NFT Creator Novel Raises $6M in Seed Funding

Novel Commerce, which helps brands, retailers and content creators create and sell NFTs (non-fungible tokens) has raised $6 million in seed funding.

As the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday (April 5), the seed round brings the value of the company to $21 million.

Based in New York, Novel lets retailers make NFTs and sell them without having to do the coding. The company also plans to offer its clients the ability to create content merchandise and discounts for their online stores and its NFTs, which are a type of cryptocurrency that can hold media like images, videos, songs or documents.

The Journal report noted that the funding comes at a time when many brands are venturing deeper into experiments with Web3, the term for the decentralized, blockchain-powered version of the internet.

Read more: As NFTS Go Mainstream, Mainstream Payment for Them Catches on, Too

And as PYMNTS wrote recently, the market for NFTs getting so big so fast that it won’t stay entirely crypto-centric for long.

While there’s still a lot of buzz around million-dollar CryptoPunk and Bored Ape Yacht Club collectibles, the building hype around metaverses — where everything you see is an NFT — is making a more recognizable currency a necessity.

Both Warner Music and Universal Music are purchasing “land” in the metaverse and teaming up with developers that can make NFT songs and albums a reality — especially as the format could make piracy much more difficult.

Brands have begun considering employing NFTs as a method of offering value to their customers and thus boosting the impact of the tokens, Mike Proulx, vice president and research director at Forrester Research Inc, told the Journal.

“We’re starting to see increasingly brands tie their NFT and/or metaverse-precursor experiments around loyalty programs, ‘plussing’ them up with additional access or things that you can get that make you feel special as a loyal customer,” Proulx said.

Novel wants to help marketers with that mission, said Anna Merzi, the firm’s co-founder and chief revenue officer, adding that this could mean, for example, NFTs that give their owners access to exclusive shopping experiences.