Numerai – the DeFi protocol known for its data science tournament to drive hedge fund investment decisions – has closed a $3M token sale with participation from Union Square Ventures, Placeholder VC, and others.
Numerai has closed $3mil in funding from Union Square Ventures, Placeholder, CoinFund, Dragonfly Capital and others.
“According to DeFi Pulse, a total of $2.1 million worth of tokens are locked in the Erasure protocol” writes @celiawan2 of @TheBlock__ https://t.co/w3vXvTi3CN— Numerai (@numerai) June 3, 2020
Numerai’s latest product, Erasure, enables a decentralized data market for buyers to purchase information. As it stands today, the application is the 17th largest in terms of total value locked (TVL), aggregating $2.1M in DAI and NMR.
For those unfamiliar, Erasure gives those who need information a means of locking value as a reward for fulfilling the request. If someone is able to fulfill the request, they can upload a file containing the information. If the requesting party is satisfied, they can release the reward. If they’re dissatisfied, the reward is destroyed.
While this seems like a niche concept, Erasure has quickly grown to prominence in the DeFi community. Requests are happening every day. As a quick example, here’s Richard Chen asking where a certain melody was from for $10.00. The request was filled in a matter of hours.
WANTED 📣
‘Where this melody is from https://t.co/38kDCbQiED‘ — @richardchen39 paying $10.00 https://t.co/IcrtlAAFZ1— Erasure Bay (@ErasureBay) May 15, 2020
With fresh new capital readily available, Numerai will be directing the funds towards Erasure’s development and continue to build out the Numerai-based decentralized data marketplace. Investors for the round include Union Square Ventures, Chris Burniske’s Placeholder VC, Dragonfly Capital, and Numerai Founder Richard Craib.
Last year, in March 2019, Numerai also raised $11M from a token sale led by Paradigm, Placeholder, and others.
Since today’s announcement, the NMR token has surged +12% while the application’s value locked increases in parallel at +14%, according to DeFi Pulse.
If you’re interested in staying up to date with Numerai, you can follow Numerai on Twitter here. If you’re interested in watching or fulfilling data requests, make sure to follow Erasure Bay on Twitter here!
Analyst at Bankless – one of the leading resources for open finance. Lucas is an active contributor to the DeFi ecosystem with appearances in other notable DeFi outlets including The Defiant and Our Network. He has years of experience working with dozens blockchain and token startups where he focused on token economics, marketing, and growth.