There are several ambitious space initiatives in the works as we speak, and many of them have one thing common: they’re attempting to raise seed funding through NFTs. ExLabs hopes a crypto injection will facilitate its asteroid mining explorations.
Since the turn of the year, a host of space start-ups have jumped on the NFT bandwagon to raise money in novel ways.
We’ve had MoonDAO, which wants to go from buying a seat abord Bezos’ low-earth cruiser, to creating its own Moon colony with crypto. Elsewhere, FrontierDAO is using NFTs to fund research into its own commercial spaceflight.
In the case of ExLabs, the innovative tech outfit is developing asteroid mining tech with staff who previously worked at NASA and Space X – which is no stranger to ambitious projects itself.
This week, it announced plans to pursue ‘unconventional’ seed funding from NFTs and crypto, as it strives to build futuristic landers which, somewhat ironically, will mine otherworldly rocks.
Emphasising that NFTs are a side hustle and not the main enterprise, ExLabs head of operations Matthew Schmidgall stated: ‘We’re an aerospace company first doing an NFT project… our main focus isn’t in figuring out how to solidify and corner all of the elements of the NFT ecosystem.’
‘We want to be a part of it and help it evolve into a format that actually works and is trustworthy.’
In terms of what the company is actually planning to offer NFT and/or space buffs, we aren’t quite sure and Schmidgall isn’t giving a ton away. It does see potential life blood in NFTs beyond.