Vera, a non-fungible token (NFT) decentralized finance (DeFi) blockchain platform, recently completed its seed round of funding for a total of $3 million. The round was led by Animoca Brands, one of the world’s leading NFT gaming companies and investors, with participation from other venture capital and private equity investors such as OKEx Block Dream Fund, Genesis Block Ventures, Krypital Group, Shima Capital, SL2 Capital, Mozaik Capital, Sentor Investments, and Sandbar Investments.
With early grant backing from Web3 Foundation—founded by Dr. Gavin Wood, the founder of Polkadot blockchain—Vera developed its initial technologies on Substrate and supports NFT applications and games built on any blockchain such as Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, and Binance Smart Chain.
Yat Siu, co-founder and chairman of Animoca Brands, said, “Just like how a traditional mobile game should not have to build a bank to allow players to use in-app financial services, a blockchain NFT game or marketplace should not have to build and maintain a decentralized financial platform for its users. Vera is building a secure decentralized financial platform that is urgently needed in the NFT space to enable several essential financial services which many of us take for granted in the real world. We look forward to being a catalyst to help Vera become a leading open financial platform for all NFT assets.”
“After building several blockchain projects for enterprise clients such as Dapper Labs and Northern Trust, the 4th largest bank in the world, our team noticed the lack of trustworthy decentralized financial services for the new NFT asset class,” said Denis Lam, founder of Vera. “You should not need to be a billion-dollar company to build your own secure financial services for your app, and even if you can afford to do so, it’s probably a huge distraction and strategic risk for your core business model.”
The Silicon Valley-based startup plans to use the funds for product development, secure and audit its smart contracts, and expand its ecosystem into several upcoming major NFT games and metaverse ecosystems.
“Our goal is to be the largest DeFi network for NFT assets so anyone connected to it can contribute to and share the rewards of a growing economy,” explains Lam. “To accomplish this, Vera is actively growing its ecosystem partners and integrating our technology with our partner’s NFT applications so their millions of users and NFT collectors will finally have access to reliable, trustworthy, and rewarding financial services.”
About Vera
Vera is the most powerful open financial platform for non-fungible token (NFT) assets. Vera offers decentralized financing, leasing, lending, and other essential financial services for any NFT marketplace, game, or application. Founded in 2021 and backed by notable investors in the decentralized fintech space such as Animoca Brands (leader in blockchain gaming and NFTs; key investor in Axie Infinity, Open Sea, Dapper Labs, CryptoKitties, and many more) and the Web3 Foundation, Vera’s mission is simple: To build open, secure, and powerful NFT financial products that are equally available to everyone everywhere.
Image by Robert Bye from Unsplash