Palm NFT Studio announced a $27 million Series B investment round including Microsoft’s M12 venture fund and Warner Bros.
As the NFT space grows, developers are seeking solutions to reduce Ethereum’s significant environmental effects, congestion issues, and transaction costs. Palm has emerged as a bespoke, NFT-centric sidechain and scaling solution to address those concerns, and the creative studio behind it has now attracted some significant new investors.
Mircosoft and Warner Bros raised for Palm NFT Studio
Microsoft’s M12 venture fund led a $27 million Series B fundraising round for Palm NFT Studio today. Griffin Gaming Partners, SK Telecom, RRE, Third Kind Venture Capital, Sfermion, and The LAO, an investment-focused decentralized autonomous organization, are among the round’s other notable participants (DAO).
“It was critical for us to find strategic partners that were philosophically and politically aligned with what we’re trying to do here when we went to raise this money,” Palm NFT Studio CEO Dan Heyman told Decrypt. “I can’t think of a better group than the one we’ve put together.”
Microsoft is arguably the most interesting name on the list, not only because it led the round through its venture arm, but also because it is the most interesting name on the list.
So far, Microsoft has only dabbled in the NFT space, releasing free NFTs in conjunction with a Minecraft teaching program earlier this year, as well as others in conjunction with the launch of Windows 11.
Mircosoft Involvment in the Ethereum field
Microsoft has been involved in the Ethereum field for several years, including a 2015 partnership with ConsenSys, the parent company of Palm NFT Studio, which also finances the editorially independent Decrypt. Microsoft is beginning to look beyond private, permissioned blockchain implementations and into broader use cases, according to Heyman.
“Now they’re attempting to push the edge and figure out how that private chain experimentation and innovation might be used to other projects,” he said. “We’re ecstatic that they’ve selected Palm NFT Studios as their first public NFT partner.”
Another reason Microsoft was drawn to Palm was its ecologically sensitive architecture, according to Heyman, with transactions utilizing an estimated 99 percent less energy than Ethereum’s mainnet.
Palm NFT Studio has also collaborated with Damien Hirst on his NFT drops, while other studios, like Candy Digital, have used the decentralized system for their Major League Baseball NFTs.
“Everything done well is art.”
We’re excited to witness Great Expectations, the second NFT collection by @hirst_official, which launched as an airdrop on @HENIGroup!
The NFTs have been airdropped to holders of #TheCurrency NFTs on @PalmNft.
🟡🔴🟢🔵🟣https://t.co/2wVEZRbS3O
— PalmNFT (@PalmNft) November 27, 2021
An NFT functions as a receipt or deed of ownership for a valuable digital asset, such as photos, video files, or interactive video game elements. The NFT industry has grown dramatically in 2021, with $10.7 billion in trading volume in Q3 alone.
Warner Bros. is a long-time Palm NFT Studio partner
Warner Bros. is a long-time Palm NFT Studio partner, and the two collaborated on a free NFT drop in October for its DC FanDome streaming event. According to Heyman, Palm distributed hundreds of thousands of free NFTs to DC Comics fans who registered for the event.
Such activities reflect the studio’s plans for large-scale fan involvement projects in the future. While big-ticket NFT sales are significant to the industry, Heyman claims that the number of active collectors is modest.
Instead, he believes that when more use cases emerge and society advances beyond the “rental model” of streaming media providers, NFTs will become “quite common.” He also expects that, like the DC FanDome memorabilia, most NFTs will eventually be given away for free as a keepsake or engagement tactic.
Heyman draws to the emergence of NFT avatars and vinyl records as two seemingly disparate trends that connect at the concepts of identity, ownership, and people wanting to acquire and cling onto things they love, as well as his own childhood love of music CDs.
“The opportunity with NFTs, in my opinion,” he continued, “is to fundamentally reinvent the relationship between fans and creators.” “In the digital context, NFTs give a tremendous potential to do it at scale.”
