Kraken Announces NFT Marketplace

Mike Dalton

May. 3, 2022

The exchange will offer creator rewards, multi-chain support, and zero gas fees.

Flickr photo by Steve Jurvetson

Key Takeaways

Kraken announced today that it is opening the waitlist for its NFT store and revealed the platform's various features.
In December, CEO Jesse Powell suggested Kraken would open an NFT marketplace but gave few details at that time.
Kraken is one of many exchanges that have launched an NFT platform; others include Coinbase, Binance, and FTX.

Crypto exchange Kraken announced today that it is opening the waitlist for its NFT marketplace and announced several planned features.

Kraken Opens NFT Waitlist

In a blog post today, Kraken announced its non-fungible token marketplace, which will be called Kraken NFT.

Kraken plans for zero user gas fees when NFTs are circulated within its own platform. However, users will need to pay gas fees if they deposit or withdraw NFTs to and from Kraken.

The company also plans various other features: notably, it will allow users to track the rarity scores of their NFTs and will reward NFT creators by paying them a portion of secondary sales.

Kraken’s NFT marketplace will accept payments in most currencies and cryptocurrencies already accepted by the exchange. More than 120 different assets are supported, Kraken says.

Kraken will support NFTs on multiple blockchains, with Ethereum and Solana both supported at launch. The exchange says that more blockchains will be announced later at a later date.

The company did not reveal when its NFT marketplace will launch but announced that the waitlist opens today.

CEO Announced Plans In December

Kraken CEO Jesse Powell announced plans to open an NFT marketplace in December but gave few details at the time.

In that announcement, Powell cited various reasons for creating an NFT marketplace, including the appearance of Metaverse NFTs and expected growth in the overall NFT market.

Other major crypto exchanges have already launched NFT marketplaces, including Coinbase, FTX.US, Binance, and Gemini.

But although those exchanges have recently entered the competition, the dedicated NFT marketplace OpenSea remains the largest site for NFT trading. It recorded a $3.2 billion trading volume in April.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and other cryptocurrencies.

Disclaimer