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Leading solana-based nft market magic eden has become a unicorn in less than a year since its launch last September. The last round of funding raised its assessment to $1.6 billion. The founders promised to accelerate his hiring frenzy despite the trend of downsizing hitting crypto companies in the middle of market crashes.
A Multi-Shain Ambition.
Magic eden – a nft market that accounts for over 90% of the nft volume on solana – announced it had raised an additional $130 million, its valuation reaches $1.6 billion. This is roughly a tenfold increase from its valuation three months ago, according to a source acquired by Bloomberg.
The news came in the context of a growing wave of pessimism clouding the crypto industry, with exchanges like COINBASE and Gemini massively trimming their workforce sizes to survive through the months-long bear market. The company decided to go against the grain, ready to nearly triple its workforce to 140 of the current 50 employees.
Jack lu – co-founder of magical eden – the volume of nft transactions on its platform has continued to increase in recent months, although the ground price has decreased by more than 80% compared to the previous year. The company had $7.5 million in revenue in May and has been profitable since inception, he said. The objective of the platform is to achieve an annual turnover of 100 million dollars.
Based on the information gathered, the dominant platform on solana is ready to use the newly mobilized capital to expand its primary and secondary markets and support content creators.
Zhuoxun yin, coo de magie eden and an old chef de produit coinbase, revealed that the market plans to service noteworthy nft projects beyond the solana network and support multiple blockchains in the future. However, Yin did not specify what blockchain in addition to Solana will be deployed on the market first.
Its main rival, OpenSea, currently supporting Solana, Ethereum, Klaytn, and Polygon, was valued at $13.3 billion by January this year. Founded less than a year ago, Magic Eden has risen to be one of the top three NFT marketplaces, according to Dappradar. Its primary platform – launchpad – has more than 250 projects and its secondary market has more than 7,000 collections.
Solana or Ethereum
Sequoia Capital – the famed VC behind Magic Eden, previously expressed concern over OpenSea’s dominance in the NFT market, stating that the platform could take advantage of the Solana ecosystem before OPENSEA expanded its services to the blockchain.
Solana attracted mainly retail investors because of the significant advantage of Solana's gas charges for processing NFT transactions. However, the network is also known for its frequent turnoffs due to technical difficulties, causing temporary suspensions on block production and processing transactions. As such, safety is a major concern for the Solana system.
