Magic Eden announced its partnership with Solana-based NFT aggregator platform Coral Cube. Magic’s latest announcement is part of its strategy to expand its ecosystem offering.
An NFT is a digital representation of artwork, video clips, music tracks, JPEGs or collectibles stored on the blockchain.
🧵 @MagicEden is proud to announce we are joining forces w/ @coralcubenft, an NFT marketplace & aggregator built for traders.
Since they started, @coralcubenft built one of the most performant and fastest trading experiences on SOL. pic.twitter.com/AiM0uczUMM
— Magic Eden 🪄 (@MagicEden) October 12, 2022
‘The NFT aggregator space has been consolidating in recent months with OpenSea’s acquisition of GEM in April and UniSwap’s acquisition of Genie in June.
Tiffany Huang, Magic Eden’s head of marketing and content, said the company will “protect” its brand by keeping creators’ copyrights in Magic Eden intact. But it will also offer the option for merchants to sell NFT royalty-free through Coral Cube, an apparent attempt to have it both ways in a rapidly changing market.
NFT aggregators are platforms that select the best NFTs based on a series of filtering mechanisms. They are designed specifically for traders, rather than collectors.
“Magic Eden had such a dominant position that niche operators had no choice but to pursue a 0% creator’s fee strategy to grab market share and drive OTC volumes back to the marketplaces,” he continued. “Once Yawww started the trend, there was no turning back.”
Magic Eden said Coral Cube will benefit from the rapidly expanding NFT marketplace by helping it scale its growth and become the largest NFT aggregator platform in the market.
“We continue to believe that royalties are an incredible use case for NFTs,” tweeted DeGods Project. “We will continue to support creators who want to find solutions to enforce copyright. We believe this is the best decision for our business at this time. It is time for us to take a new approach.”
Magic Eden has been expanding its ecosystem of product offerings in order to take on the world’s largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea.
In July, the platform collaborated with Genopets to launch the first SFT marketplace for in-game items, before announcing its expansion to the Ethereum blockchain in August.
Although Coral Cube is a 0% royalty platform, Magic Eden clarified that it will not move to 0% royalty after a Twitter user questioned the logic of merging with a 0% royalty marketplace.
Magic Eden achieved unicorn status in June after raising $130 million in a Series B round co-led by Electric Capital and Greylock Partners at a valuation of $1.6 billion. The platform has seen a significant increase in NFT transaction volume in recent months since expanding its ecosystem to the Ethereum blockchain.
Magic Eden’s moves
The possibility of Magic Eden shying away from royalties and trying to regain market share has been a hot topic among Solana’s NFT collectors in recent weeks. On Wednesday night, the startup tweeted that it had “a lot to say,” but quickly clarified, “The announcement is NOT that Magic Eden is moving to zero royalties.”
Instead, Magic Eden said it was “joining forces” with Coral Cube, the zero-royalty marketplace and aggregator, to “accelerate its path to becoming the biggest and best NFT aggregator across the networks.” Magic Eden’s Huang clarified today that the company has not acquired Coral Cube, but has “partnered” with the marketplace. Terms of the deal had not been shared at press time.
The Coral Cube partnership may have been news to some, but many Solana insiders expected it – one notable NFT collector called it the “worst-kept secret in NFT history.”
“Now you know,” tweeted Bryan Jun, a founding member of Hyperspace, after the announcement, alongside an image showing the Coral Cube logo tagged “Magic Eden (0 Creator Royalty).” Hyperspace, a Solana NFT aggregator and release platform, began reporting Coral Cube sales as Magic Eden volume about a week ago.
On Wednesday night, Magic Eden teased, “The future of Solana NFTs starts with you. We and [Coral Cube] will give traders the ability to determine what the rights will look like on our platform. Vote with your trades.”
Huang added that the move is intended to “protect the Magic Eden brand while serving merchants” through its agreement with Coral Cube, suggesting that there is likely to be some sort of revenue-sharing arrangement with the aggregator.
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