NFT Creator Dapper Labs Raises $725M For Web3 Developer Growth

Key Insights:

• Dapper Labs wants to lure developers away from Ethereum and onto Flow Blockchain.
• The Web3 startup created CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shots NFT collection.
• Dapper Labs was valued at $7.6 billion in September 2021.

Venture capital is still flowing into Web3 firms despite a massive slump in the broader digital asset market. On May 10, Dapper Labs announced that it had secured a $725 million funding round to expand its Web3 developer ecosystem.

The latest round of investment for the firm included participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coatue, CoinFund, Greenfield One, Liberty City Ventures, Digital Currency Group, and Union Square Ventures.

It marks the tenth time the company has sought venture capital investment since it began doing so in early 2018, according to Crunchbase. The startup raised $250 million at a $7.6 billion valuation in September.

Web3 Developers Wanted

According to the company, the fund is the largest joint commitment to any blockchain ecosystem. Dapper Labs manages the Flow Blockchain, which runs many applications and NFT collections. While nowhere near as large as other blockchain ecosystems, Flow has 5.8 million accounts, according to the network explorer.

CEO Roham Gharegozlou claims that more than 7,500 people are building on the platform, and he aims to entice even more to choose Flow over rivals such as Ethereum [ETH], which is the industry standard. The network also claims to have roughly a thousand active projects and 175,000 monthly active users.

CoinFund Managing Partner, David Pakman, commented:

“As [Web3] accelerates and sophisticated app developers search for the best platforms, Flow is perhaps the best decentralized blockchain built for the scale, security, and ease of use most modern startups need to succeed,”

The funding will be used to lure developers to the Flow ecosystem through FLOW token grants and other investments. Its primary focus will be to support Web3 gaming, infrastructure, decentralized finance (DeFi), NFT content and creators, and potential team expansion and acquisitions.

Dapper is probably best known for the NBA Top Shots NFT collection. This allows collectors to buy and trade basketball-themed cards and items on the blockchain. There was a spike in sales in February 2021, but interest has waned since, with around $26 million in sales for April 2022, according to Cryptoslam.

Dapper also created CryptoKitties, one of the first blockchain games released in 2017.

FLOW Price Outlook

The blockchain’s native token, FLOW, has reacted to the news with a gain of 11.3% over the past 24 hours. At the time of writing, the token was trading at $3.96, according to FXEmpire. In February, FLOW got a bit of a lift following a mobile game debut at the Beijing Winter Olympics.

However, FLOW has been hit hard recently in the wider crypto market slump, sliding 24% over the past fortnight. Additionally, it has dumped a whopping 90% since its April 2021 all-time high of $42.40.