SudoRare, a hybrid non-fungible token (NFT) platform, has been involved in a rug pull barely six hours after the trading platform went live.
While the initial narrative was that the exchange was attacked by cybercriminals, blockchain security protocol Peckshield later revealed that chances are that it was the NFT trading platform’s developers that looted its customers.
According to Peckshield’s data, a total of 519 Ethereum coins (worth approximately $820,000) along with some LooksRare (LOOKS) and USDC were carted away. Investigations revealed that the funds had been moved to three addresses with one of them linked to an account on the Kucoin trading platform.
The suspicion that it was the project developers that were behind the attack was hinged on the fact that the platform’s social media handles as well as its medium page has been closed down. This will be another blow to the NFT community as the trust placed on a supposedly innovative protocol was dashed before the outfit could even prove itself.
The SudoRare NFT platform was allegedly designed as a trading outfit that combines the decentralized NFT pool model of SudoSwap with the centralized and reward-based model of the LooksRare platform. If the NFT trading platform had not been rugged, it might have provided a measure of competition to existing outfits including LooksRare, Magic Eden, and OpenSea.
Exploits and pre-meditated attacks are not uncommon in the growing digital currency ecosystem. With developers known to abandon projects in the past as in the case of SushiSwap, its occurrence tapered over the past year with hacking and phishing attacks taking the centre stage amongst DeFi and NFT protocols.
This year has been a very tumultuous year in general as the biggest exploit, involving the more than $620 million drain on the Ronin Bridge, has been recorded thus far. Besides this, protocols like the Nomad Network and even Crypto.com has suffered hacks this year, further casting doubts on the security capacity of the entire DeFi and NFT infrastructure.
eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) continues to deepen its footprint in digital collectables. The e-commerce giant announced on Wednesday that it has acquired the U.K-based non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace KnownOrigin. The terms of the acquisition were undisclosed.
The latest acquisition is important for eBay’s tech-led reimagination as part of the company’s effort to develop a top destination platform for digital artwork collectables as well as sales.
Jamie Iannone, CEO of eBay, talked about the development: “we will remain a leading site as our community is increasingly adding digital collectables. KnownOrigin has built up an impressive, passionate and loyal group of artists and collectors making them a perfect addition to our community of sellers and buyers.”
Since established in 2018 in Manchester, UK, KnownOrigin has remained a marketplace that allows collectors and artists to create, purchase, and resell NFTs via blockchain-support transactions. Since its establishment, KnownOrigin has witnessed huge growth and trade volumes as it has revolutionized the way users create, buy, and sell NFTs.
eBay’s tech-led reimagination has resulted in massive upgrades to the firm’s technology, performance and customer experience, including tools making it easier to discover, buy and sell anything.
As a part of such reinvention, last month, eBay started allowing the buying and selling of NFTs with the launch of its first collection of NFTs in partnership with web3 platform OneOf. The firm said the surge in the collectables market led to its first-ever collaboration in the NFT landscape.
Rising Demands of NFT
Crypto has shown its potential to the world about its real efficiency and shaping the economy of the digital era. Likewise, NFTs, a niche of cryptocurrency, has created another way of reaching the top, building what crypto took years to develop in decades.
NFTs have created a way for the artists and many other professionals to showcase and mint their works as NFTs. It is a great diversion in the crypto era where users began working on mining their NFTs.
The NFT market has introduced businesses, investors, users, and ordinary people to exploit great opportunities. More celebrities, including musicians, sportspersons, movie stars, and others have turned their interests in this digital token to create their own NFT collections and sell them.
The NFT craze has remained as strong in 2022 as it was last year. Lots of big mainstream businesses are setting up NFT shops in hopes of discovering a new revenue model.
Everyone from GameStop, Visa, The NFL (National Football League), Softbank, Coinbase, Rackuten, WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), Tech Mahindra, Spotify, Associated Press, USFL, Animoca Brands, and other have their own NFT marketplaces in some stage of planning, while some have launched recently.
Video game retail giant GameStop is entering the crypto world through a partnership with an Ethereum-based digital assets marketplace.
