#264: Magic Eden's Master Plan

🪄 It involves a rewards program and fortunately more

Magic Eden revamps their rewards program

I know, some (maybe all) of you are tired of the topics around points, rewards, and airdrops. Today’s piece on Magic Eden touches upon rewards, but that fortunately isn’t the main course 😉

I myself am even having trouble keeping up with all the new programs that are launching. For example, another Rabby (wallet provider) is launching a points program, which competes with Rainbow’s points program launched last month, and looks to take market share away from the 800-pound gorilla that is Metamask (doesn’t have an airdrop or points system).

So with that said, what has Magic Eden done with its new rewards program and how does this headline obscure the bigger-picture vision that Magic Eden has in store? We have to look at the announcements in chronological order.

Before continuing, if you’re unfamiliar with Magic Eden learn more about them here.

Magic Eden introduces Non-Fungible DAO

Yesterday, Magic Eden announced the Non-Fungible DAO.

TLDR:

• Magic Eden will be open-sourcing their smart contracts across their Solana, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Polygon marketplaces. ME will transition control of the protocols to the Non-Fungible DAO.

• The DAO will be governed by holders of the $NFT token (not live yet)

• A majority of the $NFT token supply will be allocated to the community, which is earned by using the protocols owned by Non-Fungible DAO

  • Translation: Use Magic Eden, get airdropped $NFT in the future

4 hours later

Magic Eden posts a teaser video reiterating the marketplace’s multi-chain capabilities and partnerships. It’s a fun video so check it out. Two frames in the video stick out to me:

1. Multiple prominent NFT collections on different blockchains are seen side by side

2. The Magic Eden wallet is featured. This was announced a couple months ago, is still in Beta, and is in waitlist mode

What does this all mean TPan?!

Hang on, I haven’t even talked about the revamped rewards program 😂

24 hours later

ME shares details regarding its revamped rewards program. This adds more context to the earlier announcement about the Non-Fungible DAO and $NFT.

TLDR:

• The new rewards program will be cross-chain and will start with Solana on February 2

• Rewards will be retroactive, rewarding historical activity on the platform

• Magic Tickets owners will receive rewards as well. Magic Tickets are a NFT collection that granted access to MagicDAO, a legacy effort that probably had similar ambitions but was not set up optimally for them. As we can see, this is now rolled into the broader revamp.

• Using Magic Eden will result in more Diamonds (with the assumption that Diamonds will convert to $NFT at some point)

Huge announcement!

However, amidst all the excitement around these posts, something didn’t feel right to me. When I was looking all the slew of announcements from Magic Eden and preparing for this segment I wasn’t sure what to make of them. Everyone’s excited, but what does it all mean? The focus is on the airdrop and token, which is big news.

I don’t think that’s the real headline though. Instead, it should be that…

Unifying the NFT marketplace experience

…Magic Eden is unifying the NFT experience. What does this look like?

Unifying Marketplaces

The first screenshot from the video I shared earlier says it all.

This is not a thing. Visually it could be, but you need to connect a different wallet for each of these chains (Ethereum, Solana, Bitcoin).

That is why Magic Eden has 4 marketplaces. Magic Eden is 1 marketplace by name, and 4 marketplaces by function.

So what’s the common denominator that actually allows for one marketplace (instead of 4) under one roof? A wallet that can support that!

Wait a second…

Unifying Wallets

The Magic Eden Wallet is the glue that allows the 4 marketplaces to become 1. As I mentioned in that piece:

So why is ME launching a new wallet extension app in this seemingly crowded space? The extension’s description in the Chrome Web Store provides a good idea with select points below:

• Instantly transfer cryptocurrencies between chains and easily collect any NFT on Solana, Ethereum, Polygon, or Bitcoin Ordinals

• Use a single cross-chain wallet without switching between multiple chain-specific wallets

• Direct integration with Magic Eden’s NFT platform gives you better NFT management, experience, and rewards on Magic Eden

• Do more with your NFTs directly from your wallet. View, purchase, list, and sell NFTs on Magic Eden without leaving your wallet.

• Use easy payment methods such as debit card, bank transfer, or Apple Pay to buy or sell across chains. Magic Eden Wallet supports localized currency in select regions.

What does this enable?

Well, ME gains more marketshare, gets a lot more users, retains more of them, has a successful airdrop, everyone has a big party, Bitcoin goes to $1 million, etc. Yay!

What else?

Unifying users and communities across ecosystems

Want to purchase a popular Solana NFT, but have always been confused with bridging ETH to SOL?

Want to purchase a Bitcoin Ordinal but don’t even know what an Ordinal means?

It’s ok, you can do it all under one roof with one wallet thanks to ME!

Unifying attention and users

Ok great, ME has something up their sleeve with the marketplace and wallet. Why should users care?

Frankly speaking, users do in theory and unfortunately don’t in reality. What they actually care about two things:

1. Making money

2. Saving money

I mean, why else are the most popular posts these days announcements of rewards or points programs?

The ME team knows this, so they’ve planned a way to incorporate rewards (aka an eventual token) into their larger vision. Putting this all together:

Ok, that was less visually appealing than I thought it would be lol.

To summarize the visual: Magic Eden Rewards is the means to the end, which is:

1. A better NFT experience for users

2. A stronger, stickier, and richer business model for Magic Eden

It’s sorta like getting a picky baby to eat vegetables except it’s getting financially motivated degens to adopt a better user experience.

What’s next?

I don’t know if my prediction is right, only time will tell. However, I believe the puzzle pieces are all there, hinting at ME’s roadmap and strategy to realize it.

If they’re successful in it, I believe they’ll put some more magic into the potential of what NFTs and crypto have to offer 🪄

See you Thursday!