Polychain Capital Leads $22M Investment in NFT Appraisal Protocol Upshot
Upshot, a protocol that provides non-fungible token (NFT) appraisals, has raised $22 million in a Series A2 funding round led by Polychain Capital,
Evaluating the value of an NFT is a complicated task because the answer is essentially “what someone is willing to pay.” Pricing data, however, is important to have both as a potential NFT trader and for developers exploring the intersection of decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFTs.
Launched in 2019 as an insurance-focused prediction tool, Upshot built out its real-time NFT appraisal data by asking its users to compare collectibles with incentives for honest or expert opinions. Upshot offers an application programming interface (API) for developers to integrate the data into their projects. The Upshot analytics platform is available in a private beta version and will be open to the general public soon.
Upshot plans to use the new capital for additional research and development for its pricing models, for hiring more staff and for financing new DeFi algorithms and related developer tools.
In the Series A extension, Polychain joined previous investors Framework Ventures, CoinFund, Blockchain Capital, Slow Ventures, Mechanism Capital and Delphi Digital, among others.
“Polychain is inspired by the vision of a collective intelligence platform rewarding its users for accurately modeling and pricing esoteric assets,” Polychain Capital founder and CEO Olaf Carlson-Wee said in a press release. “Upshot provides deep insight into NFT markets and has already demonstrated the efficacy of their pricing models through industry-leading accuracy metrics, their appraisal of the Sotheby’s Bored Ape Yacht Club batch auction and more.”