coinedition.com
A series round led by FTX raised $5 million for NFT marketplace Joepegs on the Avalanche blockchain. Even though Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange FTX has now announced bankruptcy, its funded projects continue to post updates.
Gm NFT Twitter 💜
— Joepegs🔺 | Raised $5M! (@joepegsnft) November 14, 2022
We raised $5M in a seed round led by the Avalanche Foundation @avalancheavax and FTX.
With this funding we continue developing the core marketplace and accelerate growth of Joe Studios 🙌
Full announcement featured in @TechCrunch: https://t.co/3ayRinET3n
Joepegs’ founders who use the username Cryptofish and 0xMurloc have stated,
“The funding from FTX Ventures was completed in June, and have since been transferred out of FTX prior to recent bankruptcy events,”
Launched in May, the NFT marketplace has achieved rapid growth since. Generating $3.4 million in secondary NFT sales with over 12,000 active users on the platform, Joepegs is currently the largest NFT marketplace on the Avalanche ecosystem.
Moreover, Joe Studios which serves Joepegs as an in-house production unit, as well as an NFT launchpad shared that it has onboarded more than 50 projects across the Avalanche blockchain.
Joepegs’ co-founders have also powered Trader Joe which is a decentralized trading exchange on Avalanche. Since its launch in July 2021, the exchange has acquired over $88 billion in trading volume.
Cryptofish and 0xMurloc believe that NFT marketplaces are as good as the content in the ecosystem. Hence, to help users discover the best NFTs on the platform, the founders realized very quickly they have to invest in a lot more platform capabilities. They also mentioned that fundraising will be used to enable these capabilities.
In addition, Joepegs collaborates with projects, traders, and artists “across the ecosystem,” as reported by 0xMurloc.
In early 2022, Avalanche partnered with the leading NFT marketplace, OpenSea. According to data from CryptoSlam, the Avalanche blockchain produced $408.2 million in total sales, making it the seventh-largest blockchain as per NFT sales volume.