PayPal, the financial services giant, has announced its plans to venture into the realm of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with a recent patent filing at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
According to the September 21st filing, PayPal aims to develop a full-featured NFT marketplace that will allow users to purchase, sell, and trade various types of digital collectibles and assets.
The scope of items available on PayPal’s proposed NFT marketplace is far-reaching, encompassing digital representations of images, videos, audio files, event tickets, personal property deeds, works of art, and more. The patent filing goes into great technical detail about how both on-chain and off-chain NFT transactions will be facilitated on the platform. Off-chain transactions in particular will rely on an intermediary service provider and use of an omnibus wallet to avoid the need for transactions to be broadcast on the blockchain itself. This avoids the often high gas fees associated with on-chain transactions.
While Ethereum is never directly referenced, there are several hints that PayPal intends to build its NFT marketplace using the Ethereum network and infrastructure. Beyond just collecting NFTs, the marketplace also plans to offer features like NFT royalties and fractionalization. Fractionalization will allow multiple users to own fractions of a single NFT, improving overall liquidity. A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) may also be used to ensure satisfactory NFT liquidity in the marketplace.
This patent filing is PayPal’s latest foray into the world of digital assets and Web 3.0. The company already allows users to buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies. It recently launched its own stablecoin as well. The proposed NFT marketplace represents the next evolution of PayPal’s crypto offerings as NFTs continue to grow in popularity and adoption. By leveraging its massive user base, PayPal could soon become a major player in the NFT arena.
#NFT #Crypto #PayPal #Web3 #Blockchain
