NFT marketplace Rarible raises $1.75 million in seed funding round

The non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Rarible has raised $1.75 million in a seed round.

The round was led by crypto fund 1kx, and was joined by ParaFi Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Bollinger Investment Group, MetaCartel Ventures and Rarible's pre-seed investor CoinFund, among others. The fundraise -- one of the first major seed rounds in the nascent NFT space -- was an equity deal with a grant of tokens, the startup told The Block.

Funding in hand, some of the priority goals for the Rarible team include further decentralization, community ownership, building an NFT protocol, and solving current issues that users face today. In November, The Block reported on the marketplace's problems wherein Rarible users with verification and high followings were resorting to artificially inflating their buying and selling activity for profit. 

According to Anjan Vinod, an investment analyst at ParaFi Capital, Rarible has emerged as a leading marketplace and community for NFTs in the past year.

"We believe all types of assets across gaming, art, music, and finance will become tokenized," he said. "The Rarible team has built one of the best user experiences for creating, trading, and interacting with NFTs."