Blockchain, machine learning and crowdsourcing based NFT evaluation platform aims to become the world’s evaluation authority for digital assets
Upshot, a blockchain-based protocol that provides industry-leading non-fungible token (NFT) evaluations, today announced a $22 million Series A2 funding round led by Polychain Capital, the world’s leading investor in protocols and startups. cryptocurrencies. Polychain joins previous investors Framework Ventures, CoinFund, Blockchain Capital, Slow Ventures, Mechanism Capital, and Delphi Digital, among others. Upshot is the first and leading technology company that can accurately and reliably assess the value of digital assets like NFTs at scale. The company plans to use the funds for additional research and development for its pricing models and to build its growing team. The investment will also help Upshot fund its innovative decentralized finance (DeFi) x NFT primitives, and create additional developer tools to enable others to build novel DeFi x NFT primitives leveraging Upshot’s pricing feeds.
According to DappRadar, NFT trade volume in 2021 was $24.9 billion, up from $95 million in 2020. However, overall NFT value growth, in terms of user experience, cross-apps within DeFi and more, has been bypassed by the notoriously difficult pricing mechanisms for digital assets. Real-time machine learning and expert assessments are an intuitive and accurate approach to solving this critical problem.
“The past year has been one of explosive growth for NFTs, but inefficient pricing mechanisms for these new assets have significantly limited their potential,” said Upshot co-founder and CEO Nick Emmons. “During that period of time, we have been working tirelessly to create the best pricing models in the NFT space. We are incredibly excited to partner with Polychain, one of the leading crypto funds, as we embark on this next wave of development. With this fundraising round, we will aggressively expand our team, continue to improve our industry-leading pricing models, and build a suite of new exotic and novel primitives at the intersection of DeFi and NFT.”
The intersection of DeFi and NFT presents a new high-growth vertical in the industry. However, the only way to unlock this vertical is through real-time NFT price feeds. In order to limit volatility and price bubbles within NFTs and create liquid digital assets, scalability and precision issues within the market must be addressed. Providing the tools to arrive at valuations through industry experts unlocks this potential for DeFi x NFT primitives, including arbitrage, liquidity, leverage, and risk.
“Polychain is inspired by the vision of a collective intelligence platform that rewards its users for accurately modeling and pricing esoteric assets. Upshot provides in-depth insight into the NFT markets and has already proven the effectiveness of its pricing models through industry-leading accuracy metrics, its assessment of Sotheby’s Bored Ape Yacht Club lot auction, and more.” said Olaf Carlson-Wee, founder and CEO of Polychain Capital. “Upshot is the premier real-time pricing marketplace that will unlock the next wave of financial primitives for NFT markets.”
“At CoinFund, we are very excited to support this upcoming Upshot funding,” said Jake Brukman, Founder of CoinFund. “Upshot’s machine learning and testing technology unlocks best-in-class primitives for bringing liquidity and DeFi to the NFT space and is poised to dramatically expand the set of non-fungible asset use cases.”
About Upshoot
Upshot is a blockchain-based protocol that provides industry-leading Non-Fungible Token (NFT) evaluations. By providing accurate and trusted expert assessments. Upshot enables the creation of solutions at the intersection of decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFTs, for the industry and themselves. Upshot Analytics is currently available in Private Beta and will be open to the general public soon. The Upshot API is currently available and is used by teams to inform their projects.
