The Magic Eden NFT marketplace integrates Polygon to leverage blockchain gaming
Magic Eden, a cross-chain non-functional token marketplace, announced today that it plans to expand to integrate the Polygon blockchain to allow the marketplace to work more closely with game partners and creators using the network.
Polygon is a scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain and is home to some of the biggest Web3 game projects and publishers, including big names like Ubisoft, Atari, Animoca, and Decentraland. The platform provides a low-cost, high-speed network to transact on Ethereum for applications when the blockchain is congested.
Magic Eden is a marketplace for non-fungible tokens, which are digital assets that use blockchain technology to represent ownership of virtual objects such as digital art, music, files, and video game items. NFT owners provide proof of ownership of these items by holding the private cryptographic keys that represent the receipt of ownership on the blockchain.
Magic Eden currently supports Ethereum and Solana-based NFTs, making it a multi-chain marketplace, meaning NFT traders can exchange NFTs on multiple blockchains. With the addition of Polygon, users will also be able to trade on that network, which is widely favored by Web3 game creators because it is compatible with Ethereum’s virtual machine, called EVM.
Zhuoxun Yin, co-founder and CEO of Magic Eden, said that the integration of Polygon with Magic Eden would be an important milestone and help drive the market into the next stage of growth by helping to capture a larger gaming audience and offer current users greater opportunities for chain trade.
“First, we’ve always envisioned a cross-chain future for Magic Eden, and this brings us closer to uniting a wider audience that loves NFTs,” Yin explained. “Second, given Polygon’s popularity among game developers as a low-cost EVM-compliant chain, integrating Polygon will continue to cement Magic Eden as the go-to Web3 gaming platform.”
Magic Eden intends to focus first on providing tools for creators using Polygon, including a Lunchpad with MATIC, Polygon’s native crypto token, and a marketplace before the end of the year. The upcoming Launchpad for Polygon has already attracted a number of game publishers and developers, including BORA, backed by Kakao Games, IntellaX, nWay, Block Games, Boomland, Planet Mojo and Taunt Battleworld.
The Polygon network now supports tens of thousands of decentralized blockchain applications and has processed 1.9 billion transactions and has over 174 million unique user addresses and secures over 5 billion in assets. The company raised $450 million in funding led by Sequoia Capital India at a valuation of $2 billion in February. By expanding to Polygon, Magic Eden hopes to leverage its audience and diverse ecosystem of developers and publishers by giving them a place to trade assets for their games.
This partnership comes at a time when the NFT markets have flagged significantly because the crypto markets are in decline. According to a Bloomberg report by the end of September, NFT trading volumes fell almost 97% from heady highs of $17.2 billion surpassing 2021 volumes to below $467 million in September, showing a significant decline in the markets. ONE report from Decrypt echoed those sentiments, showing that October sales had fallen 25% across all chains from the previous month, showing that the markets were indeed losing momentum.
Crypto markets face slowdown in general as what is known as ‘crypto winter’ continues to be elaborated after recent collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. This is particularly prominent in Ethereum, a major cryptocurrency used for NFTs, which has lost about 30% of its value since the beginning of November, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
