Doodles, a popular NFT site, has appointed Pharrell Williams as its Chief Brand Officer. Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, led the first funding round for Doodles’ VC firm.
Ethereum NFT Project Doodles made two significant announcements at an event held alongside the NFT NYC Conference tonight.
They revealed that Pharrell Williams, the musician and producer, will be joining the project and that Seven Seven Six has led its first round funding.
Williams recently joined the NFT area with his own Gallery of Digital Assets project. He will now be Doodles’ Chief Brand Officer. Williams will be helping to shape the collection’s approach towards music, animation and consumer products.
Williams said, “I’m big fan of this brand,” in a recorded video message. “We are going to grow from the core community and bring Doodles up to new heights, to new levels.”
He will also serve as executive producer for “Doodles Records Volume 1”, an album of Doodles-inspired songs, which will be released in partnership by Columbia Records. According to a Doodles spokesperson the album will feature “major recording artistes” and artwork by Scott “Burnt Toast” Martin, Doodles artist.
Doodles’ album will be streamable on various platforms but only NFTs will be sold. The representative said that the Doodles album NFT would also come with additional, yet unspecified NFT collectibles.
In addition to the Williams news, Doodles creators announced that Seven Seven Six (VC firm of Alexis Ohanian), led a funding round for the project. This is Doodles’ first capital raise.
Ohanian stated that Seven Seven Six will work with Doodles to take all of the work done so far, and to bring it to another level and scale it further. Williams and Katelin Holloway, co-founders of Seven Seven Six, will be joining Doodles’ board.
The amount of funding was not disclosed.
The creators also revealed Doodles 2, a new NFT collection, at the event. It will feature millions of avatars (up from 10,000 in their original collection) and a wider range of traits as well as wearable items. Although the avatars won’t be available on Ethereum, the team didn’t reveal which blockchain they would release the new collection on.
Doodles was launched in October 2021. It has gone on to be one of the most important NFT collections on market. It has generated almost $500 million in secondary trading volume to date, according to CryptoSlam. Doodles has recently appointed Julian Holguin, former Billboard President, as its CEO.
An NFT is a proof that an item has been owned. It’s used for digital goods like unique profile photos (like Doodles), artwork, collectibles and game items.
Moonbirds was an Ethereum NFT collection that Seven Seven Six had previously invested. It launched this spring to great buzz. Moonbirds is a HTML3 startup by serial entrepreneur Kevin Rose and venture capitalist Seven Seven Six. It raised $10 million.
Ohanian is a vocal NFT advocate who has collected projects such as CryptoPunks, the Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks. He previously announced Web3 coinvestment initiatives with Polygon and Solana.
