Initial Review of Coinbase NFT Market: Focused on Social Attributes and User-Friendly Interface, Aiming for the Web3 Social Market
"People not only want better tools to buy and sell NFTs, they want better ways to discover them, better ways to find the right communities, and better spaces to feel connected to each other."Author: Gu Yu, Chain Catcher
After waiting for more than half a year and with over 4 million people on the waiting list, the Coinbase NFT Market finally launched its beta version tonight, unveiling its mysterious veil. Currently, although the NFT market only supports specific invited users to log in and trade NFTs, most of its pages are freely accessible. Next, Chain Catcher will provide a detailed introduction to the features and characteristics of the Coinbase NFT Market based on the currently available public information, to help everyone better understand the platform.
First of all, the Coinbase NFT Market is not similar to the fully centralized Binance NFT Market. It currently only supports login via decentralized wallets like Metamask and Coinbase Wallet, and it only supports displaying and trading NFTs on the Ethereum mainnet. More public chains will be supported in the future, which means that the Coinbase NFT Market directly competes with decentralized NFT markets like Opensea.
To quickly attract more users, the Coinbase NFT Market has announced that transaction fees will be 0 in the short term, but in the future, fees will be charged according to industry standards. Additionally, the market plans to support users purchasing NFTs using Coinbase accounts or credit cards in the future, further lowering the barriers for users to buy NFTs.
However, compared to the aforementioned features, the biggest selling point of the Coinbase NFT Market lies in its social attributes. In the blog post announcing the launch, Coinbase did not hide its immense ambition for the social attributes of the Coinbase NFT Market, referring to it as a Web3 social marketplace for NFTs and a platform to help creators and collectors build and participate in communities, rather than just a trading market.
"We understand that people not only want better tools to buy and sell NFTs: they want better ways to discover them, better ways to find the right communities, and better spaces to feel connected to each other. That’s why the product we are building is not just about trading. We want to empower people to create, collect, and connect," Coinbase stated.
The emphasis on social aspects is also reflected in various pages of the Coinbase NFT Market.
First is the user homepage, which, in addition to supporting avatar and nickname settings and linking Ethereum addresses like Opensea, also allows users to add personal profile introductions, hide specific NFTs, showcase their created NFTs, and link to Twitter and Instagram, among other features. Furthermore, the Coinbase NFT Market supports a follow feature, allowing any user to view the following and follower status of other users on their homepage.
On specific NFT pages, users can publicly comment and like in the comment section. This feature is expected to become an important platform for communication between buyers and sellers or for onlookers to discuss.
On the Discover page, the Coinbase NFT Market presents NFTs for sale in an information feed and personalized recommendations. After users interact more with the platform, the discovery page will be optimized based on the products purchased, trends, and people followed.
Additionally, at the bottom of the homepage, the Coinbase NFT Market will specifically recommend creators on the platform, helping them better reach users and build communities.
Aside from the aforementioned features, another characteristic of the Coinbase NFT Market is its relatively simple and flatter style. Previously, Coinbase also stated that it would focus on building a user-friendly interface, placing complexity behind the scenes to make NFTs more accessible. "It will make minting, buying, showcasing, and discovering NFTs easier than ever. Just as Coinbase helped millions access Bitcoin in a simple and trustworthy way for the first time," Coinbase said.
Corresponding to the simplicity is a relatively limited set of features. Aside from the previously mentioned social functions, many detailed NFT information aspects are not presented, such as the specific rarity ratio of NFT attributes, price charts, and the historical information area is also collapsed.
Moreover, the main functional options of the Coinbase NFT Market also include Shop and Trending. On the Shop page, users can directly view NFTs that are for sale and select by type. On the Trending page, users can view the NFT collections with the highest trading volume over the past 7 days and see specific lists.
In the blog, Coinbase stated that in the coming weeks or months, new features such as NFT minting, Drops (generally referring to whitelist purchases), and token-gated communities (communities accessible only to users holding specific NFTs) will be added. Among these, the NFT gated community feature may become one of the core competitive advantages of the platform's social functions, truly realizing the vision of helping creators build communities on the platform and gathering more loyal users.
