Coinbase Finally Unveils Social NFT Platform For Limited Beta Users

• Prices for Coinbase NFT are presently only advertised in ETH.
• NFTs may be shown on user profiles, and a discovery feed will propose NFTs to buyers.

On Wednesday, Coinbase revealed that its NFT marketplace is now in beta and open to a select group of beta testers who’ll be accepted depending on their position on the queue for the platform. Adding social elements like a comment system (with upvotes and downvotes) and an algorithmic feed is part of the company’s strategy to compete with already-established competitors in the field.

It looks like a hybrid between Instagram and the biggest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, according to Coinbase’s blog post. NFTs may be shown on user profiles, and a discovery feed will propose NFTs to buyers depending on what they purchase, what’s trending, who they follow, and more, according to the site. 

Only Ethereum Supported

Of course, beta testers may buy NFTs from the “Shop” page. A wallet like Coinbase’s or MetaMask’s may be used to log in to the beta version of the marketplace, which currently only supports the Ethereum blockchain. Prices for Coinbase NFT are presently only advertised in ETH, despite the company’s promise to accept MasterCard in the future.

A key participant in the crypto exchange market, Coinbase, is going into NFTs a little too late in the game. The market is losing steam; according to Bloomberg: Using DappRadar’s NFT marketplace tracker, we can see that the volume and quantity of traders on the major marketplaces have declined during the last month. OpenSea, the biggest NFT firm, has around 67% fewer deals and 23% fewer traders than it had in March. Search interest in NFTs now dwindled back to normal levels after a brief spike in October 2021 through January 2022.