NFT Marketplaces
Brands are finding new revenue streams in the evolving non-fungible-token (NFT) sector.
The New York Stock Exchange filed a trademark application in February 2022 for its own NFT marketplace.
Fractal is a new gaming NFT marketplace from Twitch cofounder Justin Kan, launched in December 2021. The platform raised $35 million in seed funding in April 2022.
Yuga Labs, the owner of Bored Ape Yacht Club, raised $450 million at the end of March 2022 to build its own NFT marketplace and metaverse. The goal is to create “an interoperable world” that is “gamified” and “completely decentralized,” Wylie Aronow, a cofounder of Bored Ape Yacht Club who uses the pseudonym Gordon Goner, told The Verge.
Sotheby’s is the first auction house to launch a marketplace dedicated to NFTs. Announced in October 2021, its Metaverse is backed by celebrities and supports numerous digital artists that it has worked with during the past year.
The Associated Press (AP) has launched an NFT photography marketplace, built by tech provider Xooa. The marketplace features work by AP photographers past and present, and will include Pulitzer Prize winners.
Why it’s interesting: NFT marketplaces are opening the door to the future of e-commerce. “There’s always been lots of hype around NFTs, but what investors are now seeing is that it’s actually durable,” Justin Kan told CoinDesk. “Even if it’s a bear market, even if the prices might go down, the idea that people want to collect digital assets on the internet, that’s going to stay. Digital items in gaming, it’s like a new category of e-commerce, basically.”