Will the likes of Kraken, Coinbase put OpenSea NFTs out of business?

Prominent crypto exchange, Kraken has been making a lot of news lately. From its recent integration of the Lightning Network to scoring a license in UAE, the crypto exchange is clearly elevating its presence in the crypto ecosystem. Now, following the footsteps of other crypto platforms, Kraken is all set to roll out its very own NFT platform.

Back in 2021, Coinbase had previously announced the launch of its very own NFT space. However, the platform did not immediately carry out the big release. A waitlist was put in place and the launch is currently in its beta phase. Similarly, Kraken has set up a waitlist where interested users can join in.

Kraken Exchange has announced the launch of its NFT platform and is currently available to join its waitlist. Kraken is the second largest exchange in the US after Coinbase. Coinbase’s NFT platform is in beta testing. https://t.co/rurOCVsIWq

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) May 3, 2022

The US-based crypto exchange is expected to offer an array of services that would streamline the purchase of NFTs. Kraken claims to offer zero gas fees for trades on the NFT space. This, however, would be possible only after users’ NFT have custodied with Kraken NFT.

Along with this, users would be able to purchase NFTs with cash or crypto, check rarity scores and even secure NFTs across a variety of blockchains.

Will OpenSea be stripped of its ‘largest NFT marketplace’ title?

2022 started out on a rather bad note for OpenSea. The world’s largest NFT marketplace was hit with multiple attacks causing monetary loss to its users. Following this, the platform recorded a steep fall in activity. Apart from this, the number of users of the platform remained low compared to those who joined the Coinbase waitlist.

The crypto exchange welcomed nearly 8.4 million users into its waitlist. Since the platform is still in its beta phase, the user base is most likely to surge, the community speculates.

dear @opensea,

say hello to @Coinbase_NFT

sincerely,
everyone.

— Or Vardi (@or_vardi) May 3, 2022

In the last 30 days, statistics show that the platform endured a significant drop in its volume.

Source – DappRadar

As a result, Kraken is expected to disrupt OpenSea’s hold on the market just like Coinbase is expected to do.

Here’s why Coinbase’s beta phase did not take off well

Coinbase rolled out the beta of its NFT marketplace towards the end of April 2022. With the fervor around this platform at its peak, the community expected increased interest in this update. However, the platform amassed less than 900 transactions following the launch. This created quite a buzz in the market. But it should be noted that this was still its beta phase. One Twitter user wrote,

“It’s in beta now. Their waitlist has 4x more people than on opensea Probably only a matter of time before Coinbase becomes the default nft marketplace. Most people don’t want to deal with metamask, recovery phrases etc, they just want to click buy and hold on their exchange acct”

Another user pointed out the recent exhaustion of the Ethereum network following Yuga Labs’ mishap as well as Solana’s series of outages. Therefore, Coinbase failed to attract the traction it was expected to.

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