Quix NFT market saved from shutdown of Web3 Gaming Player

Optimism’s largest NFT marketplace has revealed that it won’t shut down after all. The team revealed that a prominent player from the web3 gaming space had stepped in.

Quix, the largest NFT marketplace on Optimisme, has announced that it will not be shutting down the marketplace. The team tweeted on February 28 that a “prominent player from the web3 gaming space” had become involved, saving the marketplace from closure.

Quix announced in November 2022 that it would be closing its marketplace — with the closing date set for February 28. The team has left it until the last minute to inform users about the rescue.

Launched in December 2021, Quix chose Optimism because of the scalability benefits that the layer 2 scaling solution offers. Popular NFT projects that have featured on Quix include BoredTown, Oliens, Motorheads and Ganland. Quix even built the ERC-721 bridge, which is an important part of Optimism’s design.

NFTs experienced a massive increase in popularity since their launch, but in 2022 the market also saw a decline over time. Quix wasn’t the only platform affected, but users will breathe a sigh of relief that the marketplace will continue to exist.

Quix returns from the brink

The plans to shut down came as something of a shock to the crypto community. The project announced at the time that it would open source on behalf of the Optimism community, but users still felt discouraged.

The closing announcement also mentioned that a token grant would be offered retroactively to contributions and the community until February 28. The team concluded by saying that it remained optimistic about the future of the NFT ecosystem, and it appears that optimism was well-founded.

Quix was exposed to an exploit last year

Quix has been exposed to other incidents that have put a strain on the effort. In July 2022, it suffered an exploit that led to the theft of over $100,000 in OP and USDC. It announced that it would refund all the stolen tokens.

Meanwhile, the Optimism network and its OP token have experienced solid growth in recent weeks. The token has grown significantly since the start of the year, rising 135% against ETH. The fact that Coinbase joined its ecosystem helped the token gain 14%. The total value locked is currently at $1 billion, with Velodrome DEX being the largest platform on the network.