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Did WazirX betray his community? NFT Marketplace closure sparks fury
In a shocking development, Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX announced on Friday 24 February the closure of its WazirX NFT marketplace. According to the company, the decision came as a result of “low volume and traction.” The sudden shutdown sparked outrage among NFT artists, with some vowing to boycott future products from its co-founders, Nischal Shetty and Sandesh Suvarna.
Here’s everything you need to know about the shutdown of the WazirX NFT marketplace:
WazirX is shutting down its NFT marketplace: Here’s why
In a Twitter thread on Friday, WazirX wrote to the NFT marketplace about its decision to shut down the platform.
“To all the creators and collectors of the WazirX NFT Marketplace, we regret to inform you that our platform has closed due to low volume and traction,” the company wrote. It further claimed that in the last 30 days, the platform saw only 354 transactions, generating a volume of $112.24. From this, only about $6 was collected in total platform fees. Moreover, the site only added 71 unique active wallets during this period.
“We created a safe and secure marketplace where creators could showcase and trade their unique digital assets,” WazirX wrote in a blog posts. “NFTs are decentralized and owners have full control over their assets… Our users can be confident that they can continue to hold their NFTs in their wallets and these can be sold on other marketplaces such as Open sea.”
How has NFT Twitter reacted?
For several months now, the WazirX NFT Marketplace official Twitter account has been inactive. In fact, before the announcement, the last post was in mid-October last year. Apparently, the team was even unaware of a Cloudflare bug on the site until community members raised the issue.
After the announcement, the NFT artist community criticized WazirX for his sudden decision, without consulting any of the stakeholders. For many of the artists on the platform, the announcement came as a shock.
Vimal Chandran, a multi-disciplinary visual artist from India, wrote: “A bit disappointed with the way @WazirXNFT ended things abruptly!!”
“I will avoid anywhere these guys are present @sandeshsuvarna @jbsahani,” added photographer Arijit Mondal. “90% of creators got demotivated and left the NFT space. 50% of collectors did the same. I’m stuck with 140+ collected NFTs myself.”
Several artists have also accused the marketplace of being a blanket move. However, co-founder Nischal Shetty refuted the claims and said, “The NFTs have always been under the self-custody of those who participate.”
What happens now?
WazirX has said that they will keep the NFT marketplace website on file for the next 20 days. Artists and creators can also trade their NFTs on marketplaces that support the BNB blockchain. Meanwhile, some community members have also suggested that the team help members set up a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) around WazirX.
However, it remains to be seen whether this will be successful. It also remains to be seen how the NFTs will perform if traded on other NFT marketplaces. After all, WazirX largely catered to the Indian NFT community.
