20/04/2022 Coinbase NFT Marketplace Goes Live. Can It Rival OpenSea?

The beta iteration of the exchange’s marketplace is putting a social-media spin on NFT trading.

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Crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) launched thebeta versionof its long-awaitednon-fungible token(NFT) marketplace on Wednesday, allowing a small group of users from a wait-list of 3 million to use the platform for the first time.

The marketplace, which was first announcedlast October, will support Ethereum-based NFT trading, with a social-media spin that could distinguish it from competitors.

The platform will allow users to showcase their personal profile and follow accounts whose content will appear in a “For You” feed, which is visually similar to social-media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Users will also be able to “like” and comment on each other's posts, a Coinbase representative told CoinDesk.

“This product is more than just buying and selling, it is about building your community,” Sanchan Saxena, Coinbase's vice president of product, told reporters in a press briefing on Tuesday. “It is about making sure that you can connect and engage with them on the platform. One other thing I mentioned in the beginning was that it’s a very social marketplace.”

The marketplace will support “all sorts of self-custody wallets” besides the official Coinbase Wallet, a decision the exchange made to create “an open NFT environment for everyone,” according to the briefing. The platform will also support fiat purchases via credit cards.

The marketplace will start off with zero transaction fees (besides Ethereumgas costsand creator-implemented royalties), but will eventually implement a “low, single-digit fee,” Saxena said.

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A press briefing showed Coinbase's more social approach to NFT sales.

Coinbase's NFT plans

Coinbase has a plan for what it’s calling “progressive decentralization” within the marketplace, where certain features will begin centralized but eventually move on-chain.

One of these features is user comments, where threads will initially be stored on Coinbase servers but eventually moved to the blockchain.

Another is what the exchange is calling a user’s “follower graph,” which they will be able to take with them from platform to platform.

A new direction for NFTs?

A social media-focused marketplace is novel in the current NFT landscape, but could become the norm as more players enter the industry.

In March, Meta Platforms (FB) CEO Mark Zuckerbergannouncedthat NFTs would eventually come to Instagram, though details on the integration remain unknown.

Social-media focus or not, any marketplace entering the world of Ethereum NFTs will have to take a direct shot at OpenSea, which has hosted 95% of all Ethereum-based NFT traders in the past 30 days, according todatafrom DappRadar.

Arts

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/04/20/coinbase-nft-marketplace-goes-live-can-it-rival-opensea/

Interesting NFTs
Alex in Wonderland
A figure, Alex, stands mostly naked in the midst of a physical and psychological maelstrom. He is clad only in nostalgic 80’s era socks, on a tenuous island between active waters and a variety of shark denizens. Sharks on the right side of the image are all beached, including a shark with a quartz crystal snout, an orange shark wrapped in a life buoy, and a shark further in the distance wearing an 80’s style shirt with the number “88”. On the left side is the largest shark, wearing bright glossy red lipstick and brandishing prominent teeth with braces. She is cordoned off from the figure by a roped float divider, and within her thought bubble is a warning symbol. Behind the figure, hovering in the air, are Grey aliens emerging from the distance, out of a series of elliptical UFO shaped interdimensional membranes. The Greys take on the visual form of spermazoa ostensibly impregnating the interdimensional thresholds. As is typical, these Greys inhabit a zone just behind the unconscious topology of Alex’s dissociative mind. Though Alex’s bottom half is representative, his top half mutates into a psychological cornucopia. In a manner akin to “Auto-Erotic Sphinx”, a predecessor work, the figure has self suctioned—an act of sensual infatuation, enjoyment, and exploration. Upward exists the figure’s primary conscious eye, adorned with a revolutionary beret emblazoned with a Bitcoin badge. The figure’s summit features the nose of a fighter jet facing off against video game Bullet Bills, one of whom is marked by a communist North Korean star. A cropped section of a UFO observes the contest. Alex’s mind branches both left and right. To the left is more singular embodied consciousness, manifesting two eyes and a Ganesh trunk grasping crayons. The right branch dissociates upward diagonally, emerging into an array of eyes, faces, teeth, tail, a unicorn horn, and much more—all of which participate in expressing his unconscious being; a democracy of psychic factions representing thought impressions and associations. All illumination and darkness– fernal, infernal, high consciousness and corporeal underbelly–reside in this realm. In the distance are relatively languid, light clouds, and against the firmament hovers a colossal distant eye peering over the scene and far beyond. This painting possesses underlying genetic traits with previous works such as “Auto-Erotic Sphinx with Toys”, “Dionysus”, and “Fuku-Shiva”. The work serves also as a nod to an earlier period of art inspiration during late teens and early twenties— born out of the nakedness, vulnerability, curiosity, and wonder inherent to coming of age and all subsequent psychedelic revelation.
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By OthersideDeployer
CryptoPunk #8472
The CryptoPunks are 10,000 uniquely generated characters. No two are exactly alike, and each one of them can be officially owned by a single person on the Ethereum blockchain. Originally, they could be claimed for free by anybody with an Ethereum wallet, but all 10,000 were quickly claimed. Now they must be purchased from someone via the marketplace that's also embedded in the blockchain.
Dreaming at Dusk
More than 15 years ago, Tor onion services were brought to digital life. An ecosystem of onions has been blooming ever since. To commemorate this landmark in the history of privacy, we collaborated with @ixshells to create a one-of-a-kind digital artifact: a generative art piece derived using the private key of the very first onion service, duskgytldkxiuqc6.onion. This auction benefits the Tor Project, the nonprofit protecting your human right to privacy. 1020*1280 / 60fps / .mp4 / RSA1024
Saigonpunk #2
MC is the protagonist of Saigonpunk. She is a bounty hunter. The story follows her quest to recover her husband’s memory fragments.