In the short timeframe of crypto’s existence, horizontal marketplaces have dominated the creator landscape as the most common means of facilitating the purchase and discovery of NFTs.
While some “blue-chip” projects enable minting to occur directly on their NFT community website, most will direct members to external marketplaces for secondary sales since building out an infrastructure to support meaningful decentralized trading experiences comes with considerable technical and logistical challenges.
Oftentimes, this type of trading happens almost exclusively on marketplaces like OpenSea, which retains its position as the largest and most popular NFT marketplace with $22.73 billion in NFT sales thanks to its 1.3 million buyers.
If OpenSea were to go bankrupt and turn off its lights, the entire ecosystem would ground to a halt. While this is unlikely, power is still hugely centralized and many platforms reserve the right to set their own royalty parameters, de-platform users or freeze assets traded through its smart contracts.
The increasing rate of centralization amongst NFT marketplaces is incredibly concerning. It was only recently that a number of dominant aggregators shifted to a royalties-optional model in an attempt to provide more liquidity to their platforms, upending a practice that had since then been considered an industry norm.
The news sparked backlash from crypto Twitter, with many arguing that the ceasing of royalty protections not only undercuts the decentralized ethos of Web3, but sparks a race to the bottom where OpenSea and other incumbents are forced to adjust their own royalty structures in order to remain competitive.
NFTs were supposed to empower creators to bypass intermediaries and make a sustainable living from their practice, yet they are increasingly forced to relinquish control to platforms that are not respecting their royalties and do not have their best interests in mind.
Custom DEX's would solve these issues, but curiously this is rarely happening amongst NFT projects and creators today. That’s not to say that custom solutions don’t exist. Many pioneering projects like CyptoPunks and CryptoKitties hosted their own dedicated trading platforms way before the market won over mainstream culture.
However, the trend for custom solutions is now beginning to resurface as an increasing number of disenfranchised creators look to take matters into their own hands. Luckily, we have just the solution.
Over the past few months, our team has been hard at work developing a whole ecosystem of products that make it easy to work with NFT data, host your own secondary, and create rich, integrated experiences in Web3. Now, we're gearing up to launch our MultiDEX and we couldn't be more excited by what this means for the creator community!
The MultiDEX lets creators and projects seamlessly embed NFT trading directly into their website or application. Unlike third-party trading platforms, custom DEX's allow for more on-brand selling experiences, lower fees than third-party platforms and guarantees buyers are purchasing from the real collection.
We believe that custom DEX's are the future of NFT trading. Not only because they offer creators and projects much more control over their secondary markets, but because they push the space forward in the right direction. Let's take a closer look.
Using the MultiDEX, your project no longer has to rely on centralized marketplaces that can technically delist your collection at any time. Instead, offers, listings, and trades are executed 100% on-chain, so your community will always be able to trade their NFTs.
Integrating NFT trading into your own community ecosystem gives you full creative control of the presentation of your work and the ownership of your brand. Easily personalize the look and feel of your exchange and create custom, branded trading experiences for your community.
No more redirecting users to third-party trading platforms. Instead of switching back and forth between marketplaces, community members can buy and trade NFTs within a close community setting and have a much easier time navigating your project's ecosystem.
At a time when royalties aren’t always a given, when your community trades NFTs on your own smart contract exchange you can help you secure this income stream by ensuring the creator fee is always paid.
Many marketplaces are rife with plagiarism or outright scams. On your own custom trading platform you have full control over which tokens can or cannot be traded. This way, you can assure collectors that they're buying an authentic NFT and protect your community from copycat collections.
We couldn’t be more excited to be delivering the MultiDEX to the NFT space at a time when the perils of the NFT ecosystem have never been more apparent. If you are a creator or project interested in creating your own custom trading interface, visit our homepage to join our waitlist!