Leading NFT marketplace Magic Eden is shaking up its token plans.
Months later revealing plans to launch a fungible token with the NFT ticker in partnership with a mysterious organization called the Non-Fungible DAO, Magic Eden announced Thursday that it will instead stick with its existing branding: an ME token from the rebranded ME Foundation.
Details about when the ME token will launch and how it will be distributed – including via a possible airdrop to Magic Eden merchants who have earned Diamond rewards (aka points) – are still unclear. However, we know that the token can only be claimed via the Magic Eden Wallet on mobile and desktop.
ME Foundation Director Matt Szenics shared Declutter that the original idea behind the “NFTThe token name was intended to essentially claim a ticker that could represent the asset class, i.e. non-fungible tokens or blockchain tokens that represent ownership of unique items such as works of art, rare video game items and more.
“The ambition was, Hey, it would be really bullish if we just locked this token ticker to basically get people to think of us as the NFT token project,” he said. “And it’s pretty easy, right? And you represent the asset class of the future, worth billions.”
But a few things happened after that, he recalled. Firstly, Magic Eden quickly rose to number one in the NFT space in terms of trading volume, supported by increased demand for Bitcoin Ordinals early this year, prior to the halving.
And second, the multi-chain Magic Eden began expanding beyond NFTs, which has been the platform’s focus since its initial launch on Solana in 2001. Magic Eden launched its own cross-chain wallet after an initial beta rollout late last yearand then debuted support for Runes-A Bitcoin version of fungible tokens, launched in April.
As Magic Eden’s ambitions grew, Szenics said the Foundation and Magic Eden itself – where he previously worked – decided to stick with the branding that had built so much recognition in the crypto world over the past three years.
“We want this to represent something bigger than just NFTs, especially if we later adopt protocols that represent fungible token standards,” he said, adding that the ME Foundation team wanted to “give ourselves room” to expand beyond the NFT market to expand. and launch a community token for many purposes.
“That doesn’t mean we’re not optimistic [NFTs]”, he added.
The ‘we’ in those comments refers to the ME Foundation, not Magic Eden, although there is clearly potential for confusion with the shared branding.
Despite the name swap for the token and the Foundation’s support, Szenics said the core details otherwise remain the same. The ME Foundation is being built around the various NFT protocols that Magic Eden built and then granted to the Foundation, making them open-source and freely available for use by other marketplaces and platforms.
So the goal is to encourage other companies to adopt those NFT protocols and smart contracts – and also to adopt the ME token. Szenics said the ME Foundation will eventually provide developer token grants to help platforms and their users, hoping to make the ME token broadly useful beyond just Magic Eden itself.
Despite the shared branding, Szenics also emphasized that the Cayman Islands-based ME Foundation is a separate entity from Magic Eden, and that this is not simply a thinly veiled form of “decentralization theater.”
Currently, a two-person team, including former Magic Eden CEO Tiffany Huang, has formally spun off ME Foundation employees from Magic Eden — and even locked them out of the startup’s Slack server, he said.
The ME Foundation is a separate company with its own charter and an agreement to use Magic Eden’s brands, he added. They plan to expand the team as the Foundation oversees the ME launch and upcoming token distribution, encouraging growth and adoption in the crypto space and managing the ultimate leadership. DAO of token holders.
Sticking with the Magic Eden branding is a tribute of sorts to Magic Eden, Szenics said, even though the future of the ME token could include protocols built by other teams.
“It’s almost a tribute to the original builders of the protocols,” he said. “Who knows what protocols the Foundation will have in the future? But it is there to start with – and the facts are that the original builder was Magic Eden.”
“Now they are open source,” he said of the protocols underlying the ME Foundation and the token. “They belong here.”