NFTs, or nonfungible tokens , have exploded in both the financial markets and the zeitgeist at large. Simply put, NFTs use blockchain technology to authenticate digital assets, which can then be bought and sold—sometimes at staggering sums. Much of the hype around NFTs has been fueled by headline grabbing sales, such as the artist Beeple’s recent $69.3 million payday for a single digital artwork, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey hawking his first tweet for $2.9 million, and the original GIF of the internet’s favorite Pop-Tart cat going for nearly $600,000. While some analysts worry that NFTs are a speculation bubble primed to burst, Roham Gharegozlou, CEO of blockchain company Dapper Labs , is planning for the long haul—and he just received a major round of funding to meet that goal. Announced today, Dapper Labs, the company behind the National Basketball Association’s (NBA’s) digital collectibles platform Top Shot , closed $305 million in funding led by investment management company Coatue, with additional backing from Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala , Will Smith and Keisuke Honda’s Dreamers VC, Andreessen Horowitz, The Chernin Group, and more. Dapper Labs came out of beta last fall and is now valued at a $2.6 billion. ????ALL HAIL THE KING???? @YoDough scooped up this Legendary LeBron James Moment from our Cosmic Series 1 set for $208,000‼️ This Moment is from our first Legendary set ever minted ???? The top acquisition for any NBA Top Shot Moment … so far. Congrats on the nice pickup! ???? pic.twitter.com/rFLMzbwXN7 — NBA Top Shot (@nbatopshot) February 22, 2021 Founded in 2018, Dapper Labs is on a mission to make blockchain technology mainstream. Its first product, CryptoKitties (which Gharegozlou launched in 2017 under venture studio Axiom Zen), gamified the blockchain experience by allowing users to collect and breed digital cats as NFTs. But its partnership with the NBA has been one of the most notable cosigns in making blockchain more accessible. Launched last October, NBA Top Shot, powered by Dapper Labs’s own blockchain system Flow, allows users to buy and sell Moments, i.e. digital trading cards that feature a clip of an NBA player’s best shots or plays. A video of LeBron James dunking on Nemanja Bjelica during a 2019 matchup between the L.A. Lakers and the Sacramento Kings sold on Top Shot for $208,000. New Orleans Pelican Zion Williamson’s epic shot block in a game against the Denver Nuggets
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The company behind the NBA’s NFT trading cards is now valued at $2.6 billion