Alibaba Group, a Chinese e-commerce and internet services firm, has announced that it is launching a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, in an effort to push forth with its initiatives in the adoption of blockchain technology.
The new NFT marketplace will be launched as a section of Alibaba Auction, a service that the firm already provides. Bit Universe, a crypto portfolio services firm backed by the Tree Graph Blockchain Research Institute, will develop and provide Alibaba’s users with analytics and insights for their collections through the Guang Jian NFT platform. Bit Universe’s NFT platform is integrated with Alibaba’s Alipay, and will also be accessible via WeChat, a popular messaging platform in China owned by Tencent.
Guang Jian will facilitate Alibaba Auction’s services for all collectibles, including digital items such as e-sports collectibles, digital trading cards, digital art, and digital copyrights. Guang Jian is integrated as well with the New Copyright Blockchain, a blockchain infrastructure backed by the Sichuan provincial government.
The new service under Alibaba Auction will be called “Blockchain Digital Copyright and Asset Trade” and would allow content creators, writers, musicians, game developers, and artists to sell the rights to their content through blockchain-enabled non-fungible tokens. Sales of these “copyright” NFTs will include complete ownership of works purchased from the platform.
The marketplace is now live, with a number of NFTs already scheduled for auction in September. Participating bidders are required to deposit 500 yuan (about 55 GBP, or $77) to get admitted to the auctions. Reserve pricing for upcoming auctions starts at $15.
Alibaba’s Alipay platform also recently offered NFT artworks that featured “White Snake 2: The Tribulation of the Green Snake,” a popular Chinese animated film which was released in July. The film NFTs constituted wallpapers for user payment code pages, with 80,000 copies from two editions sold out within a day.
Alibaba-owned news platform South China Morning Post also recently launched its own NFT standard called “ARTIFACT” which allows bidders to purchase historical items from its archives on a blockchain.
Other Chinese tech firms such as Tencent have also launched their own NFT initiatives, with the launch of Huanhe (phantom core), a trading software built on top of the Zhixin Chain ($ZXT), Tencent’s proprietary blockchain app which can be accessed via WeChat.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
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