25 Growing NFT Companies & Startups (2024)
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The rise of the blockchain has given rise to many exciting new, completely digital projects. Cryptocurrencies are probably the best-known example of blockchain technology. Recently a new trend in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), has become popular.
The trend first exploded in popularity when it was revealed that someone paid a whopping $69M to buy an NFT created by the artist Beeple.
The NFT market cap grew significantly during 2021 and reached a market cap of over $40B. In 2024 however, the NFT market has shrunk and has a cap of about $9.6B.
This list presents 25 growing startups that are making an impact on the NFT space.
1. Element Market
5-year search growth: 250%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2017
Location: New York, New York
Funding: $11.5M (Early Stage VC)
What they do: Element Market is a digital asset exchange. What makes the startup special is that it also serves as an aggregator that gathers and provides information on the value transfer of different NFTs.Element Market has held only 1 funding round, which has attracted 3 investors, with one of them being Dragonfly Capital Partners.
2. OneOf
5-year search growth: 75%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2021
Location: Miami, Florida
Funding: $12.6M (Seed)
What they do: OneOf is another startup that has played a considerable role in the segmentation of this industry. The company has built a community of music artists and fans to cooperate. With a $0 minting cost, OneOf offers music artists a way to create their digital assets at low prices and minimal environmental damage.
3. Own the Moment
5-year search growth: 167%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2021
Location: Tampa Bay, Florida
Funding: $120K (Pre-Seed)
What they do: Own the Moment has developed a set of tools that help users make better investments in the NFT space. The apps can gather data on a specific asset and provide analytics, discussions and forecasting to allow the investor to make a better-informed decision. Own the Moment joined the Techstars Sports Accelerator in June 2021.
4. KnownOrigin
5-year search growth: 238%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2018
Location: Manchester, UK
Funding: $4.68M (Series A)
What they do: KnownOrigin is an Ethereum-powered digital art marketplace for trading non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This marketplace is unique because all artwork is created and sold as a single entity. As of 2024, KnownOrigin has over 30,000 unique artwork owners and 75,000+ NFTs sold. In June 2022, eBay acquired KnownOrigin for an undisclosed amount.
5. Mintify
5-year search growth: 99x+
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2022
Location: New York, New York
Funding: $1.6M (Seed)
What they do: Mintify is a multichain aggregator, trading, and analytics platform for NFTs and digital assets. Key features of Mintify include the NFT trading terminal, notifications for upcoming NFT drops, price appraisal models, and more. According to the startup's website, over 100,000 traders have processed 200+ million transactions on the platform.
6. Spores
5-year search growth: 42%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2021
Location: Hanoi, Vietnam
Funding: $2.3M (Seed)
What they do: Spores brands itself as a cross-chain, DeFi-powered NFT ecosystem. Their governing and utility token, $SPO, which currently has a market cap of around $1.4M, gives life to the ecosystem by making it easy to fractionalize, mint, manage, and trade NFTs.
7. Hello Moon
5-year search growth: 118%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: New York, New York
Funding: Undisclosed
What they do: Hello Moon is an NFT and DeFi token marketplace on the Solana blockchain. The platform provides developers with real-time data feeds to track wallet and on-chain activity. Developers can upgrade to a premium membership to unlock more dev credits, data streams, and better customer support.
8. Autograph
5-year search growth: 5%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: Santa Monica, California
Funding: $205M (Series B)
What they do: Autograph, co-founded by NFL legend Tom Brady, is an NFT platform that helps celebrities create and sell NFTs to fans. The start has worked with some of the biggest names in sports, including Tiger Woods, Derek Jeter, Wayne Gretzky, Tony Hawk, Naomi Osaka, and Usain Bolt. As of May 2024, the company has raised over $200 million.
9. Ternoa
5-year search growth: 1,000%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2013
Location: Biarritz, France
Funding: $7.3M (Seed)
What they do: Ternoa has developed its own blockchain. They plan to use it to build something they call a Time Capsule non-fungible tokens. The idea is that Time Capsules will make it possible for users to encrypt, store and transfer data in a faster and more secure way. According to its roadmap, the startup started mining its first Time Capsules in August 2021.
10. Exchange.art
5-year search growth: 85%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2021
Location: London, England
Funding: $3.2M (Seed)
What they do: Exchange is a digital art marketplace on the Solana blockchain. Artists can create art and use the platform to mint and sell their creations as NFTs. The startup has facilitated over $21 million in art sales from more than 16,000 creators.
11. Only1
5-year search growth: 36%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2021
Location: Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Funding: $4.3M (Seed)
What they do: Only1 is a social platform that uses tokens as a means of engagement and rewards. Creators can use the platform to post their content (which other users then purchase.) This allows creators to monetize their name and their followers. Only1’s smooth transfers are partly due to the fact that their system is built on the Solana blockchain.
12. Yield Guild
5-year search growth: 900%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2020
Location: Quezon, Philippines
Funding: $36.2M (Initial Coin Offering)
What they do: Yield Guild is a decentralized autonomous organization (DEO) whose mission is to develop the largest virtual world economy. It aims to achieve its mission by gathering a community of play-to-earn gamers who play to earn and collect token rewards. Yield Guild’s vision has attracted funds from over 40 investors over 2 funding rounds.
