Welcome again to Chain Reaction, a podcast that unpacks and dives deep into the newest traits, drama and information in crypto with a number of the largest names within the business to interrupt issues down block by block for the crypto curious.
For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Jack Lu, co-founder and CEO of NFT market Magic Eden. That is his second time on Chain Response, however the market has developed lots since the last time he came on in August 2022, so we’re excited to have him again!
Earlier than co-founding Magic Eden in 2021, Lu labored as a product supervisor at Google and a advisor for Boston Consulting Group.
Magic Eden initially started as a Solana-based NFT buying and selling platform, however has expanded its help to different blockchain networks like Polygon, Ethereum and Bitcoin. Right now, it has grown into one of many largest NFT marketplaces with over 8,000 collections, about $3 billion in NFT transactions and 22 million distinctive month-to-month guests. In June 2022, Magic Eden raised $130 million in a Collection B spherical that granted it unicorn standing.
Lu dropped a bunch of fascinating nuggets in regards to the NFT house and the way Magic Eden is planning to deal with the altering surroundings, particularly round NFTs.
He shared that Magic Eden plans to remain aggressive by its multichain choices and by supporting a number of the biggest NFT collections within the house, like Mad Lads, which can even onboard its viewers to its platform. Within the Bitcoin NFT house, {the marketplace} is trying to faucet “a variety of the cross-chain overlap,” Lu mentioned, including, “There’s a variety of Solana neighborhood members and Ethereum neighborhood members who’ve tried to take a look at BTC.”
When requested if Magic Eden will add extra blockchains to its platform, Lu maintained that his stance is to “by no means say by no means,” however proper now it’s not eyeing any new additions.
“Going from one to 4 [blockchains] in six months is like having 4 children, 4 infants, and we have now to nurture all of them,” he mentioned. “Proper now, we undoubtedly really feel like we have now to consolidate and polish up the expertise for all these ecosystems.”
On the similar time, there’s a variety of innovation on the best way, and Lu needs to be prepared for that.
“There’s a variety of chains, whether or not that’s particular to gaming — there are category-specific ecosystems which are popping up,” he mentioned. “There’s many, many nice chains and ecosystems simply inside that class that might make a variety of sense for us to broaden into.”
In March, Magic Eden launched help for web3 gaming with Magic Eden Video games, which lets web3 builders nurture participant bases and communities. Whereas that market is thrilling, it’s nonetheless early, Lu famous.
“We see a really, very wholesome creator pipeline into gaming. We perceive there’s a variety of inbound and present curiosity from web3 gaming builders, and for us, that’s all the time been a number one indicator that the NFT ecosystem goes to take off with the influx of creator curiosity.”
Lu additionally sees long-term potential in layer-2 blockchains constructing on high of the Ethereum community which are primarily based off Arbitrum or Optimism.
Although Magic Eden has grown quickly, it needs to stay true to its philosophy of creating the NFT buying and selling expertise “easy” whereas nonetheless serving to customers “really feel the worth” of the NFT ecosystem, he mentioned.
“Our mission is to deal with the long run.”
We additionally talked about:
- Help for BRC-20 tokens
- NFT market volatility
- Royalty charges
- Web3 gaming growth
- Recommendation for NFT neighborhood
Have to catch up earlier than you pay attention? Learn these for a fast overview:
Chain Response comes out each different Thursday, so be sure you subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite pod platform to maintain up with the newest in web3 and crypto.
