Flow, a blockchain for non-fungible tokens built by CryptoKitties's creator Dapper Labs, raises $18M in a token sale
Mathew Di Salvo / Decrypt :
Context & Ripple Effects
Dapper Labs has been raising around its own chain for two years: a $15M round led by Venrock in late 2018 after spinning CryptoKitties out of Axiom Zen, then an $11.2M round in 2019 backed by a16z and Warner Music Group specifically to build Flow as a proof-of-stake chain designed for high transaction volume. The $18M token sale marks a shift in funding mode — from equity rounds to selling the network's own token.
That matters because Flow's pitch is consumer-scale NFTs, the use case that congested Ethereum when CryptoKitties launched there. The corpus shows the bet paying off downstream: Genies plans a digital-goods marketplace on Flow, and Live Nation's Ticketmaster later issues event ticket NFTs on the chain.
First-order effects
- Dapper Labs adds $18M to a war chest already spanning multiple equity rounds, while the token sale puts Flow tokens directly into buyers' hands — a holder base with a financial stake in the network's adoption.
- Selling tokens rather than equity exposes Dapper Labs to the securities question that equity investors never posed; the corpus later records a $4M class-action settlement alleging unregistered securities tied to its NFT sales.
Second-order effects
- A funded, dedicated consumer chain gives brands an alternative to building NFT projects on congested general-purpose chains — the opening Genies and Ticketmaster both take, pulling entertainment and avatar companies onto Flow rather than Ethereum.
- Token-sale funding pressures competing chains and NFT platforms to offer comparable community-alignment economics or concede the consumer-apps niche to purpose-built networks.
Third-order effects
- If brand NFT programs keep landing on vertical chains, blockchain competition shifts from general throughput to application-specific infrastructure — with each major consumer category potentially anchored to its own chain and its corporate steward.
- The pattern of token sales followed by securities litigation suggests consumer crypto funding will increasingly run into regulatory scrutiny over whether tokens and collectibles sold to the public are investment contracts.
The trend: Consumer NFT infrastructure is consolidating around purpose-built blockchains backed by entertainment brands, moving mainstream digital collectibles off general-purpose chains like Ethereum.