Deciphering the Metaverse: The decentralized control fallacy

Since the birth of the crypto industry, the ethos of decentralization has been inculcated into the minds of participating builders and investors alike. The importance of this firmly held belief is also instilled into new entrants going down the crypto rabbit hole, who quickly grasp the significance of this ubiquitous value, often serving as a compass to inform their decisions. Previously, the pursuit of decentralization acted as the impetus that catalyzed innovation in DeFi, giving rise to a cornucopia of decentralized exchanges (DEX). Over time, the market became cluttered with an abundance of siloed DEXs offering similar solutions, which required users to go searching for the best quotes across multiple platforms. Bridging this gap, liquidity aggregators sprang up with the intention of enhancing efficiency for users by bundling liquidity and providing the best quotes available across various platforms.

Likewise, the NFT space has witnessed a rapid expansion of burgeoning, decentralized NFT marketplaces over the last couple of months. In the course of this development, liquidity has turned into an increasingly fragmented resource, scattered across numerous competing NFT marketplaces, trying to unseat the more centralized monopoly OpenSea. Recently, the NFT liquidity aggregator, Gem, has made great strides in easing the burden on NFT collectors of having to consult various NFT marketplaces individually, capitalizing on the above-mentioned evolution by providing users with a cheaper and more convenient option to trade NFTs across marketplaces.