What’s a Web3 Micro-Marketplace?
In order to achieve an active and engaged community, many projects are firing up not only their own tokens, but marketplaces to ensure those tokens have utility. A thriving market will be a critical to ensuring tokens are continually cycled through an ecosystem. Let’s discuss!
In order for NFT projects’ tokens to have perceived value, they must have some sort of utility — a way to use them. Enter: The Marketplace.
Not every project needs a comprehensive NFT marketplace. In fact, that is an incredibly difficult proposition to undertake — with blockchain and the ease of exchanging goods for tokens, it’s all too easy for counterfeit goods and scams to take hold. Instead, a ‘micro-market’ — a marketplace solely for a single projects’ goods, can be a great addition and provide for a unique way to expand a brands presence.
Micro-markets allow projects to provide a controlled platform in which community members can exchange goods — in most cases (such as NFH and the Loremporium), users who accrue tokens through NFT ownership and participation in an idle game can exchange those tokens for other goods. This provides utility for the tokens and incentivizes participation in the project. Goods can be, but aren’t limited to, additional digital assets (NFTs), physical goods (merch and specialized items), experiences (tickets to IRL events), and more.
Marketplace economics can be tricky. They need to have enough inventory to allow for a broad cross section of users to access their goods, but not so much supply that it outstrips demand and reduces perceived value of its contents. There also needs to be an ongoing determination of inventory and addition of items so that community members don’t rush out to liquidate their tokens, because in the absence of in-project utility, users will not always wait around for the promise of future elements.
I predict that we will eventually see an interesting cross-collaboration between projects and their native tokens to expand utility and allow NFT collectors to transact across multiple markets. Not every project will have immediate liquidity — and in that case, the ability to have expanded options to recognize value for earned tokens will be critical. Think: $PUNKS or $POW token from @metaherouniverse (Pixel Vault) being used in the NFHeroes Loremporium. Cool Cats being used with Furballs. Etc. There will be massive challenges from an arbitraging and assignment of value perspective, but as those are resolved it opens up an entirely new method of cross-project collaboration that would boost the entire space.
Questions about NFH? Drop them below and we’ll explore them in future Medium articles!
