A Very Unique October Recap: News digest for October 2021
After one of the busiest months in our history, we take some time to recap our latest fundraise, multiple partnership announcements, NASDAQ op-eds, and the long-awaited Quartz crowdloan launch.
There’s been so much happening at Unique Network over the last month that we wanted to take some time to recap some of the amazing announcements and major moments happening in our world. To everyone out there supporting our project and the future of next-generation NFTs on Polkadot and Kusama, we thank you!
Unique Network Raises $11.3 Million For Next-Generation NFT Infrastructure
We shared the MAJOR news that we have raised $11.3 million in our second round of our pre-sale, bringing our total raised to $16 million! The investment round was led by Web3 investment pioneers and early Unique supporters, Outlier Ventures, who were joined by some of the most well-known NFT investors, including The LAO, Flamingo, Nalu Capital and over 200 other investors (including a number of follow-on investments from our previous round of funding!).
Read about our latest investment news on Yahoo
Quartz Crowdloan — LAUNCHED!
After many months of planning and anticipation, we finally went live with our Quartz Crowdloan. If you need a bit of a refresher, crowdloans give platforms like Unique a chance to win a parachain on their network, a process done through crowdsourcing KSM required for connecting our chain to theirs. The supporters of Unique Network can vote for Quartz to secure a slot on the Kusama Network by locking KSM tokens for a given period (a "lock period"). Upon securing a parachain slot, the Quartz crowdloan participants will be rewarded with QTZ tokens. Bonding KSM to a crowdloan is a great way for people to show their support to a project like Unique’s, and early participation equals higher rewards.
We were also proud to give 100 Chelobricks to the first 100 participants who staked 10 KSM or more. This drop went in minutes! On day one of the crowdloan, 17,500 KSM were committed, an incredible milestone for the entire team here at Unique. The crowdloan is still going strong with over 27,800 KSM bonded at the time of writing. You can submit KSM here!
Unique CEO & Founder Alex Mitrovich Wrote an Op-Ed for Nasdaq!
Our fearless leader went deep in the pages of NASDAQ for a spirited op-ed on the journey of NFTs! Alex takes us through the inception of NFTs on Ethereum to how an interoperability future on Polkadot reduced the limitations of its predecessor to power a more efficient, sustainable, and limitless potential for the next generation of blockchain we're building.
Unique Partnered with NFT Discovery Platform Artpool & Art Curator Grid
As one of our multiple partnerships from October, Unique has joined forces with Artpool, an NFT discovery and curation platform which will build their new NFT marketplace on Unique's infrastructure, utilizing many of our network's Advanced Tools & Features. Artpool and ACD are a fantastic and energetic team with a lot of passion in the art world, coming from traditional backgrounds into the new NFT frontier. We had a great time joining the team for their long-awaited launch in Lisbon, which included an installation and show from Fredrik Tjærandsen, who sold out his first NFT drop on their Unique-powered marketplace.
Read more about the Unique x Artpool Partnership
Forever Has Fallen to Release the World’s First Interactive & Story-Driven NFT Collection, Powered by Unique Network
Unique loves gaming! We especially love when next generation-blockchain gaming platforms can interact and build upon our infrastructure to create new exciting moments for the entire blockchain community. Enter Forever Has Fallen, a new form of entertainment that combines storytelling with interactive gameplay. As they wrap up their hotly tipped first season, which took fans and a few duped journalists by surprise, Forever Has Fallen will use our technology to add a new element to their ongoing series in the form of an NFT drop and collection.
Read more about the Forever Has Fallen Partnership
We Look Back on Substrapunks — Out Debut NFT!
For a retrospective article on our blog, we looked back on Substrapunks, the groundbreaking first NFT game on Polkadot. As a special homage to the influence and success of Cryptopunks, we released 10,000 Substrapunks in conjunction with the design and soft launch of our Marketplace in November of 2020.
Unique Partners with SupraOracles to Improve Data in NFTs
SupraOracles is an oracle platform that brings enterprise-standard oracles to the Web 3.0 ecosystem. Through their innovative technology, SupraOracles empowers the developer community with a novel oracles toolset that efficiently creates, deploys, and manages data applications. Our partnership with SupraOracles will combine Unique's white-label NFT technology with SupraOracle's novel oracle toolset to improve the composition of the dynamic NFTs that we're nurturing through our advanced tools, marketplace, and platform.
Read more about the SupraOracles partnership
Unique Comes in at a (close) 2nd Place for Best Whitelabel Marketplace at the NFT.NYC Awards!
We were honored to have been nominated for “Best Whitelabel marketplace creation platform” at the annual NFT.NYC awards, coming in at a close second behind Origin Protocol. Big thanks to everyone who sent a vote our way. We hope to see you at NFT.NYC this week! Make sure to follow us on Twitter and Telegram as we’ll be sharing our plans for the week (including a very Unique booth somewhere special).
Thanks again to the entire Unique community — new and old — for their support and energy over this monumental last month for our platform. We’re still just getting started, so rest assured there is lots more to celebrate in the very near future.
Make sure to stay updated and connected with what’s happening at Unique Network on our Twitter and Telegram!