In a new press release, GameStop says they are teaming up with Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Immutable X (IMX) to create a joint non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace.
“Immutable X will also become a layer-2 partner and platform for GameStop and the company’s NFT marketplace that is expected to launch later this year.”
The deal will establish an up to $100 million fund in IMX coins to kickstart the creation of NFTs, and the possibility of earning $150 million more in tokens if certain achievements are met.
“The partnership establishes an up to $100 million fund in Immutable X’s IMX tokens, which the parties intend to use for grants to creators of non-fungible token content and technology…
In addition, the terms provide for Immutable X providing up to approximately $150 million in IMX tokens to GameStop upon the achievement of certain milestones.”
The gaming retailer first stated its intentions to create an Ethereum-based NFT marketplace last May, though they had not yet picked a partner at that time.
News of the partnership sent Immutable X skyrocketing, as the token went from a seven-day low of $2.49 to a peak of $4.13 in just a few days, a staggering 66% increase. IMX has since stabilized and is exchanging hands at $2.94 at time of writing.
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Featured Image: Shutterstock/Natalia Siiatovskaia/WindAwake
OpenSea has become the home of NFT trading, but its various problems are leading users to seek out alternatives.
LooksRare caused a storm when it launched with a token for active OpenSea traders last month.
Coinbase NFT should also have a major impact on the space once it launches this year.
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OpenSea became the go-to NFT marketplace during the technology’s 2021 boom. However, the platform’s high fees, centralized model, and recent listing issues have driven collectors to seek out alternative options for buying and selling non-fungibles.
NFTs and OpenSea
To talk about the rise of NFTs is to talk about the rise of OpenSea.
Launched in December 2017, OpenSea emerged as the first open marketplace for Ethereum-based NFTs. Over the next three years, OpenSea quietly developed its platform, catering to the few blockchain geeks who were weathering the crypto bear market by trading CryptoKitties and MoonCats, two historical NFT projects that were among the first collections traded on OpenSea.
While OpenSea had found its niche, it wasn’t until January 2021 that the platform started to realize its true potential. On the back of high-profile NFT sales such as Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5,000 Daysand the advent of NFT avatar collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club, NFTs quickly gained popularity and notoriety in both the crypto and mainstream worlds. OpenSea had a tremendous ten-fold increase in revenue between January and February 2021, but this was only a taste of things to come.
Throughout the rest of 2021, OpenSea’s revenues kept increasing. According to data from Token Terminal, OpenSea’s current revenue stands at $440 million for January 2022, making it the marketplace’s best month ever. With an estimated 90% of the total market share of NFT trading venues, OpenSea achieved a $13.3 billion valuation in a raise led by venture capital giants Paradigm and Coatue at the beginning of the month. However, despite its successes, several factors are driving many in the NFT community away from the leading NFT marketplace in favor of smaller alternatives.
The Problems With OpenSea
One common complaint with OpenSea centers on its high fees. 2.5% of the final sale value for every NFT sold goes straight to OpenSea, which is one reason for the company’s high margin profits. Factoring in OpenSea’s fees with the high royalties paid on some collections, users stand to lose up to 10% of the final sale value on secondary sales of NFTs.
Those focused on the ideals of Web3 and decentralization also take issue with OpenSea’s high degree of centralization. Many members of the NFT community had hoped that OpenSea would issue a governance token to its users to help decentralize the company and give back to the users who were instrumental in its growth. However, these hopes were seemingly shot down in December when OpenSea’s new Chief Financial Officer, Brian Roberts, revealed that he had hopes of taking the company public through a stock offering. Although Roberts quickly backtracked on his words, an OpenSea token does not look likely anytime soon.
As OpenSea is centralized, there’s a risk that it will create a closed ecosystem akin to existing Web2 platforms. As a demonstration of the centralization issue, OpenSea recently froze 16 NFTs stolen from New York’s Ross+Kramer Art Gallery owner Todd Kramer. The fact that OpenSea has the power and is willing to freeze assets traded through its smart contracts sets a worrying precedent.