13. Art Blocks
5-year search growth: 52%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2021
Location: Marfa, Texas
Funding: $6M (Seed)
What they do: Art Blocks is an NFT marketplace and platform focused on generative art. Artists write code that produces unique, on-demand artworks when collectors mint NFTs on the platform. Unlike other NFT platforms, Art Blocks generates on-demand, one-of-a-kind digital art based on an artist's algorithm. As of April 2024, the startup has processed over 270,000 transactions for a total of $1.46 billion in sales.
14. Zerion
5-year search growth: 4,100%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2016
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $33M (Series B)
What they do: Zerion is a non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet for NFT and DeFi portfolio management. Currently, Zerion supports 10+ networks, including Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Solana, and more. Today, the company supports over 300,000 monthly active users.
15. Dapper Labs
5-year search growth: 133%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2018
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Funding: $612.5M (Series Unknown)
What they do: Dapper Labs uses blockchain to deliver experiences and products to millions of people around the world. The startup brands itself as “THE” NFT company because it has been part of some of the most successful NFT projects, such as NBA Top Shot, CryptoKitties, and UFC on Flow. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that, according to PitchBook, Dapper Labs is one of the most heavily funded companies operating in this sector.
16. Bitski
5-year search growth: 200%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2016
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $23.3M (Series A)
What they do: Bitski is a platform where users can certify and trade assets. The startup brings the idea of the metaverse one step closer to reality as their system allows users to access assets from any device. Bitski’s platform has already been used to create over 300 apps.
17. Charged Particles
5-year search growth: 103%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2019
Location: Ontario, Canada
Funding: $1M (Seed)
What they do: Charged Particles, as their name suggests, is a system that charges NFTs by making it possible for them to contain multiple ERC-20 Tokens. This allows owners to monetize their assets by earning interest in the stored tokens. The startup has already attracted the interest of big crypto players such as CoinGecko and Moonwhale.
18. OpenSea
5-year search growth: 500%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2017
Location: New York, NY
Funding: $427.2M (Series C)
What they do: OpenSea is a marketplace for crypto-collectibles and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). It currently offers more than 13.5M items across 7 categories, including art, collectibles, sports and trading cards. The most popular collections on the platform (ranked by 7-day trading volume) include CryptoPunks, Hashmasks, and Rarible. It took 2 years from OpenSea’s June 2018 launch to reach their 20,000 user milestone. (They now have over 1M users).
19. BitsCrunch
5-year search growth: 3,300%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2021
Location: Munich, Germany
Funding: $10.6M (Series A)
What they do: BitsCrunch is an AI-powered blockchain analytics startup that provides NFT and digital asset data. The platform utilizes AI and ML algorithms to detect fraud and other forensic data for investment decisions and risk assessments. BitsCrunch token BCUT currently has a market cap of $20 million.
20. Animoca Brands
5-year search growth: 150%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2014
Location: Cyberport, Hong Kong
Funding: $838.6M (Secondary Market)
What they do: Animoca Brands is a blockchain, digital entertainment, and gamification startup. The startup develops games that incorporate NFTs to give players ownership of in-game assets. Not only does Animoca Brands develop their own products, but they have also made various investments into top NFT platforms like OpenSea.
21. CryptoSlam
5-year search growth: 700%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2018
Location: Overland Park, Kansas
Funding: $9M (Seed)
What they do: CryptoSlam is an aggregating platform that gathers sales volume data of NFTs and displays them in a centralized list. The startup currently aggregates data from 20+ blockchains. As of May 2024, total NFT sales volume on the platform surpassed $64.1 billion.
22. ConsenSys
5-year search growth: -31%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2014
Location: Brooklyn, New York
Funding: $726.7M (Secondary Market)
What they do: ConsenSys is a software engineering company specializing in building blockchain-powered infrastructures. The company has worked on multiple NFT projects, where they have built token launches and complete marketplaces—and everything in between. The startup’s success has attracted funding from global powerhouses such as MasterCard, JPMorgan Chase, and UBS, to name a few.
23. Legends Of Crypto
5-year search growth: 1,300%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2021
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Funding: Undisclosed
What they do: Legends of Crypto is a token-powered card game where players can win different collectibles. These items can then be traded for cryptocurrency. The startup is currently pre-revenue and is testing its beta with a private number of users.
24. Unisat
5-year search growth: 733%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2023
Location: Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Funding: Undisclosed (Seed)
What they do: UniSat is an open-source crypto wallet used to store, mint, and transfer Bitcoin NFTs. The non-custodial wallet also provides a a platform to trade Ordinals, Atomicals, BRC-20 and ARC-20 assets. In April 2024, the company announced they've reached 1 million weekly active users.
25. Vulcan Forged
5-year search growth: 500%
Search growth status: Peaked
Year founded: 2020
Location: Athens, Greece
Funding: $8M (Undisclosed)
What they do: Vulcan Forged is another gaming platform that lets players earn digital assets. Instead of focusing on building only one game, the startup has over 10 games with different themes. This system has been working quite well as it has allowed Vulcan Forged to amass over 200,000 users across their 15 games and decentralized applications.
Conclusion
This concludes our list of fast-growing startups utilizing blockchain technology to make access and usage of NFTs easier and more mainstream.
As can be seen from our list, startups competing in this sector are building the infrastructure, marketplaces, protocols and applications that are set to make NFTs a part of the future.
