Magic Eden's Zedd talks expansion plans after the NFT marketplace raises $130 million

Episode 56 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded in-person with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Magic Eden Co-Founder & COO, Zedd.

Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.

Magic Eden, Solana’s largest NFT marketplace, is eyeing an ambitious growth plan after raising a $130 million funding round co-led by Greylock and Electric Capital.

While the broader crypto market struggles to find its footing, Magic Eden is coming off its best month ever, with just over 5 million SOL in volume transacted during May.

In this episode of The Scoop, Magic Eden co-founder and COO Zhuoxun 'Zedd' Yin, talks through the project’s funding efforts and unpacks some of the reasons why he believes Magic Eden has room to grow into more than just an NFT marketplace.

As Zedd explains during the interview, both Magic Eden’s founders and its investors share a broad time horizon for the future:

“I think despite the ridiculous and amazing traction that I think we've had in the first nine months, it's still very early days for us and we have a lot more we want to build — and I think hopefully that plan and that outlook resonated with a lot of investors. And for us, we were lucky to be able to bring on the partners that we were really excited about.”

Instead of limiting itself to running a marketplace, Magic Eden hopes to establish itself as a hub for all NFT-related activity.

According to Zedd:

“We would love to be the place where there's actually many layers on top of the marketplace — so not only is this the place where you perform the execution of the transaction, but really all of the discovery, all of the community based interaction, all the fun social elements that come with NFTs is also happened on Magic Eden.”

Magic Eden also plans to branch out beyond the Solana blockchain

"As, you know... very intentional decision to start on Solana. But I really do think that if developers and users are going to be in other ecosystems, it's almost like if you're a traditional company starting in Australia. But then there's a lot of users in New Zealand or like whatever, like Singapore. You want to be there too. Right?"

During this episode, Chaparro and Zedd also discuss:

The difference between Web2 and Web3 products
How the bear market is effecting NFTs
How Magic Eden plans to expand into gaming

This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross River
Fireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.

About Coinbase Prime
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About Cross River
Cross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.