NFT Marketplace Magic Eden Secures $27M Series A

Venture capital firm Paradigm led the raise

March 14, 2022 01:09 pm

Blockworks exclusive art by Axel Rangel

The capital will go toward staff expansion, product development and future partnerships
Other investors include Sequoia Capital, Electric Capital, Greylock Partners, Kindred Capital, Variant Fund and Solana Ventures

Magic Eden, a Solana-based NFT marketplace, announced a $27 million Series A funding round on Monday. The round was led by Paradigm with participation from Sequoia Capital, Electric Capital, Greylock Partners, Kindred Capital, Variant Fund and Solana Ventures.

The raise will go toward staff expansion, future partnerships and product development.

Jack Lu, CEO and co-founder of Magic Eden, told Blockworks that the funding will “help [them] expand as a company, including hiring the best talent, improving [their] product and infrastructure and investing in community initiatives.”

Newsletter

Subscribe to The Breakdown

Among those initiatives is MagicDAO, a recent attempt to launch a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) gated by the startup’s NFT (non-fungible token) collection Magic Ticket. The project airdropped 30,602 such tickets, which provide access to the group’s Discord channels, to community members and plans to involve those members in governance decisions in the future.

Magic Eden has recorded over $736 million in total trading volume since its launch last year — establishing itself as the largest Solana marketplace, according to data dashboard DappRadar.

Trading volumes for Magic Eden, however, have declined 85.76% to roughly $41 million in the past month — mirroring the performance of the broader NFT market.

The NFT marketplace OpenSea’s trading and transaction volumes fell as well, declining 22.4% and 11.61% respectively over the past month. OpenSea, unlike Magic Eden, auctions off NFTs on Ethereum and Polygon.

Paradigm, which launched a $2.5 billion crypto fund last November, is an investor in OpenSea as well.Benjamin Cohen, managing partner of crypto fund Web 3 Equities, previously told Blockworks when a market is as fast as OpenSea, it is “fair to assume that [it] will experience large swings and corrections.”

Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

The Breakdown: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.
0xResearch: Alpha in your inbox. Think like an analyst.

Tags

Newsletter

The Breakdown

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Digital Asset Summit 2026

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 24 - 26, 2026

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

buy tickets learn more

recent research

Research

Kinetiq Protocol: From LST Infrastructure to HIP-3 Deployer

Kinetiq has established itself as Hyperliquid's dominant liquid staking protocol, holding 82.5% of LST market share with $610M in TVL. The protocol is now expanding beyond its kHYPE staking core into higher take-rate verticals: iHYPE for institutional custody rails, Launch for HIP-3 capital formation, and Markets for builder-deployed perpetuals. We view Markets, launching Jan. 12, as the highest-potential product line given its mechanically scalable, activity-linked unit economics. Near-term revenue remains anchored by kHYPE's KIP-2 fee schedule (~$1.6M annualized), while Markets provides embedded optionality if HIP-3 economics normalize post-Growth Mode. KNTQ's setup is relatively clean: zero insider unlocks until November 2026, 6.2% buyback yield from staking revenue, and cleared airdrop overhang. Risks center on unproven Markets execution, declining kHYPE TVL despite ongoing incentives, and competition from Hyperliquid's native initiatives.

by Shaunda Devens