Justin Kan, the co-founder of interactive live streaming service Twitch, has launched a gaming non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace. A report unveiled this news on December 13, noting that the platform is titled Fractal. Reportedly, Fractal will launch on Solana, a network that seeks to kill Ethereum.
According to the report, Fractal features a primary market that lets gamers purchase in-game items from game companies directly and use them in Solana-based games. On top of this, the marketplace has a secondary marketplace that supports peer-to-peer (P2P) trading.
Explaining what inspired him to launch an NFT marketplace for gaming items, Kan said,
People have always been able to make real money playing video games. What we’re seeing with Web 3 gaming, it feels like a natural development towards ownership gamers have always wanted.
Despite being relatively new, the company has already forged multiple partnerships with gaming companies, and it seeks to announce them in the coming week.
While the firm did not disclose which gaming companies it has partnered with, it is worth keeping in mind that Kan has been an active investor in web3 gaming over the past few months. For instance, he led an $8 million funding round for Syn City, a Solana-based play-to-earn mafia game, in November. Syn City’s development team includes acclaimed players like Disney, Ubisoft, Roblox, EA, and Gameloft.
Solana continues establishing itself as the go-to blockchain for NFTs
Solana is proving to be the go-to platform for NFTs due to its fundamentals. Explaining why it chose to start with Solana NFTs, Fractal said the blockchain features high transaction speeds and low costs. The company added that these features are attractive to game developers that seek to sell a high volume of assets. However, Fractal aims to add support for other blockchains over time.
Despite these bullish developments, non-crypto gamers are yet to embrace the changes of shifting to web3. Their loathe of NFTs became evident after Ubisoft announced that it seeks to integrate in-game NFTs dubbed credits into Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint and other games.
The YouTube video announcing this development got a 96% dislike ratio, with one of the gamers commenting,
To me, this is a blatant signal that you’re just milking the Ghost Recon franchise for literally every cent while putting in minimal effort into the actual game itself. Not playing a GR game in the future if there’s this level of degeneracy in the team. You took a solid franchise and absolutely made it a laughing stock.
