from popular app stores, Vorick said, “This is a third-party app that comes from the community. … Quick responses to things like TikTok being banned don’t need to ask us for permission.”
• This rebrand comes nearly one year after the startup reached a $225,000 settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an unregistered token sale in 2014. Skynet users now rely on Siacoin tokens if they run a full Sia node.

Read more: Sia Network Raises $3.5 Million From Bain Capital to Become Crypto Hulu

A young defensive back with the Los Angeles Rams is the latest pro athlete launching a non-fungible token (NFT), hoping to use the sale to raise money, and awareness, to combat the wave of anti-Asian hate crimes this year.

Taylor Rapp, the free safety entering his third season in the National Football League, completely lacks the star power of a Rob Gronkowski or a Patrick Mahomes, marquee players who leveraged their splashy brands into multimillion-dollar NFT sales earlier this month. 

But the backfield starter, who said he’s been hustling with his co-creators for three weeks on their slapdash NFTs, told CoinDesk he hopes to make up the difference by focusing his sale on its anti-racist cause. He’s the only Chinese-American active in the NFL at a time when reports of hate crimes against Asians are surging.

“The whole reason behind making the collection was to raise money to donate to the AAPI community and, you know, my Asian community, because we’ve seen all the crazy horrific attacks every single day,” he told CoinDesk Tuesday, hours after New York City police began investigating the latest apparent anti-Asian assault in a year full of them.

Rapp hasn’t yet “locked in” what portion of the NFT sale he will donate to community organizations through GoFundMe’s $5 million #StopAsianHate campaign. But he said it will represent “a substantial amount” of the total.

The NFTs themselves, which do not feature team iconography and are not being released through a deal with the league, might shake the gargantuan NFL machine into addressing the attacks against Asians more forcefully, Rapp said. 

He noted league officials issued a statement condemning the attacks under the hashtag #StopAsianHate in late February, “just like all the other big corporations” that he said are finally waking up to a problem that began with COVID-19 nearly one year earlier after the reports of the disease originating in Wuhan, China.

“I really hope the NFL sees this and the important message that is behind it in why I’m actually doing it,” Rapp said. “Hopefully, the Rams will be able to see that as well.”

NFTs for a cause

The NFTs lean heavily on Rapp’s Chinese identity. He’s calling them the “Year of the Ox” collection (a reference to this year’s Chinese zodiac sign) and said each carries a Chinese proverb his mother picked out as well as the Chinese character for “Ox” that he said his grandfather hand-painted. 

Digital artists Elena Provolovich, Ryan Darwent, and David Bircham collaborated with Rapp on designing his six NFTs, only one of which is 1-of-1. The other images run as high as 24 copies and the total supply is 90. Darwent told CoinDesk his contribution takes after photography, though others in the collection more closely resemble a museum piece.

Many also come paired with real-world memorabilia, Rapp said, a concession for the “boomers” who, like his father, don’t buy into intangible digital collectibles. For his part, Rapp thinks NFTs have staying power.

He said the auction begins Thursday night on NFT marketplace OpenSea.

Rapp is hopeful the NFT buzz can serve as a vehicle for spreading awareness of Asian athletes, especially in the NFL where aspiring players face an uphill battle due to their underrepresentation in the league, he said.

“Going through the ranks of high school and college and NFL, you begin to see fewer and fewer people who look like you,” Rapp said, noting he had no such “role model” in the NFL while growing up.

“For me, it’s all about representation and being able to be that figure for” young players, he said.

Bakkt is launching its digital wallet app with companies such as Starbucks among its roster of merchant partners.

• The app drew 500,000 users in its invitation-only trial run prior to its public launch Tuesday, Bakkt said in a press release.
• The app was announced in October 2019, with plans to launch in the first half of 2020.
• The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have scuttled Bakkt’s original timeline, given the app’s focus on the hospitality and travel sectors.
• Bakkt is aiming to aggregate cryptocurrency holdings with other digital assets such as airline miles, gift cards and loyalty points.
• “Customers can now use Bakkt to reload their Starbucks Card through the Starbucks app for iOS,” Bakkt said.
• Other partners include Best Buy, Choice Hotels, Fiserv and GolfNow.

