Quick take:
- The platform aims to leverage its domain name and branding to onboard users.
- Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary serves as advisor of the platform.
- NFT.com will sell governance tokens as NFT “keys”.
Upcoming NFT marketplace, NFT.com, has ambitions to take on market leader OpenSea. Led by CEO Jordan Fried, former senior vice president of Hedera Hashgraph, the platform aims to leverage its domain name and branding to bring NFTs to the masses in a growing market.
However, there is more to the plan to edge out its competitors than just having a straightforward domain name that cost $2 million to buy. Fried and Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary, who serves as advisor of the platform, told Decrypt that they want NFT.com to be governed by its community of users.
Eschewing backing from venture capitalist firms, NFT.com will launch 10,000 Genesis Key NFTs to be auctioned and sold. The NFT keys will function as governance tokens to the marketplace and will be overseen by a DAO. Keyholders can also mint an NFT and use it as their profile picture on the platform to showcase their collectibles.
Fried told Decrypt that the marketplace’s business model is built on the idea that users and creators will accumulate value for the platform as it grows. He adds that NFT.com’s users are the CEOs and that he considers himself more of a “steward and evangelist”.
He also said that previous attempts by others to create a community-driven NFT marketplace without VC backing didn’t have fully doxxed teams. With scams rampant In the NFT space, platforms with anonymous teams are seen as a risk.
Fried opined that creators should have some control and a relationship with the marketplace’s team. Using blue-chip projects such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, World of Women, and Doodles as examples, he told Decrypt: “They don’t have an account manager at OpenSea. They don’t have a direct line to Devin [Finzer] and Alex [Atallah], the CEO and CTO. They’re not valued. OpenSea is valued at $13.3 billion… but the people who helped them get there are not a16z and the investors. It’s the creators who are creating NFTs on this platform.”
Set to launch in May in the Ethereum ecosystem, NFT.com has a few other Hedera founding members on its team. Members of NFT.com’s DAO will vote on additional blockchains to integrate into the marketplace.
While other cheaper and faster blockchains like Solana, Polygon, Tezos and Flow have been integrated into major marketplaces like OpenSea and Rarible, Fried said that they can’t compare to the huge creator economy on Ethereum.
“Our philosophy is to support NFTs wherever NFTs exist. But you have to start on Ethereum,” he explained to Decrypt. “No other protocol even comes close right now. All of our original infrastructure is on Ethereum, but we hope to be multi-protocol as soon as we’ve got the capabilities and as soon as our DAO enables us to do so.”
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