Also of concern is OpenSea’s habit of delisting NFT artists’ collections without warning. Recently, the platform delisted 16 NFTs from the late hip-hop photographer Chi Modu without comment. Modu owns the rights to the photography and was not breaking any of the platform’s community guidelines.
Another complaint with OpenSea is a listing issue that has resulted in numerous high-value NFTs being sold for a fraction of their market value. If a user lists an NFT for sale then transfers it to a different wallet, the listing gets canceled on OpenSea’s frontend as it cannot be fulfilled. However, if the user doesn’t pay a gas fee to cancel the transaction first, the listing reactivates if the user transfers the NFT back to the original wallet at a later date.
To make matters worse, OpenSea sent out an email to users with inactive listings on their accounts advising them to cancel listings without first transferring their NFTs away from the address with the associated listing. This process makes it easier for opportunists to snipe mispriced NFTs by checking the Ethereum mempool for cancelation transactions then paying a high gas fee to execute a purchase transaction before the cancelation.
As OpenSea’s users continue to lose patience with the platform, other NFT marketplaces and trading solutions have emerged. Many of these competitors have quickly gathered momentum by acknowledging OpenSea’s shortcomings and launching cheaper, more decentralized, and more user-friendly ways for collectors to buy and sell NFTs.
LooksRare
The first contender on our list—and one of the newest projects—is a platform that takes direct aim at OpenSea’s business model. LooksRare launched last month and has attracted users through a combination of a token airdrop and trading rewards. Anyone who traded at least 3 ETH worth of NFTs between Jun. 16 and Dec. 16, 2021 was eligible to claim an allocation of LOOKS tokens, with more tokens dropped to those with higher trading volumes.
LOOKS holders can stake their tokens to earn a portion of the trading fees generated through sales on LooksRare. The yield for LOOKS staking currently sits at over 600%, a testament to the high trading volumes on the marketplace. In addition, LooksRare undercuts OpenSea by charging 1.5% on trades rather than 2.5%. Since LooksRare launched on Jan. 10, it has outpaced OpenSea in raw trading volumes almost every day—but there’s a catch.
LooksRare is currently distributing LOOKS tokens to users with the highest trading volumes. This has incentivized several users to conduct wash trades on high-value NFTs, trading them between wallets to rack up higher trading volumes, and thus, more LOOKS token rewards. LooksRare has facilitated many legitimate sales too, with high activity on trending collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, CloneX, and Azuki.
With its motto of “by NFT people, for NFT people,” LooksRare emphasizes decentralization and community involvement. Even for those who care less about the ideals of Web3, LooksRare offers users a cheaper, more streamlined experience with the ability to earn through NFT purchases.
gem.xyz
As more and more NFTs get spread out over different marketplaces, a place to aggregate listings is becoming a necessity. Enter gem.xyz, a newly-released NFT aggregator that makes comparing listings across several marketplaces easy.
The biggest boon of using gem is the ability to buy multiple NFTs in the same transaction, allowing for substantial gas fee savings. Users can select the NFTs they want to purchase from a collection, and gem’s user interface will show the total cost and the gas fee savings from rolling all the trades into a single transaction.
The more NFTs a user purchases in a single transaction, the more gas they save. gem estimates that buying 14 NFTs at once equals a gas saving of 33% over OpenSea or other NFT aggregators such as genie.xyz. As gem makes it easier and cheaper to buy NFTs in bulk, it’s the perfect tool to “sweep the floor” by buying up the cheapest available items from an NFT collection.
Additionally, gem allows users to pay for NFTs using almost any ERC-20 asset or combination of assets, simplifying the buying experience further. It also pulls data directly from other marketplace’s smart contracts, so even if the frontend of these sites goes down, users can still buy and sell NFTs listed on them through gem.
gem is still in beta but has already facilitated over $50 million worth of NFT sales. Those who test the platform out may even be rewarded in the future if gem decides to launch a token as other NFT marketplaces have done in the past.
sudoswap
While NFT marketplaces offer a convenient way to get eyes on an NFT you want to sell, there’s usually a fee for the service. However, if you’ve already found a buyer, or even someone willing to trade one or more of their NFTs for yours, you can head over to sudoswap and create a custom swap for free, minus the cost of gas.
