The Avalanche app from Venly is now accessible to all Shopify businesses, allowing them to mint and sell NFTs via a no-code interface.
If any of Shopify’s millions of merchants wish to sell NFTs, they need not direct buyers to a specialized platform such as OpenSea or Magic Eden. Instead, they can mint and list NFTs via their existing storefront utilizing one of Shopify’s blockchain apps. These NFTs can now be created on Avalanche due to Venly.
Today, Venly, a blockchain technology company, announced the expansion of Avalanche support via its Shopify NFT minting app. The layer-1 blockchain platform, which is billed as a faster and less expensive alternative to leading NFT platform Ethereum, is now available to all Shopify merchants. Previously, only a subset of Shopify users had access to the platform.
The firm says that Shopify is a leading ecommerce platform that supports online storefronts for millions of retailers across the globe. CEO Tobi Lütke is a proponent of Web3 and serves on the board of directors for the crypto exchange Coinbase.
According to Venly, nor an existing Avalanche wallet nor experience with cryptocurrency will be required for purchasers to get an NFT. They can instead pay using fiat currency (like as a credit card) and receive a link to a newly-created Avalanche wallet containing the newly-minted NFT, which they can then transfer elsewhere.
Venly, a 2018 startup that offers blockchain wallet solutions, is one of numerous blockchain app partners integrated into the Shopify ecosystem. In the past, other partners have supplied tools for users to mint NFTs on blockchain systems such as Ethereum and Flow.
Tim Dierckxsens, co-founder and CEO of Venly, told Decrypt that the company first gave NFT minting tools to brands and artists on Shopify, but that it saw a growing need for a simple, no-code tool that any seller could use to make NFTs. He said that Shopify asked Venly to make an app for its merchants so that they could sell NFTs to more people.
“I believe it’s one of the biggest evolutions [for NFTs] where this can be taken to a mass market,” Dierckxsens told, “and you don’t need to understand the necessity of crypto to make the purchase.”
Venly enables Shopify businesses to sell NFT collectibles, offer NFT token-gated experiences, and connect NFTs to tangible objects for authentication, among other use cases. Dierckxsens also believes that there is a significant opportunity for producers and artists to offer NFTs through social media channels that can interface with Shopify businesses or point to them.
“Our growing blockchain ecosystem demonstrates our commitment to supporting merchants as they sell NFTs directly through their storefronts, helping to further grow participation in Web3 and expand what’s possible in commerce,” said Shopify Blockchain Ecosystem Lead Christina Lomazzo in a release.
Late in 2021, Venly launched its Shopify NFT minting tool on Polygon, the Ethereum scaling network. Dierckxsens stated that Venly plans to add support for NFTs minted through Hedera and Ethereum scaling network Immutable X in the future. Avalanche is the second network to be supported.
He told that concentrating on layer-1 platforms and Ethereum layer-2 networks with low gas fees for clients was intentional. Even if they may not appear to vary as wildly as they did during the original NFT purchasing frenzy of 2021, Ethereum mainnet gas fees can vary greatly and be pricey.
“You cannot sell a mass market item and expect end users to pay around $20 to $100 in transaction fees,” Dierckxsens said.
Even though the amount of NFTs traded on the platform is low—about $1.2 million in December, according to data from CryptoSlam—Avalanche has seen a rise in the number of people using NFTs over the last year. In October, OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace, added support for Avalanche NFTs. This is because Web3 gaming on the platform is expected to grow over the course of 2022.
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