The fastest-growing NFT marketplace, OpenSea, announced that it will form an investment arm to fund Web3 startups and projects, as well as a community grants program to encourage community efforts that benefit the larger Web3 and NFT ecosystem. Portfolio firms will benefit from the money, advice, technical support, and strategic connections from OpenSea Ventures. Beyond its own leadership, OpenSea will provide access to partners and investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Animoca Brands, Katie Haun, and singer 3LAU.
The “transition to a multi-chain world” for both fungible and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), NFT-related protocols, Web3 gaming, and social initiatives, and NFT aggregators and analytics systems that support both OpenSea and other marketplaces will be the focus of the investment arm.
With its Ecosystem Grants initiative, the firm hopes to fund projects arising from the Web3 community in addition to OpenSea Ventures. OpenSea’s mission is to fund projects that increase user accessibility and developer tooling for NFTs, generate educational resources, and promote inclusivity and accessibility.
OpenSea’s first focus will be on short-term projects that can be launched within two quarters of getting a grant, but the company’s criteria will grow and its focus will broaden over time. Before selecting the first batch of grantees, the firm wants to form a review committee and release the initial details and criteria.
An NFT serves as a deed of ownership for a one-of-a-kind digital item, and it can be used to represent profile images, digital artwork, video-based treasures, and more. According to DappRadar, the overall NFT business achieved $25 billion in trading volume in 2021. As business increased in the second part of the year, OpenSea was responsible for the majority of that amount.
The announcements were made after a record month for OpenSea in terms of trading volume, with more than $5 billion worth of Ethereum and Polygon traded in January. Last August, when the NFT market began surging to new heights, the previous combined high was less than $3.5 billion.
Last month, OpenSea announced a $300 million Series C financing headed by Paradigm and Coatue, valuing the company at $13.3 billion. This is a significant boost in valuation from its Series B round, which raised $100 million at a valuation of $1.5 billion.