NFT Market OpenSea Buys Dharma Labs Crypto Wallet, Changes CTO

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A television camera is seen in silhouette standing in front of “Autoglyph #177”, a non-fungible token (NFT), and “CryptoPunk #7523”, a series of 10,000 unique pixel-art characters made by Larva Labs in 2017, during a media preview of the ‘Natively Digital: A Curated NFT Sale’ auction at Sotheby’s in New York, U.S., June 4, 2021. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

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Jan 18 (Reuters) – NFT Marketplace OpenSea said on Tuesday it had purchased Dharma Labs, a digital wallet for cryptocurrencies, for an undisclosed amount, and said Dharma’s chief executive would become the company’s chief technology officer. OpenSea.

OpenSea, which was founded in 2017 and was recently valued at $13.3 billion in its latest venture funding round, said the deal would help it “significantly improve the experience of buying, minting and selling NFTs” on its marketplace.

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are a type of digital asset that exists on the recordkeeping technology blockchain. They’ve exploded in popularity over the past year, with people buying artwork and sports game video clips as NFTs.

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NFT sales reached some $25 billion in 2021, according to data from market tracker DappRadar, although there were signs of slowing growth towards the end of the year. Read more

OpenSea declined to share financial terms of the deal. Axios, which reported on the talks, said Dharma Labs raised around $15 million in funding. Data from research firm Crunchbase indicates that it raised $7.1 million.

OpenSea said its current chief technical officer, Alex Atallah, will take on a new outward-facing role overseeing the development of the company’s Web3 and NFT ecosystem, while Dharma Labs chief executive Nadav Hollander will take over. the post of Atallah.

“web3” is a general term used to describe a decentralized next phase of the internet running on blockchains, where users would have stakes in the platforms. Read more

“In 2021, NFTs exploded into mainstream consciousness in ways few could have imagined, and OpenSea grew nearly 1,000-fold virtually overnight,” Hollander said in a statement. “We now have the historic opportunity to build a truly generational product. I am excited to focus on scaling OpenSea’s technology to meet the reliability, performance and availability criteria that its users expect. and deserve.”

OpenSea said the Dharma Labs app will be shut down.

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Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford; edited by Jonathan Oatis

Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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