Though sales of nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, have dropped substantially amid the ongoing Crypto Winter, Uniswap Labs remains bullish on the future of the market.
The company, which backed the development of Uniswap, the largest decentralized exchange, today launched its own NFT aggregator platform after it shared in June that it had acquired Genie.
Unlike an individual NFT marketplace, the Uniswap aggregator allows users to view listings from OpenSea, LooksRare, NFTX, and others all at once. Users can then assess prices across the board and determine whether they want to buy or sell their own NFTs, either individually or in batches.
The goal isn’t to create another NFT marketplace, Mary-Catherine “MC” Lader, COO of Uniswap Labs, tells Fortune.
Courtesy of Uniswap Labs
“It’s not competing with OpenSea. It’s not telling you to list your NFTs on Uniswap. It’s just giving you access to OpenSea and the other marketplaces,” Lader said. “The marketplaces have many other important functions. They have a lot of creator tools that help creators mint NFTs, and we’re not competing with that.”
Uniswap Labs noted that its aggregator will be the “the first major NFT platform” to open source its front-end code, and also mentioned that it will be more gas-efficient for users, meaning cheaper transactions fees.
Despite much of the criticism that follows NFTs and the current market slump, the company sees long-term promise in its aggregator.
“We believe that NFTs are in the very early stages of their development,” Lader said. “A non-fungible item can be used for lots of different things—well beyond what they’re being used for today.”
Recently, Uniswap Labs announced it raised a $165 million Series B funding round, valuing the company at $1.66 billion. In May, the decentralized exchange surpassed $1 trillion in lifetime trading volume, and it’s previously dipped into the NFT realm with Unisocks, a token that was redeemable for a real pair of socks.
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