Originally Published - May 18, 2021
** Welcome to the very first edition of the Upshot Update đź‘‹**
It’s been an exciting month here at Upshot! We launched our open beta, welcomed thousands of new appraisers to the platform, and raised $7.5 million from some of the top funds in crypto. And we’re just warming up!
In this newsletter we’ll round-up the latest news, updates and insights from the team, and take a look at what’s happening across the NFT space. If you haven’t already, make sure you subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter so that you don’t miss a beat. Let’s dive in 👇
🌟 What’s New
Upshot’s open beta is live 🎉
Anyone can sign-up and start appraising NFTs on Upshot. This open beta period is an extension of our closed beta, just with a larger user base. We will use the beta period to gather user feedback and improve the product before an official launch.
We raised $7.5 million 🏦
Earlier this month we closed a $7.5M Series A funding round co-led by Framework Ventures, CoinFund, and Blockchain Capital. With this fundraising, we will be expanding our operations to work towards providing real-time price feeds using crowdsourced insights for any illiquid asset.
We’ll be kicking off a CryptoPunk competition 🔥
Our first appraisal competition is coming soon — making it possible to farm a CryptoPunk for the first time. Appraisers will be able to earn and redeem UPT for a handful of prized NFTs. Up for grabs will be a CryptoPunk, three Meebits, and some digital art pieces from leading artists.
Plus…
- We teamed up with Faze Banks to give away a Meebit to one lucky winner 🏆
- Upshot is using Chainlink’s VRF to bring efficient price-discovery to NFTs 🔗
- Bankless shared a primer explaining how to appraise NFTs on Upshot 🤑
- Upshot founder Nick Emmons joined Andrew Steinwold on the Zima Red podcast to talk about what Upshot is, how it can improve NFT price-discovery, and more đź‘‚
- We released a new intro video to help people learn how Upshot works 🎥
đź’ˇ Insights
What Efficient Price-Discovery Means for DeFi
NFTs are an incredibly powerful standard for representing almost anything in the decentralized world. Improving the efficiency of NFT price discovery and liquidity will help bridge the gap between NFTs and DeFi. In this post, we show why bridging this gap is so powerful by listing just some of the financial primitives it would enable.
đź–Ľ NFT Round-Up
What’s Happening ⚡️
+ A collection of nine CryptoPunks sold for $16.96M at Christie’s
+ Edward Snowden’s genesis NFT, “Stay Free,” was purchased for 2,224 ETH ($5.5M) by PleasrDAO, with all proceeds going to the Freedom of the Press Foundation
+ 18 prized Generation Zero Yats were sold during the Yat 💯 Destiny live auction, with “The Golden Key 🔑” topping the charts at $425,000. Can somebody say “Yat appraisals”?
Top NFT Sales (Last 30 Days)* đź’Ž
1. Save Thousands of Lives | 1,340 WETH ($5.1M)
2. Meebit #10761 | 700 WETH ($2.7M)
3. Dreaming at Dusk | 500 ETH ($2M)
Top NFT Collections (Last 30 Days)* đź–Ľ
1. CryptoPunks | Vol: $93.6M (+16%) | Sales: 1,008 (-27%)
2. Meebits | Vol: $64M | Sales: 3,491
3. NBA Top Shots | Vol: $54.2M (-59%) | Sales: 1.3M (+13%)
*Data from DappRadar
đź‘Ą Come Work With Us
Upshot is hiring across multiple roles!
We are a team of crypto-natives with deep experience working on some of the leading projects in the space — backed by the foremost funds and angels in crypto. At Upshot, we are committed to finding top talent looking to make an impact at the forefront of this burgeoning space.
Interested in working at Upshot? Check out our open positions đź‘Ą
Join the 🆙🏀 Community
Hop in the Upshot Discord to chat about all things NFTs with the team and fellow collectors! We’re building a collector-centric community and would love to have you be a part of it.
Stay tuned. We have more exciting announcements coming soon.