KnownOrigin
eBay bought it four months after its Series A, then wound it down two years on
One of the first NFT art marketplaces, started in Manchester in 2018, where digital artists minted their work and sold it to collectors on Ethereum.
- Capital raised (announced)
- Estimated
Recorded announced backing; this is separate from cash received, customer deposits and money recovered.
- Creators on the platform, February 2022
- Estimated
Company-reported creators at the February 2022 raise; not buyers, active users or a sales measure.
Funding
| Round | Date | Announced | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Series A | 2022 |
Announced is what was said at the time. Cash actually received is rarely disclosed and is not assumed to match.
People
| Name | Role | Period | Now | Last checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| David Moore | Jan 2018 – end | Strategic adviser to Cifr.io (contract), December 2025 to June 2026 | Oct 2026 | |
| Andy Gray | Jan 2018 – end | Founder of BlockRocket, a Manchester Web3 and AI consultancy whose founders built KnownOrigin | Oct 2026 | |
| James Morgan | Jan 2018 – end | Founder of BlockRocket, a Manchester Web3 and AI consultancy whose founders built KnownOrigin | Oct 2026 |
Timeline
2018
Started from a Manchester basement as one of the first NFT art platforms.
22 June 2022
eBay said the deal was signed and closed on 21 June 2022 and called it a step in its push into digital collectibles.
February 2024
Reported as part of eBay's company-wide job cuts in early 2024.
17 July 2024
5 December 2024
Users were given until 9 December 2024 to log in and download their historic data.
How it ended
On 17 July 2024, two years after eBay bought it, KnownOrigin announced that it would wind down its on-chain marketplaces and minter over the following weeks and point users to secondary marketplaces such as OpenSea and Magic Eden. The site stayed up with reduced functionality until December 2024, when KnownOrigin said the marketplace would be replaced by a standalone information page and gave users until 9 December to download their historic data.
What happened next
- Aftermath17 April 2026
Value Added Resource reported that layoffs at eBay's Manchester office had cleared out much of the remaining KnownOrigin team, citing posts by departing staff, including the company's first employee.
Still alive
Open spot
KnownOrigin is gone. Is your NFT marketplace still running?
Spotlight your project here.
Sources
16 sources behind this page.
- 1BlockRocket (homepage and team section) · BlockRocket
- 2EBay Acquires NFT Marketplace KnownOrigin for Undisclosed Amount · CoinDesk · Jun 2022
- 3UK-Based NFT Platform KnownOrigin Secures $4.85M Series A Investment · CoinJournal (reporting a company press release)
- 4Does Ebay's NFT marketplace KnownOrigin shutdown raise storage concerns? · crypto.news · Jul 2024
- 5Ebay acquires NFT marketplace · Drapers · Jun 2022
- 6eBay Acquires Leading NFT Marketplace, KnownOrigin · eBay Inc. (company newsroom) · Jun 2022
- 7Contributors to knownorigin/known-origin-contracts-v3 · GitHub
- 8GitHub profile: andygray · GitHub · user-editable
- 9GitHub profile: jamesmorgan · GitHub · user-editable
- 10LinkedIn profile of David Moore · LinkedIn (self-published profile, viewed by a person) · user-editable
Show 6 moreShow fewer
- 11Manchester Start-Up KnownOrigin Has Raised £3.5m For Their NFT Digital Art Marketplace · Manchester's Finest (reproducing a company press release) · Feb 2022
- 12The Manchester startup democratising the art world raises £3.5m for NFT digital art marketplace · Startups Magazine (reproducing a company press release) · Feb 2022
- 13X account lookup: @selfmadeheroes · twitterapi.io (X data provider)
- 14X search: @KnownOrigin_io posts mentioning "David" · twitterapi.io (X data provider)
- 15eBay Quietly Pulls Back from Web3 With UK Layoffs Amid AI, Live Shopping and C2C Strategy Shift · Value Added Resource · Apr 2026
- 16eBay's KnownOrigin Winds Down On-Chain Marketplace & Minters For NFT Cryptoart · Value Added Resource · Jul 2024
Every figure above is clickable and opens the sources behind it. Copies were stored when each source was read, so a citation still resolves after the page it came from is gone.