More than 8.4 million email addresses were on the waiting list for Coinbase NFT, and the project said it would be available to everyone over the age of 18 “in the coming weeks.”
Coinbase’s non-fungible token marketplace has entered beta more than six months after the company announced it planned to open a waiting list for the site.
According to a post on Wednesday, the cryptocurrency exchange said “Coinbase NFT” beta testers would be able to create profiles online, as well as buy and sell non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. In a press briefing on Tuesday, Coinbase VP of Product and Ecosystem Sanchan Saxena hinted that the marketplace design would be a cross between a social media platform and other NFT marketplaces like OpeaSea.
Saxena’s Claims
“While it is true that the buying and selling of NFTs is an important part of the current ecosystem, what we have learned from talking to many customers and creators is that there is more to buying and selling,” Saxena said. “There’s the community aspect.”
According to Saxena, the platform will have opportunities for engagement between users and creators. Like many social media platforms, Coinbase NFTs will allow users to follow the profiles of creators and others, comment on artwork, and monitor a personalized feed to discover new NFTs based on engagement and purchases.
As for comment moderation, Saxena said the platform would work on the principle that users and legislators decide “the law of the land.” According to the Coinbase executive, the staff is “not in the business of judging what is right, what is wrong, as long as it is legal.”
Coinbase Announcements
While the market is in beta, Coinbase said there would be no transaction fees for a limited time, and the exchange has set out to reduce gas fees for Ether (ETH) transactions by partnering with 0x Labs. Users can choose their own self-custody wallets or the Coinbase Wallet.
According to Coinbase, the exchange planned to open up access to the NFT market based on users’ position on the waitlist, with the platform available to everyone over the age of 18 “in the coming weeks.” Additionally, Coinbase said that it planned to “decentralize more features” like user feedback in the future.
At the time of publication, more than 8.4 million email addresses were on the waiting list for Coinbase NFT. The cryptocurrency exchange reported that it had more than 89 million verified users trading $547 billion in quarterly volume, should the exchange’s liquidity spill over into its NFT venture.
Coinbase is one of the few crypto exchanges trying to get into NFT sales. Major cryptocurrency exchange Binance launched an NFT market in June 2021 with the aim of minimizing the cost of transactions, and FTX and its US subsidiary introduced a market in September that allows users to trade NFTs cross-chain on the Solana and Ethereum Blockchains.
According to data from DappRadar, OpenSea ranked first among NFT markets with a volume of approximately $130 million in 24 hours. However, the recent sales performance of an NFT from Jack Dorsey’s genesis tweet suggests the market may be slowing: one user bought the tokenized image in 2021 for $2.9 million, while the highest bid at the time of publication is approximately $32,000.
By Audy Castaneda
