Dapper Labs, the company behind the collectible digi-kitty phenom on blockchain, has raised $15m in a new round of funding.
With the new cash, the Canadian company wants to expand globally, and it seems like every company in the entertainment biz (WME and aXiomatic to name a few) is lookin’ to adopt a digital kitten.
Heeere, CryptoKitty, kitty, kitty…
Launched in 2017, the game that allows users to purchase digital cats to collect, breed, and trade (like Pokemon meets Tamagotchi), quickly became the leading consumer blockchain application outside of exchanges.
According to the company, the goal of CryptoKitties was, and still is, to showcase the use and benefits of blockchain for everyone. It’s also a goldmine: the average price for a CryptoKitten is $60, and some people have shelled out as much as $140k for a single digital feline.
To date, the company has raised $27.8m with more than 3.2m transactions and tens of millions of dollars transacted on the platform.
Now, it’s given birth to a full-on industry
The company said that the NFT (non-fungible token) standard that CryptoKitties created has opened brand new possibilities for digital ownership.
Since its launch, Dapper Labs has instituted a developer program and created a launchpad to help third-party teams build self-sustaining businesses within the ecosystem.
More importantly: It successfully breathed new life into the phrase “non-fungible,” which we can only assume both Merriam and Webster gave up on long ago.