Exclusive: Rarible Co-Founder Says NFTs Are Here To Stay

Non-fungible tokens, a relatively new concept, are digital assets represented by data and stored on digital ledgers, or blockchains. Like any other asset, NFTs, via tokens that represent digital certificates of ownership, can be bought and sold. The transactions transfer ownership from one unique entity on the blockchain to another.

Alexander Salnikov is the founder of Rarible, a community-owned NFT marketplace for the creation, sale and collection of digital items secured with blockchain. Benzinga chatted with Salnikov about how utility and value can meet with blockchain technology.

Rarible's Beginnings: Salnikov has worked in blockchain and cryptocurrency since 2012. NFTs, which were not at all that popular at the time, caught his interest.

“NFT was fun, visual and tangible," he said. "It's simple and the digital item is yours, in the wallet.”

Salnikov began building Rarible, a platform to allow collectors and artists the ability to exchange unique objects over the Ethereum ETH/USD blockchain.

“Back when we started, in order to create NFTs, you needed to write code,” Salnikov said.

Early NFT adopters included game developers that were deploying code to the Ethereum blockchain to create their own games, like CryptoKitties.

“We assembled this simple platform that allows you to create an NFT and sell it. We invested a lot of our team’s effort into making it really simple, clean, and digestible — UX and UI were a heavy priority for us." 

Rarible's Use Case, Recent Developments: After introducing an incentive program, platform adoption went through the roof, Salnikov said. 

“We launched a liquidity mining program which basically rewards everybody who is trading on the marketplace,” he told Benzinga. “We reward transactions so all the buyers and sellers in the marketplace receive a portion of a weekly reward, creating an extra layer of competition.”

The program drew in native cryptocurrency users due to their interest in farming and governance, which Rarible offers through its RARI token.

Apart from serving as an award, RARI offers owners a voice in Rarible’s future: token holders can propose and vote for change, as well as moderate the platform.

In September, Rarible launched an insurance NFT partnership. At the time, the company’s platform accounted for more than half of the NFT market.

“The trends are working in our favor,” Salnikov said. “Our plan is to thrive off these developments.”

What's Next For Rarible: NFTs have gripped pop culture. Digital artist Beeple recently sold work for $69 million, while platforms like NBA Top Shot are seeing historic moments sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

In light of this NFT mania, Rarible raised $1.75 million in a seed round led by the crypto fund 1kx, with participation by ParaFi Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Bollinger Investment Group, MetaCartel Ventures and CoinFund, among others.

The company will tap into these new funds to accelerate innovation and become the backbone for more NFT projects by big brands, celebrities and others, Salnikov said. 

“We’re launching Rarible protocol that would allow everybody to build on top of the Rarible marketplace,” he said. “If you want to build your own marketplace, you can build that on top of the Rarible protocol, too.”

With the protocol, platform users will have the opportunity to tap into instant liquidity provided by millions of monthly users. 

“Typically, you need to write a lot of code to build your marketplace — we simplify things for you.”

Additionally, Rarible is looking to support timed auctions, 3D items, collaborations and new royalty structures, as well as to ensure NFT metadata is preserved forever.

“Over the next six months, our target is to abstract away all the hard blockchain stuff — to enable you to just log in with your email and password, in some custodial wallet that keeps your keys safe,” Salnikov said. “We’re developing a platform where creators, brands, celebrities, and large companies can build a true and deep connection with their audiences.”