U.S. Crypto Exchange Kraken Developing Its Own NFT Platform

In the coming months, the U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is set to launch a platform of its own solely for NFTs. Earlier on Tuesday, it released sign-ups for users hoping to be included on the waitlist. Kraken chief operating officer David Ripley noted that this new platform will also come with unique offerings for users, one of which is the subsidizing of Ethereum transaction costs such as gas fees.

“Depending on how you measure it, cryptocurrencies went from seeing modest adoption to something that is a multi-billion dollar industry,” explained Ripley. “We see over the next five to 10 years, the same type of trajectory and total market size could come to fruition for NFTs, so we are viewing this as a massive opportunity with a massive potential market.”

While it is still unclear how much Kraken’s platform would subsidize transaction fees, its website claims that there will be “zero gas fees for trades on Kraken NFT.” However, the statement is marked with an asterisk, annotating that “gas fees will be incurred when transferring NFTs on and off the Kraken platform.”

“Since transaction (gas) costs on Ethereum are substantial, a marketplace that offers zero fees or subsidized costs could attract users from other marketplaces similar to how Robinhood attracted customers from other brokerages by removing trading fees,” elaborated Messari senior research analyst Mason Nystrom.

This new platform is, likewise, expected to be integrated with support for Ethereum and Solana-based NFTs upon launch with other blockchains to be included down the line, furthered Ripley. Additional features of Kraken’s NFT platform include a framework to vet listed projects, incorporating NFT-specific data like a rarity metric, and enabling users to custody of their assets with the exchange.

The unveiling of this new platform follows in the footsteps of Coinbase Global after it launched an NFT platform of its own earlier in April. Under its beta phase, the new Coinbase platform only caters to under 1,000 users and total trading volume has only reached $443,100 so far, based on data gathered by crypto analytics tracker Dune.

Source: Yahoo Finance