Multinational coffee franchise Starbucks announced it was ending its NFT marketplace program, which let customers earn and purchase digital collectible stamps in the form of NFTs. This will make room for new projects and initiatives.
According to a statement published on Starbucks' Odyssey Beta website, the respective program will end on March 31. It allowed users to take part in coffee-themed challenges and games in exchange for digital stamps that they could use to access new experiences and benefits.
In addition, the community discord forum and the NFT marketplace, where users exchange digital stamps, will shut down.
Odyssey transitions to Nifty
According to Starbucks, the Odyssey NFT marketplace will become the Nifty NFT marketplace. Users can continue to trade, buy, and sell Odyssey stamps on the Nifty NFT marketplace.
It's not clear why Starbucks decided to shut down the NFT marketplace, but it probably has to do with the overall downturn of the market itself. Another Web3 project might replace it.
Starbucks stated that it had to "prepare for what comes next as we continue to evolve the program."
An inopportune launch
Starbucks opened its NFT marketplace in September 2022, a rough year for the crypto industry. Celsius had gone bankrupt in July and the Terra-Luna ecosystem had collapsed in May that year. FTX collapsed soon after the NFT marketplace launch.
Starbucks launched the NFT marketplace on the Polygon blockchain, a proof-of-stake network with lower energy consumption. At the time, the franchise stated that it would use this more energy-efficient blockchain technology as a better option than "proof-of-work."
GameStop and Meta pulled the plug on their NFT marketplaces
In January, gaming company GameStop announced it would shut down its NFT marketplace after a series of cuts in its crypto services. In the spring of 2023, Meta closed down its NFT marketplace features on Facebook and Instagram less than a year after the first launch of the integrations.
NFT predictions
Cointelegraph talked to experts about their NFT niche predictions for 2024 and beyond. One of the experts is Oh Thongsrinoon, chief marketing officer of Altava Group, a company bridging Web3 and luxury fashion. His company has always believed that NFT marketplaces have value and utilities beyond profile pictures and PFPs. He believes markets like real estate and precious metals will implement NFTs this year.
Vineet Budki, CEO of Cypher Capital, foresees NFTs "maturing into valuable tools with real-world applications" this year.
NFT marketplaces lost 17% this week
NFT marketplace sales amounted to $358,080,260 this past week, which represents a weekly decline of 16.55%, data from the NFT analytics platform Cryptoslam show. The three leading blockchain platforms in terms of NFT marketplace sales volume reported weekly declines. The Ethereum Mainnet, which leads NFT sales, realized a volume of $129 million, but sales of ETH-based NFTs declined by 21% compared to the previous week. Bitcoin NFT sales dropped by a comparable percentage, with a sales volume of just over $124 million.
Solana's NFT marketplace sales declined by around 5%, totaling $61.68 million over the past week. BNB Chain and Polygon rounded out the top five by NFT sales volume over the week.
The leading collections on NFT marketplaces
The most successful NFT collection was "Uncategorized Ordinals," with a sales volume of $57 million, up 43% from the previous week. It was followed by the infamous "Bored Ape Yacht Club" (BAYC) collection, which realized a sales increase of 14% to more than $13 million.
Among the leading NFT marketplace collections by sales volume were Mad Lads, Nodemonkes, and Peplicator. The most expensive NFTs sold this week were Frxethredemptionticket and ORDI, fetching $842,000 resp. $493,000.
The Solana, BNB, and Ronin blockchains also recorded significant sales. Despite the decline in overall sales, the number of NFT buyers increased by a whopping 245% to 370,111.
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