Uniswap Labs Acquires Genie NFT Marketplace
- Uniswap Labs has announced its acquisition of Genie to enable it to fulfill its mission of unlocking global ownership and exchange.
On Wednesday, leading crypto platform, Uniswap Labs, announced that it had acquired the first NFT marketplace aggregator, Genie. According to the announcement, the move will enable Uniswap to expand its products to include NFTs and ERC-20s. Also, it would enable the platform to achieve its goal of enabling global ownership and exchange.
Uniswap and NFT Market
Genie NFT marketplace is a platform where anyone can search and perform NFT transactions across other NFT marketplaces. The announcement added that integrating NFTs into Uniswap products would start with the Uniswap web app.
Thus, users can trade NFTs on multiple NFT marketplaces. The next stage would be the integration of NFTs into Uniswap’s developer APIs and widgets. Once those integrations are completed, Uniswap would have become a broad platform for builders and users in web3.
This purchase isn’t the first attempt of Uniswap to explore the NFT world. It launched Unisocks in 2019. At that time, Unisocks was the first NFT liquidity pool backed by real-world assets.
The Labs’ development of Uniswap v3 NFT positions led to the establishment of on-chain generative SVGs. As a gateway to web3, Uniswap believes that NFTs are a valuable addition to the fast-rising digital economy.
Hence, it believes that the NFT ecosystem should be integrated into the ERC-20 ecosystem. Uniswap Labs will use a USDC airdrop to share some of the NFT values with top Genie users. However, more details about this airdrop will be available on the launch date.
Uniswap Labs plans to launch the airdrop within the next two months. Those who receive the airdrops have up to 12 months to claim them. Uniswap offers simple and secure access to better liquidity than other centralized exchanges.
It doesn’t have a central limit order book, a feature common with most centralized crypto exchanges. The team plans to develop and launch more DeFi products that can be integrated into NFTs before the year ends. Thus, its users can have greater access to digital value and ownership.
Challenging OpenSea’s Leadership Status
Uniswap’s move to enter the NFT space is a means of creating more options for NFT transactions over the long term. Right now, opensea ranks the highest for the number of daily NFT transactions.
However, OpenSea’s leadership in the NFT space is gradually dwindling following the launch of more NFT marketplaces. Magic Eden, Looks Rare, and now, Uniswap’s Genie are becoming a growing force in acquiring some of OpenSea’s NFT market share.
However, it is surprising that Uniswap is making this purchase when NFT trading volumes are declining. The downturn in the crypto market is negatively affecting the NFT market.
The announcement has yet to hugely affect the price of Uniswap Labs’ native token (UNI). The UNI token currently trades at around $4.74, up by 3.57% in the last 24 hours, according to Coinmarketcap data.
Rebecca is a Senior Staff Writer at BitcoinWisdom, working hard to bring you the latest breaking news in the cryptocurrency market. In the words of Elon Musk “Buy stock in several companies that make products & services that *you* believe in. Only sell if you think their products & services are trending worse. Don’t panic when the market does. This will serve you well in the long-term.”
