Moonbirds will store NFT art ‘in chain’ — Raises $50M in Series A funding

Storing an NFT “in chain” means that the NFT can be generated completely off the underlying smart contract, without any need for an off-chain storage provider.

PROOF, the private community behind the Moonbirds NFT collection, has announced it is shifting its blue-chip collection completely “in chain” — allowing images to be fully contained within the underlying smart contract.

In a community live stream named “Future PROOF” on Aug. 30, Harri Thomas, director of products at PROOF explained that the new approach will mean that in the future, the viewable image of a Moonbird NFT will be “constructed from the contract itself from art layers, which are going to be stored on the blockchain.”

“We’ve talked about putting the birds ‘on chain’, so what I’m here to tell you today is that they’re not only going to be ON chain, they’re going to be put IN chain.”

Thomas explained that their Ethereum-based NFTs will be different from most other NFTs which are simply tokens that point to where the images are stored off chain.

“This is an unusual approach. Certainly not unique,” explained Harris, adding that another example of an NFT project using the same approach is OnChainMonkey, a 10K PFP NFT collection launched in 2021.

Thomas declined to provide a date for when the NFT collection will make this shift, but noted that it is a “primary focus” for the smart contract team, so “hopefully not too long.”

Co-founder and chief product officer Justin Mezzell, who was one of the hosts of the live stream added:

“It's cool to enter that rarefied space of a fully in-chain project and making sure that this project is really fully decentralized and viewable for just generations.”

The live stream also revealed the first official expansion of PROOF’s Moonbirds collection, known as Moonbird Mythics — is expected to launch in early 2023.

The collection will span 20,000 NFTs, and is the organization’s third NFT profile picture (PFP) project.

$50M in funding

PROOF has just raised $50 million in a Series A funding round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), along with participation from Seven Seven Six, True Ventures, Collab+Currency, Flamingo DAO, SV Angel, and VaynerFund.

“It’s great to have this vote of confidence from some of the most respected investors in Web3, as well as capital to keep delivering great products and services as we mature this business over the long term,” said PROOF founder Kevin Rose.

In April, the Ethereum-based Moonbirds NFT project completely sold out its collection of 10,000 computer-generated pixel owl avatars within 48 hours of launch, netting $281 million in sales at the time.

Its success despite the bear market earned it a title as a “blue-chip” NFT.