Coinbase Joins the Bandwagon, Floats its NFT Marketplace

Nasdaq-listed digital currency trading platform, COINBASE Global Inc has unveiled its Non-Fungible Token (NFT) marketplace for digital artists and creators, joining its competing marketplaces including BINANCE and FTX Derivatives exchange in floating a similar platform. The exchange said the platform will facilitate the buying and selling of digital artworks that are resident on the blockchain in a decentralized manner.

While the NFT metaverse has seen impressive growth in the year-to-date period, there is still a major drawback in terms of user experience for entrants into the marketplace. According to Coinbase, the marketplace is designed with enhanced user-experience features, and it will currently support ERC-721, and ERC-1155 standards with multi-chain support planned soon after.

“We will make it effortless for artists to maintain creative control through decentralized contracts and metadata transparency. All NFTs are on-chain. The initial launch will support Ethereum based ERC-721 and ERC-1155 standards with multi-chain support planned soon after. We’ll provide the best user experience, but we’ll never lock creators in,” said Sanchan Saxena, VP of Product, Ecosystem.

Coinbase boasts of bridging the gap between the seemingly esoteric ecosystem, and the general public when Bitcoin became a thing in its early days, the trading platform says it wishes to do the same with its NFT marketplace.

Bringing Competition to Mainstream Players

The dive into the NFT metaverse by the biggest trading platforms is in line to take up a good market share of mainstream trading platforms like OpenSea. OPENSEA reportedly controls the bulk of the total trading volumes of all NFTs being traded on secondary markets today. The platform’s monthly transaction volume crossed $3 billion in August.

While OpenSea and other marketplaces like Rarible, and SuperRare currently maintain their leads as the pioneering NFT marketplaces, the emergence of Coinbase and its peers is billed to pose a reasonable challenge, which hopefully will contribute to enhancing further adoption of the digital arts by retail collectors.

While the need of the final consumer is central to the success of NFT trading platforms, Coinbase said it will prioritize the needs of its artists and creators.

“Creating an NFT should be as simple as tapping a few buttons. Anything more complicated is a barrier to creativity. Coinbase NFT will be a peer-to-peer marketplace that empowers the imagination. With an intuitive design built on top of a decentralized marketplace, Coinbase NFT puts the art and artist’s experience at the forefront,” the Coinbase Executive said.