Uniswap calls its new NFT Aggregator a “Google search” for trading

Five months after acquiring the NFT trading aggregator Genius and founder Scott Gray, Uniswap is launching an NFT aggregator on its website.

“Many people think about NFTs and tokens as two siled experiences, two siled audiences,” said Gray, who now works as Uniswap’s head of NFT Product. Decrypt in an interview. “But that’s not really the case.”

Uniswap, one of the most popular DeFi protocols for self-service token trades, have approx 3.48 billion dollars in total volume locked. Now it wants to level the NFT playing field with its aggregator. With it, users can view entries and “global floor prices” on seven different marketplaces, bulk buy NFTs in a single transaction, and list NFTs for sale across marketplaces.

But Uniswap’s NFT product is not just a repackaged Genie. Gray told Decrypt that more marketplaces have been added and the smart contract has been renewed to be up to 15% cheaper on gas taxes than other aggregators.

As part of the launch, Uniswap will offer limited gas discounts to its first 22,000 aggregator users on their first transaction, up to 0.01 ETH each (roughly $12) until December 14th. Discounts can be claimed after January 16 through the Uniswap app.

While it might not seem like much, early Genie users will also be eligible to receive part of a $5 million USDC airdrop for “certain historical Genie users” via Uniswaps official site to celebrate the launch. Genie users who made more than one transaction before April 15 will be eligible for $300 each, while holders of Genie’s Genesis NFT or Genie Gem NFT will be eligible for $1,000 each.

Uniswap’s NFT aggregator includes listings and data from OpenSea, X2Y2, Sudoswap, LooksRare, Larva Labs, Foundation and NFT20. Gray said Uniswap may add more in the future, but most marketplaces store data off-chain. This means that Uniswap needs the cooperation of these marketplaces to obtain the API keys needed to add them to the site.

Why use an aggregator? While OpenSea remains the most popular NFT marketplace, the tide may be changing. As more and more NFT marketplaces are launched, the trading experience becomes more complicated and dispersed as users create accounts on multiple marketplaces.

Gray believes such market fragmentation is actually a good thing for decentralization – and aggregators simplify an otherwise overwhelming shopping experience.

“I think it’s safe to have all this fragmentation as long as you have a really good aggregator because it allows the users and the creators to be in control instead of the platform,” Gray said Decrypt.

“And we don’t want to end up in a situation where [Apple] App Store where they can take anything down, or right now, for example, they’re basically limiting the NFT space because they want 30% of every NFT sale.”

Uniswap’s aggregator will not enforce creator feeswhich has become a popular topic as various marketplaces announce that they will (or will not) enforce creator fees for secondary sales.

“Creator fees have been a big catalyst for the NFT space,” Gray acknowledged, but clarified that Uniswap will not enforce such fees through its platform.

“As an aggregator, we don’t have the ability to set creator fees, or enforce creator fees, because we don’t create listings on our site,” he said. “But in light of that, we’ve made it very easy for users to filter out which marketplaces they want to use, or they don’t want to use.”

Gray also believes aggregators such as Uniswaps can contribute to mass adoption.

“If we have a lot of information asymmetry and a lot of capital inefficiencies in the NFT buying experience, then we’re not going to get the mainstream adoption that we need in the space,” he said.

“I see an aggregator like Uniswap more like Google Search, where we direct traffic to where it’s most efficient.”

Uniswap’s aggregator will be open source, meaning anyone can contribute suggestions for improvements to the protocol and interface through GitHub.

When asked if Uniswap will add any of its own fees to its aggregator in the future, Gray said there are currently no plans to do so.

Although the aggregator will only support Ethereum NFTs at launch, it is possible that more may be added over time.

“We definitely have it on our radar to expand into more chains,” Gray said.

However, Uniswap’s shiny new aggregator isn’t its first foray into NFTs. The DEX previously launched a limited collection of “phygital” Ethereum NFTs called Unisocks, which are digital socks that can be “burned” and redeemed for a physical pair IRL.

When asked why the sock NFTs still cost about $20,000, Gray called them “a meme.”

“Hayden still does hand deliveries for Unisocks,” Gray said of Hayden Adams, Uniswap’s inventor and CEO of Uniswap Labs. “It has become like a meme for Ethereum OGs and big Uniswap supporters.”