Solana-based NFT project Burnt Finance raises $3 million in seed funding

Burnt Finance, a Solana-based non-fungible token (NFT) minting and auction protocol, has raised $3 million in a seed funding round.

The funding was secured via a private token sale round, Burnt Banksy, the pseudonymous founder of the project, told The Block. The round was led by Alameda Research, with participation from Multicoin Capital, Mechanism Capital, DeFiance Capital, Vessel Capital, HashKey, Spartan, Polygon COO Sandeep Nailwal, Terra CEO Do Kwo, and others. Burnt Finance was incubated by Injective Protocol.

With fresh capital at hand, Burnt Finance plans to speed up the protocol development and launch new NFT collaborations "with a number of prominent artists," Burnt Banksy told The Block.

Burnt Banksy is best known for burning and creating an NFT of an original Banksy piece, "Morons," earlier this year and selling it for nearly $400,000 on the OpenSea platform. Banksy is a popular graffiti artist whose painting, "Love Is In The Air," is going on an auction next week at Sotheby's, and the auction house will accept bitcoin and ether for a physical artwork for the first time.

Besides NFTs, Burnt Finance plans to also support synthetic assets through its Solana-powered minting and auction protocol. The protocol is currently in the beta phase and is expected to launch in Q3 2021.

"We believe in the potential of the crypto auctions, and with Burnt Finance strive to address the needs of the market, launching the first fully decentralized auction protocol built on Solana," said Burnt Banksy.