“Base, Introduced” – meet Coinbase’s new NFT in partnership with Zora – Cryptopolitan
The second largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, Coinbase, recently introduced Base, an Ethereum-centric layer-2 (L2) blockchain. In addition, Coinbase’s Base test net was launched on Thursday. As reported by Cryptopolitan, Base is a layer 2 network built with Optimism’s OP Stack, aiming to recruit millions of new crypto users over the next few years.
Base is coming to NFT and Web3 developers
The crypto exchange released a free open Ethereum NFT for anyone to create cards after its launch. However, it is not through Coinbase’s own shaky NFT marketplace.
Currently, “Base, Introduced” is a free NFT made available by COIN via Zora, a platform for minting NFTs and a business specializing in Web3 production tools. It’s an open edition of NFT, which means that until Sunday, anyone can get one of the same items, but only one per wallet.
Since Base’s NFT release this morning, over 24,000 Ethereum NFTs have been created. As a result, NFT’s smart contract, which includes the project’s code, has become the Ethereum network’s top “gas guzzler,” consuming roughly $271,000 in gas (or network transaction fees) in three hours.
Zora takes over presence for Web3 developers
Although Zora is known for allowing Web3 developers to create NFTs, COIN already has its own NFT marketplace. However, COIN NFTs have received little notice since their introduction in spring 2017. According to public blockchain statistics, less than $8,000 in NFTs were exchanged in the past week.
Compare this to the $596 million in trading that happened on Blur last week. Blur is the leading NFT marketplace, having overtaken OpenSea, which had been the leader for a long time, as a result of whale traders aggressively flipping assets to exploit BLUR token trading.
The crypto giant’s NFT shows the introducing NFTs in the marketplace, but these are secondary listings submitted by authorized users. Despite having a very small team on it today, the exchange’s president and COO Emilie Choi stated on an earnings call this week that the exchange is “not throwing in the towel” on its NFT targets.
The exchange’s NFT marketplace has previously supported NFT coins, including significant drops like The Bill Murray 1000. Nevertheless, earlier this month, the company acknowledged that it has “paused” creation releases on NFT to redirect resources to other services on the market.
The free platform’s NFT refers to the recent “open edition meta” in the NFT world, where creators launch low-cost NFT coins and then add gamification elements, sometimes giving holders an incentive to “burn” (or permanently destroy) a number of them in exchange for a unique, rarer version that is not the same as the others.
COIN has not stated whether Basic NFT will be useful or beneficial in the future. Nevertheless, in secondary markets, NFTs are becoming more popular. Most of them are now selling for around 0.01 ETH ($16) each, which is a relatively low price. Still, some early editions and those with so-called “vanity numbers” fetch higher prices.
NFT #888, for example, was bought this morning for 0.888 ETH (about $1455). The buyer is now selling it for 8,888 ETH (about $14,700) with the expectation of making a large profit. Since the free coin was released this morning, other three-digit NFT variants have sold for hundreds of dollars.