Dapper Labs announced a $305 million funding round Tuesday from another batch of National Basketball Association stars and a venture capital firm backing its runaway hit, NBA Top Shot.

Kevin Durant, Michael Jordan, the investment firm Coatue and a deep bench of 30 athletes plus the rapper 2 Chainz have piled into the non-fungible token (NFT) firm, the startup said. Citing a person with knowledge of the situation, USA Today reported the funding round places Dapper’s current valuation at $2.6 billion.

The mega-round comes as Dapper’s NBA Top Shot platform continues to monetize fans’ growing demand for digital collectibles. Sitting atop Dapper’s Flow blockchain, the card-like crypto platform has raked in nearly $500 million in sales and seen its secondary trading market eclipse $2 million in volume almost daily.

While the hype remains centered on NBA Top Shot, Dapper Labs signaled in a press release it intends to bring yet more digital collectibles to Flow through “experiences” by Warner Media Group and UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship), among others. More experiences are coming this year, the startup said. The company has raised $357 million to date.

Here’s the full list of investors, per the Dapper Labs press release:

The company received support from NBA legend Michael Jordan as well as current players and funds including Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala, Kyle Lowry, Spencer Dinwiddie, Andre Drummond, Alex Caruso, Michael Carter-Williams, Josh Hart, Udonis Haslem, JaVale McGee, Khris Middleton, Domantas Sabonis, Klay Thompson, Nikola Vucevic, Thad Young, and Richard Seymour’s 93 Ventures, as well as entertainment and music heavyweights including Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary's Sound Ventures, Will Smith and Keisuke Honda's Dreamers VC, Shawn Mendes and Andrew Gertler's AG Ventures, Shay Mitchell, and 2 Chainz. Other strategics participating include a16z, The Chernin Group, USV, Version One, and Venrock.

Additional investors in the round include: [Major League Baseball] players Tim Beckham and Nolan Arenado; [National Football League] players Ken Crawley, Thomas Davis, Stefon Diggs, Dee Ford, Malcom Jenkins, Rodney McLeod, Jordan Matthew, Devin McCourty, Jason McCourty, DK Metcalf, Tyrod Taylor and Trent Williams; team ownership including Vivek Ranadive (Kings), and notable sports investors Bolt Ventures.

SuperRare, one of the leading marketplaces for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), has cashed in on NFT mania with a $9 million funding round led by tech venture capitalists Velvet Sea and 1confirmation.

Mark Cuban, Chamath Palihapitiya, Marc Benioff (CEO of Salesforce.com) and other well-heeled tech backers also participated in SuperRare’s Series A, the three-year-old startup told CoinDesk.

The round comes as crypto worth millions pours into blockchain-linked digital collectibles. While huge sales by relatively established artists such as Beeple catch headlines in mainstream media, an army of lesser-known NFT creators are also selling for six-figures on marketplaces such as SuperRare.

Artists are now generating over $25 million in total sales per month on SuperRare, the startup said. When it launched three years ago, a given month might have seen just $8,000 total. 

But the crowd driving SuperRare’s boon remains surprisingly small. 

Just 727 wallet addresses combined for $5.47 million in SuperRare trading volume in the past week, according to on-chain data site DappRadar. It was the fifth-largest NFT marketplace by volume during that period.

Read also: It’s an NFT Boom. Do You Know Where Your Digital Art Lives?

SuperRare occupies a relatively small but gilded corner of the surging $400 million NFT market. Unlike competitors OpenSea and Nifty Gateway, which are larger and more akin to collectible clearinghouses than swanky digital art showrooms, SuperRare only lists one-for-one editions, making its fare feel almost like a gallery.

Founders John Crain and Jonathan Perkins will invest the capital to fund the platform’s growth, they said. Future features include social rollouts, upgrades to the marketplace backend, a foray into virtual reality and taking steps to ensure featured works remain accessible in the long-term.