On sudoswap, users can create open swaps that anyone can view and interact with or select a specific address to be the exclusive participant in a trade. Not only can NFTs be traded for ETH or WETH like on OpenSea, but also between any ERC-20 token, ERC-721 or ERC-1155 NFTs, or even a combination of all three.
Gas costs are optimized, so users only need to pay for asset approvals and swaps, unlike OpenSea and other NFT marketplaces that require users to pay gas to create orders. sudoswap is completely trustless, with assets remaining in users’ wallets until both participants confirm a trade.
As an added level of security, sudoswap uses trade codes instead of allowing users to post hyperlinks to swaps. This stops scammers from luring unsuspecting users with fake hyperlinks. To send a specific trade to another user, the creator must give the trade code to the other party, who can then input it into the official sudoswap site.
sudoswap lets NFT collectors avoid marketplaces entirely by allowing them to trustlessly solicit trades with buyers and sellers. As it takes 0% commission, users can save substantial amounts when trading high-value NFTs.
SuperRare
While traditional NFT marketplaces cater to casual buyers looking to trade avatar collections or generative art runs, SuperRare targets a different demographic of NFT collectors. It has established itself as the go-to platform for exclusive artists selling unique single-edition artworks.
Because SuperRare is still in early access mode, the marketplace is only onboarding a hand-picked selection of artists. Even after the platform fully launches in the future, those wanting to sell their NFTs must first submit their artist profile to SuperRare and be chosen for inclusion on the site.
However, despite the difficulty of being listed on SuperRare, the rewards for artists are great. The platform favors creators, ensuring they receive 10% of all secondary sale revenue for art initially sold on the SuperRare marketplace.
While SuperRare has cultivated an exclusive arena for high-value NFT artwork, it comes at a price. Compared to other marketplaces, SuperRare is expensive, with 15% of primary sales going to SuperRare, 10% of secondary sales going to creators, and an additional 3% tax on all purchases paid by buyers.
However, in return, SuperRare offers a white-glove service for all market participants and ensures creators are supported so they can continue producing high-quality digital art. The platform also holds decentralization close to its heart and uses a DAO system to manage the community treasury and guide the platform’s future development.
Coinbase NFT
The last OpenSea alternative on our list hasn’t yet launched but is sure to disrupt the NFT world when it does.
Coinbase NFT is set to focus on accessibility for non-crypto native users. Whether other marketplaces require users to connect with a non-custodial Web3 wallet such as MetaMask, Coinbase NFT will integrate with the Coinbase exchange and let users buy and sell NFTs in U.S. dollars using credit and debit cards. Additionally, Coinbase will custody NFTs for users while letting them mint, collect, discover, and showcase their non-fungibles all in one place.
The Coinbase NFT initiative is currently led by the company’s Vice President of Products, Sanchan Saxena, an industry veteran with a proven track record of developing products for companies such as Airbnb and Instagram.
“We are actually embracing the idiosyncrasies and the positives and the negatives of the blockchain,” Saxena told nft now in a January interview. Those familiar with blockchain technology will still be able plug into Coinbase NFT with a non-custodial browser extension wallet. But for less tech-savvy users, Saxena has confirmed that they will not have to worry about the jargon and technical aspects of buying NFTs.
By abstracting away the technical side of NFTs, Coinbase’s new marketplace should help keep newer users safe from scams and costly mistakes while they get to grips with the complex world of NFTs.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.
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The Associated Press (AP) is launching a nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace where collectors will be able to purchase tokenized photographs from the global news platform.
The initial collection of NFTs will include photographs of subjects like space, climate, and war from AP photojournalists. They will be released over several weeks starting on Jan. 31 for varying prices, according to the marketplace’s website.
The photographs will be minted as NFTs on the Ethereum layer-two scaling network, Polygon. The platform will support secondary transactions using debit or credit cards, and payments in Ethereum.
