Unique Network, a next generation NFT chain for Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems, has raised $4.3 million in the first round of its pre-sale, led by Web3 investment pioneers Outlier Ventures. They are joined by Animoca Brands, DFG, and other investors. This investment will enable Unique Network to develop and grow its community, finalize the launch of Unique’s parachains on Polkadot and Kusama, and spur economic growth by open-sourcing its basic components, including a white label marketplace that enables anyone to build an NFT.
“The biggest problem we are seeing with NFTs is that Ethereum was not built for non-fungible tokens, it’s a network for fungible asset classes,” said Unique Network cofounder and CEO Alexander Mitrovich, who has led the platform since its inception and plans to use these raised funds as a catalyst for growth. “Unique Network was created with the intention of solving the gas dilemma, lowering the education barrier, and expanding the interoperability of NFTs beyond something cool to look at. We are building the framework that allows for NFTs to interact with each other, to make them malleable in a way that non-traditional users will understand and interact with. That is the only way we take this amazing technology to its next iteration.”
The Problem: First Generation of NFTs Is Overwhelmed
Unique Network is an infrastructure that will allow the next generation of NFTs to flourish. The network was developed out of an acute need for NFT platforms to find solutions for the existing barriers to entry in this sector: costly and cumbersome gas fees, high knowledge threshold of blockchain knowledge, scalability concerns, and sustainability concerns revolving around Ethereum’s governance protocol.
The Solution: NFTs for Everyone
As the first custom parachain explicitly designed for NFTs on Polkadot and Kusama, Unique has created a viable solution through its novel NFT pallet design and ownership restructuring, which address these impediments presented on Ethereum. The improvements made for interoperability and improved governance structures will enable users to experiment in generating their own NFT collections, royalties, and marketplaces. Concurrently, Unique Network has released an open-source repository of components that will enable anyone to launch their own custom NFT minting solution, wallets, and galleries from which they can engage in the metaverse.
“The current NFT craze has many retail investors running to invest in a single NFT in the hopes that it doubles or triples in value. This does nothing for the mainstream adoption of NFT technology, which has the capacity to transform dozens of industries in the same way DeFi has transformed more than banking. Unique Network has presented an innovative idea to bring this technology back to earth, and allow for community-driven NFT commerce,” said Jamie Burke, founder and CEO of Outlier Ventures.
“We’re very excited about what Unique is bringing to blockchain gaming and NFTs, raising the bar for functionality and interoperability, and hopefully this will be another milestone on the road to delivering property rights for gamers,” added Robby Yung, CEO at Animoca Brands.
In the months to come, Unique Network will launch on Kusama and Polkadot, and focus on bootstrapping the creation of a new generation of innovative NFT solutions for art, gaming, and many other use cases.
You can also learn more about Unique Network in the upcoming Polkadot Decoded, where CEO Alexander Mitrovich will be delivering a presentation titled “NFTs with Polkadot” on Thursday, May 20th.
