Opinion | NFT Trading Is Still in the "eBay Era," and the Blue Ocean Remains
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Opinion | NFT Trading Is Still in the "eBay Era," and the Blue Ocean Remains
Today, we're in the "eBay era," where the largest NFT marketplaces aggregate everything into product grids focused on trading. But in the future, the best NFT marketplaces may not look like markets at all.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsWritten by: Li Jin
Translated by: TechFlow Intern
Today, we are in the "eBay era," where the largest NFT markets aggregate everything into product grids focused on trading. But in the future, the best NFT markets may not look like markets at all.
Looking back at the history of internet marketplaces: first-generation markets created immense value simply by aggregating supply and demand. Think of Craigslist, eBay—users just needed to browse and find what they wanted to buy.
For NFTs, we’re still in Market 1.0—users must first know what they want, go to a marketplace, type it into a search bar, and then transact.
Over time, transactional platforms have evolved to offer more seamless experiences, and the same will happen for NFTs.
Vertical-specific features and signals will help users discover the right products, and markets may even learn from user behavior to determine what to display.
Sometimes, these platforms become so embedded in engaging user experiences that they hardly resemble markets at all—think Instagram, Airbnb, Etsy, or Pinduoduo (a Chinese social shopping app with $256 billion GMV). People gradually realize that transactions exist within an experience.
As product scope expands and NFTs gradually permeate all digital media—from digital fashion to the metaverse to gaming assets—NFT markets will need better verticalized experiences, improved discovery, and stronger connections between data points for users.
In the future, NFT markets will incentivize and guide purchases, learning from users’ past on-chain and off-chain activities to surface relevant content—instead of requiring users to sift through everything available.
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