Tioga Capital led a $5 million funding round for NFT utility platform Tropee

A $5.1 million (€5 million) seed investment was made in the NFT utility platform Tropee by the European web3 company Tioga Capital.

Sébastien Borget of The Sandbox, Thibault Launay of Exclusible, Grégoire le Jeune of Geometry, and Lorens Huculak, the creator of the OpenSea-acquired Gem, were among the cryptocurrency founders who took part in the equity round, which ended in August. Startup officials declined to disclose its valuation.

Investors have shown much interest in startups that simplify minting NFTs. No-code NFT minting platforms Highlight and Fair.xyz were recently backed by Haun Ventures and OpenSea.

Tropee concentrates on the "post-mint" experience rather than directly addressing the minting process.

The startup allows its clients to create experiences around a brand's NFTs with minimal technical expertise, according to founder François Mahl.

However, the startup's website implies that users must be familiar with wallets.

He said it might be an audiobook, an exclusive video, a celebrity 1-on-1, merchandise, or even an event.

According to Mahl, the current post-mint procedure is convoluted and has numerous user experience flaws, including reliance on Google forms and Discord servers.

Four people, including the co-founder of the French unicorn Meero, established Tropee in May last year.

According to Mahl, Tropee has assisted companies like Christian Lacroix and G-Star in developing experiences that add value to their NFT collections.

The value of non-fungible utilities.

Tropee is one of many early-stage startups that has received funding this year to enable users to inject utility into a new asset class typically associated with financial speculation.

Hang, an NFT membership platform, raised $16 million this year with leadership from Paradigm.

Arianee, a digital ownership startup, raised $21 million from Tiger Global and the French government's development bank, Bpifrance.

Electric Capital led a $4.2 million investment into Lasso Labs last month so that NFT holders could monitor the value of their holdings.

While marketplace volumes have slowed, the floor prices for popular collections have remained relatively stable this year, leading to these price increases.

The Block Research reports that OpenSea, a popular marketplace for Ethereum NFTs, saw its volume drop from nearly $5 billion in January to just $326.4 million in December.

Still, Mahl of Tropee isn't too concerned about the potential collapse in the base price of hot collections.

That shift, in his opinion, will help the technology become more closely associated with practicality.

People were buying "not because they were passionate about the community or their NFTs but because they wanted to make a quick buck," he said. "The next stage will involve purchasing NFTs to derive value from them, whether that value is monetary or experiential."