The marketplace is being built by Xooa, a blockchain infrastructure platform specializing in building “white-label NFT marketplaces for brands and IP owners.”
Head of marketplaces at Xooa, Zach Danker-Feldman, said the partnership will serve as a “powerful connection between the virtual world and the real world.”
Crypto wallet provider Metamask is also supported, with future collaborations with Fortmatic, Binance, and Coinbase on the cards. Additional upcoming features will include “withdrawals to other marketplaces,” “social media capabilities,” “new content concepts,” and “off-chain benefits” for NFT holders.
Once every two weeks, there will be a “Pulitzer Drop,” which will include Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs. Each NFT will include the photograph’s detailed metadata such as the time, date, location, equipment, and technical settings used for the photograph.
According to an announcement from the AP, funds from the NFT sales will go back into funding AP journalism. The Associated Press is a 175-year-old non-profit news cooperative based in New York City. Although the platform will allow secondary market sales, it will charge a hefty 10% fee.
Related:CNN selling historic news ‘moments’ as NFTs
This is not the news agency’s first foray into blockchain technology. In October 2021, The AP partnered with Chainlink Labs to ensure any data from its U.S. newspaper and broadcaster members would be cryptographically verified.
In 2020, the AP used the Ethereum and EOS blockchains to publish the results of the presidential election. Furthermore, in 2018 it partnered with blockchain-based journalism startup Civil to facilitate its plans to track content usage and secure intellectual property rights.
The AP is not the only news organization showing interest in the potential uses of blockchain in the journalism industry. In June 2021, CNN launched its NFT project “Vault by CNN: Moments That Changed Us.” The collection tokenized a series of historic “news moments” from the news company’s 41-year history.
Solana (SOL) has become a top contender in the smart contract industry and in the past year the network’s total value locked (TVL) grew by $660 million and stretches across more than 40 decentralized applications to hit an all-time high above $11 billion.
Even with this growth, investors have reason to question whether the current $56 billion market capitalization is justified and how it compares to competing networks like binance smart chain (BNB), Avalanche (AVAX) and Polygon (MATIC).
Avalanche, Solana, Binance Coin, and Polygon, priced in USD. Source: TradingView
By analyzing the past 6-month price performance, there’s an apparent decoupling from Terra (LUNA), Solana and Avalanche when compared to other smart contract platform competitors.
There is strong institutional appetite for Solana’s ecosystem
Solana’s market capitalization is more than double Avalanche and Terra which have $26 billion market caps. Searching Solana’s latest news on Cointelegraph yields an exciting array of institutional investments, ranging from the $314 million private token sale by Solana Labs in June, to an $18 million fundraise in September by Solana’s DEX project Orca.
There’s solid evidence of a growing ecosystem judging by investor appetite. However, to understand how successful Solana’s scalability solution is, we have to evaluate its usage metrics.
Looking at the number of active addresses on Solana’s dApps is a good place to start.
Solana, Ethereum, Avalanche and Polygon 7-day most active dApps. Source: DappRadar
Ethereum’s leading dApp by active addresses is Uniswap, which has 188,200. Therefore, Raydium’s 97,600 weekly users is rather impressive considering it was launched just 10 months ago. Meanwhile, back in Feb. 2021, Uniswap already held over $4.3 billion TVL.
As for Solana’s NFT marketplace Magic Eden, its 58,400 weekly active addresses also account for more than half of Ethereum’s OpenSea, the sector’s absolute market leader in volume and users activity.
Avalanche user activity is highly concentrated on the Trader Joe decentralized finance app, but its $715 million weekly volume pales in comparison to Uniswap’s $22.1 billion or Raydium’s $12.5 billion. The same can be said by Polygon which has $573 million in trading activity at its QuickSwap DEX.
Solana has the third largest futures market
Solana currently holds the third largest futures open interest, which is the most relevant metric in derivatives contracts. This indicator aggregates the total number of contracts held by market participants regardless of the recent trading activity.
