June 23, 2022
By Murtuza Merchant
Ethereum NFT project Doodles made a pair of significant announcements at an event hosted alongside the NFT NYC conference tonight, revealing that musician and producer Pharrell Williams will join the project and that it has raised its first round of funding led by venture capital firm Seven Seven Six.
Williams, who recently entered the NFT space with his own Gallery of Digital Assets (GODA) project, will join Doodles as Chief Brand Officer. In his new role, Williams will help shape the collection’s approach to music, artwork, consumer products, animation, and events.
“I’m a big fan of the brand,” said Williams in a pre-recorded video message at the event. “We’re going to build from the core community outward and bring Doodles to new heights, new levels.”
Additionally, he will serve as executive producer on an album of Doodles-inspired music called “Doodles Records: Volume 1,” which will be released in partnership with Columbia Records. The album will include “major recording artists,” per a Doodles spokesperson, and feature artwork from Doodles artist Scott “Burnt Toast” Martin.
The Doodles album will be available to stream via various platforms, but will only be sold via NFTs. According to the representative, the Doodles album NFT will also be bundled with additional, as-yet-unspecified NFT collectibles.
Alongside the news around Williams, the creators of Doodles also announced that Seven Seven Six, the VC firm of Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, led a funding round in the project. It’s the first capital raise for Doodles.
In a pre-recorded video message shown at the event, Ohanian said that Seven Seven Six plans to work with the Doodles team to “take all the work they’ve done so far and bring it to another level, scale it even further.” Seven Seven Six co-founder Katelin Holloway will join Doodles’ board, along with Williams.
The funding amount was not disclosed.
At the event, the creators also announced Doodles 2, a new NFT collection that will span millions of avatars—up from 10,000 in the original collection—and feature a wider array of traits along with wearable items. The avatars will not be released on Ethereum, but the team did not announce which blockchain the new collection will release on.
About the author
Murtuza Merchant is a senior journalist and an avid follower of blockchain, cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
