Moonbirds NFT plans raises $50M in Series A funding to keep NFT artwork “in chain”

The venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), along with Seven Seven Six, True Ventures, Collab+Currency, Flamingo DAO, SV Angel, and VaynerFund, recently led a $50 million Series A fundraising round for PROOF.

PROOF, the private community that developed the Moonbirds NFT collection, announced that it is transferring its blue-chip collection totally “in chain,” allowing photos to be entirely held within the underlying smart contract.

On August 30, Harri Thomas, director of products at PROOF, gave a community live webcast titled “Future PROOF,” in which he said:

“We’ve talked about putting the birds ‘on chain’, so what I’m here to tell you today is that they’re not only going to be ON chain, they’re going to be put IN chain.”

Thomas clarified how their Ethereum-based NFTs would differ from the majority of other NFTs, which are merely tokens that refer to off-chain locations where the photos are stored.

The 10K PFP NFT collection OnChainMonkey, which was introduced in 2021, is another example of an NFT project employing the similar methodology, according to Harris.

Thomas said that the smart contract team’s “main focus” is on this, so “hopefully not too long,” but he would not say when the NFT collection would make this change.

The first official Moonbirds collection extension, known as Moonbird Mythics, was also announced during the live stream. The Moonbirds NFT collection is scheduled to debut in early 2023.

The third NFT profile picture (PFP) initiative for the organization, the collection will include 20,000 NFTs.

Within 48 hours of becoming live in April, the Ethereum-based Moonbirds NFT project sold out all 10,000 of its computer-generated pixel owl avatars, generating $281 million in sales at the time.