Solana futures aggregate open interest. Source: CoinGlass
Despite the sharp drop since the Nov. 8 peak at $1.9 billion, the current $860 million futures open interest ranks Solana the third derivatives market by size. For example, Binance Coin (BNB) futures holds $520 million, followed by Terra (LUNA) with $430 million.
Solana leads in TVL, users and derivatives markets
Undoubtedly, there’s an impressive amount of activity coming from Solana’s on-chain data and derivatives markets. The network’s TVL increased by 15x over the past 6 months and Solana’s dApps users is nearly half the amount of users on the Ethereum network.
Solana seems to be quickly closing the gap in three important metrics: TVL, active users, and derivatives markets. Competitors like Terra, Avalanche and Polygon seem a long way behind, which possibly justifies the market capitalization premium.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of theauthorand do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.
Erstwhile crypto skeptic Jordan Belfort has bravely outed himself as an NFT proponent amid the booming growth of the sector in 2021.
Belfort is known for his dodgy antics while working as a stockbroker on Wall Street, with his story being captured in “The Wolf of Wall Street” film starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
The 59-year-old has slammed crypto on multiple occasions, and in 2018 he even compared Bitcoin to the level of fraud that his firm Stratton Oakmont used to engage in before he was indicted for securities fraud and money laundering in 1999.
On Oct. 25, Belfort revealed to his 600,000 followers that he purchased CryptoPunk #6033, depicting a male wearing a durag and smoking a vaporizer pen. According to the transaction history on OpenSea, Belfort spent 102.49 Ethereum (ETH) worth roughly $410,000 on the NFT.
He then followed that up by bullishly tweeting “Wow! I love NFT Twitter! And now that I’m here, I’m not fucking leaving!”
You’ll fit in well with the #NFT influencers pic.twitter.com/Uu1uq8N4vy
— Pranksy (@pranksy) October 25, 2021
Earlier this month Belfort unveiled his own upcoming NFT drop, which will feature artwork inspired by The Wolf of Wall Street Movie and his life. While details are sparse at this stage, Belfort tweeted on Oct. 21 that he is currently working on how to “add utility for each holder” of his NFTs so that he can make it a unique drop.
I’m dropping my NFT soon here’s a first look at some of the artwork inspired by The Wolf of Wall Street movie and my life.
Can you spot some of the moments we referenced? pic.twitter.com/twzMRCJc7z
— Jordan Belfort (@wolfofwallst) October 20, 2021
Disney NFTs are the ‘bare necessities’
Disney is taking the plunge into the NFT sector with a collection of tokenized characters from popular movies and shows owned by the multinational giant.
While details of the specific characters have not been announced, there is a vast amount of content to choose from given Disney also owns Pixar, Marvel and the Star Wars franchise.
The drop is set to go live on Nov. 12 and is being launched in collaboration with the VeVe NFT platform. The collection is dubbed “Golden Moments” and any NFT purchaser will also receive three months of free service on the Disney+ streaming app.
Disney NFT drop: VeVe
VeVe hosts a marketplace for licensed NFTs, and the firm has previously launched digital comics in collaboration with Marvel and DC, along with launching NFTs depicting content from Adventure Time, Monster Hunter, Star Trek and Jurassic Park to name a few.
The Economist’s NFT sale raised $422K for charity
The Economist, the 178-year-old global news publication sold a tokenized magazine cover for around $422,000 on Oct. 25.
The NFT magazine cover was from the “Down the rabbit hole” edition of The Economist on Sept. 18, which explored the world of decentralized finance (DeFi). The cover depicts an Alice in Wonderland-themed illustration, with Alice looking down a rabbit hole while various crypto coins take the plunge below.
Down the rabbit hole: The Economist
The NFT sold via auction for 99.90 ETH ($400,000 at current prices) on Monday, with the profits from the sale going to The Economist Educational Foundation, which is an independent youth outreach charity that teaches young people to analyze current affairs.
WWE seeks NFT-based summer slam
World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) has penned a deal with Fox’s NFT firm Blockchain Creative Labs to launch licensed NFT collectibles.
