Non-fungible tokens (NFT) were all the rage in 2021. Now, however, the craze is showing signs of slowing down. Some are even talking about the bubble getting ready to pop. That hasn’t stopped Berlin-based startup FUEL from raising €1.5m in a new funding round. It now aims to become the “Shopify for NFTs.”
While Shopify has created an ecommerce platform enabling independent stores to sell wares, the FUEL platform empowers creators to build their own customer-branded NFT shop. The idea is that artists won’t need any technical skills to launch, manage and grow their NFT collections.
“FUEL is a platform for all kinds of creators, from digital artists to musicians and social media creators,” Csongor Barabasi, chief technology officer at FUEL, tells Verdict. “They can sell any type of digital content, from pictures and videos to in-game collectibles, tickets and VR merchandise.”
Motivating the raise, the FUEL founders point at how the sale of NFTs jumped from $95m in 2020 to $25bn in 2021. Others market estimates put the market cap achieved by the NFT sector at over $40bn last year. Investment bank Jefferies believes that figure could jump to $80bn by 2025.
They have a point. From the moment the artist Beeple sold a piece of art as an NFT for $69.3m at an auction in March last year, you could barely flip open a broadsheet out of fear of stumbling over another story about NFTs. Everyone suddenly wanted a slice of a market that had up until then been mostly associated with the CryptoKitties craze of 2019.