Amazon, a Fortune 500 company, confirmed that it is in development to launch a digital asset service or in other words “NFT Initiative”. It was not yet confirmed what exactly it will be, but it is expected to focus on blockchain-based gaming that rewards players with non-fungible tokens.
Amazon, one of the largest companies in the world, which belongs to the famous Fortune 500, confirmed that it will develop services in Web3 and NFTs. The e-commerce giant did not confirm what will be created, but they let it be foreseen that it is a digital assets company.
Amazon’s idea is to focus on blockchain-based games that at the same time, provide rewards to players with NFTs or fungible assets.
In addition, this news followed AWS’ (Amazon Web Services) recent strategic alliance with Ava Labs, a project behind the Avalanche blockchain. In a press release issued when the partnership between the two companies was made, both teams noted that Ava Labs aims to implement subnetworks as a managed service of AWS Marketplace. As a result, it will be possible to allow people to create custom subnets with just a few clicks.
Emin Gün Sirer, founder and CEO of Ava Labs, spoke out in the press release named above and said that this tool will be of great help to individual and enterprise developers, as, they will be able to activate nodes and test networks on the fly with AWS in whichever legal jurisdiction makes the most sense for them.
The news that Amazon wants to enter the Web3 world and NFTs is not that relevant since, many saw it coming from the latest statements by Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon. He stated in April 2022 that the e-commerce company is willing to sell NFTs someday.
He also said that he expected non-fungible tokens to continue to grow significantly as they had been doing at the time and that cryptocurrency payment mechanisms will probably not be added until cryptocurrencies become more widely known and important to people. He ended his remarks by confirming that beyond cryptocurrencies, NFTs could be sold on Amazon in the future.
Undoubtedly, the evolution and innovation of large companies will be of great help to the non-fungible token industry and the entire Web3 ecosystem. A few months ago it was rumored that Amazon might collaborate with emerging NFT artists, but this did not happen.
What did happen was that Amazon was involved in the NFT space through a series called NFTMe, if you don’t know what it is about, I leave you the article I did previously “Amazon to release a documentary on NFTs and their impact around the world.“, which aimed to explore the culture and disruption of the NFT space around the globe.
Although little is yet known about the product, company or tool to be launched by Amazon in relation to NFTs and blockchain technology, hopefully in the coming months the company will be able to provide public information about it, since April 2023 is the tentative date for the launch of the new service.
Another doubt that has not yet been confirmed is whether Amazon’s ambitions and ultimate goals in Web3 will have as direct competition to other companies in the blockchain industry such as OpenSea or Rarible. Surely for both entities, the launch of a new Web3 e-commerce product from Amazon could be seen as a substantial threat. However, time will tell whether this is the case or not.
Finally, with the amount of customers that Amazon has, it could be of great positive impact a NFT marketplace of this great company, since, so far more than 2.5 million users have interacted with OpenSea, the leading marketplace at present, but every day different sites are being developed and launched to buy and sell NFTs.
Written by Rodrigo Catalan (TW: @RodrigoCatalanB) for NFT Express.