Kraken opens waitlist for forthcoming NFT platform

Crypto exchange Kraken has opened the waitlist for its non-fungible token platform.

Rumblings of a Kraken NFT platform first began in December of last year, when a spokesperson told The Block that Kraken would begin offering NFT services in the very near future. Today, the firm announced some of those services in a blog post today, saying Kraken NFT will be a “complete solution for exploring, curating and securing your NFT collection.” 

The idea is to create a seamless integration for the trading and custody of NFTs. The platform will integrate the buying and selling of NFTs with users’ Kraken accounts, which allows traders to execute transactions with cash or crypto. Sellers can list NFTs in any of the fiat or cryptocurrencies Kraken supports and buyers can bid in their preferred currency.

Kraken also plans to offer Creator Earnings, which will reward artists with a portion of each secondary market sale price of their NFT. 

The platform will sport built-in tools to analyze and describe the rarity of individual NFTs compared to other tokens in the same collection. The announcement did not elaborate on what these metrics will encompass.

Users who custody NFTs with Kraken will consequently enjoy zero gas fees for trades, though they will incur gas fees when transferring NFTs and crypto off the Kraken platform. The platform will support collections across multiple blockchains using a single interface, however it will only support Ethereum and Solana at launch, with more integrations to come.

In late December of last year, Kraken CEO Jesse Powell said the platform would provide services to allow customers to extract additional value from their NFT collections. At the time, he proposed the platform would include NFT-collateralized loans. Today’s post did not mention those functional capabilities of NFTs.