On September 22nd 2022, Alexander Taub announced the “soft launch” of Truth Marketplace with Snag Solutions, a white-label NFT marketplace. The Truth marketplace is going to be the official home of Goblin Town, as well as a few other NFTs related to Truth collections. This includes The 187, Illuminati Collective, Grumpls, McGoblinBurger, illuminati DAO token, UNDAO, Believer Passes, Merch Passes, and more.
While this marketplace launch is the talk of the town recently, it’s certainly not the first one. The “first on-chain job marketplace” was Roo Troop, followed shortly after by Nickelodeon’s NFT marketplace. This begs the question, why are so many projects creating their own marketplaces when we have existing ones like OpenSea and Magic Eden?
Why Are Projects Launching Their Own Marketplaces?
In the case of Truth Labs, the marketplace has been created to address what it and many others in the Web3 space view as high fees on existing marketplaces. On top of the royalties (2.5% to 10%) that a project decides to take from each purchase, OpenSea also pockets another 2.5% fee of every transaction made.
Truth Labs aim is to enable secondary market sales of NFTs with reduced fees. The new marketplace will charge a set 5% royalty fee for every transaction made on the platform. “This is now the lowest cost channel to list your Truth Labs-related NFTs”, Taub stated.
In addition to addressing royalty fees, Truth Labs will “introduce more stringent processes for reporting stolen NFTs to better align with the ethos of Web3 and decentralized technologies,” the company explained in a press release. This comes after OpenSea’s stolen item policy was criticized after its most recent update.
Aside from lower fees and better security, project specific marketplaces can include customizable functionality to better suit their needs in comparison with general marketplaces.
Additionally, having exclusive marketplaces makes it much easier to onboard people. The process of minting an NFT on one site, and then having to view it on OpenSea, as well as having to trade on OpenSea, may be confusing for newcomers. Having everyone in one location is far more convenient, which is why Nickelodeon created its own native marketplace.
What’s Coming Next?
Truth Labs new marketplace will be a new and exciting Web3 experiment. Its success or failure could be the catalyst for other projects to follow suit and do the same, or not. If other mid-caps or ‘blue chips’ were to follow a similar model, it could lead to greater marketplace diversity, more competition and increased innovation from Web3 teams.
Saying this, Jong and Heerwagen recently proposed to build an ApeCoin DAO marketplace. The marketplace would “drive adoption of $APE through $APE listings, drive traffic to the ApeCoin DAO, and decrease fees to community members by building a APE-native marketplace with rich ape-specific user experiences.”
The conversations are already taking place and the future is exciting. It’s bullish to see that NFT development proceeds even during a dreary bear market.