The multi-year deal was announced on Oct. 27 and the partnership will see the rollout of NFTs depicting iconic moments in WWE history, along with its stars and events such as WrestleMania and SummerSlam. A marketplace will be launched to host the assets, although the details are yet to be announced.
Related:Upgradable NFTs: How collaborations will leap forward
With the new partnership, it appears that the WWE is looking to learn from the mistakes of its previous NFT drops. WWE hall of famer John Cena labeled his own licensed drop a “catastrophic failure,” last month. Cena said that fans only purchased 7.4% of his NFTs and questioned whether the price point for the 500 Gold tier packages was too high.
“Myself and the folks in the WWE thought $1,000 was a fair price point. We were wrong. We were absolutely wrong,” Cena said at Florida Supercon 2021 on Sept. 12.
Other NFT News
Software giant Adobe announced on Tuesday that it is partnering with major NFT marketplaces including OpenSea, KnownOrigin and SuperRare to allow users to verify the authenticity of the digital content on the platforms.
On Monday, GameStop listed a total of eight jobs for crypto-friendly candidates to work on its NFT platform and Web3 gaming initiatives. The listings include three roles for NFT-experienced software engineers, three jobs for product marketers, and two roles focused on Web 3.0-based gaming.
GameStop (GME) is assembling a team of blockchain and NFT experts to work on the firm’s upcoming NFT platform.
The firm’s GME stock is a cult favorite amongst retail traders as a result of the r/wallstreetbets and Robinhood saga earlier this year. On Reddit the r/Superstonk community boasts 659,000 members, and is dedicated to hosting business and stock discussions related to GME.
A post about GameStop’s job listings yesterday has received more than 10,000 upvotes at the time of writing, with many members posting bullish sentiments over GameStop’s latest move.
GameStop quietly unveiled a bare-bones website for its NFT marketplace in May. The site currently features a Nintendo Gameboy-style gaming console with an Ethereum logo, along with a message calling out for recruits to work on the platform.
Since then the firm has held its cards close to its chest, however on Oct. 25 it listed a total of eight jobs for crypto-friendly candidates, including three roles for NFT experienced software engineers, three jobs for product marketers and with two roles focused on Web3 based gaming.
One of the listings for the Head of Web3 Gaming job says that GameStop is looking for someone with experience with “Ethereum, NFTs and blockchain-based gaming platforms.” The firm has also hinted that there are some plans related to the Metaverse in the works.
“GameStop is looking for a unique individual who can help accelerate the future of gaming and commerce. In this future, games are the places to go, and play is driven by the things you bring. Future creators won’t just build games but also the components, characters, and equipment. Blockchains will power the commerce underneath,” the job listing reads.
Related:Reddit may be preparing to launch its own NFT platform
Members of the r/Superstonk community were singing the firm’s praises yesterday, with “Triaspia2” calling it one of the “best job listings” they had seen, while pledging to buy more GME as it was a “bullish signal.”
Redditor “Donnybiceps” was equally bullish, noting that:
“NFTs are the future and people who haven’t gotten on board the GME train while knowing all these clues then you should be blaming yourself for not thinking this through.”
GME has had a volatile performance in October, going as low as $166 before bouncing to around $187 and subsequently crashing down again. However, according to data from Tradingview, the price of GME has still gained 2.8% this month to sit at $178 at the time of writing. The year-to-date gain for GME is a whopping 844%.
Reddit has posted a job advertisement for Senior Backend Engineer, NFT Platform.
In the posting, Reddit highlighted the importance of community in the NFT world.
A Reddit NFT platform would not be the company’s first foray into crypto projects, having issued its own ERC-20 tokens in the past.
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Reddit, one of the largest content aggregators and social media services, may soon be launching a platform for users to buy and sell non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The company is hiring a backend engineer to develop a trading platform for “NFT-backed digital goods.”
Reddit Job Listing Hints at an NFT Marketplace
A job post published today on Greenhouse, a popular recruitment platform, appears to confirm that Reddit is hiring a senior backend engineer to design and build backend services for a large-scale NFT trading platform. The post made note of the central role many believe NFTs will play for creators and communities in the future. Hence, it advertises that it is “looking for engineers and leaders to help us seed the [NFT] team.”
