‘Very Natural’ to Expand From Solana to Ethereum NFTs

NFT

Magic Eden, the main Solana NFT market, continued its growth to Ethereum as we speak by rolling out assist for a handful of main collections, together with the Bored Ape Yacht Membership, Pudgy Penguins, and Otherside. Extra initiatives shall be added within the days forward.

The “Magic Ethen” push was introduced in August as step one in Magic Eden’s multi-chain evolution, first revealed again in June when the agency introduced a $130 million increase at a $1.6 billion valuation. Reasonably than launch its personal native Ethereum tech, Magic Eden is aggregating listings from different marketplaces and integrating them inside its platform.

Jack Lu, Magic Eden co-founder and CEO, appeared on the most recent episode of Decrypt’s gm podcast. The wide-ranging interview covers quite a lot of matters, together with Magic Eden’s personal speedy ascent—it launched only one yr in the past this month—amid a risky wider NFT market, plus the worth Lu sees in NFTs throughout numerous use circumstances.

Presenting Magic Ethen: the quickest, most feature-packed ETH aggregator. Your first vacation spot to purchase NFTs utilizing ETH, SOL, or fiat.

Debuting with just a few collections as we speak, are you able to guess which of them? pic.twitter.com/tSU9f2DdhJ

— Magic Ethen 🪄 (@MagicEden) September 20, 2022

In keeping with Lu, going multi-chain was Magic Eden’s plan from the beginning, relationship again to its earliest pitch decks for traders. Nonetheless, the corporate opted to start out with Solana, which he mentioned was “seen as a frontier ecosystem” final yr. Magic Eden shortly leapfrogged the small, current Solana marketplaces and have become the dominant participant in that market.

When it got here time to announce Ethereum assist in August, Lu admitted that the Magic Eden staff was “nervous about” the response from its passionately SOL-centric viewers. Nonetheless, he doesn’t imagine that the markets are as divided as they could appear on the floor.

“There’s really very excessive levels of person overlap between the 2 ecosystems,” Lu advised gm co-hosts Daniel Roberts and Stephen Graves. “It is not so mutually completely tribal. Initially, that is what I believed too—it’s like SOL solely, ETH solely. However really, as we dug [in] extra to study it, really, numerous the SOL customers got here from Ethereum.”

Lu mentioned that numerous the early Solana NFT customers had really come over to the platform after first experimenting on Ethereum. Whereas there are nonetheless examples of tribalism amongst notable collectors in each areas, there are additionally NFT personalities who’ve performed in each areas.

Solana Unicorn Magic Eden Expands NFT Market to Ethereum

“For us to maneuver from SOL to ETH, it was really very pure,” mentioned Lu. “Quite a lot of these customers had been like, ‘Oh yeah, effectively, I’ve received a MetaMask [wallet] already, I already know sort of in regards to the panorama. It is sensible {that a} Solana market desires to maneuver to Ethereum, as effectively.’”

So far as why Magic Eden expanded to Ethereum, there’s an apparent reply: it’s the biggest ecosystem by way of general buying and selling quantity, and holds a lot of the highest-value initiatives. There are additionally doubtless loads of customers which have solely ever collected Ethereum NFTs. However Lu additionally pointed to “issues that we’ve lengthy admired” over within the Ethereum house.

“There’s some crucial person motivations,” he defined. “There are superb NFT communities, NFT collections, and NFT creators and tradition within the Ethereum ecosystem.”

Lu mentioned that in increasing throughout a number of NFT ecosystems—with Ethereum the primary of doubtless many additions to return—each Magic Eden and the broader Solana NFT house can study from Ethereum’s NFT tradition, and even “port over a few of these learnings.”