Blockchain Art Market MakersPlace Launched By Pinterest Employee Raises $2M

Date: May 01, 2025

MakersPlace allows creators to generate fingerprints on their artworks to show the ownership.

MakersPlace raises $2 million in a seed funding round. The investment was backed by Uncork Capital, Abstract Ventures, Draper Dragon Fund with participation from Pinterest, Coinbase, Facebook and Zillow.

MakersPLace, a blockchain art startup allows the creators to sell art prints online and in return, it charges 15 percent commission. Artists receive the payment in the form of unexchangable cryptocurrency token that they can keep in their MakersPlace crypto wallet or own crypto wallet.

Artists do not require to have in-depth knowledge of blockchain tech; they can easily fingerprint their creations. For online art sales, artists just need to give their photo ID then an ERC-20 will be created for their every work.

After a year of beta testing, the San-Francisco based startup finally launched its online platform yesterday.

MakersPlace co-founder and former Pinterest employee, Dannie Chu, said,

“At Pinterest, we noticed that there are millions of digital creators that are spending countless hours creating digital artwork, but they struggle with basic things like attribution.”

He further added,

“Their(artists) work is getting printed, copied, shared and ultimately they make very little money from it being put online. If you can’t create a sustainable model for digital creators to create, you’re not going to have art.”   

Working as an employee at Pinterest, Yash Nelapati saw the business opportunity in Pinterest drawbacks. He created a platform called MakersPlace to sell digital artwork. It allows the artist to produce blockchain fingerprint for their creations which will help in the authenticity of the artworks.

Uncork Managing Partner, Jeff Clavier stated,

“MakersPlace has already partnered with thousands of incredible digital artists selling their unique artwork, a testament to the easy-to-use platform they’ve built. They’ve also created a seamless and fun, one-stop-shop for discovering and collecting digital artwork.”

Traditionally, the online Art Sales industry sell their original artwork via e-commerce channels. According to reports, the industry is expected to grow larger, increasing at a rate of 11.3% annually to $2.2 billion over the five years to 2018.

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