According to the job post, the person hired as the senior backend engineer will “design, build and ship backend services for millions of users to create, buy, sell and use NFT-backed digital goods.”
The NFTs space has experienced parabolic growth in the last six months, fueled by an incredible demand for tokenized art, in-game items, and digital collectibles. The ongoing boom has prompted some of the largest crypto firms, such as Coinbase and Binance, to launch their own marketplaces facilitating the buying and selling of these assets. Now, it appears Reddit may be planning its own NFT marketplace.
According to some recent estimates, the total volume of NFT sales amounted to about $10.7 billion in Q3 2021. Amidst the frenzy, other NFT marketplaces have seen skyrocketing revenues. The leader in this category is OpenSea, which generates roughly $68 million in revenue per week, according to crypto analytics service TokenTerminal.
Notably, this is not the first crypto endeavor for Reddit. The social media firm has previously issued ERC-20 tokens for two subreddit forums in the past.
This news was brought to you by Phemex, our preferred Derivatives Partner.
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Coinbase recently announced the launch of its NFT marketplace, much to the delight of crypto investors. Its aim is to make the minting, selling, buying, and storing of non-fungible tokens easier for investors who want to get into the market. It brings this service to its 68 million-strong user base in its mission to make crypto more accessible to investors.
The NFT marketplace, which is yet to be opened for trading, will provide competition to the leading non-fungible token marketplace OpenSea. With its large user base, Coinbase may be set to be the largest NFT marketplace. Alongside the announcement of the marketplace was a waitlist sign-up for interested parties. On the first day following the launch, Coinbase has already broken the 1 million mark for users who had signed up.
Over 1.1 Million Sign Up For Coinbase Waitlist
The waitlist which is open to everybody has seen a tremendous amount of support. On its first day, Brian Armstrong, Co-Founder and CEO of Coinbase, announced that the waitlist had gotten over 1.1 million sign-ups. Interest in the non-fungible token marketplace has been high and users have poured out support for Coinbase following the announcement.
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Over 1M people have signed up for Coinbase NFT since we launched yesterday 🤯https://t.co/pNE3nfFmyW
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) October 14, 2021
Related Reading | SpaceBudZ Marks First NFT Sale Above $1 Million On Cardano Network
Traffic to the waitlist had been so high that it had to be scaled up to accommodate everyone. Coinbase’s Vice President of Product, Sanchan Saxena, gave the update a few hours after the announcement went live and assured users that they could keep signing up for the marketplace.
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Thanks for your patience everybody – for the last few hours, we have ramped up and scaled things for you to be able to sign up for the NFT marketplace.
See you there https://t.co/ysu6Eku84b! https://t.co/kOHbZaPr8P
— Sanchan S Saxena (@sanchans) October 13, 2021
Exchanges Taking The Plunge Into NFTs
The success of non-fungible token platforms like OpenSea has driven the need for more NFT platforms in the space. OpenSea currently averages about 260,000 daily users and has seen significant NFT sales on its platform. This has prompted cryptocurrency exchanges to begin offering non-fungible token capabilities on their own platforms.
Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world, had launched its own NFT marketplace. Its offers users a place to mint, buy and sell non-fungible tokens without having to go through the rigorous process of minting the non-fungible tokens directly on the blockchains.
FTX exchange also recently announced the launch of its very own NFT marketplace. FTX is one of the fastest-growing cryptocurrency exchanges and has recorded a 397% increase since January.
Related Reading | FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried Reveals Reason Behind Billions Of Dollars Tether Purchase
As more exchanges launch their own NFT marketplaces, speculations are they will become the go-to platforms for the minting and trading of non-fungible tokens.
Coinbase will launch the marketplace to its U.S. users first and will roll out the feature to its other customers over time. “Just as Coinbase helped millions of people access Bitcoin for the first time in an easy and trusted way – we want to do the same for the NFTs,” the announcement read.
Featured image from Ledger Insights, chart from TradingView.com
