Last year, the South China Morning Post of Hong Kong split off its NFT business into a new company called Artifact Labs.
Artifact Labs, a Web3 company that works to keep records of past events on the blockchain, has closed a $3.25 million funding round.
Blue Pool Capital led the round, and Animoca Ventures also took part. Blue Pool Capital is a fund that primarily invests the fortune of Jack Ma and Joe Tsai, the founders of Alibaba.
Artifact Labs stated in a press release that it intends to use the funds to expand the company’s operations, with an emphasis on hiring more developers.
“It’s not about creating new IPs for speculation – for example NFT hype projects – it’s about driving new engagement with historically significant collections by using Web3,” Phillip Pon, CEO of Artifact Labs, said in a release. “We want to carve new space in the younger public’s consciousness for historical brands and artifacts…while supporting these important organizations with new revenue streams to fund their preservation work, we are also solidifying immutable on-chain data preservation through NFTs.”
Artifact Labs secures $3.25M to preserve historical records
South China Morning Post (SCMP) in Hong Kong was the first company to help Artifact Labs grow. In 2021, the SCMP released ARTIFACT, a standard for non-fungible token (NFT) for recording historical data in 2021.
In 2021 and 2022, the newspaper did a brisk business selling NFTs of its historical front pages, such as the 1997 surrender of Hong Kong to China, the Avian flu outbreak, the Asian Financial Crisis, and the death of Princess Diana of the United Kingdom.
According to a statement from Artifact Labs, the company intends to generate revenue streams for preservation organizations by launching NFT collections. Additionally, Artifact Labs plans to develop and introduce new technology that will assist institutions in preserving their archives on the blockchain.
Content Source: coindesk.com
