Ethereum L2 NFT marketplaces suspend operation indefinitely – crypto.news

Quix on Optimism and Stratos on Arbitrum announced that they would cease operations while they open-sourced their code. Transactions by NFT collectors will be directed to OpenSea.

The “sibling” NFT marketplace infrastructure “malnutrition” causes it to fail prematurely

Optimism-based Quix on Twitter yesterday, 23rd of November, 2022, took a closing bow as they announced they will be working with Optimism Collective to “usher Quix into its next phrase.” 12 minutes after the announcement, Quix’s “sibling” marketplace, Arbitrum-based Stratos, retweeted Quix’s closing announcement, announcing that they, too, are winding down.

Stratos tweeted, “A huge thank you to everyone in the Arbitrum and Stratos community. Our sister marketplace, Quix, is winding down, and we are also. Quix will be open-sourcing their code, which also powers Stratos.”

In a full “Message from Quix,”  they explained in detail that Quix funding is running low. Quix’s monthly infrastructure costs are more than its revenue, and they appear to be “running too lean of an operation.“

Quix had been holding up with just a team of three, and though, despite their numbers, they have achieved a lot, like launching the Quix launch pad, building an Optimism ERC-721 bridge, and helping teams like Mirror, RabbitHole, and CoinGecko etc to integrate NFTs into their products.

They, however, can’t hold up anymore as they stated, “Quix is no longer a business that we can continue to operate. We turn to Optimism Collective to usher Quix into its next phrase.” Despite saying goodbye, Quix states how proud they are of what they’ve built and how it has grown over the years

To lighten things up, Quix announced that “the Optimism Foundation has enabled the open sourcing of Quix’s code on behalf of the Optimism Community.” This means Quix code will be freely available for the community to leverage and build.

Would Quix ever come back?

According to some Quix users, Quix is the best NFT marketplace that explores good projects and enjoyable art. In some cases, some believe it to be better than an NFT giant marketplace like OpenSea. 

The Ethereum L2 NFT marketplaces move into Optimism Collective seem to be more of a retreat than a total surrender. Optimism fund is known to support new projects with grants. Perhaps there is a comeback, and they will eventually pick up and emerge bigger in the nearest future.